Conquest and pestilence in the early Spanish Philippines / Linda A. Newson.

Originally published: Honolulu : University of Hawai'i Press, c2009.

conquest was thought to have been more benign than what took place in the Americas because of more enlightened colonial policies introduced by Philip II. Conquest and Pestilence in the Early Spanish Philippines illuminates the demographic history of the Spanish Philippines in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and, in the process, chalenges these assumptions. In this provocative new york, Linda Newson convincingly demonstrates that the Filipino population suffered a significant decline in the early colonial period. Newson argues that the sparse population of the islands meant that Old World diseases could not become endemic in pre-Spanish times. She also shows that the initial conquest of the Philippines was far bloodier than has often been supposed and that subsequent Spanish demands for tribute, labor, and land brought socioeconomic transformations and depopulation that were prolonged beyond the early conquest years. Comparisons are made with the impact of Spanish colonial rule in the Americas. Based on extensive archival research conducted in secular and missionary archives in the Philippines, Spain, and elsewhere, Conquest and Pestilence in the Early Spanish Philippines is an exemplary contributionto our understanding of the formative influences on demographic change in pre-modern Southeast Asian society and the history of the early Spanish Philippines. LINDA A NEWSON is a professor of geography at King's College London.

CONQUEST AND PESTILENCE IN THE EARLY SPANISH PHILIPPINES "The book is truly remarkable in breadth and depth and has the power of a prosecuting attorney's relentless presentation of a damning circumstantial case : the reader's resistance gives way under the sheer weight of the evidence. We hear many different voices (some ecclesiastical, some civil or military) reiterating the same sad tale of depopulation and slow recovery. Others have, on less evidence, surmised some of this story of loss, but no one before has effectively estimated its depth of duration. The tale deserves to be told." Norman G. Owen, Editor The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia Scholars have long assumed that Spanish colonial rule had only a limited demographic impact on the Philippines. Filipinos, they believed, had acquired immunity to Old World diseases prior to Spanish arrival