sehepunkte 24 (2024), Nr. 10

Stephanie Joy Mawson: Incomplete Conquests

Incomplete Conquests. The Limits of Spanish Empire in the Seventeenth-Century Philippines, by Stephanie Joy Mawson (Universidade de Lisboa), is an impressive book that assembles a set of novel aspects and perspectives in regard to the colonial history of the Philippines. The scope of the book is set on the little investigated 17th century and inquires above all into the issue of the difficult interpretation of "silences" of the archives. It is based on a striking number of sources from Spain (Seville and Madrid), complemented with material from the City of Mexico, Rome, Manila, and two libraries in the UK and the USA. Despite being centered almost exclusively on colonial sources, the author manages to reread the colonial narratives and find the evasive voices of the subaltern. The colonial archive of the Spanish empire is deconstructed and read against the grain to make sense of its voids and omissions. Thereby, the study challenges the apparently obvious conclusion from the colonial archive that colonial state had much "power, coverage and scope, that it simply did not have" (9).

The book's clear vantage point is the "prism of limitations" of the Spanish empire, understanding the colonial archive as "archive of crisis" (6, 186). It does not want to "reject" Spanish colonization of the Philippines but "calls for a reassessment of its strengths and limitations" (183-4). Neither was the process of conquest "relatively bloodless" (186) and fast nor were the missionaries mere arbitrators between a violent colonial state and defenseless natives. Colonial violence was ubiquitous and is perceived here as weakness in the face of omnipresent limitations and anxieties of the Spanish in Southeast Asia. Overall, the process of colonization of the Philippines was by far less successful than former historiography has displayed. Her conclusions, Mawson states, would "not sit comfortably within a historiography that has overwhelmingly focused on how the colonial state exercised power and control" (187).

In response to a historiography that is centered on the colonial state as principal agent, such as John L. Phelan's, Mawson's work takes a postcolonial stance, in the wake of Filipino-American scholars such as William H. Scott, John D. Blanco or Vicente L. Rafael. It seeks to break the established binary narrative of colonizer vs. colonized and make space for "moments of cooperation and collaboration" (5), focusing thereby on indigenous agency. Thus, she argues, the conquest of the Philippines was incomplete, because "colonial power was diffuse and always mediated via indigenous actors" (8). Mawson stresses the importance of shifting the focus from a historiography that is based on the colonial state to the limitations of colonial rule, i.e. to the silent agents, giving agency, culture, and history back to the natives. Her most essential conclusion comes at the end of her introduction: "The actions of Philippine communities defined the limits of empire territorially, economically, spiritually, and militarily" (17).

Throughout the book, Mawson masterfully weaves selected personal stories, elements of folklore, ethnographic evidences and original quotes together with her historical analysis. Statistical material is nicely put into charts and many maps (original and new) illustrate the locations of the presented events. At the end, a useful index completes the book.

Meticulously, the study traces the "limits of Spanish empire" along seven harmoniously drafted chapters. It starts in the years 1660-1663, which represent a crucial moment in Philippine history [1], containing several limitations of Spanish rule that are analyzed in the subsequent chapters in more depth. The events of this period illustrate that the Spanish colony was overextended and overwhelmed.

A first limitation is found in the colony's internal structure, the labor regime. Mawson argues that the government's dependency on native elites, in particular in regard to mobilizing native labor, was a major restraint and one reason why slavery, as part of the indigenous debt system, was not effectively abandoned in the Philippines until very late.

Also, religion was a field where the Spaniards met with severe limitations. Despite alleged mass conversions to Catholicism, the actual number of converted natives was low and the conversions were less "complete" than indicated, leaving space for hybrid forms of faith. The reason for resisting Catholic expansion were the specific religious identity of the natives as well as the abuses of the missionaries.

Another limitation was the southern frontier, established above all by sultanates and smaller chieftaincies, whose permanent incursions Spain never managed to constrain. In addition, the mountainous regions of the archipelago represented limitations, as Manila never had the resources to get a grip on the upland communities in these remote places of refuge, in particular in Northern Luzon.

At the heart of the book stands the chapter on the rarely acknowledged insurgencies in the Cagayan Valley, in which Mawson skillfully illustrates the symbiotic connectedness between the upland and the lowland communities. Pacifying the valley was a long-lasting struggle for Manila because of the relations that the native villagers had with the people in the mountains for military or economic assistance. The upland communities also served as places of refuge, giving the region much volatility.

Finally, the limitation closest to the heart of Spanish power was the enormous Chinese population, which lived in the outskirts of Manila, making the Spanish capital practically a Chinese city. While their presence was necessary for the preservation of the colony, in terms of commerce, supplies, and services, their sheer number threatened the Spaniards, making them resort repeatedly to means of extreme violence to desperately reaffirm their sovereignty.

Incomplete Conquests does not give much reason for criticism. Some formal flaws can easily be passed over and the same goes for minor imprecisions (Kudarat had not yet been a sultan in 1619 [2]), though one might have reflected a bit more on the use of the terms "don", "friar" and especially "indio". The bibliography is rather comprehensive, but I believe the research would have benefitted from studies of scholars such as Alexandre Coello de la Rosa, Jean-Noël Sánchez Pons, or Ana M. Rodríguez-Rodríguez. The investigated body of sources is excellent, yet it catches one's eye that only little material from the Philippines was consulted; conspicuously absent is the National Archives of the Philippines. Finally, I'd like to briefly consider three strands of thought regarding the angle of the investigation. First, native intermediaries must not necessarily be seen as a limitation but, at some point, also as a strength of the colonial system. Second, presenting a concise view on tax data of the 17th century would have enabled a comparative assessment of what effectively had been archived in that regard. Third, referring to the "incomplete conquest", the question arises what kind of completeness the Spanish Crown might have had planned for the Philippines. A contextualization with the Spanish territories in Latin America would have been helpful to put this approach more into perspective.

None of these points are really detrimental to the quality of the book, which, in conclusion, can be considered a landmark in the historiography of the 17th-century Philippines. It is highly recommendable and will be very useful for researchers, teachers, and students of postcolonial studies and in particular of the colonial history of Southeast Asia.

Notes:

[1] Jean-Noël Sánchez Pons: A Prismatic Glance at One Century of Threats on the Philippine Colony, in: The Representation of External Threats. From the Middle Ages to the Modern World, edited by Eberhard Crailsheim / María Dolores Elizalde, Leiden 2019, 343-365.

[2] Cesar Adib Majul: Muslims in the Philippines, Quezon City 1973, 28.