The Formation of a City:Trade and Politics

in Nineteenth-Century Cebu

Resil B. Majores

o understand acityone needs to see it in relation to its hinterland and tothe larger systems to which it is linked. The central Philippine city ofCebu is a fine example for this frame of analysis.

The nineteenth century saw the birth of Modern Cebu City. Its settlement his­tory, of course, goes farther back. It was (owing to its strategic location and fineharbor) an important trading center in thearchipelago in pre-colonial times, itsembryonic urbanism nourished by participation in a developing interislandand intra-Asian trade.By 1565, Legaspi's coming, the central settlement of Sugboor Cebu had around 300 dwellings and 2,000 inhabitants.

Colonialism arrested its development. For a while the Spaniards used it as baseand capital of their colony-in-the-making and here they proceeded to sketchthe outlines of a colonial city.ASpanish settlement (the first in Southeast Asia),christened Vl1la deSan Miguel,was laid out on May 8,1565, and provisions madefor a fort, church, and Spanish quarters adjoining the area where the Cebuanoslived. However, the transfer of the Spanish base of operations to Panay in 1569,and then to Manila, left Cebu with the skeleton of a Spanish colonial outpost.More important, the disruption of Cebu's old trading links with other Asianports, restrictions on interisland trade, and the institutionofthe Manila-focusedgalleon trade in the 1570's, relegated Cebu to the economic backwaters. Cebuwent through a long period ofdecline in the first 200 years ofSpanish rule (ca.1565-1760). Throughout this period, Cebu remained a key Spanish regional ad­mi nistrative, military and rel igious center, with the honors of being a province(as early as 1582, encompassing within its territory neighboring islands like!lohol and Leyte), military headquarters for the Visayas, and seat of a bishopric.

80 Resil B. Mojares' The Formation of a Oty: Nineteenth Century Cebu The Journal of History 81

It had little else, however. The lack of the economic opportunities led to a declineof both native and alien populations in the port area. (In the mid-eighteenthcentury. there were only one or two Spaniards in the city who were not officials,soldiers, or priests, and only around 18 or 20 Chinese residents). In the eighteenthcentury. the French scientist Le Gentil was to report that"the city of Cebu -whichreally should not be called a city-is an assemblage ofa few miserable huts:'

The birth of modern Cebu City is a nineteenth-century phenomenon. It is aproduct ofwider changes taking place in the colony and the world. In the closingdecades of the eighteenth century, the Spanish government-responding tosuch factors as the declineof the galleon trade, the loss of the Mexican situado,and changes in the world economy-began to liberalize trade and promoteagriculture and commerce in the archipelago. Early efforts were tentative andthe monopolistic position ofManila in Colonial trade continued to peripheralizeCebu and the other Philippine ports. The report of Tomas de Comyn, who hadserved as general manager of the Royal Philippine Company (established in1785), shows that the cultivation of agricultural export crops had not begunreplacing subsistence agriculture in Cebu Province as late as 1810.

The early nineteenth century, however. saw a quickening of interisland trade.The increased importance of commercial agriculture opened up the Philippinecountryside as merchants, land speculators, and trading agents fanned to theprovinces to acquire lands and fmance cash-crop cultivation, stationing them­selves in key provincial ports to profit from the flow of goods. By the 1840's, thecomplexion ofCebu City had changed. This is shown in the increase of popula­.tion (in the 1840s, Cebu City. except San Nicolas, had apopulation of 10.921), andthe growing ethnic diversity of the port population (in the 184Os, there werearound 3,000 'Chinese mestizos and the beginnings ofa new Chinese immigra­tion such that the city's Chinese population rose from 18 to 1.500 between 1840and 1895). Cebu became a major participant in the export economy. In the 1840sCebu was the third leading sugar-producing province in the Philippines. after'Parnpanga and Bulacan. In 1856, Cebu produced 5,698 tons ofsugarwhile Negros(which emerged as a producer only after 1860) produced only around 900 tons.

However. it was less Cebu's role as producer as its function as a distributioncenter which primed urban prosperity in the port area. Cebu was a market city.a focal point for the collection. handling, and distribution oftrade commodities.

Nineteenth-century Cebu was an entreport for such products as hemp, sugar,tobacco. rice, corn. and coffee from Negros, Leyte, Bohol, Samar, and NorthernMindanao. It was, on one hand, a major point for the transhipment ofgoods toManila and markets in Australia, United States, Great Britain, and Spain. It was,on the other hand, a distribution center for inbound commodities for the cen­tral and eastern Visayas and northern Mindanao.

The opening of Cebu to world trade. by virtue of the Spanish royal decree of july30, 1880. confi rmed the status of Cebu as one of the nerve centers of the revital­ized colonial economy. Between 1868 and 1883, the total value of the export tradeof Cebu City more than doubled (from 1,1 81 ,050 pesos to 2,429,048 p~sos ) .

Changes in the city transformed the hinterland. Nineteenth century develop­ments brought about the closer integration of city and countryside. In CebuProvince. town-building dramatically increased. As late as the eighteenth cen­tury. the provincial settlement pattern was highly dispersed and the cabecerascreated by the Spaniards were largely unpopulated.As late as 1737,an Augustin­ian priest said that usually only 8 or 10 houses were located in the cabecera oftownswith apopulation as largeas 1,000 or 2,000 aspeoplepreferred to livecloseto their clearings or farms. Until 1825, there were only l3 towns in the provinceof Cebu. Between 1825 and 1898, forty-four new towns were created.

Commercial agriculture and trade created amore fleshed-out hierarchyofsettle­ments in the province (and. at another remove, the region): fi rst, the city, thehead-link to the colonial capital and the outside world; then the cabeceras orpoblacionesstrategically located throughout the Island; and finally, the barrios orsitios where the primary producers worked and lived. It was not just progresswhich created this system. Darker fo rces were also at work: the dispossession ofcultivators and petty landowners, peasantization and the rise of tenancy, the riseof the haciendas and the concentration of the wealth in the hands of a few(usually city-based) fa milies, the emergence of a cash economy, and the weak­ening of local autonomy. All of these provided the ground for class and rural­urban tensions which areas much a part of the history of the city as the statisticson urban infrastructure and volume of trade.

Trade ushered in a period of rapid urban growth in the Cebu port area. All thesecreated the modern form of Cebu City. By 1900, Cebu City had a population of

,I:

82 Resif 8. Mojares • The FonnaUol!j;lf a City: Nineteenth Century Cebu The Joumal of History 83

15.000 (30,000with adjoiningSan Nicolas included), includingmore than a thou­sand foreign residents, and some2,000buildings and houses. Increasinglydiver­sified. the city encompassed 18'districts or barrios.

The character of the city was to be seen in the way urban space was organized.The city's main functional components were, to begin with. the port and itsassociated complex ofwharves. warehouses. factories or sheds (for bulk-break­ing. sorting. and grading), and shipping services (coaling station. shipyard).

This was the door through which commodities. bills of exchange, and menentered and exited.

Close to the port were three associated administrative centers. First were theeconomic institutions through which capitalism exercised control: banks. trad­ing companies, brokerages. shipping firms, and insurance agencies. Chiefamongthis were the English houses ofSmith Bell & Co. (ca 1865) and Loney. Kerr & Co.(ca. 1867), and the American firm of Russell & Sturgis (ca. 1868). which com­bined the functions of traders, banks, shipowners. and shipping and insuranceagents. Second. we have the politico-military institution that maintained civilorder and facilitated political control of the surrounding territory: the CasaGobierno (the seat of the provincial government). Ayuntamiento (the city gov­ernment), Fort San Pedro, and the offices of the colonial government. Third, wehave the various religious and ideological sites which created the substance andsemblance of moral order: the Bishop's Palace. churches and convents, schools,and even the public parks-Plaza Maria Cristina (Independencia ), Plaza delGeneral Lono (Rizal), Plaza Alcolea (Freedom Park). and Plaza Parian - whichfunctioned not only as recreational places but as open spaces to highlight theceremonial power of government and church. All three centers were concen­trated in the ciudad proper (roughly the six-hectare area bounded by present­day Magallanes. Juan Luna, Manalili and Martires streets).

Close to these centers was the market. Corresponding to the scale of the city,there was agreat deal ofsurfacediversity in market establishmentsand activities.In Cebu, this ranged from European-style bazaars, jewellers, and tobacco shops(which dominated the main business street, Calle Magallanes) - catering to arising demand for customer items among a cosmopolitan, urban popuIati?n -:­then to the public market (In Lutao district. now Carbon Market area) With Its

pettyChinese shops, butchersheds,hawkers,and retailers offish, meat, vegetables,and other fo od and household items. In sections and interstices of thecommercial area were to be found small-scale manufacturing establishments aswell as an assortment ofprofessional and service shops and offices (livery stables,funeral parlors. drugstores. pawnshops. printshops, and others).

The location ofresidences was highly mixed. Though the Spaniards had carriedout a policy of residential segregation for racial groups (the ciudad for Span­iards, Parian for Chinese mestizos, Lutao for the Chinese. and San Nicolas forindios), racial lines, like class divisions. tended to be indistinct and half-articu­lated. The wealthy merchant families. however, gravitated around Parian (beforesuburbanization began in .the early twentieth century with the westward expan­sion of the city). Lower-class dwellings and nascent slums were to be found atthe edges as well as the inner interstices of the city.

As a colonial provincial city, Cebu was essentially an economic intermediary ­a middleman - between the industrializing countries and the largely captivesource of raw materials; between. on one hand. the colonial capital and themetropolitan powers. and, on the other. the province and region in which Cebuwas located. In the colonial system, it was less an economic center as a way­station. Hence, like colonial ci ties elsewhere, much of the city economy wastaken up by the tertiary sector. Cebu was quintessentially a city of administra­tors, clerks, agents, retail merchants, grocers, peddlers, domestics, and transportworkers. A 1900 occupational census of the city shows that 6,014 were in tradeand transportation, 5.170 in domestic and personal services, and 814 in agricul­ture. The lack.of industrial development prevented employment opportunitiesin the city from expanding.or expanding in other directions. Manufacturing waslimited to small-scale, cottage-type industries: soap and candlemakers, coco­nut-oil factories. corn mills, shoemakers, native distilleries, and foundries.

Cebu City is tobe understood in relation to internal and external worlds. On onehand, Cebu is a focal point for the concentration ofeconomic wealth drained offnot only from other places in the island province of Cebu but from thesurrounding region. particularly eastern Visayas and northern Mindanao. It standsat the center ofa network of provincial ports, towns, and villages that. in turn.were collecting-and-distributing points for their own immediate hinterland.

84 Resil B. Mojares • The Formation of a City' Nineteenth Century Cebu The Journal of History 85

On the other hand, Cebu is a center subordinated to larger, more powerfulcenters: Manila and beyond, such capitals of world commerce as New York,London, or Amsterdam. Such links underlie its prosperity but also its vulner­ability, arising from its dependence.on larger systems on which it exerciseslimited control.

To what extent, or in what ways, has the character of Cebu defmed its function asinnovator or generator of social and political change? There are two generalviews on the role of cities (and, in particular, colonial cities). One stresses theirgenerative functions: they are forward points ofsocial progress, advanced formsof social organization, centers of creativity. The other stresses their parasiticcharacter: they drain off the wealth of the countryside and hinterland, exploitprimary producers, concentrate resources and consume surpluses, and redis­tribute inequitably to centralize power and maintain hegemony over the sur­rounding territory.

In colonial and post-colonial Southeast Asia where the urban hierarchy is domi­nated by a "primate" city, secondary cities like Cebu experience a further dual­ism: they do not only profit from the cyclical booms of world commerce butsuffer as well a double subordination to the centers' of the world economy andthe capital of the nation-state itself.

These dualisms shape the political ethos of Cebu City. This is illustrated in thecity's response to the two important events of turn-of-the-century Philippinehistory: the anti-Spanish revolution and the American occupation. In the nine­teenth century, economic prosperity and such concomitants as higher educa­tion, literacy, and exposure to the outside world empowered the Cebuano elite ofthe port area. The Seminario-Colegio de San Carlos (with adiscontinuous historythat goes back to 1595) began accepting students on a regular basis in 1825 and,between 1881 and 1895, its enrollment increased from 310 to 662. Aschool forwomen, Colegio de la lnmaculada Concepcion, was established in 1879. A fairnumber of Cebuanos went on to higher education in Santo Tomas and Ateneo inManila. Printshops and newspapers came to be established: Imprenta deEscondriilas, the first Cebu printshop, in 1873; El Boletin de Cebu, the first Cebunewspaper, in 1886. Increased maritime traffic (by the end of the 1860s it tookless than two days to travel by steamship between Manila and Cebu) broughtinto the city not only commodities and men but new ideas.

This empowerment was expressed in two ways: first, in local assertiveness (withclass and ethnic overtones) on the part of the local elite; and, second, in anemerging nationalism. Two illustrations can be cited for the first. From 1828 to1879, the Chinese mestizo elite of the city waged a drawn-out legal battle againstthe Augustinians and local Spanish officials over the civil and ecclesiasticaljurisdiction of the rich Parian district (which existed as a separate town from1755 to 1849 and had expanded to include the districts of Mabolo, Lahug, andBanilad). In the feud, Parian residents had lawyers send petitions to the SpanishKing. Though its status as a separate town and as an independent parish endedin 1849 and 1879, respectively, the Parian demonstrated its will to autonomy andpower. In this conflict, the wealthy city residents showed both an appetite forpower and a capacity to work against the wishes of local church and civil au­thorities.

Another instance of this assertiveness came in 1888. In the face of the sugarcrisis in the 1880s (when prices and production dropped due to the competitionof the European sugar beet industry), the leading Cebuano merchants and land­owners met on April 26, 1888 and formed a society called La Esperanza. Itsofficers were the elite of the port area: Don Buenaventura Veloso, Don VictorianoOsrnefia, Don Pedro Cui, Don Francisco Llorente, Don Valeriano Climaco, DonFlorentino Rallos, Don Juan Base de Villarosa, and Don Alfredo Velasco. Thesociety called for the promotion of agriculture by demanding higher pricesfrom the foreign firms for export crops. It also sought to protect its investmentsand mitigate dependence on foreign houses by establishing large warehousesfor the storage of sugar. Manila, however, sat on its application for recognitionand by the time its statutes were returned to Cebu for revision in 1891, theupturn in the sugar trade had dissipated the interest of the members of thesociety.

On the eve ofthe Revolution, the Cebuano urban elite, plugged into the channelsof world commerce and dealing directly with British and American tradinghouses, must have felt that the Spanish colonial presence had become excessbaggage. It was for this reason that some of them supported the Revolution andmost welcomed the change of government. In the main, however, they adopteda cautious, conservative position. The city elite responded to the Tagalog rebel­lion of 1896 by donating money to the Spanish cause and by either supporting orjoining the voluntarios leaies. the pro-Spanish local militia. In the Cebuano

86 Resil8. M oja res • The Fonnation of a City: Nineteenth Century Cebu The Journal of History 87

rebellion of April 1898, they largely stayed out of harm's way. They began tomanifest their support for the Revolution only late in 1898 when it was clear thatthe tides of war had shifted in favor of the Republic with the escalation ofCebuano resistance and the entry of the Americans. They had serious reserva­tions, however, as the armed resistance was led by men that included 'Tagalogs',strangers, and declasse elements in local society. There were anxieties about theturning 'upside-down' of a familiar order. Thus, when the Americans occupiedCebu City in February 1899, the elite again shifted their allegiance to the occupy­ing power. In the days that followed, they called for the cessation of hostilities,the normalization of business conditions, and the stationing of more U.S. troopsin the island.

Urban society, however, also spawned social elements of a less conservative bentthan the city's merchant elite. The anti-Spanish revolution and anti-Americanwar were led by three discernible groups of men. The first were members of aninchoate urban bourgeoisie (what an observer of the time called mediailustrados): civil servants, students, small property owners, and skilled artisans.The second were members of the municipal elites from outlying towns (likeToledo, Tuburan, and Bogo). The third were migrants and revolutionary agentsfrom Luzon and other places. The social complexion of the resisters shows thatthey were men exposed to urban influences, inhabiting the edges and intersticesof the urban social order. Of interest is the role of mobile, free floating elementslike seamen (who provided the early links between the leaders of the Revolutionin Luzon and those in the provinces), migrants, and political agents. Of furtherinterest is the role ofthe municipal elites: these were men linked to the port areaby trade, who participated in the profits of that trade but were disadvantaged inrelation to the foreign houses and the business elite of the Cebu Port area. Basedin the towns, their distance from the coercive instruments of the state alsoequipped them with a certain autonomy of action.

The bulk of the fighters was, of course, made up of peasants and rural dwellers(often referred to as bukidnon or taga-bukid}, men of the city's hinterland, whowere impelled by a mix of motives: peasant egalitarianism, grievances over theeffects of peasantization, patron-client reciprocities, racial pride and visions ofa millenarian order. These were men who had little stake in the social order andthey were the ones who continued the struggle, along more indigenous lines,after the surrender of the republican leaders in Cebu in October 1901.

In sum, urbanization in Cebu linked local society to world commerce. Such alinkage shaped the contradictory tendencies - conservation, reform, rebellion- in the political ethos of urban Cebu. Conservatism, however, was the domi­nant tendency: it underlies theearly support for Spain, the ambivalence towardsthe Republic, and the capitulation to the Americans on the part of the Cebuurban elite.

The period dealt with in this paper is important since the history of Cebu Cityfrom the nineteenth century to the present has been marked by a distinct con­tinuity. Inits outward aspects,CebuCityhas changed dramatically. It has, in 1980,a population of490,281, and has grown to be the axis ofa metropolitan area thatincludes two other cities and six municipalities (the population of MetropolitanCebu in 1980 is 92~,754) . Its economic character, however, remains basicallyunchanged. If anything, the change has been towards an even closer integrationof Cebu to the networks of the global economy. There are current moves to"bypass" primate Manila through greater administrative and fiscal autonomy insuch areas, or through such instruments, as the creation of a Metropolitan CebuAuthority, greater autonomy in the management of Cebus international air andsea por~, the expansion of foreign investments, and the creation of new export­processing zones.

All these may herald the beginning of a new phase in Cebus history.Yet,while thepast shows to us the logic of this development, it does not inspire confi dencethat this will necessarily bring about the long-term progress of the interlockingsystems of city, region, and nation.

References

The following are the major sources of Cebu City history used in this study:IIruce L Fenner.eebu UndertheSpanish Flag (I521-1896):An Economic and Social History

(Cebu:SanCarlosPublications,1985).

11<'.\ 11 11 .Mojures,elISaGorordoineebu: UrbanResidence inaPhilippine Province(Cebu: RamonAllt lil izFoundation, Inc., 1983).

Mil 1I,It,I( :l ll l i llil IIC." ·r! IC: ChangingNature of theCebuUrban Elite in the 19thCentury, "PhilippineSodll /J//\1111' \ ': Ulobl~l Trade ul/ll l.ucal1'ra/lsforrnatiotIS, A.W,McCoy & E.C.de Jesus, (eds.)(l)tll'wn Cuy: Aten«l de Munila UniversityPress,1982),251-296.

88 Resil B. Mojares • The Formation of a City: Nineteenth Century Cebu

Resil B.Mojares.Th eWarAgainst theAmericans: Resistanceand Collaborationin Crbu,1898­1906(Cebu:Maria Cacao, forthcoming).

Daniel F. Doeppers,"The Development of thePhilippineCities Before 1900; JournalofAsianStudies 31:4 (1 971 -72), 789-792.

Frederick L. \Vernstedt, "Cebu: Focus ofPhilippine InterislandTrade;'EconomicGeography,32:4 (October 1956), 336-348.

For a general view of colonial cities in Southeast Asia, see:T.G. McGee,The Southeast AsianCity (NewYork:Frederick A.Praeger,1967).

YM.Yeung & C.R Lo, eds.,ChangingSoutheastAsianCities:Readingson Urbanization(Singapore:Oxford University Press,1976).