A history of one of the great cities of Southeast Asia and what makes it such a unique place.
Manila (or Lungsod Ng Maynila) today is a sprawling metropolis acting as the capital of the Philippines and home to more than 10 million people – nobody knows exactly how many because the city spreads ever further and further outwards. As many as 17 separate cities and metropolitan areas all join together in an immense tangle of people, buildings and roads. Yet, of course, it was not always this way.
The city of Manila is perched on the eastern edge of Manila Bay and has access to a natural and excellent harbour. Manila was particularly blessed by mountains to both east and west, which helped protect the people residing within it from the extremes of weather, including heat, monsoon and storm, which did affect people living elsewhere in the archipelago. It was this happy confluence of events that helped to establish it as a settlement comparatively early in the history of the Philippines. Indigenous South Seas islander peoples mixed with migrant Chinese and people further away in order to forge a multicultural and multiethnic society many hundreds of years ago.
By the 16th century, Manila had become an autonomous trading settlement, walled and governed internally by a Muslim ruler in much the same way that settlements had been established across the Malay world. In 1571, Spanish conquistadors led by Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, discovered the city and at once destroyed it, replacing it with a fortress city at first known as Intramuros (Between the Walls) and nominating it the capital of the new colony. Most of the population in the region lived in the vicinity of markets since these were largely trading communities. The Spanish built their churches close to these areas of high population and gradually the spaces in between filled up with new arrivals and the city spread to encompass the originally outlying settlements. Over the next few decades, the city was seized temporarily by the Chinese, the Dutch and the British, although on each occasion it was returned to the Spanish. The triangular trade organised by the Spanish to bring silver from South America to East Asia to pay for goods on the Chinese market became one of the most important systems in the world. Few if any of the benefits of such trade ever reached the Filipino people.
As a metropolitan centre, Manila witnessed the growth of resentment towards colonization, first by the Spanish and then by the Americans after the Spanish-American War of 1898, after which it was made capital of the American colony. It remained so until the Japanese invasion liberated the city (opinions about the occupation continue to be controversial). The city was then destroyed by the American military during its attempt to drive out the Japanese. In the years since, Manila has grown to become one of the leading cities of Southeast Asia, although the destruction of most of its historical legacy makes it less picturesque than other cities.
John Walsh, Shinawatra University, April 2007
