Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vfjqv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T14:53:42.926Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Manilamen and seafaring: engaging the maritime world beyond the Spanish realm*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2012

Filomeno V. Aguilar
Filomeno V. Aguilar*
Affiliation:
Ateneo de Manila University, Loyola Heights, Quezon City, 1108 Philippines E-mail: fvaguilar@ateneo.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although the Philippines is hardly known for sending out migrants prior to the twentieth century, and even among seafarers only the galleon age is remembered, this article provides evidence of transcontinental maritime movements from the late eighteenth century until the early twentieth century. These migrants were known in the English-speaking world as Manilamen. Most were seafarers, but some became involved in pearl-shell fishing, while others engaged in mercenary activities. They settled in key ports around the world, their numbers in any one location fluctuating in response to changing circumstances. Despite relocation to distant places, the difficulties of communication, and the impetus toward naturalization, Manilamen seem to have retained some form of identification with the Philippines as homeland, no matter how inchoately imagined.

Keywords

Manilamigrant labourPhilippinesseafaringwhaling and pearling
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , November 2012 , pp. 364 - 388
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank two anonymous referees who gave very valuable comments, criticisms, and suggestions. I am truly indebted to William Clarence-Smith for his friendship and editorial interventions that gave this article its final shape. For excellent assistance I owe much to Pauline Khng. I have benefited from comments made by Paul Kramer, Caroline Sy Hau, and Benedict Anderson on my other papers of a related theme, and I would like to register my gratitude to them here. The reduction in teaching load granted by the School of Social Sciences, Ateneo de Manila University, in 2011–12; the support from the Oscar R. Ledesma Endowed Fund; and the Visiting Research Fellowship in 2010 at the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, are also gratefully acknowledged.

References

1 Philippine Overseas Employment Authority (POEA), Overseas employment statistics 2010, http://www.poea.gov.ph/stats/statistics.html (consulted 16 June 2012).

2 Tyner, James A., ‘Global cities and the circuits of labor: the case of Manila, Philippines’, in Filomeno Aguilar, ed., Filipinos in global migrations: at home in the world?, Quezon City: Philippine Migration Research Network and the Philippine Social Science Council, 2002, pp. 60–85Google Scholar

Sampson, Helen, ‘Transnational drifters or hyperspace dwellers: an exploration of the lives of Filipino seafarers aboard and abroad’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 26, 2, 2003, pp. 253–277Google Scholar

McKay, Steven C., ‘Filipino sea men: constructing masculinities in an ethnic labour niche’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 35, 4, 2007, pp. 617–633Google Scholar

Fajardo, Kale Bantigue, Filipino crosscurrents: oceanographies of seafaring, masculinities, and globalization, Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2011Google Scholar

Swift, Olivia, ‘Seafaring citizenship: what being Filipino means at sea and what seafaring means for the Philippines’, South East Asia Research, 19, 2, 2011, pp. 273–291Google Scholar

Galam, Roderick G., ‘Communication and Filipino seamen's wives: imagined communion and the intimacy of absence’, Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, 60, 2, 2012, pp. 223–260Google Scholar

3 Schurz, William L., The Manila galleon, New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1939Google Scholar

4 Fajardo, Filipino crosscurrents, pp. 42–43Google Scholar

5 Edward Slack Jr, ‘The chinos in New Spain: a corrective lens for a distorted image’, Journal of World History, 20, 1, 2009, p. 38.

6 Borah, Eloisa Gomez, ‘Filipinos in Unamuno's California expedition of 1587’, Amerasia Journal, 21, 3, 1995–96, pp. 175–183Google Scholar

7 Taylor, Paul, ‘Spanish seamen in the New World during the colonial period’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 5, 4, 1922, p. 651Google Scholar

8 Edward Slack Jr, ‘Sinifying New Spain: Cathay's influence on colonial Mexico via the Nao de China’, Journal of Chinese Overseas, 5, 1, 2009, p. 8Google Scholar

9 Gealogo, Francis A., ‘Population history of Cavite during the nineteenth century’, Journal of History, 51, 2005, p. 310Google Scholar

10 Slack, ‘Chinos’, pp. 35–38Google Scholar

11 Taylor, ‘Spanish seamen’, p. 649Google Scholar

12 Lane, Tony, ‘The social order of the ship in a globalised labour market for seafarers’, in Rosemary Crompton, Duncan Gallie, and Kate Purcell, eds., Changing forms of employment: organisations, skills and gender, London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 83–106Google Scholar

13 Ibid., pp. 649–50.

14 Taylor, ‘Spanish seamen’, p. 632Google Scholar

15 Ibid., p. 635.

16 Ibid., pp. 647, 654.

17 Ibid., p. 652.

18 Slack, ‘Chinos’.

19 Slack, ‘Sinifying new Spain’, p. 5Google Scholar

20 Israel, Jonathan, Race, class, and politics in colonial Mexico, 1610–1670, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975, p. 76Google Scholar

21 Slack, ‘Chinos’, p. 65Google Scholar

22 Taylor, ‘Spanish seamen’, p. 650Google Scholar

23 Ibid., pp. 652–3.

24 Espina, Marina, Filipinos in Louisiana, New Orleans, LA: A. F. Laborde and Sons, 1988Google Scholar

Mercene, Floro, Manila men in the new world: Filipino migration to Mexico and the Americas from the sixteenth century, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2007, pp. 1–42Google Scholar

25 Buchholdt, Thelma, Filipinos in Alaska, 1788–1958, Anchorage, AK: Aboriginal Press, 1996, p. 16Google Scholar

26 Ibid., pp. 17–18.

27 Ibid., pp. 3.

28 Richards, Rhys, ‘The “Manilla-men” and Pacific commerce’, Solidarity, 95, 1983, p. 48Google Scholar

29 Buchholdt, Filipinos in Alaska, p. 5Google Scholar

30 Ibid., pp. 9–10.

31 Ibid., p. 11.

32 Richards, ‘“Manilla-men”’, p. 55Google Scholar

33 Delano, Amasa, A narrative of voyages and travels, in the northern and southern hemispheres: comprising three voyages round the world; together with a voyage of survey and discovery, in the Pacific Ocean and Oriental islands, Boston, MA: E. G. House, 1817, p. 167Google Scholar

34 Tower, Walter, A history of the American whale fishery, Philadelphia, PA: John C. Wiston Co., 1907, pp. 50Google Scholar

35 Ibid., pp. 58–9.

36 Ibid., p. 92.

37 Craig, Josephine and Craig, Austin, Farthest westing: a Philippine footnote, Philadephia, PA: Dorrance, 1940, p. 158Google Scholar

38 Melville, Herman, Moby Dick, New York: Modern Library, 1926, p. 439Google Scholar

39 Buchholdt, Filipinos in Alaska, pp. 21–32Google Scholar

40 Philippine National Archives (henceforth PNA), Consulados Estados 1792–1896, Bundle 1, Spanish Documents Section (henceforth SDS) 2404, S810, Inquiry regarding seamen, natives of Zamboanga … serving on board the American whaler ‘Ausell Gibbs’, United States Consulate, Singapore, 10 November 1852; PNA, Consulados Estados 1792–1896, Bundle 1, SDS 2404, S818–818B, D. Miguel de Mortola, Ministro Ynterventor y Subdelegado de Haciencia y Gobernador Politico interinamente por enfermedad del Sor. propietario de esta plaza de Zamboanga … Concedo libre y seguro pasaporte a Ventura Rojas, Agustin Alarcon, Dionicio Cedillo Jorge, Marcelino Rojas, Hermogenes Francisco, Higinio Ferrer, Matias Torres, Jose Javier y Marcos Carrion.

41 Tower, American whale fishery, p. 91Google Scholar

42 PNA, Consulados Estados 1792–1896, Bundle 1, SDS 2404, S849–850, Da cuenta con testimonio sobre la medida adoptada para el modo de prestar los auxilios de gente a la tripulaciones de buques extrangeros … Manila, 1 Junio 1853.

43 McKeown, Adam, Melancholy order: Asian migration and the globalization of borders, New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, pp. 29–42Google Scholar

44 Robles, Eliodoro, The Philippines in the nineteenth century, Quezon City: Malaya Books, 1969Google Scholar

45 Filomeno Aguilar Jr, ‘Beyond inevitability: the opening of Philippine provincial ports in 1855’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 25, 1, 1994, pp. 70–90Google Scholar

46 PNA, Protocolos de Manila – Marina 304, año de 1851, SDS 20076, Contratas. This bundle contains a rare summary and table of contents of mariners’ contracts for the year.

47 The port in Peru is unspecified. The port in France, Madre de Gracia, is probably Honfleur in Normandy. The ship for Calcutta had Singapore as an intermediate destination.

48 PNA, Protocolos de Manila – Marina 304, año de 1851, SDS 20076, S159–159B, Contrata, 2 Junio 1851.

49 Many Manilamen sailors were illiterate. See also the subsequent statement that some of these men learned to read and write while overseas in Graciano Lopez Jaena, ‘Discurso pronunciado por D. Graciano Lopez Jaena el 25 de Febrero de 1889 en el Ateneo Barcelonés (Speech delivered by D. Graciano Lopez Jaena on February 25, 1889 at the Ateneo Barcelona)’, in La Solidaridad, trans. Guadalupe Fores-Ganzon, vol. 1: 1889, Pasig City: Fundación Santiago, 1889/1996, pp. 30–1.

50 MacMicking, Robert, Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines during 1848, 1849, and 1850, London: Richard Bentley, 1851, pp. 45–46Google Scholar

51 MacMicking, Recollections of Manilla, ed. M. J. Netzorg, Manila: Filipiniana Book Guild, 1967, p. 31Google Scholar

52 Philippine Merchant Marine Academy (PMMA), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_Merchant_Marine_Academy (consulted 20 March 2010).

53 Bazaco, Evergisto, History of education in the Philippines, Manila: University of Santo Tomas Press, 1953, p. 150Google Scholar

Martin, Dalmacio, A history of education in the Philippines, 1861–1961, Manila: Philippine Historical Association, 1980, p. 26Google Scholar

54 ‘Juan Luna’, in Kulay Diwa: Gallery of Philippine contemporary art, 2009, http://www.kulay-diwa.com/juan_luna (consulted 11 May 2010).

55 PNA Pasajeros Llegados 1892–1893, SDS 3148, Bundle 2, S292–293, Dn. Carlos Rovinson, Capital de la barca Ynglesa ‘Anne Stafford’ … exponer: Que deseando embarcar de dotacion á los individuos …, Manila, 18 May 1893.

56 PNA Pasaportes: Españoles y Filipinos 1864–1889, SDS 14470, S665, El Consul de España en Newcastle on Tyne: concede pasaporte a D. Crisostomo Villamil, natural de Dagupan provincia de Pangasinan (Filipinas) de estado soltero, para que pase a Manila, Newcastle on Tyne, 24 October 1888.

57 PNA Pasaportes: Españoles y Filipinos 1864–1889, SDS 14470, S716, El Consul de España en Hongkong concede pasaporte al filipino Alejandro Bernardo, natural de Panay, Capiz, marinero desembarcado de la Barca americana ‘Armenie’ para pasar a Manila, Hong Kong, 3 December 1888.

58 Lopez Jaena, ‘Discurso’.

59 US National Archives and Records Administration (henceforth NARA) Record Group (henceforth RG) 350, Entry 5, File 26526–38, Gregorio R. Oca, New York City, to the Bureau of Insular Affairs, 3 December 1923; US NARA RG 350, Entry 5, Box 1085, File 26526-40, Secretary of State to Secretary of War, 8 January 1924.

60 MacMicking, Recollections, 1967, p. 31Google Scholar

C. T. Brady Jr, Commerce and conquest in East Africa with particular reference to the Salem trade with Zanzibar, Salem, MA: Essex Institute, 1950, p. 21Google Scholar

61 MacMicking, Recollections, 1967, p. 32Google Scholar

62 Franklin Ng, ed., The Asian American encyclopedia, vol. 2, New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1995, p. 429Google Scholar

63 Mercene, Manila men, p. 52Google Scholar

64 Ibid., p. 53.

65 Ibid., p. 54.

66 Smith, Richard J., Mercenaries and mandarins: the Ever-Victorious Army in nineteenth century China, Millwood, NY: KTO Press, 1978, p. 52Google Scholar

67 Ibid., p. 28.

68 Ibid., p. 13.

69 Ibid., p. 28.

70 Ibid., pp. 56–7.

71 Carr, Caleb, The devil soldier: the story of Frederick Townsend Ward, New York: Random House, 1992, p. 91Google Scholar

72 Smith, Mercenaries and mandarins, p. 29Google Scholar

73 Spence, Jonathan, God's Chinese son: the Taiping heavenly kingdom of Hong Xiuquan, New York: W. W. Norton, 1996, pp. 310Google Scholar

74 Ibid., p. 328.

75 Ibid., p. 238.

76 Ibid.

77 PNA, Consulados Estados 1804–1898, Bundle 4, SDS 2407, folios S676–S681, S781, Contaduría General de Ejército y Hacienda de Filipinas, Manila, 5 February 1861.

78 Smith, Mercenaries and mandarins, p. 25Google Scholar

79 Ibid.

80 Ibid.

81 Goodman, Bryna, Native place, city, and nation: regional networks and identities in Shanghai, 1853–1937, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995, pp. 72–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar

82 Smith, Mercenaries and mandarins, p. 29Google Scholar

83 Carr, Devil soldier, p. 107Google Scholar

84 Smith, Mercenaries and mandarins, p. 29Google Scholar

85 Ibid., p. 30.

86 See ibid., p. 31.

87 Filomeno Aguilar Jr, ‘Filibustero, Rizal, and the Manilamen of the nineteenth century’, Philippine Studies, 59, 4, 2011, pp. 429–469Google Scholar

88 Hirschman, Charles, ‘The meaning and measurement of ethnicity in Malaysia: an analysis of census classifications’, Journal of Asian Studies, 46, 3, 1987, pp. 555–582Google Scholar

89 Douglas, John, ‘Asia and Australasia’, Nineteenth Century and After, 52, 1902, pp. 43–54Google Scholar

90 Ganter, Regina, The pearl-shellers of Torres Strait: resource use, development and decline, 1860s–1960s, Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1994, p. 101Google Scholar

91 F. W. Bamford, ‘Progress report, Royal Commission on the pearl-shelling industry’, Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, vol. 3, Melbourne: Government Printer, 1913Google Scholar

92 J. Hamilton, ‘Report of the Commission appointed to inquire into the general working of the laws regulating the pearl-shell and bêche-de-mer fisheries in the colony’, Queensland Votes and Proceedings, vol. 2, Brisbane: Government Printer, 1897Google Scholar

93 M. S. Warton, ‘Report by M. S. Warton, Esquire, Resident Magistrate and Sub-collector of Customs, Broome, on the pearl-shelling industry in north-west Australia’, Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, vol. 2, Melbourne: Government Printer, 1902, p. 3Google Scholar

94 Douglas, ‘Asia and Australasia’, p. 48Google Scholar

95 C. J. Dashwood, ‘Report by His Honour Judge Dashwood, Government Resident, Palmerston, on the pearl-shelling industry in Port Darwin and Northern Territory’, Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, vol. 2, Melbourne: Government Printer, 1902, pp. 9Google Scholar

96 Ibid., p. 53.

97 Hamilton, ‘Report’, pp. xxxvGoogle Scholar

98 Dashwood, ‘Report’, p. 38Google Scholar

99 Ganter, Pearl-shellers, p. 101Google Scholar

100 Dashwood, ‘Report’, p. 55Google Scholar

101 Hamilton, ‘Report’, p. 27Google Scholar

102 Ibid., p. 53.

103 Hamilton, ‘Report’, p. 2Google Scholar

104 See Table 2.

105 Warton, ‘Report’, p. 14Google Scholar

106 Dashwood, ‘Report’, p. 4Google Scholar

107 Hamilton, ‘Report’, p. 24Google Scholar

108 Dashwood, ‘Report’, p. 45Google Scholar

109 Ibid., p. 53.

110 Ibid., p. 39.

111 Ibid., p. 45.

112 Ibid., p. 13.

113 Commonwealth of Australia, ‘Report of the Commission on Foreign Contract Labour in Western Australia’, Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, vol. 2, Melbourne: Government Printer, 1902, p. 53.

114 Cited in Ganter, Pearl-shellers, p. 30.

115 Hamilton, ‘Report’, p. xxx.

116 Loos, Noel, ‘The pragmatic racism of the frontier’, in R. Evans, K. Saunders, and K. Cronin, eds., Race relations in North Queensland: a history of exclusion, exploitation, and extermination, Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1988Google Scholar

117 Douglas, ‘Asia and Australasia’, p. 40Google Scholar

118 Evans, Gaynor, ‘Thursday Island 1878–1914: a plural society’, BA Honours thesis, School of Anthropology and Sociology, University of Queensland, 1972, pp. 51–53Google Scholar

119 Hamilton, ‘Report’, pp. 2Google Scholar

120 Ileto, Reynaldo, ‘Philippine–Australian interactions: the late nineteenth century’, in Reynaldo Ileto and Rodney Sullivan, eds., Discovering Australasia: essays on Philippine–Australian interactions, Townsville, Queensland: James Cook University, 1993, p. 30Google Scholar

121 Ileto, Reynaldo, Pasyon and revolution: popular movements in the Philippines, 1840–1910, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University, 1979, p. 82Google Scholar

122 Brady, Commerce, p. 21Google Scholar

MacMicking, Recollections, 1967, p. 32Google Scholar

123 Bautista, Veltisezar, The Filipino Americans from 1763 to the present: their history, culture, and traditions, Farmington Hills, MI: Bookhaus Publishers, 1998, p. 110Google Scholar

124 Filomeno Aguilar Jr, ‘The riddle of the alien-citizen: Filipino migrants as US nationals and the anomalies of citizenship, 1900s–1930s’, Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 19, 2, 2010, pp. 203–236Google Scholar

125 Cartier, Carolyn, ‘Cosmopolitics and the maritime world city’, Geographical Review, 89, 2, 1999, pp. 278–289Google Scholar

126 Bolster, W. Jeffrey, ‘ “To feel like a man”: black seamen in the northern States, 1800–1860’, Journal of American History, 76, 4, 1990, pp. 1174Google Scholar

127 Ibid., p. 1179.

128 Filomeno Aguilar Jr, Clash of spirits: the history of power and sugar planter hegemony on a Visayan island, Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1998Google Scholar

129 Bolster, ‘“To feel like a man”’, p. 1180Google Scholar

130 Linebaugh, Peter and Rediker, Marcus, The many-headed Hydra: sailors, slaves, commoners, and the hidden history of the revolutionary Atlantic, Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2000Google Scholar

131 Archivo del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores (Madrid), Sección de Ultramar, Filipinas, 1894–99, legajo H–2964. I am indebted to Xavier Huetz de Lemps for sending me a digital copy of these documents.

132 Torpey, John, The invention of the passport: surveillance, citizenship and the state, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000Google Scholar

133 Hirschman, ‘The meaning’, pp. 565–566Google Scholar

134 Belinda Olivares-Cunanan, ‘Saga of Filipino settlers in South Africa’, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 16 May 2005, and ‘Pinoy fishermen rescued SA town’, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 17 May 2005.

135 Hamilton, ‘Report’, pp. 32–36Google Scholar

136 Tyner, ‘Global cities’.

137 Hau, Caroline S. and Shiraishi, Takashi, ‘Daydreaming about Rizal and Tetchō: on Asianism as network and fantasy’, Philippine Studies, 57, 3, 2009, pp. 342Google Scholar

138 John Schumacher, SJ, ‘The Burgos Manifiesto: the authentic text and its genuine author’, Philippine Studies, 54, 2, 2006, pp. 153–304Google Scholar

139 For example, PNA Pasaportes: Españoles y Filipinos 1864–1889, SDS 14470, S697, El Cónsul de España en Hongkong concede pasaporte al filipino Donato Atienza natural de Taal provincia de Batangas para que puede pasar a Manila … este individuo es un marinero desembarcado del Vapor Japonés ‘Saikio Maru’, Hongkong, 27 Noviembre 1888.

140 For example, PNA Pasaportes: Españoles y Filipinos 1864–1889, SDS 14470, S719, El Cónsul de España en Hongkong concede pasaporte a Da. Luisa Basa de Cucullo, española filipina, que pasar a Manila acompañada de una criada filipina, Hongkong, 6 Diciembre 1888.

141 Anderson, Benedict, ‘Forms of consciousness in Noli me tangere’, Philippine Studies, 51, 4, 2003, pp. 505–529Google Scholar