Winds of colonisation: The meteorological contours of Spain's imperium in the Pacific 1521-1898

Environment and History

Volumn 12, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 65-88

  Bankoff, Greg ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND   (New Zealand)

Author keywords

Colonialism; Galleons; Pacific; Spain; Weather

Indexed keywords

COLONIALISM; HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE; METEOROLOGY;

EURASIA; EUROPE; PACIFIC OCEAN; SOUTHERN EUROPE; SPAIN;

EID: 33644531911     PISSN: 09673407     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3197/096734006776026827     Document Type: Review

References (111)

1. This article was begun in the hospital delivery room while my daughter, Jenna Annemarijin was being born in Hoorn, the Netherlands on 20 August 2004. The following text is dedicated to her.
2. On the nature of imperial governance, see Charles Cunningham, The Audiencia in the Spanish Colonies as Illustrated by the Audiencia of Manila, 1583-1800 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1919);
3. Eliodoro Robles, The Philippines in the Nineteenth Century (Quezon City: Malaya Books, 1969);
4. Nicholas Cushner, Spain in the Philippines: From Conquest to Revolution (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1971);
5. and Greg Bankoff Crime, Society and the State in the Nineteenth Century Philippines (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1996).
6. On evangelisation, see John Leddy Phelan, The Hispanicization of the Philippines: Spanish Aims and Filipino Responses 1565-1700 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1959);
7. Horacio de la Costa, The Jesuits in the Philippines, 1581-1768 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1961);
8. Gerald Anderson, Studies in Philippine Church History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969);
9. and Vicente Rafael, Contracting Colonialism Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988).
10. Winds are named according to the point of the compass from which they blow, that is winds blowing from the West are west winds or westerlies, conversely those blowing from the East are east winds or easterlies.
11. The above discussion of atmospheric circulation is based mainly upon William van Dorn, Oceanography and Seamanship (Centreville, Maryland: Cornell Maritime Press, 1993), 59-67.
12. Primer on El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) (Quezon City: Climatology and Agrometeorology Branch, PAGASA, Department of Science and Technology, 1997), 2;
13. Maxx Dilley and B. N. Heyman, 'ENSO and Disaster: Droughts, Floods and El Niño/Southern Oscillation Warm Events', Disasters 19, 30 (1995): 181-2;
14. and The El Niño Phenomenon (Nairobi: UNEP/GEM Environment Library No. 8,1992), 14-15.
15. While the dynamics of ENSO are now reasonably well understood, meteorologists are still unable to explain what upsets the normally balanced cycle of wind and water. It is considered possible that the amount of snowfall in the Himalayas may provide the trigger that initiates a warm or cold event or that they are linked to the number of sunspots. The El Niño Phenomenon, 9;
16. G. Diokno, 'Coping With the El Niño of the Century', Canopy International 23, 5 (1997), 6;
17. David Enfield, 'Historical and Prehistorical Overview of El Niño/ Southern Oscillation', in El Niño: Historical and Paleoclimatic Aspects of the Southern Oscillation, ed. H. Diaz and V. Markgraf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 95-118.
18. There are also subsurface Equatorial Counter-currents that flow eastward beneath the surface currents.
19. Dorn, Oceanography and Seamanship, 101-4, 107-9;
20. Francisco Santiago Cruz, La Nao de China (Mexico: Editorial Jus, 1962), 98.
21. Parts of this section have previously appeared in Greg Bankoff, 'Depends Which Way the Winds Blow', Mains'l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History, 41, 2/3 (2005).
22. Oskar Spate, The Spanish Lake: The Pacific since Magellan, Volume 1 (London: Croom Helm, 1979), 47-9.
23. Spate, The Spanish Lake, 104-6;
24. and William Schurz, The Manila Galleon (Manila: Historical Conservation Society, 1985 originally published E. P. Dutton & Co., 1939), 178-82.
25. On the early history of Spain in the Philippines, see Phelan, The Hispanicization of the Philippines.
26. Oskar Spate, Monopolists and Freebooters: The Pacific since Magellan, Volume 2 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1983), 279-89.
27. In 1813 the Cortes de Cadiz issued a decree ending the trade. The last galleon 'raised its rusty anchors, set its yellowed sails and slowly sailed out of Acapulco bay toward the setting sun, never to return' in March 1815. M. Almazón, 'El Galeon de Manila', Artes de Mexico 18 (1971): 19.
28. On the galleon trade, see also Jose Maria Frances Mexico y Manila (Historia de Dos Ciudades) (México D. F.: Secretaria. de Educación Publica Departamento de Bibiotecas, 1964), 31-6;
29. Rafael Bernal, México en Filipinas Estudio de una Transculturación (México, D. F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1965), 75-86;
30. John Hoyt Williams, 'Tapping the Orient: Voyages of the Manila Galleons', Oceans 15 (1982):44-9;
31. and Ostwald Sales Colín, El Moviemiento Portuario de Acapulco El Protagonismo de Nueva España en la Relación con Filipinas, 1587-1648 (Mexico D.F.: Plaza y Valdes Editas, 2000), 81-110.
32. For a complete list of all Pacific sailings through Micronesia, see Rodrigue Lévesque, 'Ships through Micronesia', in History of Micronesia (Gatineau, Quebec: Lévesque Publications, 2002), 20: 377-646.
33. William Schurz, 'The Manila Galleon and California', Southwest Historical Quarterly 21, 2 (1917): 107-126;
34. Cruz, La Nao de China, 101;
35. and Rolando Garcia, Henry Díaz, Ricatrdo García Herrera, Jon Eischeid, Maria del Rosario Prieto, Emiliano Hernández, Luis Gimeno, Francisco Rubio Durán and Ana María Bascary, 'Atmospheric Circulation Changes in the Tropical Pacific Inferred from the Voyages of the Manila Galleons in the Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries', Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 82, 11 (2001): 2346.
36. There was much discussion and even gubernatorial directions on occasion to have the galleons take the much more direct route up the west coast of Luzon and around Cape Bojeador with claims that ships could reach the 20°N parallel in two to three days and so reduce the voyage to Mexico from five or six to three months. Schurz, The Manila Galleon, 183-184.
37. Galleons are known to have returned to Manila in 1593, 1602, 1616-1617, 1663, 1672, 1682, 1687, 1795 and 1806. Cruz, La Nao de China, 136.
38. Spate, Monopolists and Freebooters, 114-8;
39. Cruz, La Nao de China, 101;
40. Schurz, The Manila Galleon, 201. The Chamorro population of Guam, Saipan and Tinian (the inhabited islands) declined from an estimated 80-100,000 in 1668 to 3,197 by the Census of 1710 and had utterly disappeared by 1887.
41. See also Andrés de Ledesma, Mission in the Marianas: An Account of Father Diego Luis de Sanvítores and his Companions, 1669-1670. Trans. with commentary by W. Barrett (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975);
42. Francisco García, Sanvítores in the Marianas (Guam: Micronesian Area Research Center, University of Guam, 1980);
43. and Emilie Johnston, Father Sanvítores: His Life, Times and Martyrdom (Guam: Micronesian Area Research Center, University of Guam, 1993).
44. Cruz, La Nao de China, 110-115, 139;
45. W. Michael Mathes, Vizcaíno and Spanish Expansion in the Pacific Ocean, 1580-1630 (San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1968);
46. Schurz, The Manila Galleon, 190, 198-200;
47. and Spate, Monopolists and Freebooters, 296-307.
48. On Spanish settlement of Alta California and the Northwest, see Irving Richman, California Under Spain and Mexico 1535-1847 (New York: Cooper Square Publisher, 1965);
49. John Kendrick, The Men With Wooden Feet: The Spanish Exploration of the Pacific Northwest (Toronto: NC Press Limited, 1985);
50. Warren Cook, Flood Tide of Empire: Spain and the Pacific Northwest, 1543-1819 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973);
51. David Thomas, (ed.) Spanish Borderlands Sourcebooks: Native American Perspectives on the Hispanic Colonization of Alta California (New York: Garland Publishing, 1991);
52. and George Phillips, Indians and Intruders in Central California 1769-1849 (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1993), 32-64.
53. Rafael Gracia y Parejo, Considerations on the Rights of Spain over the Caroline Islands (Madrid: Establecímiento Típographico de Gregorio Juste, 1885).
54. On Spanish colonialism in the Carolinas, see David Hanlon, Upon a Stone Altar: A History of the Island of Pohnpei to 1890 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988);
55. and Francis Hezel, Strangers in Their Own Land: A Century of Colonial Rule in the Caroline and Marshall Islands (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995).
56. Dorn, Oceanography and Seamanship, 74;
57. Schurz, The Manila Galleon, 186-187;
58. Cruz, La Nao de China, 107.
59. See also Alexander von Humboldt, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1811), volume 4.
60. Spate, The Spanish Lake, 119-143.
61. On the voyages of Mendaña and Quirós, see William Amherst and Basil Thomson, The Discovery of the Solomon Islands by Alvaro de Mendaña in 1568 (London: Hakluyt Society, London, 1901);
62. Celsus Kelly, La Australia del Spiritu Santo: The Journal of Fray Martin de Munilla and Other Documents Relating to the Voyage of Pedro Fernández de Quirós to the South Sea 1605-1606 and the Franciscan Missionary Plan 1617-1627 (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society at the [Cambridge] University Press, 1966);
63. and Clements Markham, The Voyages of Pedro Fernández de Quirós, 1595 to 1606 (Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1967).
64. On Spanish influences on other parts of the Pacific, see Robert Langdon's controversial studies The Lost Caravel (Sydney: Pacific Publications, 1975)
65. and The Lost Caravel Re-Explored (Canberra: Brogla Press, 1988).
66. Cruz, La Nao de China, 103, 125-6, 130, 138, 140;
67. and Garcia et al., 'Atmospheric Circulation Changes in the Tropical Pacific', 2448-50. A royal order decreed that galleons should set sail before 1 July. The prevailing winds in the Philippines blow from the east between mid December and March, north to south from April to May, southeasterly June through August, north-easterly from late September to October, and from the north and north-east from the end of October to the beginning of December. Cruz enumerates the following deaths among crew sizes that ranged between 60 and 100 in the first galleons to upward of 400 on the largest: 80 in 1606, 99 in 1620, 105 in 1629, 114 in 1643 and 82 in 1752.
68. Garcia et al., 'Atmospheric Circulation Changes in the Tropical Pacific', 2440, 2442, 2447-8.
69. The remaining tropical cyclones come across the South China Sea. The western and central areas of the archipelago are generally less exposed to the full force of typhoons whose intensity tends to dissipate as they cross the central mountain ranges. Dorn, Oceanography and Seamanship, 80-81;
70. and Nicholas Brown, Leoncio Amadore and Emmanuel Torrente, 'Philippine Country Study' in Disaster Mitigation in Asia and the Pacific (Manila: Asian Development Bank, 1991), 196. The PAR includes a rectangular area of ocean with the Philippine Islands at the centre, Palau at the eastern edge, Taiwan to the north and Sabah in the south.
71. Miguel Selga, 'Primer Catálogo de Baguios Filipinos', Revista de la Sociedad Astronómica de España y América 19 (1928): 15, 19, 42, 63-4, 94-5, 110-11, 142-3, 20, (1929): 14-15, 27-31, 44-7, 60-4, 73-9, 89-96, 141-4,(1930): 7-13, 25-32, 46-7.
72. This astonishing chronicle of typhoons in the archipelago commences with a Chinese account of the one that struck the ship carrying the Buddhist sage Fa-hien on his return to China off the West coast of Palawan in July 414 and of the similar fate that overtook the Moorish traveller Ibn Batuta on a voyage between Amoy and Sumatra in July 1348. Miguel Selga, 'Notas Etimológicas Sobre el Tifón y el Baguio', Revista de la Sociedad Astronómica de España y América 16 (1926): 110.
73. A detailed discussion of the historical sources on the nomenclature of typhoons is given in Footnote 40 of Miguel Selga, 'Relación Inédita del P. Francisco Ignacio Alzina S.J. sobre los Baguios, Mareas y Terremotos de Filipinas', Revista de la Sociedad Astronómica de España y America 18 (1928): 43.
74. Vicente Manalo, Vic Leaño and Ernesto Verceles, 'Frequency of Tropical Cyclones, By Intensity, Crossing the Philippines', Ang Tagamasid 23, 2 (1995): 8.
75. The catalogue of typhoons is continued for the late nineteenth century in a publication on climate complied by the Manila Observatory in 1899 and published as part of El Archipiélago Filipino printed in Washington at the expense of the US government and later reproduced in the First Report of the Philippine Commission to the President (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1901): 4,290-344.
76. Additional material on southern Luzon for the mid nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is provided by the local history of Nabua in 'List of Typhoons', Archive of the Manila Observatory, Box 9-35. Material on the number of typhoons experienced during the first two decades of the US colonial period is contained in the Census of the Philippine Islands, 1918 (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1920): 1, 445-67.
77. Bernardo Soriano, 'Tropical Cyclone, Statistics in the Bicol Region', Ang Tagamasid 20, 4 (1992): 12;
78. Selga, 'Primer Catálogo de Baguios Filipinos';
79. Miguel Selga, 'El Baguio del Santo Cristo de Burgos', Revista de la Sociedad Astronómica de España y América 20, 134 (1930): 20, 44-5.
80. The ship's image was placed on the main altar and became an object of local veneration to the islanders. The body of water encompassed by Burias Island, Sorsogon and Ticao Island is known as the Ticao Pass. It is an area of strong currents and relatively shallow seabed. Schurz, The Manila Galleon, 204-6, 208;
81. and Selga, 'El Baguio del Santo Cristo de Burgos', 10.
82. See also Garcia et al., 'Atmospheric Circulation Changes in the Tropical Pacific', 2447-8.
83. El Tifón del Bergantín Francés Manuelita', Archive of the Manila Observatory, Box 10-36/6.
84. Miguel Selga, 'La Cronología Popular en la Designación de Temporales y Terremotos', Urania 28, 206 (1938): 65.
85. There is little difference in either the total number or the nature of tropical cyclones between Central and Southern Luzon and the Visayas but Mindanao presents a very different profile, having fewer tropical cyclones and a higher percentage of milder events than any other region. Census of the Philippine Islands, 1903 (Washington: United States Bureau of the Census, 1905), 1, 158-60;
86. Census of the Philippine Islands, 1918, 1, 447-52;
87. Greg Bankoff, Cultures of Disaster Society and Natural Hazard in the Philippines (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003), 45-6, 158-63, 179-180;
88. and 'List of Typhoons'. The Chronicle of Nabua was compiled from the municipal reports sent in reply to a questionnaire of 1911. The chronicle lists typhoons in the following years: 1701, 1703, 1709, 1713, 1721, 1723, 1726, 1733, 1748, 1758, 1762, 1766, 1774, 1776, 1781 × 3, 1790, 1801 × 4, 1803, 1811, 1816, 1824, 1839 × 3, 1857, 1867, 1870, 1875 × 2, 1881, 1885, 1891 × 2, and 1892 × 2.
89. Miguel Selga, 'El baguio del 4 de Octubre de 1854 en Pangasinan', Archive of the Manila Observatory, Box 10-36/10;
90. and 'Floods in the Philippines 1691-1911'. The later list is anonymous and does not seem to have been composed by Miguel Selga but makes frequent reference to his works and so presumably post-dates him.
91. 'Floods in the Philippines 1691-1911', Archive of the Manila Observatory, Box 10-37.
92. 'Floods in the Philippines 1691-1911'. Severe flooding of the Rio Grande de Cagayan also happened in October 1908, October 1909, October 1924 and December 1937. Half of the 18 floods in Pangasinan were recorded in the chronicle of Calasiao. Floods occurred in Nabua in 1691, 1697, 1733, 1748, 1758, 1767, 1775, 1783, 1786, 1787, 1790, 1793, 1798, 1800, 1817, 1840 and 1856; and in Pangasinan in 1768, 1774, 1776, 1777, 1779, 1785, 1790, 1794, 1797, 1806, 1820, 1821, 1825, 1831, 1857, 1865, 1871 and 1872. Part of the following account has previously appeared in Bankoff, Cultures of Disaster, 48-51.
93. List of Typhoons'; and 'Floods in the Philippines 1691-1911'.
94. G. Balce, R. Villones and D. delos Angeles, 'An Overview of Flood Hazards in the Philippines', in Natural Disaster Mitigation in the Philippines. Proceedings of National Conference on Natural Disaster Mitigation 19-21 October 1994 (Quezon City: DOST-PHIVOLCS, 1994), 19-30;
95. 'List of Typhoons'; and 'Floods in the Philippines 1691-1911'.
96. 'Sobre La Periodicidad de Los Baguios de Guam', Archive of the Manila Observatory, Box 10-41. For a detailed record of the frequency and magnitude of typhoons during the nineteenth century, see an abridged version of a register known to have been kept by several Agaña parish priests in Fathers Ancieto Ibáñez del Carmen and Francisco Resano del Corazón de Jesús, Chronicle of the Marian Islands (Crónica de las Islas Marianas) Translated and annotated by M. Driver (Mangilao, Guam: Micronesian Area Research Center, University of Guam, 1998).
97. 'Sobre La Periodicidad de Los Baguios de Guam' and Ibáñez del Carmen, Chronicle of the Marian Islands, 8-10.
98. José Coronas, 'The Climate and Weather of the Philippines, 1903-1918', in Census of the Philippine Islands, 1918 (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1920), 1, 446;
99. Documentation on the Impacts of and Responses to Extreme Climate Events Food and Agricultural Sector (Quezon City: Extreme Climate Events Technical Working Group for Agriculture, chaired by Dr Romeo Recide, Bureau of Agricultural Statistics, 2001): 9;
100. 'Alcalde-mayor de Bulacan to Governor-general, Bulacan, 6 March 1872', Philippine National Archive, Calamidades Publicas, Baguios y Huracanes, Bundle 2;
101. and 'Floods in the Philippines 1691-1911', 5.
102. Raymundus Blolong, 'The Ivatan Cultural Adaptation to Typhoons: A Portrait of a Self-Reliant Community from the Indigenous Development Perspective', Aghamato 8 (1996): 18-19, 21;
103. Ibáñez del Carmen and Francisco Resano del Corazón de Jesús, Chronicle of the Marian Islands, 9;
104. and Florentino Hornedo, Taming the Wind: Ethno-cultural history on the Ivatan of the Batanes Isles (Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2000);
105. and Julian Balmaceda, "'Turnuhan" as Practised in Various Provinces', Philippine Agricultural Review 20, 4 (1927): 386, 387, 401.
106. On the different types and construction techniques of indigenous house-building, see Julian Dacanay, Ethnic Houses and Philippine Artistic Expression (Pasig, Metro Manila: One-man Show Studio, 1988);
107. Norma Alarcon, Philippine Architecture during the Pre-Spanish and Spanish Periods (Manila: Santo Tomas University Press, 1991), 23-77;
108. and Corazon Hila, Rodrigo Perez and Julian Dacanay, Balai Vernacular Images of the Filipino's Private Space (Manila: Sentrong Pangkultura ng Pilipinas, Manila, 1992), 13-72.
109. Bankoff, Cultures of Disaster;
110. Greg Bankoff, 'Cultures of Disaster, Cultures of Coping: Hazard as a Frequent Life Experience in the Philippines, 1600-2000', in Natural Hazards Responses and Strategies in Global Perspective, ed. C. Mauch and C. Pfister (USA: Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming 2006).
111. Susanna Hoffman and Anthony Oliver-Smith refer to this human-environmental interaction in terms of 'mutuality'. Susanna Hoffman and Anthony Oliver-Smith, 'Anthropology and the Angry Earth: An Overview', in The Angry Earth: Disaster in Anthropological Perspectives, ed. A. Smith and S. Hoffman (New York and London: Routledge, 1999), 6.