Early Spanish Colonialism in Manila: A Historical Archaeology Viewpoint

Summary

The establishment of Spanish Manila in 1571 marked a turning point in global history. Historians have extolled the roles of Manila as a hub of global trade networks and a key locus of cultural exchange between the East and the West. Nevertheless, the power relationships that defined colonial life in the Manila area were taken for granted by scholars. The major ethnolingustic groups of colonial Manila - the Spaniards, the indigenous Tagalog, and the Chinese - formed a specific urban landscape during the early colonial period. This ongoing archaeology project aims to reevaluate the power relationships between these ethnic groups through an analysis of consumption in colonial and global contexts. The preliminary analysis of excavated materials from sites in Manila area since 1960s is showing that archaeology offers an alternative perspective of colonial history in Manila. This presentation provides an important reference in terms of cultural change in East and Southeast Asian waters and the Spanish empire in the New World during the early modern period.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Cross-cultural encounters/entanglements in Island Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific

Keywords

Spatial Coverage