THE SPICE ISLANDS.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 139, 18 July 1914, Page 8

THE SPICE ISLANDS.

MANILA AND THE PHILIPPINES.

{Written for THE SUN by Colonel H. C. Barclay, of W aim ate, who is making a tour of India, China, and Japan.]

S.S. Tango Mara, Nagasaki, June 8

Imagine an ocean dotted with 3000 isands, great and small, situated north of the Line, but well within the tropics. Their position is so unique within the Orient, that the earliest Portuguese navigators looked on them as.the, limit of the .East, while Spaniards sailing round the world in the opposite direction, regarded them as the limit of the West. They were then, and still are,' the southern centre of the populous nations .q£ the Far East. The Spaniards and Portuguese in encircling the globe, met there from opposite directions, and from the, earliest days of the great voyages of discovery, they became a veritable cockpit for European nations kt war with one another.

Volcanic in . origin, assisted by coral growths, they were in the past probably a connecting link of land, between Asia and the Southern countries. Lying in shallow seas, bathed by the warm waters of the Pacific, they produce all that tropical climates can grow. Discovered first by Magellan in 1521, he promptly landed representatives of State and Church and began the Christianisation of the country.

FATE OF MAGELLAN. •Magellan himself, taking part in in-ter-tribal .conflicts, lost his own life, and while attending a supposed banquet given in their honour, 26 men of his departing crew were treacherously slain. 1 : H 1564 Miguel Lopez, de Legaspi and Lis: 1 pilot (now a fria,r) named Andres Urdenata, to.ok possession of the islands in the name of Spain, having themselves come from the Spanish of Mexico. At this • time - the Portuguese laid claim to all the Orient," and the town now called Manila was selected by him as his base of action, in*-his conflicts with the Portuguese. . The Spaniards at home had at this time been engaged in their last fights with the Moors, and striking some inland inhabitants, who in' tenacity 'And methods of warfare and religion ' resembled their European they called theWt the Moros (corruption of Moors),; and .they are the race that up till the present have given the Americans the -greatest trouble to subdiie. These Moros had at some time come und6r the influence of. the Turks who had swept up from Borneo, and they' were thus converted to Mohamedsnism.. . ...

Like all primitive governments the State and religions were closely allied, and the inhabitants of the is-lands (the Filipinos) still bear traces of th«T ruling hands of the various orders of Roman Catholicism' that flowed from Spain,; Portugal, and Mexico, into the Philippines

during the early years of contact with European nations. ; CHINESE TRADERS. Then the trading* instincts of the Chinaman brought him to Manila, and through this port he sent his goods in great quantity to America. He quickly and quietly settled in the islands," and by his skill, industry, and numbers, acquired a commanding influence as compared wth the Filipinos, and the Spaniards. But local risings and the attack of the famous Chinese pirate Li Ma Hong, failed "to gain possession of the "Pearl of the Orient" for the Chinese, who had to be forcibly segregated and kept down. ;Then came the wave of Dutch warriors, representing a nation at that time at war with Spain, and within half a century of fighting by sea and land, they swept away the Spanish and Portuguese Empire in the East with the exception of the Philippines. Japan, who up to this time had been on friendly terms with the inhabitants, found it necessary, to avoid the uprooting of the basis of morality and religion, to sweep, by force of arms, Christianity out of the land, and owing to the religious influences of Spain in the Philippines this was heartily cursed by the islanders, and a breach of friendship occurred. Manila was at this time, remember, a city with its (still famous) mediaeval wali around it, and boasted a' cathedral, a university, and a hospital. A BRITISH EXPEDITION.

We now. reach the time of the Seven Years War in Europe, when Britain fought a combination of Spain and France. This gave Great Britain her opportunity for a skirmish in the favoured islands. To punish Spain for joining France in the war, she sent a body of men from Madras, mainly Sepoys, who ? taking Manila unawares, sacked and pillaged the town, but by tlui Treaty of Paris in 1763 it was handled back to Spain, Now followed .difficulties with, the Spanish system of colonisation.- The-union of Church and State, however essential to. ruling, with a firm combined hand in the early stages, invariably ends in differences of opinion. A", religious autocracy cannot work w;ell for-long within a governmental autocracy. v When their, forces ;are busily combined against the natives they may walk hand in hand, but when they have accomplished their ends with the na.tives the disputes as to their individiial powers begin, and the natives ultimately rebel against one or the other. In" this case the upheavals and revolutions were directed against the Church, whose natural desire to expand itself in ppwer, and by taxation establish magnificent edifices, brought itself to be more disliked - than the State itself. This . condition of unrest went. on till 1896, when Emilio Aguinaldo appeared as the insurgent leader of the Filipinos, and with considerable success kept up a guerrilla warfare against the ' Spanish troops. In 18j)7 a compact was entered into, but was never completely fulfilled by the Spanish representatives, and in 1898, when Admiral Dewey with the American fleet entered Manila harbour, he had little to do but overthrow a rule which had already lost j|s equilibrium, and needed only the faintest push to send it tottering, and thus ended Spain's Empire in the East Indies. It was not, however,- till 1901 that Aguinaldo and his Filipinos, ultimately bent the knee to a Foreign Power and abandoned the struggle with America.

The Philippines have thus been the centre of many a struggle, Portuguese, Spaniards, Chinese, Dutch, British, and Americans, have shed their blood to acquire the famous Spice Islands of anti- x quity. Its mountains and fertile plains have witnessed many a conflict, races have struggled for mastery among its rice fields, beneath its lovely nipa palms and cocoanut groves; while many a sea light has marred its beauteous shores, its coral sea, and its silvery, shores lined down to the water's edge'by gigantic green-leaved bananas, and the' flaming glorious rc?d of its fire trees. Still, ' wonderful to relate, the fate df the Philippine Islands is still in the lap of the gods, it may gd intoi the melting pot at any time, : ftfr undefr the see-sawing policy of the democracy, It is admitted-OB ail ha'nds to be in: a condition of unstable and, .may yet yield stirring events in history. If Mr Norman Angel wants to find a text on which- to write an additional chapter to his Great Illusion," he can find excellent material in the ■ Philippines. To this aspect of thematter I .will 'briefly refer in mynext. . •