The Chinese in the Philippine Archipelago: Global Projection of a Local Community

Abstract

In the seventeenth century, Manila became a bridge between three oceanic worlds: the Indian, the Pacific and the Atlantic. In this global connecting function, the Chinese settlers in Manila played a key role as a trigger of a new kind of trading process which transformed the Philippine archipelago social landscape. We will study the development of this migratory Chinese presence along its first century, as well as its dissemination to other places in the Philippines, as an early diasporic phenomena between a synergic cooperation and an open violent conflict with the Spaniards, with both intercultural and local impacts (fiscal, legal, urban, cultural…).