The Age of Discovery

THE AGE OF DISCOVERY: IMPACT ON PHILIPPINE CULTURE AND SOCIETY
The Philippines is a culture wherein East meets West. The Filipino public have a particular Asian
foundation, with a solid Western practice. The advanced Filipino culture created through impact from
Chinese merchants, Spanish conquerors, and American rulers. For a few Philippine patriots the time
before the appearance of the Spaniards in 1521 is seen as a Golden Age. Around then individuals of the
Philippines were accepted to have a feeling of having a place with the Malay World and were believed to
be educated, prosperous, and joined under their bosses. The Spanish victory is accepted to have put an
end to this untainted condition and prompted the decay also, obliteration of the Philippine individuals.
Spanish also, American imperialism is viewed as the reason for the present-day issues looked in the
Philippine society. The inhabitants of the Philippines lived in kinship-based settlements known as
barangay under a chief, generally known as datu. Most barangay were small, having from ten to thirty
houses, but there were some large ones of a hundred or more houses. The barangay was the largest
social unit in most of the Philippines. It was considered to be pre-political since having none of the
attributes of a governing organization, it was more of an extended family-type arrangement. The size of
a barangay was determined by its location within the natural environment. On the eve of the Spanish
arrival, there were two locations in the Philippines that showed signs of an organizational structure of a
larger scale. These were the town of Jolo in the Sulu Archipelago and the town of Manila on the island of
Luzon. Both of these places had developed a more sophisticated structure in the century before the
Europeans arrived. More about these in a moment, but first some further information about the normal
barangay. Barangay were located mostly along the leeward coasts of islands, or along rivers, or in inland
plains that were well-watered. Their productive base was agricultural; rice-growing in either an irrigated
or swidden form was the main crop, supplemented by fish, livestock, and fruits and vegetables. This was
very similar to the economic base of most other parts of the East.
Indian archipelago. The Philippine people were indeed very much part of the Malay World. As in other
parts of this World, the members of a barangay were socially differentiated into chiefs, freemen, and
slaves. The chiefs or clan-heads with their immediate family and associates had extensive control over
the social and economic life of the community. Chiefs were men of personal ability and prowess who
were recognized leaders of their communities. In a few places burial mounds have been located that
were venerated sites at which, the people believed, the spiritual force of a powerful chief resided. There
were generally rules and regulations that protected the status of the chiefly group, but we know little
about how these laws were applied; it is generally thought that life within the barangay was quite
benign. Freemen were heads of households with some right to productive land. Slavery was more of a
bonded dependency than the kind of harsh plantation labor that we generally associate with that term.
Some slaves who were captured in raids were then generally settled on the land, and in a generation or
two were integrated into the community. Others were debtors who secured their debts with their labor,
really the only capital that was available to most persons. The barangay, like negara in other parts of the
Malay Wodd, focused on the chief or datu in a totally personal manner; the hierarchical and stable
nature of this personal attach meant was the essence of the social nexus. Without such a personal tie
there was no access; individual initiative was not prized, and the greatest punishment one could suffer
was to be expelled from the community. Life in the barangay was isolated and relatively prosperous.
There was abundant space for settlements and adequate food from the land and water from the
streams. The spatial separation of the settlements and the islands resulted in many languages or dialects
being spoken; these languages were all part of the Malayo-Indonesian family of languages. Prior to the
arrival of the Europeans there was a written script, but little has remained. An early Spanish report that
everyone was literate and writing all the time seems highly exaggerated, for were this the case, much
more of this early literacy would have come down to us. It is thought that land preparation, planting and
harvesting, hunting, and housebuilding were done by cooperative labor, or bayani fum, among kinfolk
and neighbors, which still exists in some rural areas of the Philippines. Spanish colonial motives were
not, however, strictly commercial. The Spanish at first viewed the Philippines as a stepping-stone to the
riches of the East Indies (Spice Islands), but, even after the Portuguese and Dutch had foreclosed that
possibility, the Spanish still maintained their presence in the archipelago.
The Portuguese navigator and explorer Ferdinand Magellan headed the first Spanish foray to the
Philippines when he made landfall on Cebu in March 1521; a short time later he met an untimely death
on the nearby island of Mactan. After King Philip II (for whom the islands are named) had dispatched
three further expeditions that ended in disaster, he sent out Miguel López de Legazpi, who established
the first permanent Spanish settlement, in Cebu, in 1565. The Spanish city of Manila was founded in
1571, and by the end of the 16th century most of the coastal and lowland areas from Luzon to northern
Mindanao were under Spanish control. Friars marched with soldiers and soon accomplished the nominal
conversion to Roman Catholicism of all the local people under Spanish administration. But the Muslims
of Mindanao and Sulu, whom the Spanish called Moros, were never completely subdued by Spain.
Philippine society is a unique blend of diversity and homogeneity. Although geographically part of
Southeast Asia, the country is culturally strongly Euro-American. Forces of assimilation have constantly
worked to overcome cultural differences between the various ethnic groups that are scattered—
sometimes in relative isolation—throughout the archipelago. Nearly four centuries of Western rule,
however, have left an indelible imprint on the Philippines, serving as a conduit for the introduction of
Western culture and as the catalyst for the emergence of a sense of Philippine political and cultural
unity. While the Christian churches built by the Spanish and the mosques built by the Muslims provided
a spiritual anchor, the educational system established by the United States and expanded by the
Filipinos has become emblematic of cultural unity and socioeconomic progress. Nonetheless, through
the persistence of strong family ties, the revival of the barangay as the smallest unit of government,
increased attention to Asian history and literature, and subsequent revival of dormant traditions, the
Philippines has strengthened its Asian heritage without abandoning its Western cultural acquisitions

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THE AGE OF DISCOVERY: IMPACT ON PHILIPPINE CULTURE AND SOCIETY

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