The Philippine Society and Morga S Report

The Philippine Society and Morga’s Report

during the Spanish Period

Spain became a European Powers 1

The Mohammedan conquest served to make the history of Spain very different from that of the other states of Europe. The presence in the peninsula of a large population of alien race and religion made the task of unifying Spain doubly difficult; for it had also the same problem of curbing the ambitious nobles as France and England. During the tenth century, which was so backward a period in the rest of Europe, the Arab civilization in Spain reached its highest development. Cordova, with its half million inhabitants, its stately palaces, its university, its three thousand mosques, and its three hundred public baths, was perhaps unrivaled at that period in the whole world. But the Christian were finally able to reconquer the peninsula.(Robinson,. p.624-625)

As early as the year 1000 several small Christian kingdoms –Castile, Aragon and Navarre-had come into existence in northern Spain. Castile, in particular, began to push back the Mohammedans and, in 1085, reconquered Yoledo. By 1250 the long war of the Christians against the Mohammedans, which fills the medieval records of Spain, had been so successfully carried on that Castile extended to the southern coast and included that great towns of Cordova and Seville. The Moors, as the Spanish Mohammedans were called, held out for two centuries more in the mountainous kingdom of Granada, in southern part of the peninsula. Not until 1492, after a long siege, was the city of Granada captured by the Christians and last remnant of Mohammedan rule disappeared.( Robinson, Breasted and Smith, p625)

The first Spanish monarch was Queen Isabella of Castile, who, in 1469, married Ferdinand, the heir of the crown of Aragon. It was with this union of Castile and Aragon that the great importance of Spain in European history begins. For the next hundred years Spain was to enjoy more military power than any other European state. The year 1492 was a momentous one in Spanish history; for it saw not only the completion of the conquest of the peninsula but the discoveries made by Columbus, under the auspices of Queen Isabella, which opened up sources of undreamed- of wealth beyond the seas. The greatness of Spain in the sixteenth century was largely due to the riches derived from her American possessions. The shameless and cruel looting of the Mexican and Peruvian cities by Cortes and Pizarro, and the silver mines of the New World, enabled Spain for a time to hold a position in Europe which her ordinary resources would never have permitted.. ( Robinson, p 625)

The Discoveries and Colonization of the East33

The business and commerce of the medieval towns was on what would seem to us, after all, a rather small scale. There were no great factories, such as have grown up in recent times with the use of steam and machinery, and the ships which sailed the Mediterranean and the North Sea were same and held only a very light cargo as compared with modern merchant vessels. The gradual growth of a world of commerce began with the sea voyages of the fifteenth century, which led to the exploration by Europeans of the whole globe, most of which was entirely unknown to the Venetian merchants and those who carried on the trade of the Hanseatic League. The Greeks and Romans knew little about the world beyond southern Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia, and much that they knew was forgotten during the Middle Ages. The Crusades took many Europeans as far as East as Egypt and Syria. (Robinson, p. 561)

When the Crusades, which had revealed the Near East, were beginning to peter out in the thirteenth century, the far –distant Orient was brought into the vision of Europe, Eastern Asia came to meet eastern Europe. The great Tatar conqueror Genghis Khan and his successors extended their empire westward from Mongolia to the borders of the Balkans..The Mongols were hospitable to the Europeans , and before the century was over missionaries, ambassadors, and traders, had found their way from western Europe to Cathay, or China. The most famous of these visitors was Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant, whose account of his travels marked the greatest advance in geographical knowledge for more than a thousand years. Polo as a boy of seventeen accompanied his uncle on trading ship trips to Peking, the capital of the great Kublai Khan of the Mongols, and, pleasing the Khan, was retained by him as a councilor and diplomat for twenty years. Allowed at last to return Venice in 1295, Polo astounded his fellow citizens by the magnificence of the jewels which he ripped from the seams of his garments and with the stories of golden-roofed palaces that made the splendor of Venice like a village of hovels. He was nicknamed “ Messer Millione,” or “ Mr. Millions.” Perhaps the most important news brought back from the distant East was that the further shore of China was washed by the sea, and hence the treasure-laden lands of the great Khan could be reached by ship-if one only knew where and how. ( Muszey, p.5)

The Discoveries of the Portuguese. So at least thought the man who deserves to be called the father of European overseas expansion. Prince Henry “ the Navigator,” the third son of King John I of Portugal, devoted his life to maritime enterprise with the double purpose of finding places where there was “ a sure and certain hope of profit “ and of converting the infidel inhabitants thereof to the true faith. Prince Henry established a sort of maritime college, where he assembled the most noted geographers, map makers, and naval architects of the day. Continuous improvements were made in the design, construction, and rigging of vessels, and fleet after fleet was sent out to explore the waters of the AfricanCoast. (Muzzey,1935, p. 10) Likewise, about the year 1318 Venice and Genoa opened up direct communication by sea with the towns of the Netherlands. Their fleets, which touched at the port of Lisbon, aroused the business ambition of the Portuguese, who soon began to undertake larger maritime expeditions. By the middle of the fourteenth century Portuguese mariners had discovered the Canary Islands, Madeira, and the Azores. Before this time no one had ventured along the coast of Africa beyond the desert region of Sahara. In 1445, however, some adventurous sailors came within sight of a headland beyond the desert, and, struck by its luxuriant growth of tropical trees, they called it Cape Verde ( the “ green cape”). Its discovery put an end once for all to the idea that there were only parched deserts to the south.

For generation the Portuguese ventured farther and farther along the coast, in the hope of finding it coming to an end, so that they might make their way by sea to India. At last, in 1487, Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope. Eleven years later ( 1498) Vasco de Gama, spurred on by Columbu’s great discovery, sailed around the Cape of Good Hope. He proceeded northward to a point beyond Zanzibar and then, aided by an Arab pilot, steered eastward straight across the Inidan ocean and reached Calicut, in Hindustan by sea.

The Spice Trade .Vasco da Gama and his fellow adventurers were looked upon with natural suspicion by the Mohammedan spice merchants, who knew very well that their object, was to establish direct trade between the Spice Islands ( Moluccas) and western Europe.However, the Mohammedans had the entire control of the spice trade between Moluccas and the eastern ports of the Mediterranean, where the products were handed over to Italian merchants. The Mohammedans were unable, however, to prevent the Portuguese from making treaties with the Indian princes and establishing trading stations at Goa and elsewhere . In 1512 a successor of Vasco da Gama reached Java and the Moluccas, where the Portuguese speedily built a fortress. By 1515 Portugal had become the greatest among sea powers; and spices reached Lisbon regularly without the assistance of the Mohammedan merchants or of the Italian towns, especially Venice, whose was fatally hurt by the change.

There is no doubt that the desire to obtain spices was at this time the main reason to the exploration of the globe. This motive led European navigators to try in succession every possible way to reach the East: by going around Africa; by sailing west in the hope of reaching the Indies ( before they knew of the existence of America); then, after America was discovered, by sailing around it to the north or south, and even sailing around Europe to the north. It is hard for us to understand this enthusiasm for spices, for which we care much less nowadays. One former use of spices was to preserve food, which could not then, as now, be carried rapidly, while still fresh, from place to place; nor did our conveniences then exist for keeping it by the use of ice. Moreover, spice served to make even spoiled food more palatable than it would otherwise have been.

Idea of Reaching the Spice Islands by Sailing Westward.It finally occurred to thoughtful men that East Indies could be reached by sailing westward. Many intelligent people knew, all through the Middle Ages, that the earth was a globe. The chief authority upon the form and size of the earth continued to be the ancient astronomer Ptolemy, who lived about A.D. 150. he had reckoned the earth to be about one sixth smaller than it is; and as Marco Polo had given an exaggerated idea of the distance which he and his companions had traveled eastward, and as no one suspected the existence of the American continents, it was supposed that it could not be very long journey from Europe across the Atlantic to Japan. (Robinson,p.565)

Cristoforo Columbo.Among the goodly company of navigators attracted to the Portuguese harbors was a young Genoese named Cristoforo Columbo ( Christopher Columbus). At early age the boy developed a great interest in the sea, picked up considerable knowledge of geography, shipping and map making, and probably sailed with a Genoese captain to eastern Mediterranean ports. About fifteen years after the death of Prince Henry, Columbus arrived at Lisbon, where he soon won a conspicuous palce among the mariners. He made voyages to England and to the African coast and married the daughter of one of Prince Henry’s old sea-dogs, the royal governor of the Madeiras. From sources that are not clear to us, Columbus arrived at the unshakable conclusion that there were new lands to be found by sailing boldly out into the Atlantic. He broached his plan to the king of Portugal, whose commission of wise men ridiculed it as fantastic, but sent out a secret expedition to confirm their doubts. Disgusted with this trickery, Columbus shook the dust of Portugal from his feet and went to Spain, where for seven years he labored endeavoring to enlist the support of the sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, who were in the midst of a campaign to drive the Arabs out of their last stronghold in the country. After his scheme had been twice rejected by the royal commissioners, the indomitable man started to cross the Pyrenees to lay his plan before the king of France, but to his surprise he was recalled and graciously received by the Spanish sovereigns. They had just entered Granada in triumph. Queen Isabella, perhaps in gratitude for the victory over the infidels, perhaps through the persuasion of some high official who approved Columbus’s plan, perhaps from jealousy lest another nation might after all reap the glory and profit from that plan gave the Genoese adventurer her whole-hearted support. “ Capitulations,” or articles of contract, were signed on April 17,1492, conferring upon Columbus the title of Don and Admiral and the powers of viceroy and governor “ in all the islands and lands which should be discovered or acquired” by him, together with the tenth part of “ all the pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices and other merchandise” there found, and the right to subscribe one eighth of the cost of the expedition and to have one eighth of the profits.

Though the inhabitants of Palos neighboring towns had been ordered to provide ships and men for the enterprise , it was till the beginning of August that Columbus was able to equip three small vessels with about a hundred sailors. For even of the hardy mariners of Portugal were willing to enlist in so hazardous and novel an expedition. On August 3, 1492, the little fleet I the Santa Maria of about two hundred and thirty tons, the Pinta and the Nina, somewhat smaller) left Palos and put in at the Canaries for final overhauling and instruction. Quitting the Canaries on September 6, they sailed due west into the uncharted sea. The weather was favorable and trade winds from the east bore them rapidly on their way. But as weeks passed and no sign of land appeared the sailors began to murmur and the murmurs rose to threats of mutiny. It took all the iron courage of the great commander to sail on. He had confidently expected to find land not more than seven hundred and fifty leagues from the Canaries; but by the end of September that point had been passed and still there stretched before him only the gray horizon, broken now and then by a cloud-bank which the lookouts eagerly mistook for a shore. On October 6 he yielded to the advice of his chief captain, Martin Pinzon, to turn the course a little south, and soon after midnight of the eleventh a sailor on the Pinta spied a light ahead like a moving torch. The next morning the ships approached the shore of an island in the Bahama group, and while the sailors thankfully chanted the Gloria in Excelsis Columbus landed and, with the red robe of the Admiral of Spain throne over his armor and the standard of Spain held aloft, took possession of the land in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella. For several weeks he cruised line of Cuba for a part of the mainland of Asia and identifying Haiti ( or Hispaniola) with the island of Japan. Here on the day after Christmas he built the fort of the Nativity, in which he left a garrison of thirty-seven men, and started for home in the tiny ship Nina. After a stormy voyage he landed at Palos in March, 1493, and a few weeks later was summoned to the court of Barcelona, where he told his marvelous tale, exhibited the Indians, the strange birds and animals, and the specimens of gold which he had brought from the islands of the West, and received royal honors from his sovereign.

Columbus himself set out on a second voyage in September, 1493, with a fleet of seventeen vessels, carrying fifteen hundred men, with horse, cattle, sheeps, hogs and chickens, fruits and vegetables, seeds and sugar cane from the Canaries. On the island of Haiti he established the colony of Isabella as the capital of his vice-royalty- the first permanent settlement of Europeans in the Western Hemisphere.

Had Columbus dreamed that a solid barrier of land, reaching from artic to antartic snows, and beyond that another ocean wider than the one he had just crossed, lay between the island which he mistakenly called Indies and the real Indies of the East, he would not have spent the remaining years of his life in the attempt to locate the rich cities of Cathay. He sailed along the northern coast of South America in 1498 and called it “ a mainland and very large of which no knowledge has been had till now.”; but it was obviously not the kingdom of the Great Khan. Then he tries to find a passage to Asia further west and for a whole year skirted the savage shores of Central America from Nicaragua to Panama with no better success. Meanwhile his misfortunes as an administrator equaled his disappointments as an explorer. His vanity, avarice, and despotism invited resentment and plots among his followers. The meager returns oh is costly expeditions disappointed the sovereign and grandees of Spain. Even as he was sailing along the pestilential coast of South America the Portuegese Vasco de Gama had reached the harbors of India by way of the cape of Good Hope and had brought back to Lisbon treasure sufficient to pay the cost of the voyage sixty times over. Compared with such returns the results of Columbus’s exploits seemed trivial indeed. The court wits dubbed him “ the Admiral of the Mosquitoes, who has discovered lands of vanity and delusion as the miserable graves of Castilian gentlemen.” He returned to Spain in 1504 to find his benefactress Isabella on her deathbed and two years later, in humiliation of poverty and obscurity, he followed her to the grave. Never was reward more ill-proportioned to deserts. The man whose vision and courage had discovered a new world was not even to have the honor of giving it his name.