Note 7 — Chapter VII · Period of Conquest and Settlement, 1565–1600.

Despite the settlement with Portugal, the rich Spice Islands to the south still attracted them, and there were soon revealed the fertile coasts of Siam and Cambodia, the great empire of China, the beautiful island of Formosa, and the Japanese archipelago. These, with their great populations and wealth, were more alluring fields than the poor and sparsely populated coasts of the Philippines. So, for the next quarter of a century, the policy of the Spaniards in the Philippines was not so much to develop these islands themselves, as to make them a center for the commercial and spiritual conquest of the Orient.7