PhilippineIndiosin the Service of Empire: Indigenous Soldiers and Contingent Loyalty, 1600–1700

Abstract

Philippine indios served in the Spanish armies in the thousands in expeditions of conquest and defense across Spain's Pacific possessions, often significantly outnumbering their Spanish counterparts. Based on detailed archival evidence presented for the first time, this article extends the previously limited nature of our understanding of indigenous soldiers in the Spanish Pacific, focusing in particular on the problem of what motivated indigenous people to join the Spanish military. The existing historiography of reward structures among indigenous elites is here coupled with an analysis of the way in which military service intersected with other forms of coerced labor among nonelite Philippine indios. An understanding of pre-Hispanic cultures of warfare and debt servitude helps make the case that many indigenous soldiers were pushed into military service as a way of paying off debts or to avoid other forms of forced labor. Thus indigenous participation in the empire was always tenuous and on the brink of breaking down.In August 1642 the Dutch consolidated their control over Formosamodern-day Taiwan-ejecting the small Spanish garrison from their fort at Jilong and effectively ending the fitful sixteen-year Spanish presence on the island. Curiously, the Dutch conquering party incorporated a number of Philippine indios, natives of the provinces of Pampanga and Cagayan in northern Luzon. They had come to Formosa as conscripted soldiers in the Spanish military and served as soldiers and laborers in the construction of Spanish fortifications. Fed up with the lack of supplies, a lack of payment for their labor, and the ongoing cruelty and exploitation of their Spanish

The Native Militia in the Seventeenth-Century Spanish Philippines: A Space of Power for the Indigenous Elite

“…22 Mawson discussed the recruitment of ordinary indigenous fighters and their possible motivations for enlisting, distinguishing the native elite who gained rewards from ordinary natives who enlisted to pay debt obligations. 23 There are a few attempts to examine the roles of individual native elites in the military, such as the maestres de campo and their responses to Spanish policies. Nicholas Sy argues that the maestres de campo exercised both military and political authority beyond the confines of their pueblos.…”

Locating the Filipino as Malay: A Reassertion of Historical Identity from the Regional Periphery

“…In so far as human agency is a necessary factor of spreading ethno-geographic understanding, it must be mentioned that not only Spanish terms like Malayo travelled with the conquistadors, but also the colonial subjects themselves. They reached the far corners of the “Spanish Lake”, as the Pacific Ocean was regarded in the late 1500s (Schurz 1922: 181–182), for it is certain that Malayo troops were garrisoned in Spain's short-lived outpost in Formosa (Borao 2007: 4–5, 9; Mawson 2016: 381–382), revolutionaries were exiled to the Marianas to live among Malay settlers (Joaquin 2005: 144; Quimby 2011: 23), and a small community of Malay Filipinos, most likely including mariners of the galleon trade, resided in Mexico (Guzmán-Rivas 1960: 48–49; Carrillo 2014: 83). There were no distinct “Filipinos” yet in the 16th and 17th centuries, as the natives only began assuming the former creole appellation for themselves at the cusp of their first bid for independence in the late nineteenth century.…”