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This chapter analyses the emergence of two distinct agrarian systems in major rice-producing provinces in Luzon Island, Philippines. These are the large hacienda system characterized by the management hierarchy for supervising a large number of tenants in Inner Central Luzon, and the relatively small-scale landlordism wherein landlords and tenants were tied by a patron-client bond. These agrarian systems evolved despite basic similarities in economic conditions such as ecological conditions for rice production, market access, colonial history, and post-independent government policies such as land reform.

This essay depicts the beginning of the Spanish Empire in the Asia-Pacific in the mid-sixteenth century (Ming dynasty), when Spaniard Miguel de Legazpi from Mexico in the Americas colonized the Philippines and established Manila as an extension of Spain’s American colony of New Spain. Sustaining this trans-Pacific relationship for 250 year was the Manila Galleon Trade between Acapulco, Mexico and Manila, trading American silver for Chinese silk, porcelain and other fine goods. The large community (twenty to thirty thousand) of Hokkien-speaking migrants from South Fujian (Minnan) which quickly arose and confined to ethnic neighbourhood outside the Manila city wall, became indispensable to the galleon trade by transporting from China all the luxury goods for the galleons, while resident artisans and labourers provided all the everyday consumer items, food, and services to the small Spanish population in Manila city. This first American “Chinatown” was the first large and permanent overseas Chinese community of Southeast Asia/Nanyang, which launched the worldwide Chinese diasporic movement that continues to this day, stretching all over the Americas, Europe and Africa.

This chapter first describes the MacArthur group's fortress in Corregidor Island. On December 24, 1941, the group spent Christmas Eve in the Malinta Tunnel, which was to house MacArthur's General Headquarters. On December 29, at 11:45 a.m., the air raid alarm sounded on Corregidor. The Japanese were finally attacking the island, with eighteen midsized bombers and ten dive-bombers: they knew that MacArthur had fled there from Manila. The remainder of the chapter details the Japanese military landing on Luzon; U.S. and Filipino force's tactical withdrawal to the Bataan Peninsula; the fall of Manila and the first Bataan operation; and the hardships of MacArthur's troops.

This chapter examines the evidence that can shed light on the demographic impact of Spanish colonial rule on the Philippines and allow comparisons between population trends in the islands with other parts of the Southeast Asian archipelago. Focusing on demographic trends for each major island and region in Luzon and the Visayas, the chapter shows that Spanish conquest and early colonial rule in the Philippines resulted in significant population decline that was more pervasive and prolonged than generally assumed, but varied regionally. The evidence includes early Spanish colonial sources such as letters and memorials written by the first explorers, conquistadors, and priests; civil records like fiscal accounts and censuses; ecclesiastical records; and corroborative evidence derived from records of native traditions and from archaeology. The chapter also discusses some of the problems associated with the use of early Spanish colonial sources for demographic analysis and the role of racial mixing in population losses. Finally, it considers a regional approach for evaluating the early demographic history of the Spanish Philippines.

This chapter examines the decline of populations in southwest Luzon during Spanish times. The history of southwest Luzon was closely intertwined with that of Manila. The friar estates that developed in the west of the region became major suppliers of provisions for the city and helped shape its economic and social structure. Spanish contacts with southwest Luzon began in 1570, when Juan de Salcedo and his exploratory expedition from Panay arrived on the island of Ilin, plundered the town of Mamburao in Mindoro, and destroyed some settlements on the island of Lubang. This chapter first provides an overview of southwest Luzon's geography, population, and socioeconomic profile in 1570 before discussing the development of friar estates in the region. It then assesses the impact of shipbuilding, polos, fugitivism, missions, and Moro raids on the demography of the region. It also analyzes demographic trends in southwest Luzon, with particular emphasis on factors that contributed to population decline, including epidemics and migration.

This chapter examines the impact of Spanish colonial rule on the population of interior Luzon, with particular emphasis on groups living within the southern and central Cordillera. It begins with a brief review of the incidence and timing of Spanish contacts in the southern and central Cordillera, including the regions of Ituy and Paniqui, Italon and Abaca, and Igorot territory. It then considers the demographic history of the Igorot in Benguet, Kankanai and Bontoc, and Ifugao. It also discusses Dominican missionary efforts in northern Cordillera, along with demographic trends in the entire Cordillera region. It cites population estimates for interior Luzon for the period 1570–1800 and suggests that the region experienced an overall population decline of approximately 36 percent in 1570.

MacArthur finally returned to the Philippines in October 1944, accompanied by fifty-eight correspondents—the largest number to join a Pacific invasion at that stage of the war. Initially, the campaign to retake the island of Luzon did not go well, but a combination of MacArthur’s optimistic communiqués and a major naval victory in the Battle of Leyte Gulf ensured that his return contributed to Roosevelt’s reelection victory a month later. After the invasion of Leyte in January 1945 led first to the liberation of the camps containing Bataan death march survivors and then to the bloody slaughter during the battle for Manila, the home front’s animosity toward Japan hardened.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, with the advent of soil science, soils of the humid tropics were recognized as a separate entity called ‘tropical forest lateritic soils’. The term ‘lateritic’ was derived from laterite (Latin later, brick), a term coined by Buchanan (1807) to describe an iron-rich clay from south India which, when hardened upon exposure, was used as building material. Originally it was thought that laterite represented soil formations throughout the humid tropics, hence the generalization of the name to all red soils in the region. The great diversity of the tropical soils was realized only around the 1930s along with the limited areal occupation of laterite in the tropics. It was actually in Southeast Asia that Vageler (1930) and Mohr (1944) wrote the first two books on tropical soils, based essentially on their study of soils in Indonesia. The two volumes of Mohr’s book were published in Dutch in 1934–8. The English translation appeared in 1944. They attempted to classify soils of the tropics according to thickness, degree of weathering, parent material, and fertility. The understanding of the morphology, genesis, and distribution of soils in Southeast Asia evolved with the establishment and development of soil surveys in different countries of the region from the 1950s. A first overview was prepared by Dudal and Moormann (1964), using the 1938 and 1960 soil classification systems of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) (Baldwin, Kellogg, and Thorp 1938; Soil Survey Staff 1960). A revised version was in place by 1974 (Dudal, Moormann, and Riquier 1974). Preparation of a soil map of the world at a scale of 1:5 million started in 1961 at the initiative of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), UNESCO, and the International Society of Soil Science (ISSS). In 1974 a unified soil classification was prepared and published (FAO 1974). A volume was specifically devoted to Southeast Asia (FAO 1979). The present chapter is based on this publication, and reference should be made to it and the accompanying map (1:5 million) for detailed information about the soils of the region.

This chapter outlines how, by the late 1940s, the Philippine state—with the support of U.S. military dollars, equipment, and advisers—launched a war against its own citizens in the name of global anticommunism. After World War II, peasant uprisings in Central Luzon, labor strikes on U.S. military bases in the islands, and the appeal of the Philippine Communist Party threatened to dissolve U.S. policymakers' efforts to promote Philippine independence as a testament to the benevolence and anti-imperial impulses of U.S. foreign aid and policies. In opposition, a multiyear counterinsurgency campaign brought millions of dollars of U.S. military aid into the country, resulting in the increased militarization of Philippine society as well as the near total defeat of peasant and working-class alternatives to Philippine elite control of the state. But while Filipino politicians affirmed decolonization in Southeast Asia, they also faced the challenge of explaining how Philippine independence could effectively coincide with the substantial U.S. political, economic, and military intervention needed to quell the violence in Central Luzon. Despite U.S. and Philippine pronouncements that the nation represented a “showcase of democracy,” the bloodletting in Central Luzon would eventually attract the attention of the international press, which also called into question the stability and legitimacy of the newly independent Philippine Republic. In response, Americans and Filipinos effectively collaborated to reinterpret peasant complaints against the state through the lens of a global war against communism.