ABSTRACT
This essay evaluates recentscholarship on the history of the Chinese in
the Philippines through a discussion of our current knowledge of Chinese
population and migration data during the colonial period. It identifies
new sources and argues for the importance of certain frameworks in the
study of Chinese population history in the Philippines. It recommends
the use of a stronger transnational framework with a sensitivity to
anthropological concerns, such as the formation of a Chinese family
identity, and finding the translocal within the transnational community.

There are four historiographical trends of the past decade that are to a
great extent missing in the study of the Chinese in the Philippines. The first
and second trends are deeply interrelated. They are 1) the use of a stronger
transnational frame and 2) the application of anthropological fieldwork and
ideas in studying the history of migrant communities. The last two are related
to the task of moving national histories away from dominant discourses of
the center and the exclusion of minority groups. They are 3) the movement
away from a Manilacentric history and 4) the inclusion of minority groups in
general studies of Philippine demographic history. Through a critical
evaluation of recent work on the Chinese in the Philippines and our current
data regarding their population and migration during the colonial period,
this essayseeksto demonstrate why future research should more emphatically
focus its analytical lenses through the above trends.
SPANISH PERIOD (16th.19th CENTURIES)
Spanish Sources
Our knowledge of Philippine demographic history during the Spanish
period comes mainly from ecclesiastical sources and various kinds of civil
records because no house-to-house census was ever conducted until 1903
under the American colonial government (Cullinane, 1998). The use of these
sources is no longer unfamiliar to the demographic historian and mining
these sources has already produced some interesting data about Chinese and
Chinese mestizo populations while promising that future (much-needed)
research will unearth even more. I There are, however, other sources, less
familiar and not Philippine-based, that we can fruitfully mine. The following
discussion introduces new research that utilizes these sources and highlights
the transnational nature of their findings.
There is much information about Chinese migration to the Philippines
that is waiting for the researcher in the archives of Mexico and Spain.
Scholarship tends to forget that the Chinese migration network to the
Philippines also extends to Latin America where the first Chinese arrived
onboard the galleons that traversed the route between Manila and Acapulco.
Comparatively, the lack of knowledge about the Chinese in the Philippines
before 1850 is mirrored by the deficit of research on Chinese migration to
Latin America before the first Opium War (1839-1842). The opportunity to
fill the lacunae in both is demonstrated in the research ofE.R. Slack (2009),
whose use of sources from the Archivo General de Indias (AGI) in Seville,
Spain and the Archivo General de la Naeeion (AGN) in Mexico City, Mexico is
now able to give us more ‘tantalizing clarity’ about the Chinese passengers
onboard the Spanish galleons.’
Using sources from AGN which divulge names, ages, marital status,
occupations and ethnicity, Slack (2009) is able to identify the demographics
of passengers on these galleons. In the example he provides, the galleon
Santissima Trinidad in 1760 carried a crew of 370 men of which 84 percent
or 310 men (including 27 chino artillerymen, 109 chino sailors, 174 chino
cabin boys) came from the Philippines and 68 percent or 250 men specifically
from Cavite. There is also information about the occupations in New Spain
that the Chinese from Manila entered upon arrival. Laborers and craftsmen
who helped in public works constituted the majority followed by slaves and
servants. Barbers and vendors were other common professions involving
Chinese immigrants. A fascinating trail of material culture also found its way
into New Spain including religious artifacts, textiles and porcelain, but what
is more interesting to the demographer and the social historian is the amount
of matrimonial records that reveal Chinese and Chinese mestizos from Manila
acting as witnesses to a wide variety of residents in Mexico, including Spanish
and Portuguese elites.
Initial findings of Slack (2009) remain largely on the level of data: that
there were certain kinds of Chinese that moved across the Pacific and
participated in aspects of colonial life in the Spanish New World. One looks
forward to reading more substantial stories about these journeys in future
research from Slack and others who would follow his trail. But as of the
moment, his data is already forcing us to extend the migration network to
Latin America. We ought to also push the study of this network back to its
origins in China.