Tides of capitalism, culture and politics in the South China Sea : the British merchant community in Spanish Manila, 1837-1869

• Main Author: Wilson, Alastair David Owen
• Published: University of Bristol 2011
• Subjects: 959.916
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.556748

This thesis will show how the Philippine Islands were integrated into British dominated trans-national networks in the China Sea between 1837 and 1869, which heavily influenced the historical development of the Spanish colony. It will focus on the role of Manila's British merchant population in helping to establish the Philippine port-capital as an important hub in this British "world-system" (Darwin). The origins of British settlement can be dated back to the 1820s, however, this process accelerated after 1837, the year the port was formally opened to international trade. The port-capital's growing integration into a British Asian world was already hinted at by 1838, when Jardine, Matheson & Co. made plans (eventually aborted) to relocate to Manila under threat of expulsion from China. The next thirty years witnessed the Philippines' further incorporation into this British imperial politico-commercial web as European trade in the Far East mushroomed. A plethora of merchants and diplomats were attracted to the new extraterritorial acquisitions in China after victory in the 1st Opium War (1839-1842). British and foreign trade with Manila also expanded rapidly through the city's relationship to these new settlements, especially Hong Kong, Europe's gateway to China. This encouraged the growth of a (predominantly) British and North American mercantile diaspora in Manila that controlled finance, shipping and foreign trade in the port. The role of these merchant congeries in binding the colony to markets and colonial polities in China, Malaysia and Australia anchored the port within a British hegemonic network that shaped trade and diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific. In the Philippine Islands this process facilitated the economic expansion, social evolution and political reconfiguration of the colony, helping redefine the colony's place in the reconfigured Spanish "Imperial archipelago" (Morillo-Alicea) that survived the dissolution of the Spanish American empire in the mid 1820s.