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Saturday, February 21, 2015

My People

The earliest settlers in the archipelago that would become the Philippines were the Austronesians. They migrated from the Yunnan Plateau in southern China and are related to the Guangdong/Fujian Chinese. They reached our archipelago via Taiwan. You may ask me why they are darker than their relatives in China. That change in their physical feature can be explained by the process of navigation and adaptation to their new environment. While they were sailing through the open waters, they were sunburned. They also adapted well to the islands near the Equator where there is much more sunlight than where they came from. Those are the reasons why our Austronesian ancestors have brown skin. In spite of the change in their physical appearance, it is still a fact that they came from southern China and therefore they are Chinese.

In 1279, the Mongols invaded the Song Empire. After the fall of the Song Empire, the last Song emperor and his fleet escaped to our archipelago and established the Lu-Song or ‘Lesser Song’ Empire. Tondo or 'Eastern Capital' (in present-day Manila) was the capital of the Lu-Song Empire. The Lu-Song merchants were considered Chinese by the people they encountered across Asia. Lu-Song became Luzon in Spanish historical records and it was the name given to the whole island.

Chinese immigrants not only settled in Tondo but also in many parts of our archipelago where they intermarried with the local Austronesian population. Their mixed descendants were called Mestizos de Sangley. One place where there was a high concentration of Chinese mestizos is Ilocos where we can still see the remnants of the Chinese quarters called Kasanglayan in Vigan. Like Tondo, Vigan was also an important coastal trading post for merchants from many regions in Asia. Tondo and Vigan were two of the only five communities with more than two thousand people when the Spaniards and Mexicans arrived in our archipelago.

In 1574, Limahong attempted to overthrow the Spanish colonial government twice. A year before that, he gathered an army of around 3,000 Chinese. Limahong and his army first arrived in Ilocos Sur but the Spanish army drove them away. They then tried to capture Intramuros, the seat of the Spanish colonial government, but they failed so they fled and settled in Pangasinan.

The Galleon Trade from 1565 to 1815 between Manila in the Philippines and Acapulco in Mexico attracted many Chinese males from Fujian to work in the Philippines. The Spanish colonial government allowed only the males to enter the Philippines and restricted the activities of these Chinese immigrants. They engaged in retail trades and they could not own land. Because of the abuses done by the Spaniards, the Chinese revolted 14 times. The Chinese revolt in 1603 led to the massacre of around 24,000 Chinese as ordered by Governor Luis Perez Dasmarinas. Another revolt in 1639-40 led to the massacre of around 22,000 Chinese. In 1662, around 30,000 Chinese were expelled from the Philippines and those who were caught were immediately beheaded. Most of the massacred or expelled Chinese were unconverted Chinese. To avoid this fate, many Chinese male immigrants embraced Catholicism, intermarried with local women, adopted Hispanized names, and practiced Hispanic customs and traditions. Some of their descendants, like Jose Rizal and Emilio Aguinaldo, would someday lead the Filipinos in their fight for freedom against the Spanish colonial government.

The American colonial government put into effect the Chinese Exclusion Act in the Philippines but many Chinese were still able to settle in the Philippines. During World War II, the Japanese killed many Chinese-Filipinos. Some years after the Chinese Revolution of 1949, many Chinese migrated to the Philippines. During the Martial Law Regime, Chinese schools were ordered to study Filipino culture. This policy led to the formal assimilation of the post-1949 Chinese-Filipinos into mainstream Filipino society. The most recent Chinese immigrants started to arrive in the 1980s and these Chinese lived in a society in China where the traditional Chinese culture is suppressed.

There are five waves of migration from mainland China. The first ones to arrive were the Austronesians from Yunnan. The second wave brought the survivors of the Song Empire. The third group composed of mostly Fujianese males who intermarried with local women during the Spanish colonial period. The fourth set of migrants left the mainland after 1949. The fifth wave is still bringing some Chinese to the Philippines. The Chinese-Filipinos comprise about 20% of the people in the Philippines.

The Organisms of History

The three most significant organisms of world history are a bacterium that devastated the known world, a plant that divided the world into two sides, and an animal that expanded empires.

Yersinia pestis
Yersinia pestis is a bacillus that lives inside the digestive tract of fleas. The infected fleas were transported by rodents from Central Asia to the Far East and the Middle East via the Silk Road in the early 1340s. The Black Death reached Europe in 1347 and killed more than 20 million Europeans by 1353. The plague recurred several times from the 14th to the 17th century with weaker intensity. The Europeans thought that nutmeg seeds could guard them from the plague because the fleas avoided the scent of the spice. The demand and price of the spice from the Far East increased. This benefited the Venetian merchants who monopolized the spice trade in the Mediterranean. This also benefited the Arab traders who used to get the spice from Southeast Asia where they introduced their religion and their political system headed by a Sultan.

Myristica fragrans
Nutmeg is a tree that used to grow only in one island of the Spice Islands or the Moluccas. The Arab traders were buying nutmeg seeds from the islanders and selling them to the merchants of Venice. The Iberians planned to access the Spice Islands by searching for new trade routes to the Orient. The race to control the spice trade led to the division of the world into two sailing zones: East and West. Pope Alexander VI authored the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 that marked a line along the Atlantic Ocean. The East of the line was for the Portuguese and the West for the Spaniards. But the partition was not so perfect such that a portion of land (coast of present-day Brazil) in the Western hemisphere went to the Portuguese. Moreover, Spain claimed the Philippines in the East. So the Iberians ended up sharing both hemispheres like the way they share their peninsula. The Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama sailed from Lisbon to the southern tip of Africa, crossed the Indian Ocean and landed in India in 1498. Ferdinand Magellan, another Portuguese explorer sailing under the Spanish flag, sailed from Seville to the southern part of South America, crossed the Pacific Ocean and landed in the Philippines in 1521. The Portuguese and the Spaniards built their empires in the Old and New World. The Portuguese reached the Moluccas in 1511 and started sending nutmeg and other spices to Europe, thereby breaking the Arab monopoly of the nutmeg trade. The Spanish navigator Andres de Urdaneta discovered a return route from the Philippines to Mexico in 1565. This discovery opened the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade that lasted for 250 years. The Spaniards loaded the ships not only with spices but also with porcelain, ivory, silk and other items from China and other regions of Asia. Those commodities were sold in the Americas and in Europe.

In 1621, the Dutch occupied the Spice Islands and controlled the production of nutmeg for 150 years. The spice was so important to the Dutch that in 1667 they gave Manhattan Island (formerly called New Amsterdam) to the British in exchange for Run Island, a small island with nutmeg trees. In 1810, the British captured the Spice Islands, smuggled nutmeg seedlings and planted them in their tropical territories. The islands were given back to the Dutch in 1814 but their monopoly of the nutmeg trade was already broken by the British.

Equus ferus caballus
The horses originated in Central Asia and were tamed and used by the Proto-Indo-Europeans around 4000 BC to spread to Europe and to the Indian subcontinent. The Indo-European languages are now spoken by almost half of the world population and understood by the other half. The horses were later utilized as vehicles of conquest by the Persians, Greeks, Romans and Mongols. The Persian Empire encompassed Turkey and Egypt in the west to the Indus Valley in the east with an area of roughly 3 million square miles. The Greek Empire with an area of around 2 million square miles included much of the former Persian Empire. The Roman Empire encircled the Mediterranean Sea and it had an area of about 2 million square miles. The Mongol Empire covered barely 13 million square miles from China to Eastern Europe. The empires of the Old World were expansive because of the horse. In the horseless New World, the Inca Empire had an area of 770,000 square miles and the Aztec Empire had an area of only 80,000 square miles. When the Spaniards brought horses to the Americas, they were able to build an empire with an area of more than 7 million square miles. The horses indeed strengthened the cross and the sword (la cruz y la espada) of the Spaniards in their conquest and colonization of the New World.

The Black Death increased the demand for nutmeg seeds in Europe. Christopher Columbus intended to reach the Spice Islands in the East by sailing west but discovered a land between the two ends of Eurasia. Vasco da Gama reached India by sailing around the southern end of Africa. Ferdinand Magellan reached the Philippines by navigating the strait at the southern part of South America. The Iberians found new routes to Asia and brought Oriental goods to Europe. The other Europeans also wanted some portion of the riches of the East. The Europeans dominated the world for several centuries. They introduced horses to locations where there was none. However, they were the first people to use horseless carriages but still imagined a horse pulling their vehicle by expressing the output of the engine in terms of horsepower.

The Author: Andy Salatan is a descendant of Chinese survivors who fled the invading horse-riding Mongols and of indigenous Pacific Islanders who were ruled by Sultans but later succumbed to the cross and the sword of the Spaniards who brought horses to the Philippines.

The Chemicals of History

History is almost a branch of Chemistry because the major world events that formed our present civilization revolved mainly around an element, a compound, and a mixture. That element is gold, a lustrous and malleable metal. That compound is salt, which is a crystalline substance that easily dissolves in water to break down into sodium and chloride ions. That mixture is gunpowder composed of sulfur, carbon, and potassium nitrate.

Gold: The Element of History

Gold is an attractive metal because it glitters and does not tarnish. Its rarity makes it a very valuable material. In ancient Europe and Asia, it was used as currency because it is malleable and can be minted into coins. While in the empires of ancient Americas, it was used to make ornaments and statues of gods and kings. The gold-hungry Spaniards explored and colonized the gold-rich New World indirectly because of salt. They took the gold artifacts from the natives by using gunpowder.

The Kingdom of Spain became richer because of the gold from its territories. It was able to send more expeditions to claim more lands. The Spanish Empire was a global empire with colonies in Europe, North America, South America, and Asia-Pacific. The colonies sent treasures and supplies to Spain. However, English pirates started raiding some of the Spanish ships in the 1580s. So King Felipe II (Philip II) of Spain wanted to conquer England. In 1588, he sent the Invincible Spanish Armada of 130 ships with more than 25,000 Spaniards and 2,500 guns. Unfortunately, the Armada was defeated by the English who had long-range heavy guns. This victory of the English launched the rise of England to become the core of the British Empire. England sent colonists to North America whose descendants formed the United States.

The expanse of the Spanish Empire tremendously decreased in the first half of the 19th century after the countries of Latin America declared their independence. By 1865, only Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean and Guam and the Philippines in the Pacific remained as Spanish territories. As the power of Spain was declining, the United States was emerging. As a rising superpower, the US was eager for expansion. America’s westward movement did not end in the Pacific Coast. It reached Hawaii and was aiming at Guam and the Philippines on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. This was the motivation of the war between the US and Spain. Manila Bay was the stage of the first battle between the American and Spanish forces on May 1, 1898. The peace treaty was signed on December 10, 1898 in Paris. After the war, the US gained control over Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. Cuba and the Philippines were granted independence in 1902 and 1946, respectively. On the other hand, Puerto Rico and Guam remain as US territories until now.

Salt: The Compound of History

Salt was the reason for the building of the earliest roads because it needed to be transported from its source to places where there was no salt. Some roads followed the animal trails leading to salt licks or salt springs while others extended from inland settlements to the seashores. One of the first paved Roman roads was the Via Salaria (Salt Road) that stretched from Rome to the coast of the Adriatic Sea. Salt was also transported through rivers and across the Mediterranean Sea. Those salt roads and waterways became the foundations of the pioneer trade networks that would eventually connect Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East. The trading among distant populations gave rise to flourishing cities where the merchants and traders exchanged their goods. One of the most important trading centers was Venice. The Venetian merchants monopolized the Oriental commodities. So the Spaniards wanted to reach Asia by sailing to the west. In 1492, the Kingdom of Spain sent Cristobal Colon (Christopher Columbus) using some money earned from the production of salt in southern Spain. But instead of reaching the East, he discovered a landmass that was previously unknown to the southern Europeans. The Spaniards saw that the inhabitants of the New World had gold. Fernando de Magallanes (Ferdinand Magellan) was the first European to reach the East by sailing westward when he landed in the Philippines in 1521 after crossing the vast Pacific Ocean. The Spaniards saw that the islanders also had gold. So they used gunpowder to conquer the indigenous peoples of the Americas and the Philippines. They brought the gold loot to Spain.

Gunpowder: The Mixture of History

The gunpowder was invented in China around 850 AD. The formula of this discovery traveled from the Far East to Europe through the trade routes that linked the two sides of Eurasia, the same paths that brought the Black Death that killed as many as 20 million people or about one-third of all Europeans at that time. After the devastation of the plague, there were fewer warriors in the armies of Europe. So they needed a weapon that was more powerful than stone, arrow or spear. They started using the gunpowder in conquest and warfare. The Chinese invention made the Europeans the most powerful people of the world. They explored the world and claimed the lands that they discovered. They built empires across the globe. Spain and Portugal became the first superpowers. The Spanish Empire included parts of the present-day United States, Latin America (except Brazil), Guam, and the Philippines. The Portuguese Empire included the present-day Brazil, parts of Africa, the Middle East, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Macau in China. In 1580, King Felipe II (Philip II) of Spain also became the King of Portugal. From 1580 to 1640, only one monarch ruled the two empires. The French, British and Dutch also carved their empires. The French Empire included parts of North America and Africa, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The British Empire included parts of North America, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Asia-Pacific. The Dutch Empire included parts of South Africa, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Manhattan Island. The Europeans were able to dominate the world because of the gunpowder.

The gunpowder played a very important role when the Allied Powers fought the Central Powers during World War I (1914-1918). The gunpowder was also used when the Allies clashed with the Axis Powers during World War II (1941-1945). The United States again used the gunpowder and led some countries during the Korean War (1950-1953), Vietnam War (1955-1973), Gulf War (1990-1991), Bosnian War (1994-1995), Kosovo War (1998-1999), War in Afghanistan (2001-2014), and Iraq War (2003-2011). The US and some countries are currently using gunpowder in the war against ISIL that started last year.

These three chemicals of history became the measures of global supremacy. The United States is the foremost superpower because it has the largest amount of gold reserves in the world, it has the highest military strength and firepower in the world, and it has the most powerful navy in the world that patrols, controls and commands the biggest area and greatest depth of salty waters. Therefore, these three chemicals of history that shaped our present civilization still continue to influence the present and the future of humanity.

The Author: Andy Salatan is a chemist and a descendant of Chinese migrants and indigenous Pacific Islanders in the Philippines (named after King Philip II of Spain) who were conquered by the Spaniards, the British, the Americans, and the Japanese.