The Search for Spices and Souls: Catholic Missions as Colonial State in the Philippines

Abstract

A growing literature posits that colonial Christian missions brought schooling to the colonies, improving human capital in ways that persist to this day. But in some places, they did much more. This paper argues that colonial Catholic missions in the Philippines functioned as state-builders, establishing law and order and building fiscal and infrastructural capacities in territories they controlled. The mission-as-state was the result of a bargain between the Catholic missions and the Spanish colonial government: missionaries converted the population and engaged in state-building, whereas the colonial government reaped the benefits of state expansion while staying in the capital. Exposure to these Catholic missions-as-state then led to long-run improvements in state capacity and development. I find that municipalities that had a Catholic mission have higher levels of state capacity and development today. A variety of mechanisms—religious competition, education, urbanization, and structural transformation—explain these results.