Note 33 — THE PHILIPPINES, 1860–1898—SOME COMMENT AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Chinese.—Discussion of the Chinese in the Philippines is related more particularly to questions of industry and retail trade. Nevertheless, the Spanish government maintained almost to the end the theory—it was hardly more than an empty theory—that the Chinese immigration was being so regulated as to constitute a stimulus to agriculture. The subject also falls into place here because, from about 1886, when a campaign for the exclusion of the Chinese was started by Spanish merchants and newspaper men, a program for fostering the immigration of Spaniards into the Philippines, and especially into the undeveloped areas of Mindanao and Palawan, was quite regularly coupled with the arguments for Chinese exclusion. This program was usually presented without regard for the climatic and economic considerations involved; that it was a “patriotic” scheme was sufficient for some of these writers, who never stopped to ask themselves if their plans were practical.33 Among the pamphlets on the Chinese in the Philippines cited by Pardo de Tavera, those of Del Pan and Jordana y Morera deserve attention. A good survey of the subject, though not accurate in its statistics, is G. García Ageo’s Memorandum on the Chinese in the Philippines in Report of the Philippine Commission, 1900, ii, pp. 432–445.34