The Sangley Rebellion was a series of armed confrontations between overseas Chinese, known as the Sangley, and the Spanish and their allied forces in Manila under the Captaincy General of the Philippines, in October 1603. The Chinese dominated trading and outnumbered Spanish residents in Manila by a five-to-one ratio. The Spanish feared and resented them. Policies of persecution were enacted against the Chinese and they were expelled from the city to an undesirable swamp area in 1586, which the Chinese turned into a thriving town. The Chinese planned a strike due to worsening relations, but it resulted in the execution of their mayor, and became a rebellion. It ended in the massacre of more than 20,000 Chinese in Manila by Spanish, Japanese, and Filipino forces.[1][2]
Chinese merchants had been making trading voyages to Manila well before the Spanish arrival. The Chinese were noted in the first Spanish records of the area made by Ferdinand Magellan in 1521 and García Jofre de Loaísa in 1527. In 1570, the Spanish conquered Manila. The locals had only recently developed a monarchy under Muslim influence; they did not raise sustained opposition to Spanish occupation after their king's town was destroyed. The Chinese had settled across the Pasig River in an area granted to them by the Muslim king.[clarification needed] They were initially friendly to the Spanish, who rescued a disabled Chinese ship off Mindoro in 1571. Some of the rescued visited Manila in 1572 with large cargo shipments. In 1573 the first cargo of Chinese goods was shipped across the Pacific Ocean to Acapulco in New Spain. Trade with the Chinese continued until the Chinese dominated nearly all the trade to the Americas from Manila.[3]
Armed conflict between the Chinese and Spanish soon erupted. In 1574, the pirate Lin Feng tried to take Manila on November 29 and December 2, and was repelled both times. He withdrew to Pangasinan, which he was ejected in March 1575 by a force of Spanish and Filipino soldiers. An officer from the Ming dynasty, Wang Wanggao, who had been sent to track down Lin Feng, was received cordially in Manila. He returned to Fujian with two Spanish envoys and two priests hoping to gain permission to proselytize in China. Although the initial reception to the Spanish in China was positive, the negotiations soon floundered, and the relationship between the Chinese and Spanish became more violent.[4]
By 1586, the Spanish became concerned with the profit the Chinese were making from trade. They were also concerned about being far outnumbered by the Chinese, who totaled 10,000 in Manila, compared to 2,000 Spaniards. The Spanish forced the Chinese out of the city to a swampy area northeast of the city walls. Despite this setback, the Chinese soon developed a thriving town with a pond in its center. By 1590, in addition to trade, the Chinese dominated industries such as bread-making, book-binding, tavern-keeping, and stone-masonry.
In 1587, the Dominicans built a church to proselytize to the Chinese. Their letters back to their order from 1589 and 1590 claim that there was considerable interest from the Chinese converting and adapting their culture to the Spanish model. By 1603 the Spanish colonial authorities made it an established practice to appoint a Christian Chinese as mayor over the Chinese.[5] At the same time, the Spanish sought to restrict Chinese enterprises.
Around 1600 the Spanish started to sell a limited number of residence permits, only 4,000, to the Chinese at 2 reals each. The Spanish also tried to restrict Chinese trade. A decree in 1589 made prices of all Chinese imports uniform and agreed-upon prior to the trading season. In 1593 the Spanish closed Peru to Chinese imports and prohibited Spanish voyages to China. Only certain Spaniards were allowed to trade Chinese goods.[6]
In 1593, Governor Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas was killed in a mutiny by his Chinese rowers. The rowers fled to Vietnam, where most of them stayed. Some returned to China, where their leader was punished. Fearing an attack by the local Chinese in Manila, the Spanish forced them to relocate to the north side of the Pasig. In 1596, 12,000 Chinese were deported from Manila back to China. In 1603, Spanish fear of the Chinese and dependence on them and the China trade, coupled with the effects of continued immigration, led to efforts to suppress them, and the massacre of over 20,000 Chinese.[1]
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Two Fujian adventurers, Yan Yinglong and Zhang Yi, told Gao Cai, a eunuch tax and mines commissioner in Fujian, that there was a mountain of gold on the Cavite Peninsula in Manila Bay. A plan was made to send a naval expedition to obtain said gold by attacking Manila, but several censors protested this. Provincial authorities did not believe there was gold where Zhang Yi described but felt they had to send some kind of expedition, if only to prove Zhang wrong. So an assistant county magistrate, Wang Shihe, and a company commander, Yu Yicheng, were sent to confirm the story, along with Zhang in chains.[1]
The Ming delegation arrived in March 1603 and was received by governor Pedro Bravo de Acuña. They were well treated, but when they tried to administer justice in the Chinese community, they were ordered to stop. In May they made it clear to the governor that they did not believe there was a mountain of gold but were obliged to obey their orders.
The governor allowed them to go to Cavite, where they took a basket of dirt, then left for China. The Spanish did not believe the expedition had been sent only to search for gold. Archbishop of Manila Miguel de Benavides, O. P. suspected that they had been a probe sent in advance of a major Chinese invasion. The Spanish feared that the local Chinese would cooperate with an invasion. Spanish, Filipino, and even Japanese residents began to threaten the Chinese.[7][2]
A large group of Chinese planned a strike. The Chinese mayor, Juan Bautista de la Vera, a wealthy Catholic, tried to dissuade them but found that his own adopted son was the leader. They tried to persuade him to become their leader, but he refused and reported them to the Spaniards. The Spaniards arrested him after finding gunpowder in his house and eventually executed him.[7]
Alerted to the unrest among the Chinese, the Spanish shut the city gates on the night of October 3. One Spanish family was murdered north of the Pasig, while an attack on the church in Tondo was repelled by Spanish soldiers, whose commander, Luis Pérez Dasmariñas, overconfident of Spanish strength, pursued the Chinese. When cautioned against attacking by his fellow officers, he derided them as cowards and retorted that "twenty five Spaniards were enough to conquer the whole of China".[8] The Spanish followed the Chinese into a swamp, where they were surrounded and cut down.[7]
On October 6, Chinese rebels crossed the Pasig and attacked the city walls with ladders and siege towers. While they had obtained some firearms from the Spaniards they had defeated, they did not have enough to overcome the artillery on the walls. Their assault was defeated and their ladders and towers demolished by cannon shots. After a day or two, Spanish and Japanese soldiers sortied out and attacked the Chinese with support from Filipino auxiliaries. The Chinese fled and were pursued through the countryside in the following weeks. Those who were captured were killed. An estimated 15,000 to 25,000 Chinese were slaughtered.[9][2]
After the slaughter, the Spanish realized that they could not survive without Chinese trade and industry. They assured the remaining Chinese merchants that normal trade would be restored and continue as usual. Spanish officials sent letters to Fujian and Guangdong authorities explaining what had happened. Fujian officials blamed most of what had occurred on Zhang Yi, but replied that the Spanish should not have killed the Chinese, and that widows and orphans should be sent back to China. No further action was taken.
Because the Chinese town had been devastated, Chinese merchants visiting Manila in 1604 were given fine lodging inside the walled city. Trade quickly returned to normal, with 1606–1610 averaging over three million pesos per year, the highest five-year average in history.[10]
Chinese continued to live under Spanish rule. Although they were exempt from the labour and dues required of Filipinos, the Chinese had to pay a license fee of eight pesos a year, and often suffering additional extortion and harassment from sellers. They were also subject to population control, with the Spanish establishing a limit of 6,000 Chinese in Manila. But the ethnic Chinese population in the 1620s and 1630s ranged from 15,000 to 21,000. The Chinese petitioned the king of Spain for self-government, but this proposal was rejected in 1630.
As the Chinese population continued to swell, reaching 33,000–45,000 by 1639, they entered other industries such as farming. They were laborers on their own in outlying areas, employed on estates of religious orders, or used as farm labor in forced settlement projects. This large rural Chinese population rebelled again in 1639, and suffered another massacre.[11]
The Museo Bello in Puebla, Mexico has a wooden chest in its collection adorned with what is believed to be the oldest image of Manila. Its dating was determined by the details, said to reflect Manila just prior to the October massacre. "The most important visual clue that can be found in the painting is the group of figures in the Parián."[12] This scene depicts three Chinese officials mounted on horseback, accompanied by three stewards, in a deserted marketplace, which otherwise would have been teeming. The three officials have been identified as the three visitors arriving to determine the validity of the story of the mountain of gold in Cavite.