The Murillo Bulletin
The Appearance of the Name ‘Philippinas’ on the Maps of Abraham Ortelius by James W. Roy
A Bugis Nautical Chart on a Moro Ship by Muhammad Buana 17 Forgotten Renderings of the Philippines in 16th-C Portuguese Cartography by Miguel Lourenço
Spanish-Ruled
About PHIMCOS
The Philippine Map Collectors Society (PHIMCOS) was established in 2007 in Manila as the first club for collectors of antique maps and prints in the Philippines. Membership of the Society, which has grown to a current total of 43 individual members, 8 joint members, and 2 corporate members (with two nominees each), is open to anyone interested in collecting, analysing or appreciating historical maps, charts, prints, paintings, photographs, postcards and books of the Philippines.
PHIMCOS holds quarterly meetings at which members and their guests discuss cartographic news and give after-dinner presentations on topics such as maps of particular interest, famous cartographers, the mapping and history of the Philippines, or the lives of prominent Filipino collectors and artists The Society also arranges and sponsors webinars on similar topics. The talks are recorded and can be accessed by members through our website. A major focus for PHIMCOS is the sponsorship of exhibitions, lectures and other events designed to educate the public about the importance of cartography as a way of learning both the geography and the history of the Philippines. The Murillo Bulletin, the Society’s journal, is normally published twice a year, and copies are made available to the public on our website.
PHIMCOS welcomes new members. The annual fees, application procedures, and additional information on PHIMCOS are available on the website: www.phimcos.org
Front Cover: Detail of the ‘Isole de San Lazaro’ from the c.1587 manuscript mappamundi by Urbano Monte (image courtesy of the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, Stanford, CA)
PHIMCOS News & Events
THE SECOND PHIMCOS meeting of the year, attended in person by 17 members and 13 guests and with 4 members and 7 guests joining via Zoom, was held on 22 May, 2024. After dinner, Miko David shared his family’s history with us, starting some 200 years ago when three brothers, Antonio Lorenzo, Bartholomeu and Luis Barretto, all born in British India, were granted Portuguese citizenship and allowed to do business in the Portuguese colony of Macau.
After moving to Macau they had dealings with Spanish Manila where, on one of their trips, in 1815 Antonio Lorenzo’s wife gave birth to the first Barretto born in the Far East ‒ their son João Barretto, named after his grandfather. This was the start of the growth of the Barretto family in this part of the world. The presentation charted the movement of the family from the 18th century to the present day, illustrated with maps of Zambales and San Felipe, Subic where various branches of the Barretto family settled.
After Miko’s presentation we held a ‘Show-andTell’ session in which Peter Geldart presented an interesting and rare archive of secret U.S. Army reports on the liberation of the Philippines in 1944-45. The documents consist of 19 of the Weekly Intelligence Reports, all marked ‘Secret’ and dated from 15 November, 1944 to 20 June, 1945, produced by the G-2 Intelligence Section of the U.S. Sixth Army (the force formed from the famed ‘Alamo Scouts’ that spearheaded the liberation of the Philippines). The archive came from the papers of Lt. Col. Frederick W. Bradshaw, who served as the deputy head of the Sixth Army’s military intelligence.
The reports include much fascinating information: plans and field reports on the main battles of the Philippine campaign, including those of Leyte, Mindoro, Lingayen Gulf and Manila; the raid on the Cabanatuan POW Camp; the recapture of Corregidor; and details of espionage, PSYOPS, guerilla warfare, counterintelligence, improvised weapons and aerial reconnaissance. The 743 pages of typescript text, together with 66 folding maps, 13 folding plates of diagrammes, 33 full-page diagrammes, and
numerous images embedded in the text, are now at the Ortigas Library where they will be digitised and made available to the public for research. Also on display, courtesy of Ricardo Trota Jose, were four more of these Weekly Intelligence Reports from the same source.
Our third dinner meeting, held on 14 August, was attended in person by 18 members and 14 guests, with 7 members and 2 guests joining via Zoom. Andoni Aboitiz gave an entertaining talk titled ‘Admiralty Chart No. 3193 and the History of Port Sebú’, in which he presented a visual story of the development of the port of Cebu. The presentation showed the earliest Spanish maps of the port and the later British and U.S. charts that led up to the pivotal Admiralty Chart No. 3193, published in 1901 On the charts, Andoni pointed out details of the wharves, piers and areas of reclamation, and also showed us contemporary photographs of Cebu that gave a good idea of what the port looked like in the late19th and early-20th centuries
After Andoni’s presentation the audience was treated to a talk and performance on the song kundiman by Michael Dadap, who dedicates a large portion of his career to the appreciation of Filipino folk music and the awareness of Philippine traditional music Michael began with a history of the kundiman, a truncation of three Tagalog words – kung hindi man ‒ meaning ‘if it were not so’ or ‘it was not meant to be’. The lyrics express the singer’s undying love for their beloved or, during the colonial period, love of one’s country.
Although classified as love songs, kundimans have a sad and self-pitying aspect to them. The lyrics, traditionally in archaic Tagalog, portray a poor and suffering lover with very little to offer his beloved. Michael believes that the words can also be construed to be referring to the country as oppressed and downtrodden by Spanish colonial rule. In fact, as Michael explained, the lyrics of the ‘Kundiman of 1850’ (also known as ‘Joselynang Baliwag’) contained coded messages referring to troop movements and warning the locals to stay indoors.
Michael also explained the differences between a kundiman and a harana (serenade). While both are love songs, the musical composition and timing differ. Kundimans can be sung as haranas, but haranas can never be kundimans. Although kundimans are usually sung in Tagalog, there are some Visayan kundimans that are just as popular. Michael’s daughter Laura sang for us ‘Matud Nila’ (‘As They Say’), a classic Visayan kundiman, and to illustrate the difference between the two types of song Laura also sang ‘Usahay’ (‘Sometimes’), another popular Visayan love song.
From May to November PHIMCOS members were invited to attend the following exhibitions and events:
On 5 May, the opening of two exhibitions at the Pintô Art Museum and Arboretum: Buen Viaje Manila ‒ Acapulco ‒ Manila, sponsored by the Embassy of Mexico in the Philippines; and The Galleon Trade: 250 Years of Globalisation, by the Gallery of Prints.
On 23 May, a tertulia for the launch of two books by De La Salle University historian Jose Victor Torres: Intramuros ‒ The Story of Old Manila and Paseos de Intramuros ‒ A Guidebook to Manila’s Walled City, both books with a forward by PHIMCOS member Dr. Carlos Madrid.
The online launch on 6 June of The 1762 British Invasion of Spanish-Ruled Philippines by the book’s editor, Cristina Juan of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS); the book is reviewed on page 44
From 10 October to 11 November, Zamboanga: A World Between Worlds, Cradle of an Emerging Civilization, an exhibition at Fort Pilar in Zamboanga City sponsored by El Kaban de Zamboanga, the Centre of Local History and Culture of the Universidad de Zamboanga, together with the Fundación Santiago and the National Museum of the Philippines. First shown over 20 years ago, the exhibition has been enriched with works from PHIMCOS and was curated by PHIMCOS trustee Felice Noelle Rodriguez.
A trip to the Kingdom of Bhutan, organised by PHIMCOS member Ephraim ‘Eddie’ Jose, to attend the inauguration on 7 November of
the Buddhist Art and Culture Conservation Center established by Eddie in Thimpu.
Kultura, Kasaysayan at Kapangyarihan, an exhibition of items from the Edwin Bautista Collection at Museo De La Salle, including eight maps for which PHIMCOS provided detailed descriptions (dates to be confirmed).
A number of PHIMCOS members also attended Imago Melitae 2024, the 41st annual symposium of the International Map Collectors Society (IMCoS), hosted by the Malta Map Society (MMS) from 16 to 20 October. On the first morning, over 70 delegates from 14 countries assembled at the National Library in Valletta to learn about the library’s collections from William Zammit, and to view Cartographia: Map Treasures of the National Library of Malta, an exhibition curated by Joseph Schirò, President of the MMS, and the legendary collector Albert Ganado.
One of the highlights was the map by Giovanni Francesco Camocio depicting the Great Siege of Malta by the Ottoman Turks in 1565. As Bernadine Scicluna explained in her talk, the four states of the map record the progress of the siege from the arrival of the Ottoman fleet and troops to their defeat by the Catholic relief forces and departure. Following the National Library we visited MUŻA ‒ The National Community Art Museum to look at rare maps selected from the national cartographic collection.
The next day we travelled to Santo Spirito Hospital in Rabat, home of the National Archives of Malta, where we listened to presentations by Melvin Caruana, Catherine Parker and Emanuel Chetcuti. After lunch, we enjoyed tours of Mdina Cathedral and its archives, and the Mdina Cathedral Museum, specially curated by Mario Gauci and Raymond Saliba respectively.
On Friday we took the ferry to Vittoriosa for tours of the Maritime Museum and the Inquisitor’s Palace, including talks by Liam Gauci and Joseph Schirò. On the last day the programme included a tour of St. John’s Co-Cathedral, with its painting of The Beheading of St. John the Baptist by Caravaggio; a reception at MUŻA for the opening of its exhibition of British Maps of Malta, at which we received copies of the hardbound catalogue; a tour of the Lascaris War Rooms; and a farewell dinner at the Maritime Museum to close this highly successful IMCoS symposium.
Our Covers
The c.1587 mappamundi by Urbano Monte
OUR FRONT COVER carries a detail of the ‘Isole de San Lazaro’ from a manuscript mappamundi drawn on a north polar azimuthal projection in c.1587 by the Italian cartographer Urbano Monte (aka Monti); the back cover shows the whole map. There are three known examples of this planisphere: one (from which our images are taken) consists of 60 paper sheets, bound together as an atlas, now held by the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection in Stanford, California.(1) A second, similar 60-sheet manuscript copy is at the Biblioteca del Seminario Arcivescovile in Venegono, near Milan. There is also a printed copy of the map, at
the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, which is divided into 64 plates; with a frontispiece dated 1590, the printed map was published in 1604.
The ‘atlas’ book consists of the 60 double-page maps plus a separate map of the globe (which acts as a key sheet) and 13 pages of tables. The maps, which are in coloured washes with brown pen-and-ink and gold and silver highlights, are arranged in four concentric circles of 8, 12, 20 and 20 sheets respectively. When joined together, the 60 map sheets form the largest 16th-century planisphere of the world, measuring a little over 9 feet by 9 feet.
Tavola XVIII from the c.1587 manuscript mappamundi by Urbano Monte (image courtesy of the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, Stanford, CA)
Having acquired the atlas from Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps, David Rumsey arranged to have all of the sheets scanned, digitised and joined so that the massive map can be displayed as a single visual reality.(2) To quote Rumsey:
Urbano Monte’s manuscript world map of 1587 reminds us of why historical maps are so important as primary resources: the north polar projection of his planisphere uses the advanced scientific ideas of his time; the artistry in drawing and decorating the map embodies design at the highest level; and the view of the world then gives us a deep historical resource with the listing of places, the shape of spaces, and the commentary interwoven into the map ‒ science, art, and history all in one document.
Until now, Monte’s manuscript map was seen as a series of 60 individual sheets. Now that we have joined all 60 sheets digitally, we can appreciate in a new way the extraordinary accomplishment that Monte made. The degree of detail and decoration is stunning and the entire production is surely unique in the history of cartographic representation. When we georeference Monte’s map and then re-project it into the Mercator projection, we immediately understand why he used the north polar projection instead of Mercator’s: Monte wanted to show the entire earth as close as possible to a three-dimensional sphere using a two-dimensional surface. His projection does just that, notwithstanding the distortions around the south pole.(3)
The manuscript, which had been sold at auction by Sotheby’s in London in May 1981 for £58,000, was the subject of a detailed article by John Goss the research editor of The Map Collector magazine In his article Goss comments:
Concerning the planisphere and its remarkable projection, Monti himself says in his address to the reader ‘this map of the world is in the form of a squashed ball’. This projection is most unusual and perhaps the most remarkable feature of the manuscript. The Polar regions are shown, below the Antarctic Circle at least, as a series of small gores ‒ in much the same way as a ball of clay will distort and split radially at the outer edges when squashed. There does not seem to be any clear reason for the manuscript apart from the unusual projection. Could it have been a private commission destined for
the wall of some Milanese ducal palace? Even more puzzling is the fact that the geographical information seems on the whole to have been obsolete at the time it was written.(4)
Only a little is known about Urbano Monte (1544-1613). His ancestral home was in Milan, where his family held several administrative titles. Urbano, the son of Giovanni Battista Monte and Madonna Angela de Menclozzi, had two younger brothers. In 1579 he married Margarita Niguarda, with whom he had four sons and a daughter. He contributed to a 4-volume historical diary titled Delle cose piu notabili successe nella citta di Milano, which describes the visit of the Japanese Embassy to Europe in 1582-1590, including their stay in Italy. Monte's principal fame rests with his geographical treatise Trattato Universale descrittione et sito de tutta la terra sin qui consociuta descritto da Urbano Monte, which accompanies the map in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. Dr. Katherine Parker writes:
Thanks to his family’s status and affluence, Monte had a leisurely life; he never held public office and was able to pursue his scholarly interests. His library was renowned locally. At age 41, his interests turned definitively to geography, a topic that would occupy him for the rest of his life. The ambition of his later years was to publish his treatise with its planisphere, but a falling out with his eldest son, and the resulting court cases over money and inheritance, left him unable to finish the task.(5)
(image courtesy of the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, Stanford, CA)
Detail of the sun from Libro Quatro
Detail from Tavola LIII showing the description of l’Isola Zubut and Il Re di spagna et de le Indie (image courtesy of the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, Stanford, CA)
As a result, as noted by the auction house Bonhams in 2012, ‘the [David Rumsey] atlas has the feel of a work in progress, particularly because of the marginal annotations by Monte, the variety of papers used in its composition, [and] the non-sequential numbering of the earlier sheets’.(6)
The Philippines, named as the ‘Isole de San Lazaro’, are on sheet XVIII of the atlas (titled ‘Libro Terzo / Tavola XVIII. Che Ha Sua Superiore La Tavola Ottava’). The geography of the map is essentially derived from Gerard Mercator's world map of 1569. On a table in Tavola XXV, Monte lists the names of 24 sources for the map, citing geographers, Jesuit letters, cartographers including Mercator and Giacomo Castaldi (sic), and ‘Vicentio Pigafeta’.
Although there are differences, a primary source for Monte’s depiction of the ‘Isole de San Lazaro’ appears to have been the maps of Gastaldi.(7) The archipelago is located between the ‘Mare dela China’ to the north, the island of ‘Paloan’ (Palawan) to the west, the ‘Mare Lanchidol’
(between Borneo and Java, from Antonio Pigafetta’s ‘Laut Chidol’) to the southwest,(8) and the ‘Isole Moluche’ (Moluccas) to the southeast.
‘Vendenao’ (Mindanao) is depicted with two settlements: ‘Porto’ and ‘Cotabalu’. To the west of the Zamboanga peninsula are the islands of ‘Solor’ (Sulu) and Taquima (Basilan). A large island to the east of Mindanao is named as the ‘isola dele Donne’; this would become the ‘mythical’ island of St. John (although the map also shows islands with the toponyms ‘S. Joan’ and ‘S. Jan’, to the west and south of Mindanao respectively).(9)
Following Gastaldi’s cartography, to the north of Mindanao a large island is given the name ‘Philipina’, with towns identified as ‘cangu’ (Canigao), ‘Polo’ (Poro) and ‘chiabu’ (Cebu) ‒although these are ‘kingdoms which are actually island names’.(10) An island shown further west, with the toponym ‘Papuas’, is either Negros or Panay.(11) To the east of ‘Philipina’ a small island has the toponym ‘Lozon’ with, to its south, a smaller island named ‘Manila’.
As mentioned above, the outer circle of map sheets consists of a series of small gores, with 36 curved cusps; the spandrels in between the gores contain descriptive notes on different regions of the globe. On Tavola LIII, the descripttion in the left spandrel is ‘De l’Isola Zubut’, i.e. Cebu, as follows:
L’Isola Zubut è molto ricca e fertile produce oro, zucaro e zenzero fano porcelana bianca che non sostiene il veneno, la magior parte vano nudi, si ongono, et si fano la bocca e i denti rossi. Il Ré veste pani di cotone, e in testa una cufia benissimo lanorata, al collo una collana d’oro e in dito anelli de gran pregio. La Regina veste una veste longa di cotone, et porta in capo uno capello di palma come mitra papale. Ui sono pessi che volano, et certi ucelli come cornachie detti lagane, li quali si pongono alla bocca delle Balene et si lassiano trangottere, et quando sono dentro le mangiano il core et le ucidono. Li Isolani sono Idolatri ma amici de cristiani.
A free translation of this text can be read thus:
References
“The island of Cebu is very rich and fertile. It produces gold, sugar and ginger, and they make white porcelain that withstands poison. For the most part they are naked, cover themselves with oil, and make their mouths and teeth red The King wears cotton clothes, and on his head a well-crafted cap, with a gold necklace on his neck and rings of great value on his fingers The Queen wears a long robe of cotton, and wears on her head a palm hat like a papal mitre. There are fish that fly, and certain birds like crows called lagane, which enter the mouths of the whales, allow themselves to be swallowed, and when they are inside eat their hearts and kill them. The islanders are Idolaters but friends of the Christians.”
On Tavola XXV Monte lists ‘Vicentio Pigafeta’ (sic) as one of his sources, and his information on Cebu is derived from Primo viaggio intorno al mondo by Antonio Pigafetta (who was born in Vicenza).(12) However, in the original text the cornachie (crows) that kill whales are identified as corniolli, large sea snails called laghan.
1. https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/s/zwugas
2. https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/s/us49wg
3. David Rumsey, Introduction to A Mind at Work: Urbano Monte's 60-Sheet Manuscript World Map, p. 8, Stanford Libraries David Rumsey Map Center / Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps Inc., 2017; available as a PDF at: https://s3.amazonaws.com/rumsey3/Monte/Urbano+Monte+Catalog.pdf
4. J.J.S. Goss, ‘An Unusual Wall Map by Urbano Monti 1554-1613’, in The Map Collector, Issue No. 15, pp. 18-22, Tring, June 1981.
5. Dr. Katherine Parker, A Mind at Work, op. cit., p. 12.
6. https://www.bonhams.com/auction/20078/lot/2081/monte-urbano-1544-1613-manuscript-wallmap-of-the-world-milan-1587-with-additions-to-1589/#!
7. Miguel Rodrigues Lourenço, ‘Forgotten Renderings of the Philippines in 16th-Century Portuguese Cartography’, in The Murillo Bulletin, Issue No. 18, November 2024.
8. B. C. Donaldson, ‘In Search of a Sea: the Origins of the Name Mare Lantchidol’, in The Great Circle, Vol. 10, No. 2, Australian Association for Maritime History, October 1988.
9. Margarita V. Binamira, ‘Illusions, Confusions and Delusions – the mythical island of St. John’, in The Murillo Bulletin, Issue No. 6, August 2018.
10. Thomas Suárez, Early Mapping of Southeast Asia, Periplus Editions, Hong Kong & Singapore, 1999, p. 143.
11. Richard T. Jackson, ‘Nomadic Papua’, in The Murillo Bulletin, Issue No. 9, February 2020.
12. James Alexander Robertson, Magellan’s Voyage Around the World by Antonio Pigafetta. The original text of the Ambrosian MS., with English translation, notes, bibliography, and index, The Arthur H. Clark Company, Cleveland, 1906.
Restoring
Antique Maps Using Japanese Techniques
by Ephraim ‘Eddie’ Jose
THE FIRST TIME I helped restore a map was in 1981, when I was an apprentice at the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno. My sensei (teacher), Mr. Tatsuji Handa, had a conservation studio at the museum where we restored important Japanese historical artworks for museums and temples. There were so many maps that it took three years to complete their restoration. These manuscript maps, made during the Edo period on the orders of the Shogunate, formed a detailed road map from the tip of Hokkaido to the bottom of Kyushu. Every city, town, village, house, temple, business, river, lake, mountain and forest along the Go Kaidō road network was drawn, painted with ink and mineral pigments, and labeled. One oddity is that the five Go Kaidō roads are depicted as being essentially straight. The over 100 restored hand scrolls and folded maps are now housed at the Tokyo National Museum Library.
Japanese conservation
Life as an apprentice to one of the top art conservation studios in Japan was rigorous and often tedious. As they say, practice makes perfect. The restoration projects undertaken by the Handa Kyuseido Co., Ltd. studio (a member of the Association for Conservation of National Treasures) were constantly checked by the Bunkacho, the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs, which is the custodian of all cultural assets in Japan. Staffed by historians, scientists and specialists in art from three-dimensional objects such as sculptures to two-dimensional objects such as paintings, the Bunkacho also looks after cultural heritage sites and buildings. As the watchdog or, I should say, ‘Guardians’ of Japanese culture they keep extensive records of historical Japanese art in Japan and abroad. They had to approve both the techniques and the materials we used in restoration.
Learning and mastering the skills to restore ancient and fragile fine Chinese, Japanese and Korean classical paintings on paper and silk, and Himalayan Buddhist paintings, takes a decade at a minimum. I have over 40 years under my belt.
Exacta & accurata delineatio cum orarum maritimarum …, map by Jan Huygen van Linschoten (1596) before and after restoration
Most of the artworks I restore are over 200 years old and the oldest artwork I have restored was a 12th-century Chinese hanging scroll painting from the Cleveland Museum of Art. With this abundant knowledge and skills, restoring and preserving old printed maps has become second to nature for me.
I use the traditional Japanese techniques and materials in restoration, including fine acid-free Japanese handmade mulberry paper, glue made of wheat starch paste (which I cook), seaweed paste, and refined Japanese animal-skin glue. All of these glues are reversible, and the paper or fabric can be removed if just sprayed with water. The colors I use are vegetable-based and mineral pigments. This is why centuries-old classical Japanese paintings are in pristine condition.
The author backing a map with handmade Japanese paper and wheat starch paste
Brushes and tools: stamp brush, water brush, paste brushes made from horse hair and rabbit hair, working knives, mallet and pinset
Wheat starch paste, cooked and diluted in distilled water
Washing a map with distilled water
Sun bleaching a map
The Japanese artisans have a different mindset: a conservator is also an artisan, and we think about the next expert who will follow in our footsteps. As a craftsman/artisan, I have to take into consideration the next conservator, who will restore the artworks I have restored today in 300 years’ time.
Treatments
European maps drawn or printed in the 16th and 17th centuries are often in a better condition than more recent maps. The paper used was linen or rag based, and not a lot of bleach (to whiten the paper) and alum (to size the paper so the ink will not bleed) were used in their production. Later maps are frequently marred by foxing, brown dots and stains that occur when aging interacts with high humidity and temperature. If left untreated foxing will spread easily.
It is best to use distilled water as it does not contain any of the minerals or chemicals found in tap water. To wash artworks I use water from the dehumidifier in my studio, which runs 24/7 and is set automatically at 60% humidity. This is the best humidity percentage for the studio, and provides more than enough pure water to wash the maps. This procedure removes dirt residues, stains and the acidity of the paper. When the water is drained, you can see how much dirt there is, and you can also smell it
When there is much staining and dirt residue I boil the water up to 42o Celsius. This sounds easy, but a warning: do not do this at home or you may damage your map! There is a technique in washing colored maps, for which I use osmosis to remove the stains and dirt residues, and to clean the water. With this technique the colors in the map never bleed or wash out. Sun bleaching the back of a map makes the stains lighter, and is the best way to whiten a map. As a rule, I never sun bleach the face of a map, as you must be careful not to remove the patina
Foxing stains can be removed with a weak solution of hydrogen peroxide or diluted Chloramine-T, an organic compound used as an oxidizing agent. I use a fine-tip nylon brush to apply the solution to the foxing, wait until the solution is dry, and then apply the solution again. It takes an average of seven to 15 treatments before the stains disappear. After removing all
the stains, I wash the map to remove any solution left and check the pH level (acidity or basicity) of the water while washing; the best pH level is 6 to 6.5.
Backing the map with wheat starch paste and Japanese acid-free paper will fix any tears and remove creases and folds. The wheat starch paste is brushed evenly on the handmade paper, not on the backside of the map. The paper is lifted with a stick, placed on the back of the map, and brushed down to remove air pockets. Paste is brushed about an inch around the backing paper.
The author trimming a map after restoration
The map with the backing paper is moved to a drying board, with the map facing out. In time the map dries up and all the creases and folds disappear. The map is left on the drying board for a week, and during this time I will paint in any damaged or missing areas. It is important that the in-painting should be two or more tones below the surrounding original paper. After a few decades the in-painting will get darker and possibly after 300 years the paint will be darker than the map. This is the cycle of restoring and preserving maps drawn or printed on paper
Ephraim ‘Eddie’ Jose gave a demonstration on the restoration of old maps using traditional Japanese techniques to the PHIMCOS meeting held on 16 August, 2023. For over 40 years he has been restoring art on paper and textiles in Japan, the U.S. and worldwide. In 2005 he established the Thangka Conservation Center in Thimphu, Bhutan where the monks he trained are restoring Buddhist paintings. He now teaches art conservation at De La Salle University ‒ Dasmarinas.
The Appearance of the Name ‘Philippinas’ on the Maps of Abraham Ortelius
by James W. Roy
AS A DEALER, it is sometimes a challenge in selling a map not to rest on the laurels of a description that has succeeded in the past, but it is rewarding to revisit research on even relatively familiar works in order to find new points of interest. A recent subject of my research has been the world map Typus Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius, specifically the version from its third plate of 1587. Ortelius's atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum of course contained a world map from its inception in 1570; this first plate experienced significant wear and exhibited cracks and repairs during its life. It was replaced with a new plate in 1579, preserving the content of the first plate unchanged.
In 1587 the map was replaced yet again, this time with notable aesthetic changes and several changes in geographical content. The most obvious of these changes, and the one most often discussed by cartobibliographers, was the correction of the shape of South America to remove the bulge in its west coast. But one element overlooked across the board ‒ in dealer's catalogues and, most notably, by Rodney Shirley (1) ‒ is that the 1587 edition of the Ortelius world map adds the placename ‘Philippinas’ where it was lacking in both of the map’s earlier plates. This surprised me, especially considering the area's desirability for many collectors.
That the change should occur in this particular plate is understandable: Ortelius made the same change in 1587 by adding ‘Las Philippinas’ to the second edition of his 1584 map of China Chinae, olim Sinarum regionis, and the placename is prominent in his 1589 map of the Pacific Ocean Maris Pacifici. What is surprising is that the name did not appear in Ortelius's earlier atlas maps. Admittedly, the maps of Gerard Mercator, notably his iconic 1569 world map, had not included the name ‘Philippina’. But we know that Ortelius was familiar with the toponym before his atlas was issued in 1570 because ‘Philippina’ appears next to an island, below ‘Ciabu’ (Cebu), on the eight-sheet wall map of the world which he produced in 1564.(2) This was his first published map, and the only extant copy is now
in the library of Basel University. In 1571 Gerard de Jode copied Ortelius’s map, including ‘Philippina’, for his own world map, which was then included in his atlas of 1578.(3)
In 1543 the Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos had named the islands of Leyte and Samar (in what was then known as the Archipelago of St. Lazarus) ‘Las Islas Filipinas’ after Felipe, Prince of Asturias ‒ the future King Philip II of Spain. The first printed map to use the name ‘Filipina’ ‒ for an island to the east of Mindanao ‒ was the Terza Tavola by Giacomo Gastaldi, published in 1554 by Giovanni Battista Ramusio.(4) In his 1561 map Il Disegno della terza parte dell'Asia, Gastaldi amended the name to ‘Philippina’, for a larger island he located to the north of Mindanao, identified as Cebu. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Ortelius noted his sources openly and his atlas includes a Catalogus Auctorum (catalogue of authors) in which, in the first edition, he acknowledges 87 European cartographers including Gastaldi. Marcel van den Broeck (5) gives Gastaldi’s 1561 world map as one of the sources for Ortelius’s world map, and in all likelihood that is where Ortelius first saw the name ‘Philippina’.
Detail of ‘Philippina’ from the 1564 wall map
Nova totius terrarum orbis by Abraham Ortelius (image courtesy of Universitätsbibliothek Basel)
Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius, from its third plate of 1587 (image courtesy of Geographicus Rare Antique Maps)
Therefore the question arises: what events were taking place that inspired Ortelius to make changes in content to two of his atlas maps, and that informed his content on later maps? Within a short space of time ‒ 1587 to 1589 ‒ Ortelius reinstated the ‘Philippinas’ placename on his maps of China and the world, and included it in his Maris Pacifici. The answer may lie in the reports of a little-known Spanish navigator and cartographer, Francisco Gali, as discussed by Rui Manuel Loureiro.(6) In 1582 Gali accompanied the Manila galleon from Acapulco to Manila, and then participated in an all-but-unprecedented journey in 1584 from Manila to Macao, and then back to Acapulco; the journey from Macao being attended by a Fujianese pilot. That route passed Formosa, skirted the Japanese archipelago to the east, and then crossed the Pacific via a northern route, as high as 40 degrees North. While the waters around Japan had been well known to both the Chinese and Portuguese, they were still quite novel for the Spanish.
It is from this journey ‒ probably directly from the Chinese pilot ‒ that Gali gleans his report of
islands northeast of Japan rich in gold and silver, resulting in the ‘Isla de Plata ‘ shown on the 1589 Maris Pacifici map. Gali's arrival in Acapulco was big news: the Viceroy of New Spain, Don Pedro Moya de Contreras, sent a report to King Felipe II about the journey, and ordered Gali back to Manila to obtain more information. 1585 found him en route to Manila with instructions to explore Japan more fully, the islands to its east, and the Pacific generally ‒ specifically charting the quickest route to the coast of New Spain. Gali was unable to achieve any of this, as he died soon after his arrival in Manila in mid-1585.
But the news that reached Spain of these voyages appears to have been passed to Ortelius, in his capacity as Royal Cartographer to King Felipe II. Consequently, the reports of Gali's voyage ‒ the Manila galleon's possible new connections to China, and the new possibilities of trans-Pacific voyages to the north ‒ may have resulted in Ortelius's efforts to amend the apparent neglect of the toponym ‘Philippinas’ on his earlier maps of the region which had not included the name.
Typus
Detail showing the ‘Philippinas’ from Typus Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius (1587) (image courtesy of Geographicus Rare Antique Maps)
James W. Roy has over 23 years of experience in the fine antique map trade and currently works at Geographicus Rare Antique Maps in New York. He holds degrees in History and Teaching from Hampshire and Smith Colleges, with a focus on Medieval history. His interest in cartography dates to his formative years spent reading books about places that do not exist. After graduating, James worked as a teacher until he discovered that there exist people who sell antique maps for a living, so he left teaching for the map world and has remained there ever since. He can be contacted at jroy@geographicus.com
References
1. Rodney W. Shirley, The Mapping of the World: Early Printed World Maps 1472–1700, Holland Press, London, 1983.
2. Abraham Ortelius, Nova totius terrarum orbis iuxta neotericorum traditiones descriptio, Antwerp, 1564; Universitätsbibliothek Basel: https://doi.org/10.3931/e-rara-12846
3. Gerard de Jode, Universi Orbis Seu Terreni Globi In Plano Effigies, Antwerp, (1571) 1578; Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center, Boston Public Library: https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:3f462s409
4. Giovanni Battista Ramusio, Delle Navigationi et Viaggi, Volume I, second edition, Venice, 1554.
5. Marcel van den Broecke, Ortelius Atlas Maps: An illustrated Guide, second revised edition, Hes & De Graaf Publishers, Houten, 2011.
6. Rui Manuel Loureiro, ‘Inquérito sobre um navegador enigmático Francisco Gali e as suas viagens transpacíficas’, in Revista de Cultura, Vol. 60, Macau, 2019.
A Bugis Nautical Chart on a Moro Ship
Evidence of Multi -ethnic Commercial and Knowledge Networks in the 19th -century Makassar Strait and Sulu Zone by
Muhammad Buana
IN 1915, F.C. Wieder, a Dutch cartographer and librarian at the University of Leiden, authored a book, Nederlandsche historisch- geographische documenten in Spanje , which documents the existence of a map depicting the Indonesian archipelago and its surrounding regions. (1) The intricately- coloured and ornamented map extends as far as the Philippines, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. According to Wieder’s report, the map was seized by the Spanish navy from Filipino pirates near the waters of Jolo. It was given by an Augustinian friar from Manila to Lieutenant D. Cayetano Gimenez Arechaga , who then presented it to the Museo Naval de Madrid in 1847. (2)
This discovery was particularly striking, as European powers had long claimed, monopolised and safeguarded cartographic science. However, the so - called 'pirate map' found in Jolo, although probably copied from European charts, was evidently not of European origin. The map was inscribed in the Lontaraq script of the Bugis language which originates from South Sulawesi, a region located approximately 1,078 kilometres from Sulu.
This raises a compelling question: How did a nautical chart inscribed in a foreign script and language come into the possession of a group of indigenous sailors from the Philippines?
The Bugis, an ethnic group indigenous to South Sulawesi, Indonesia, have long engaged in both agriculture and maritime pursuits, with farming and trading activities forming the bedrock of their civilisation. During the Age of Commerce,(3) South Sulawesi's rice production became a major export, reaching markets as distant as Malacca and Manila. The Bugis traded high- quality produce and handicrafts, such as lipa' sabbé (traditional sarongs), in exchange for valuable imports such as ceramics, opium and silk. Experience in sailing ships to deliver trade commodities led Bugis sailors to develop a
variety of navigation techniques and the invention of the maritime technology required to meet their needs. This commercial success also led in 1676 to the codification of the traditional shipping and trade laws known as the Amanna Gappa maritime code. Their dedication to trade fostered widespread prosperity and earned the Bugis a reputation as the most industrious and enterprising people in the Malay Archipelago, as noted by John Crawfurd in 1856. (4)
Nevertheless, instability in South Sulawesi, driven by the Dutch spice trade monopoly and interference in local politics, spurred Bugis migration across the archipelago. Many Bugis, along with the related Makassarese and Mandarese refugees, became mercenaries and merchants, serving new rulers who were willing to accept them. For instance, the involvement of the Opu Daengs, five Bugis brothers, in the Johorese wars of succession allowed them to gain political influence, which they expanded across the Straits of Malacca and the Karimata Strait
European powers, recognising their martial prowess, employed Bugis mercenaries, though they viewed them as both valuable allies and potential threats. The British East India Company (EIC) used Bugis troops for the defence of Fort York in Bencoolen (now Bengkulu), while the Dutch relied on Bugis soldiers in a battle to assist the king of Java against Madurese rebels in 1674. These patterns of partnership spearheaded Bugis communities involved in maritime activities outside South Sulawesi to form diasporic networks that were not only independent but also closely connected to one another.
The Bugis Map in Madrid
The Bugis nautical chart currently exhibited at the Museo Naval de Madrid is a significant artefact, meticulously crafted from cowhide and measuring approximately 90 cm in length.
Although the chart's colour has faded slightly and the edges have browned with age, the lines, shapes, and inscriptions remain clearly legible. The chart's western boundary depicts the Isthmus of Kra and the Andaman Sea, while its eastern boundary extends to the Seram archipelago. The northern edge includes a partial representation of Luzon, and the southern edge features Timor Island. A compass rose, embellished with fleur- de - lis ornaments, is prominently displayed on the map. Intended for maritime navigation, the chart emphasises coastal areas, reefs and sandbanks, and indicates water depths using Arabic numerals.
Stylistic and material analyses suggest that this chart was produced in the early 19th century, likely incorporating elements from earlier European maps such as those in 17th- century Dutch maritime atlases ‒ Die nieuwe groote lichtende Zee - Fakkel by Johannes van Keulen and the Ligtende zee fakkel off de geheele Oost Indische waterweereldt by Gerrit de Haan ‒ and the Carte réduite de l’Archipel des Indes Orientales by Jean- Baptiste d’Après de Mannevillette (1745). (5) The Bugis chart thus
exemplifies the cosmopolitan interactions that characterised the region during this period.
The map contains over 200 toponyms inscribed in Bugis script, primarily corresponding to locations historically navigated by Bugis sailors. These toponyms are rendered in the local Bugis dialect, reflecting the linguistic and cultural specificity of the region. For instance, Bengkalis on the coast of Sumatra is inscribed as ‘Bangkalisi’ and Gresik in East Java as ‘Garassi’; Ternate in the Maluku Islands is recorded by its traditional Bugis name ‘Taranati’ that is also mentioned in the epic of La Galigo. (6) Foreign toponyms are similarly adapted into Bugis orthography, for example ‘Bataé’ for Batavia, the Dutch name for Jakarta during the 17th- 20th centuries.
The map’s creation clearly indicates its intended audience: Bugis speakers proficient in the traditional Bugis script and reading conventions. Notably, none of the toponyms are rendered in Latin script, nor do they adhere to Western naming conventions without being transformed into the Bugis linguistic framework. This carto-
Bugis map in the Museo Naval de Madrid, AMN 58 -16 (image courtesy of the Ministerio de Defensa, Archivo Histórico de la Armada Juan Sebastián de Elcano)
graphic artefact exemplifies the ways in which Bugis sailors appropriated and modified European sources, employing local toponyms and script to assert their agency and contest European dominance in the realm of cartography. (7)
The nautical chart preserved at the Museo Naval de Madrid is not the only surviving example of maps produced by Bugis cartographers. Historical records suggest that at least four additional copies of this chart once existed. However, apart from the Madrid map, only one other Bugis nautical chart is known to have endured. This extant chart, distinguished by its considerable size (measuring 105 cm in length), is the larger and better- preserved of the two remaining specimens. It bears an inscription dated A.H. 1231 in the Islamic Hijri calendar, corresponding to the Gregorian year 1816. (8) So far, the Utrecht map is the oldest Bugis nautical chart known to us, although the Madrid map may have been created around the same time.
A comparative analysis of the Madrid and Utrecht maps reveals a distinct divergence in their cartographic focus and detail. The Madrid
chart exhibits a more intricate representation of toponyms pertaining to smaller islands within the Strait of Makassar and the Lesser Sunda Islands, contrasting with the Utrecht map which prioritises the western sector of the archipelago. Moreover, the Madrid map provides a comprehensive portrayal of Sulawesi, with particular emphasis on the toponyms surrounding the Gulf of Boné, especially in the Luwu and Boné regions ‒ features that are notably subdued in the Utrecht counterpart.
The pronounced differences in Lontaraq script and the diversity of toponyms further suggest that these maps originated from different authors or Bugis cartographers hailing from distinct regions. The intentional inclusion of varying toponyms across the two maps underscores a deliberate cartographic strategy, reflecting the Bugis mapmakers' efforts to cater to the specific navigational and geographical requirements of their users. Consequently, it can be inferred that the two maps were likely designed for sea navigation with distinct purposes that were understood only by the mapmakers and the indigenous sailors who relied upon them.
Boeginese zeekaart van de Indische Archipel KAART: *VIII*.C.a.2 (Dk39 -8) (image courtesy of Utrecht University Special Collections)
Bugis and Sulu connections
The discovery of a Bugis map inside a bamboo tube aboard a Moro vessel, identified by the Spanish navy as a pirate ship, raises important questions warranting further investigation. The museum catalogue posits that the map may have been a captured artifact, possibly seized by Moro pirates from a Bugis ship, although this theory remains speculative because of insufficient archival evidence. (9) This incident predates the 1848 Balanguingui Expedition, during which the Spanish navy attacked the island of Balanguingui, considered a Moro pirate stronghold.
Notably, the Bugis nautical charts preserved in Madrid and Utrecht include toponyms from the Philippine archipelago, such as Sulu, Basilan, Maguindanao (for both Cotabato and the Zamboanga Peninsula), Tawi- Tawi (written as ‘Tawé- Tawé’), Manila (absent from the Madrid map, and marked on the Utrecht map only with a pole bearing a Dutch flag), Palawan (written as ‘Palaan’), and Linapacan (written as ‘Buru(ng)’ on the Madrid map and ‘Sale(ng)’ on the Utrecht map). These place names highlig ht the familiarity and importance of these regions to Bugis sailors. The intertwined interests of South Sulawesi and Sulu further underscore the depth of their joint connection, which largely operated beyond the scrutiny of European powers. (10) For instance, during the 1638 siege of Jolo the Makassarese actively supported the Sulu and Maguindanao rulers in their conflicts against the Spaniards. (11) The extensive maritime networks established by Bugis sailors, traders, adventurers and warriors throughout the Southeast Asian archipelago are well- documented, highlighting the enduring interaction and mobility between South Sulawesi and the Sulu region.
By the 1750s, Bugis merchants had entered the Sulu Zone, participating in the slave trade which was significantly fuelled by Iranun raiding. Alongside Bajau- Samal and Iranun migrants, the Bugis established a significant presence on Sulu's northern coast. (12) In 1774, during Captain Thomas Forrest's voyage to New Guinea and the Moluccas from Balambangan, he recorded the presence of a Bugis captain among his crew. (13) Forrest also noted the activity of numerous independent Bugis proas (outrigger sailing boats) along the trade routes between Sulu and the Moluccas.
Detail of Mindanao from the Bugis map in the Museo Naval de Madrid, AMN 58 -16
These Bugis merchants, some of whom were identified as hajjis ‒ indicating their religious commitment or completion of the Islamic pilgrimage ‒ often served as confidants, messengers, translators and trade agents for the sultans of Sulu and Mindanao. Some of them even appeared ‘to have lost their identity’, an indication of formidable assimilation into local Sulu society. (14)
Interactions between the two regions were also established through East Borneo, a region historically influenced by Brunei, Kutai (a sultanate in eastern Borneo) and Sulu. Some Bugis soldiers stationed by the EIC in Jolo originated from Pasir in East Borneo. (15) Even Bugis merchants who did not directly travel to Sulu conducted business through the Sulu Sultanate’s trading enclaves in Berau and Bulungan in East Borneo. (16) These close interactions facilitated the exchange of material culture and ideas. European records highlight the trade of Bugis- manufactured cloth within the Sulu Zone, (17) while the esoteric teachings of Sheikh Yusuf al- Makassary, a revered Sufi saint from South Sulawesi, spread into Lanao. (18) Along the Makassar Strait and throughout the Sulu Zone, these multi- ethnic exchanges shaped the region's cultural and economic landscape.
Nasser Sharief even proposes renaming the nautical chart as the ‘Iranun- Bugis Portulan’, suggesting that it was created by the Iranun using the Bugis writing system. (19) However, this claim overlooks that none of the toponyms on the map are written in Iranun conventions. So far, no documents have been found in the native or local
areas of the Iranun people that are written using the Lontaraq script. Notably, the Madrid map labels the Wajo region in South Sulawesi as ‘Tana Ugi’, a term exclusively used by the Bugis to refer to their homeland. Linguistic and typographic evidence stro ngly indicates that both the Utrecht and Madrid maps were produced by Bugis mapmakers.
Although the ‘Iranun- Bugis Portulan’ hypothesis is tenuous, it is plausible that a Moro ship with a multi- ethnic crew, including Samal, Iranun, and Balangingi sailors, could have included someone proficient in the Bugis language and script. This suggests possible intellectual collaboration, paralleling the commercial exchanges, in which Bugis mapmakers provided nautical charts for Moro sailors. The fact that none of the five reported Bugis maps were found in the vic inity of South Sulawesi prove how these ca rtographic products were widely used across the maritime world of Southeast Asia.
Conclusion
The discovery of a Bugis map in the Sulu Zone highlights a vibrant network of people, material culture, and ideas that persisted even during the era of European colonialism. The map's unclear origins underscore the region’s role as a crossroads for cultura l exchange and interaction. The Bugis map housed at the Museo Naval de Madrid is a significant artifact for both Indonesia and the Philippines, symbolising centuries of enduring connections.
Unfortunately, the map’s current presentation at the museum fails to convey its historical importance. In Madrid the map is stored in a drawer in the Las Grandes Comisiones Hidrograficas section of the Etnografia y Antropologia wing, labelled only as: "Spanish Hydrography in the 19th century, Chart of the Indonesian archipelago c.1825. Manuscript on parchment." This minimal and vague description diminishes the map's significance as shared heritage between Indonesia and the Philippines, and undermines its va lue for future studies of indigenous mapmaking in Southeast Asia. The map has not been digitised. By comparison, a high- resolution digital image of the chart in
the Special Collections at Utrecht University is available for viewing online, where the map is correctly described as follows: “This 19th- century sea chart of the Malay Archipelago is a fine example of 'indigenous' cartography, influenced by European map makers. The chart is in Buginese, (Basa Ugi).”
Amidst the growing discourse on decolonisation, the Museo Naval should enhance its approach to displaying its Bugis map, recognising it not merely as a ‘spoil of war’ but also as an artefact of significant historical value that bears witness to the changing times. This map is a key in understanding how knowledge was structured and transmitted by indigenous seafarers outside of European power networks.
Muhammad ‘Louie’ Buana is a PhD candidate at the Institute for History, Leiden University, and a Guest Researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV). He holds a Bachelor degree in Colonial and Global History (2015) and an Advanced Master’s in European and International Human Rights Law (2016), both from Leiden University. In 2011, he founded the Lontara Project, a youth initiative aimed at revitalising interest in La Galigo (see endnote no. 6) among Indonesian youth through creative approaches. His research focuses on legal history, environmental law, maritime networks, and the interactions between adat (Indonesian customary law), Islam, and colonialism in the Southeast Asian archipelago and the Indian Ocean. He can be reached at: louiebuana@gmail.com
The Bugis map in the Museo Naval de Madrid (photograph by the author )
References and Notes
1. F.C. Wieder, Nederlandsche historisch -geographische documenten in Spanje: uitkomsten van twee maanden onderzoek , E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1915, p.196.
2. C.C.F.M. Le Roux, ‘Boegineesche Zeekarten van den Indischen Archipel’, in Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap , 2nd series, Vol. 52, E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1935, pp.687 -714.
3. A term coined by historian Anthony Reid to describe the period between 1450 -1680 to describe fundamental changes in all walks of life, one of which, and the main cause, was global trade factors.
4. John Crawfurd, Journal of an Embassy from the Governor -General of India to the Courts of Siam and Cochin China; Exhibiting a View of the Actual State of Those Kingdoms, Henry Colburn, London, 1828, p.552.
5. Marco van Egmond, ‘Buginese nautical chart: The Malay Archipelago from an indigenous perspective’, Utrecht University: https://www.uu.nl/en/special-collections/the-treasury/maps -and-atlases/buginese-nautical-chart
6. Sureq Galigo or La Galigo is a mythical epic poem from Bugis in South Sulawesi which tells about the creation of the world and the origin of mankind according to pre-Islamic Bugis belief. With the preserved parts amounting to 6,000 pages or 300,000 lines of text, it is believed to be the most voluminous literary work in the world; see Edward Rothstein ’A Sacred Epic and Its Gods, All Struggling to Survive’ in The New York Times , 15 July, 2005.
7. Aditya Bayu Perdana and Muhammad Buana, ‘Islands, Maps and Lontara’: Bugis counter-mapping on a nineteenth-century map of Nusantara’, in Wacana ‒ Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia , Vol. 24 No. 3, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, 2023.
8. Van Egmond op. cit
9. Wieder op. cit., p.196.
10. Heather Sutherland, ‘The Sulu Zone Revisited’, in Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Vol. 35 Issue 1, National University of Singapore / Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp.133 -157.
11. D. José Montero y Vidal, Historia general de Filipinas desde el descubrimiento de dichas islas hasta nuestras días , Vol. I, Manuel Tello, Madrid, 1887, p.212.
12. James F. Warren, Iranun and Balangingi: Globalization, Maritime Raiding and the Birth of Ethnicity , NUS Press, Singapore, 2002, p.33.
13. Thomas Forrest, A Voyage to New Guinea, and the Moluccas, from Balambangan , including An Account of Magindanao, Sooloo, and Other Islands, G. Scott, London, 1779, p.213.
14. Najeeb M. Saleeby, The History of Sulu, Bureau of Science, Division of Ethnology Publications, Vol. IV Part II, Bureau of Printing, Manila, 1908, p.157.
15. Forrest op. cit., p.331 .
16. James Francis Warren, The Sulu Zone, 1768 -1898: The Dynamics of External Trade, Slavery, and Ethnicity in the Transformation of a Southeast Asian Maritime State, Second Edition, NUS Press, Singapore, 2007, p.11.
17. James Hingston Tuckey, Maritime Geography and Statistics, or A Description of the Ocean and Its Coasts, Maritime Commerce, Navigation &c. &c. &c., Volume III, Black, Parry & Co., London, 1815, p.494.
18. Oman Fathurrahman, Shattariyah Silsilah in Aceh, Java and the Lanao area of Mindanao , Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, University of Foreign Studies, Tokyo, 2016, p.95.
19. Nasser S. Sharief, The Iranun and Philippines’ Historical Claims in the South China Sea , PMTC Institute of Iranun Studies, Marawi City, 2023, p.37.
Forgotten Renderings of the Philippines in 16th-Century Portuguese Cartography
by Miguel Rodrigues Lourenço
DEVELOPMENTS in the history of cartography during the 19th and 20th centuries led scholars to locate, uncover and render visible to a wider audience maps that were previously buried and forgotten in libraries, hydrographic archives and private collections. Scholarly research in the field of historical cartography was, consequently, responsible for establishing a chronology of cartographical representation of the most diverse geographies in the globe, celebrating some maps as outstanding technical achievements or notable images because of their detail, accuracy or embellishment. By reproducing these ‘iconic’ maps in thematic atlases, librarians, historians and geographers acquainted their audience ‒ map collectors and fellow scholars ‒ with specific maps, mapmakers, and cartographic models for certain geographies.
Portuguese manuscript cartography
As the scholarship on historical maps progressed, so did the publication of atlases or monographic studies focusing on specific regions, which led researchers to arrange cartographic renderings by ‘phases’ of representation, thus consolidating the status of some maps as ‘notable’ or as paradigmatic images of continents, countries or islands. For each of these features, a geographical genealogy of depictions that included ‘must-have’ maps was created. In the case of the Philippines, the 1734 Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica delas Yslas Filipinas by Fr. Pedro Murillo Velarde comes to mind. For earlier periods, cartographic works such as those of Giacomo Gastaldi, Abraham Ortelius or Jodocus Hondius have been highlighted in books and essays by authors such as Carlos Quirino, Thomas Suárez, and Edgardo J. Angara, José Maria A. Cariño and Sonia P. Ner
A common trait of all these studies is the absence of analysis of Portuguese manuscript cartography in any meaningful, systematic way.(1) Despite three continuous decades of Portuguese interactions with the Philippines between the
expeditions of Ferdinand Magellan and Miguel López de Legazpi, cartographic renderings of these islands originating in those contacts have scarcely attracted the attention of scholarship beyond Portuguese historiography itself, as listed in the Selected Bibliography. Nevertheless, since the monumental, six-volume work by Armando Cortesão and Avelino Teixeira da Mota, Portugaliæ Monumenta Cartographica (PMC), was published in 1960, scholars have been privy to an abundance and, more significantly, a variety of cartographic depictions of the Philippines that expand the array of known, iconic, images of the archipelago.
In this article I will establish how 16th-century renderings of the Philippines in Portuguese manuscript cartography was foundational to the printed maps that were to become ‘iconic’ of the Philippines. By bringing Portuguese manuscript cartography to the forefront of the analysis, it is not my aim to ascertain the place allotted to those maps in the chronology of the improvement of geographic knowledge of the Philippines.(2) On the contrary, I propose to demonstrate that ‘iconic’ printed renderings of the Philippines of the 16th century were, themselves, the by-product of Portuguese depictions that were adapted to new mediums, which entailed aesthetical and discursive changes to the cartographic image.
The propensity of the scholarly community to highlight the cultural significance of printed (rather than manuscript) maps led researchers to often overemphasise the innovative features of such maps and favoured analysis focusing on the ‘operational choices’ of mapmakers, not always realising that the cartographers were resorting to available models to accommodate the specific texts with which the maps were meant to interact. This article thus contends that mapmakers’ access to up-to-date cartographic information was limited, something that in turn limits the scope of the intellectual operations we can extrapolate from their work.
Fig. 1: detail of the Philippines from Gerard Mercator’s world map Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigantium Emendate Accommodata (1569) (image courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France ref. ark:/12148/btv1b7200344k)
I will conduct my analysis by establishing a genealogy of the cartographic models inherited by men such as Gastaldi and Gerard Mercator, and by determining the layers of cartographic information pertaining to the Philippines that were harmonised in their works.(3) I will also establish a link between those works and preexisting Portuguese cartographic prototypes, and their significance within the array of Portuguese depictions of the Philippines.
Dissecting cartographic models of the Philippines
Famous for its geometrical, cylindrical projection, Mercator’s 1569 world map (fig. 1) is an important milestone in the dissemination of geographical images of the Philippines in 16th-century Europe. His work introduced a new depiction of the archipelago for cultured Europeans interested in keeping up with the ever- and rapidly-changing image of the world; one that would be quickly noticed by those with an interest in Southeast Asia.
Thanks to the return of a Spanish expedition to Southeast Asia in the 1540s, led by Ruy López de Villalobos, there was a revival of interest in the
region that was reflected in the literary production of Europe in the following decade.(4) In the second edition of the first volume of Delle Navigationi e Viaggi, Giovanni Battista Ramusio not only published previously known accounts of Magellan’s expedition by Antonio Pigafetta and others, but he also included the more recent account of Juan Gaitán narrating the explorations of the crewmembers of the Villalobos expedition between 1542 and 1544.(5) His volume was even published with a map of Southeast Asia that directly employed the toponymy recorded in Gaitán’s account, thus providing readers with the necessary interface between narrative and geography.(6)
By 1569, when Mercator produced his world map, Iberian clashes in the islands of Southeast Asia were not a thing of the past. In spite of Villalobos having capitulated to the Portuguese captaincy at Ternate, the return of a new Spanish expedition to the Philippines in 1565, this time led by Legazpi, immediately renewed tensions concerning the demarcation of the region between the crowns of Portugal and Castile that had been defined decades earlier.(7) Therefore, the configuration of the Philippines by Mercator
in 1569 occurred at a time when the islands of Southeast Asia were once again attracting European attention in expectation of the political, geographical and commercial news from the Legazpi expedition.
Gastaldi’s renderings of the Philippines
The significance of Mercator’s depiction of the Philippines was two-fold. First, it replaced the cartographic model of the archipelago that had been disseminated in Europe, most notably through the works of Gastaldi. I purposely employ the term ‘model’ instead of ‘models’ because I maintain that the 1548, 1554 and 1561 depictions of the Philippines are, essentially, iterations of cartographic models whose sources can be traced to the Magellan expedition. Gastaldi’s works repeat a basic geographic structure comprised of Mindanao; an ‘arch’ of three or four islands in the Visayas looming over Mindanao; and Palawan (figs. 2, 3 & 4).
Differences between these renderings of the Philippines are purely aesthetical and toponymical. The geography presented by Gastaldi is based on the model produced by the cosmographers of the Casa de la Contratación in Seville from the nautical and cartographical surveys delivered by Juan Sebastián de Elcano upon the return of the survivors of the Magellan expedition in 1522.
If one compares Gastaldi’s 1548 rendering of the Philippines to that of the same geography by Diogo Ribeiro in his planispheres of the 1520s, it becomes clear that the geographic structure is identical, with Gastaldi ‘closing’ Ribeiro’s unfinished geography (fig. 5). This means that when Mercator introduced his model for the Philippines in 1569, the image associated with the archipelago most disseminated in Europe was, despite toponymical revisions, nearly four decades old.(8)
Fig. 2: detail of the Philippines from India Tercera Nova Tabula by Giacomo Gastaldi (1548) (image courtesy of Paulus Swaen Inc)
Fig. 3: detail of the Philippines from Terza Tavola by Giacomo Gastaldi / Giovanni Battista Ramusio (1554) (image courtesy of Leen Helmink Antique Maps & Atlases)
Fig. 4: detail of the Philippines from Il Disegno della terza parte dell'Asia by Giacomo Gastaldi (1561) (image courtesy of Library of Congress ref. G1015 .L25 1575)
Fig. 5: detail from the ‘Planisfero Castiglioni’ by Diogo Ribeiro (c.1525) (image courtesy of Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, Modena)
Mercator’s second significant contribution to depictions of the Philippines was in introducing to printed cartography a model for the archipelago known in Europe since the early 1550s from the manuscript works of Lopo Homem and, especially, his son Diogo Homem, (fig. 6).(9) The use of the Homem family model for the Philippines is relevant since it introduced a new image for the Philippines that came to have a lasting presence in Portuguese cartography. Based on the surveys realised by Villalobos’s crewmen, the prevalence of Homem’s model effectively resulted in the disregard of previous outlines for Mindanao Island, themselves based on earlier Portuguese expeditions. Therefore, when Mercator adopted the Homem model, he effectively brought to a wider audience an image that conveyed a cartographical discourse more accurately matching the new explorations conducted by the Villalobos expedition, despite the model being Portuguese in origin.
The cartography of Gastaldi, especially the 1554 map, tried to harmonise the narratives collected by Ramusio (from the accounts of Pigafetta and Gaitán) with the available cartographic representations of the islands of Southeast Asia. As Suárez aptly notes, the production of the 1554 map involved a process of toponymical replacement, thus leading to the celebrated inclusion of ‘Filipina’ on European maps.(10) Unlike Suárez, however, I believe that this process of replacement was the result of erasing ‘irrelevant’ toponyms to accommodate others that were being emphasised by the narratives
Fig. 6: detail from a manuscript atlas by Diogo Homem (c.1558) (image courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France ref. ark:/12148/btv1b53074825v/f9)
collected by Ramusio, rather than a meticulous process of reworking existing models to accommodate new information.
Relevant toponymy appearing in the accounts published by Ramusio was thus ascribed to ‘available’ islands: those that played a lesser role in the published narratives. Gastaldi obviously had access to the accounts of the Villalobos expedition from Ramusio, but not the cartographic surveys, for he still used the models derived from the Magellan expedition, namely Mindanao, a Visayas ‘arch’ and Palawan. Having no recent cartographic surveys at his disposal to present the new Villalobos toponymy, Gastaldi ‒or Ramusio, depending on how closely he worked with the cartographer ‒ instead replaced the by then irrelevant toponymy associated with the oblong-shaped island east of Mindanao. This island was, in fact, a ‘relic’ from the rendering of the coast of Jailolo (on a c.1522 map made by Nuño García de Toreno from the Magellan expedition surveys, now held by the Musei Reali di Torino) that had been duplicated and repositioned by cartographers such as Ribeiro and Pierre Desceliers, the latter calling it ‘bisaia’.
A similar operation was later undertaken by Gastaldi in 1561. Gastaldi did not, as Suárez once suggested, catch Ramusio’s error and create a new large island he termed ‘Philippina’.(11) Rather, Gastaldi’s model is exactly the same as the one used in Ramusio’s volume, with only some aesthetical differences. Noticeably, Gastaldi relegated his 1554 ‘Cyābu’ to a lesser status in the 1561 chart, and inserted ‘Philippina’ in capital letters in the middle of the island to accommodate the recent projection of this new toponym. If the archipelago in the 1561 map seems different ‒ broader ‒ this is because not only did Gastaldi bring the islands reconnoitred by the Magellan and Villalobos expeditions in the central Pacific ocean and the Philippines closer together than in the 1554 map, but also because he replicated some of his 1548 Visayas to make up for the lack of available islands to accommodate the extensive toponymy recorded in the Pigafetta and Gaitán accounts.
His cartography of what he termed the ‘Isole de S. Lazaro’ (Islands of St. Lazarus) in 1561 was an attempt to provide the readers of his map with the most thorough and comprehensive visual itinerary of Ramusio’s published accounts. Therefore, Gastaldi’s work is not one of geographical correction, but one of matching the placenames in the accounts in Delle Navigationi et Viaggi to islands depicted in a pre-existing model
As we will see, the Homem model used by Mercator did not involve such operations because it was already based on surveys realised during the exploration of the present-day Philippines by Villalobos’s men. However, before being incorporated by Mercator in his own cartography, Homem’s model was itself one that involved a significant transformation of the representation of the Philippines in Portuguese cartography.
Forgotten renderings
The toponym Filipinas/Philippines came to acquire holonomic value after the Villalobos expedition originally employed the term to refer to Samar and Leyte.(12) It eventually supplanted the term ‘Islas del Poniente’ to refer to the group of islands that Spanish expeditions prior to that of Legazpi mostly interacted with aside from the Moluccas. For the crowns of both Portugal and
Castile, the memory of Spanish explorations in the archipelago played a role in singling out an island geography comprising Mindanao, Cebu, Mactan and the island identified as Mazaua by Pigafetta and Maçagua by García de Escalante Alvarado that otherwise would probably remain diluted in Portuguese classifications employed to differentiate the geography of the islands of Southeast Asia.(13)
Nowhere is the perception of the specificity of Mindanao and the southern Visayas more noticeable than in Portuguese cartography in the second half of the 16th century. As mentioned, the model used by Lopo Homem to depict the Philippines ‒ seen first in his 1554 planisphere, now held by the Museo Galileo in Florence ‒constituted a significant break from Portuguese practices of cartographic representation of the archipelago. After António de Brito, the Portuguese captain of Ternate, seized the Trinidad in 1522 following its failed attempt to reach Central America by crossing the Pacific Ocean, the vessel’s maritime surveys became accessible to Portuguese cartographers.
Fig. 7: detail from the anonymous ‘Penrose Chart’ (c.1535) (current location unknown) (image courtesy of Armando Cortesão and Avelino Teixeira da Mota, in PMC, Vol. I, Plate 58)
Significantly, the earliest depiction of the Philippines on a Portuguese map ‒ the so-called ‘Penrose chart’ of c.1535 (previously in the Boies Penrose Collection) (fig. 7) ‒ reflects the itinerary of Magellan’s expedition, portraying the same cartographic structure that was systematised at the Casa de la Contratación and ultimately incorporated in European printed maps: Mindanao, an arch of four Visayan islands and Palawan.(14) The dependence on Spanish surveys
Fig. 8: detail from an atlas attributed to Gaspar Viegas (c.1537) (image courtesy of Biblioteca Riccardiana, Firenze)
is striking. Inscribed on the island of Mindanao one can read ‘arçipelago de sam lazaro’, and on Cebu ‘çubo aqui mataram ho magalhães (Cebu, here they killed Magellan), referring to the Magellan expedition. There is no evidence of a direct, autonomous Portuguese interaction with the Philippines; shorelines, toponymy and legends all reflect the Spanish experience.
This would change in the coming years. On an anonymous and undated atlas, attributed to Gaspar Viegas, we can see how the southern coasts of Mindanao, specifically its most relevant bays, become more noticeable, while the Sulu archipelago achieved its proper configuration (fig. 8).(15) This may be explained by the frequency of Portuguese seafarers using a maritime route connecting the fortresses of Melaka and Ternate via the northern coasts of Borneo Island. Such a route involved entering the Sulu Sea through the Basilan Strait on their way to the Moluccas. It is worth noticing the bays of Sibuguey, Illana and Sarangani, and the Gulf of Davao. It is possible that Sibuguey and Illana bays were surveyed in 1521 when the Trinidad and the Victoria crossed those waters. It is also possible that Sarangani bay was surveyed at that time, but the earliest depictions of Mindanao show only
the faintest evidence of it. The Gulf of Davao was a feature introduced for the first time in this map. This suggests a familiarity with the southern shores of Mindanao that is likely linked to supply runs from Ternate, as well as to raiding activities to acquire slaves, also from Ternate, since both practices are mentioned in 16th century documents.(16) It was the template of this new shape for Mindanao ‒ its western side, to be more precise ‒ as well as of the Sulu archipelago that Gastaldi eventually incorporated into his 1554 map.
Unlike Mindanao, the ‘Visayan arch’ in Viegas’s charts is still derived from the original Spanish model, even more so than in the simplified version of the Penrose chart. The only island worth noticing for the cartographer was Cebu, because of its importance as the place of the decisive set of events that would result in the Magellan expedition leaving the archipelago.
The cartographer also refers to some indistinct ‘Jlhas do ouro’ (islands of gold), placed beyond known geography. This pertains to a rumour ‒spread amongst the Portuguese at Ternate by a coalition of their enemies as an attempt to lure Portuguese ships to leave Ternate unprotected ‒
that gold was to be found in Sulawesi and Mindanao.(17) Portuguese chronicles provide more than one account of this episode, and the rumour was considered credible enough for Andrés de Urdaneta to mention it in his letter to Charles V in 1537.(18) Reportedly, one João da Canha Pinto left Ternate in 1535 aboard a vessel bound for Mindanao and beyond, but the precise route he took is unknown.(19)
Fig. 9: detail from an anonymous chart (c.1540) (image courtesy of Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel)
We do, however, benefit from more precise information on the nature of Portuguese navigations along the shores of Mindanao in the later years of the decade. In 1538, António Galvão, captain of the fortress of Ternate, dispatched one Francisco de Castro to Mindanao to establish alliances with local chieftains, likely as part of a strategy to broaden the influence of Portuguese power in the Sulawesi Sea and counter the authority of the Sultans of Tidore and Ternate in the area. Such actions resulted in more accurate cartographic renderings for Mindanao, for example, the one in a c.1540 anonymous chart of Asia kept by the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel (fig. 9).(20) From extant chronicles, we know that de Castro called at locations referred to as Setigano (Sarangani), Soligão (Siargao), Butuão (Butuan), Pilimara (location uncertain) and Camigui (Camiguin).(21)
In this rendering of Mindanao, aside from displaying the bays of Illana and Sarangani as before, there is no doubt that the cartographer clearly portrays the Gulf of Davao. However, also striking is a bay to the north that engulfs a sort of circular island which, I posit, is an over-
simplification of Butuan Bay. This disregards the existence of its twin formation to the west, Gingoog Bay, and envelops what I believe to be Camiguin island.
Another remarkable feature depicts the northwestern coasts of the Zamboanga peninsula, which appear more defined than in previous Portuguese maps. This map is a testament to the strategic importance of Mindanao to the Portuguese stationed at Ternate, but also of the limited ventures of the Portuguese in the inner Filipino seas. Interaction seems limited to Mindanao, since the ‘Visayan arch’ still reproduces the information gathered by Magellan’s expedition in 1521.
Prior to Lopo Homem’s 1554 work, another rendering of the Philippines reflected similar trends in Portuguese cartography of the region, namely the anonymous c.1550 planisphere held by the Biblioteca Vallicelliana in Rome (fig. 10).(22) Once again, the most prominent geographical features of southern Mindanao are depicted up to the Gulf of Davao, likely including the island of Samal. The Visayas remain, as before, a repetition of the Spanish models.
The chronology of Portuguese cartographic representation of the Philippines is, therefore, indicative of a more intense interaction with Mindanao than with the seas of Bohol or the inner Visayas. The diversity of shapes with which Mindanao was depicted in this period is also an indicator that more than one nautical survey was reaching Europe in a short span of time and being included in new maps. None, however, became authoritative to the point of becoming a model. This would be changed by Lopo Homem’s work.
10: detail from an anonymous chart (c.1540) (image courtesy of Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Roma)
Fig.
Lopo Homem’s
cartographic model
For Portuguese cartography, the rendering of the Philippines in Homem’s work presented an overall renewal of the shorelines and toponymy of the islands, not just Mindanao but also the Visayas, the exception being Palawan. Contrary to the Portuguese charts and planispheres of the 1530s and 1540s, the introduction of a new shape for Mindanao by Homem was not a consequence of renewed Portuguese navigations along its shores but rather, as revealed by the toponymy associated with the island, the incorporation of the surveys of the Villalobos expedition in 1543-44. As a matter of fact, all of the toponyms pertaining to Mindanao and the islands to the north were recorded in the accounts of that expedition, and were likely incorporated into Portuguese cartography as a consequence of the surrender of the explorers to the Portuguese authorities at Ternate in 1545, thus making Spanish maritime surveys accessible to cartographers in Lisbon.
In the configuration of the Philippines by Homem it is possible to find two or maybe three sources. The first draws from Magellan’s expedition and pertains to the coastline of Cebu and the island of Mactan. Because its navigation concentrated around Mindanao and the eastern Visayas, Cebu and Mactan were not reached again during the Villalobos expedition . Therefore, their presence in Homem’s rendering of the Philippines should be viewed as remaining from the itinerary of Magellan’s expedition.
A second source are the surveys of the Villalobos expedition. In Homem’s planisphere, these resulted in new shapes for Mindanao and Leyte ‒ fused to Cebu ‒ and the introduction, to the north, of Samar and the Bicol Peninsula in southern Luzon. A possible third source pertains to the toponym ‘Cabrita’, placed at the tip of the Zamboanga Peninsula in Mindanao, which is either a corruption of the ‘Cabite’ recorded by the Villalobos expedition, or a Portuguese adaptation of ‘Kauit’ resulting from the direct
Fig. 11: detail from a manuscript portolan atlas by Fernão Vaz Dourado (c.1570) (image courtesy of the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, ref. mss HM 41)
knowledge of Portuguese pilots that called near La Caldera on their way from Malacca to Ternate, as attested in Spanish sources.(23)
Some toponyms, such as ‘betuão’ (Butuan) and ‘macagua’ ‒ both recorded in documents from the Villalobos expedition ‒ could also have remained from previous models from the 1520s, as was certainly the case for Cebu, Mactan and Palawan.(24) But since the former were toponyms associated with Mindanao, the more likely explanation is that they were incorporated as a whole into the preexisting model. As for ‘Cabrita’, the fact that it was the most significant toponym in the context of Portuguese navigations near Mindanao requires us to address its possible ways of incorporation into Portuguese cartography separately (see below).
As for Palawan, the island seems to have remained mostly unchanged in Portuguese cartography since last visited by the Trinidad and the Victoria in 1521, apparently impervious to Portuguese navigations sailing along the northern coast of Borneo to its south. Both the toponymy and coastline of Palawan remained the same as in the map kept at the Herzog August Bibliothek; Homem’s work did not change that. Only after 1563 did Portuguese cartographers introduce modifications to this geography. In the works of cartographers such as Lázaro Luís, Domingos Teixeira and Fernão Vaz Dourado, an extended shoreline was added to the pre-existing shape of Palawan along with a description stating ‘Coast of luções and laos alongside which Pedro Fidalgo sailed, having departed from Borneo aboard a Chinese junk, and so he navigated alongside it in a heavy storm until he reached Lamao [Nan’ao] harbour’ (fig. 11).
It is known from a 1563 book by António Galvão that Fidalgo’s journey took place in 1545.(25) In his book, José Manuel Garcia suggests that the extremely long coast could be the cartographic translation of this account, and thus not based on any actual maritime surveys, a suggestion I find very plausible.(26) Consequently, cartography from the 1560s on would replicate this information, thus conveying an adaption of a textual narrative and not cartographic surveys of any sort. Fidalgo must have followed a mercantile route with Chinese partners that connected Borneo with Nan’ao (南澳島) in China, and amid hard weather he probably sailed from
Fig. 12: detail from a manuscript portolan atlas by an anonymous author (c.1630) (image courtesy of the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, ref. mss HM 39)
Palawan to Mindoro, thence to Luzon, and later abandoned Filipino shores towards China.(27) Sailing along the western coast of Palawan, while dangerous due to the many reefs, shoals, and islets comprising the Spratly Islands, seems to have been a practice of some seafaring communities including the Portuguese, judging by the many different shapes of shoals depicted by Portuguese cartographers, especially in 17th century charts (fig. 12).
Galvão’s accounts indicate that Portuguese merchants in Asia interacted with the islands of the present-day Philippines by different means than the Malacca-Ternate route or from Ternate to Mindanao. A testimony to such interactions can also be found in the works of Portuguese cartographer Bartolomeu Velho who, in his depictions of the islands of Southeast Asia, includes a unique rendering of Palawan in known maps of the 16th century, a likely testimony to this cartographer’s ability to access networks providing rare sources of information.(28)
At some point, Portuguese seafarers surveyed the entire coasts of Palawan, even without an adequate cartographic rendering; for example, in Velho’s work Dumaran Island is fused to Palawan proper. To the southeast lies a mention to an ‘enseada (inlet) de Nuno da Costa’, of whom nothing else is known; da Costa apparently visited what is known today as San Antonio Bay (fig. 13). It is likely that there were more Portuguese interactions with the Philippines than those that can be proven from extant documents. Portuguese preferential investment
Fig. 13: detail from a manuscript portolan atlas by Bartolomeu Velho (c.1560) (image courtesy of the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, ref. mss HM 44)
in the trade in silk and cloves either led them to China or to the Moluccas. But not every Portuguese merchant managed to participate in those routes, especially in the lucrative, but highly controlled, China trade. The presence of a vessel manned by Bruneian seafarers belonging to one Antón Maletis which was seized by Legazpi’s men off the coast of Bohol is one example.(29) The Philippines may have offered a less lucrative but rewarding trade for those Portuguese who were unable to enter the Chinese and Moluccan trades.(30)
Whatever the extent of Portuguese interaction with the Philippines, it was likely limited to secondary trading or raiding expeditions considering the geographical knowledge acquired from such initiatives was incapable of offering changes to the Homem model, with the unique exception of Velho’s works. In fact, in the 1560s the cartographic solution presented by Homem in his 1554 planisphere underwent a process of crystallisation that effectively resulted in a model for the Philippines before the beginning of Spanish colonial rule in the archipelago. From Lázaro Luís (atlas of 1563) to Fernão Vaz Dourado (atlases between 1568 and 1580), every new addition to the cartography of
the present-day Philippines conformed to Homem’s established image for the archipelago.
This eventually became true for depictions of the Philippines outside Portugal following its inclusion in Mercator’s 1569 world map. By inserting Homem’s model in Gastaldi’s preexisting template for Southeast Asia, Mercator tried to present a renewed geography for the archipelago at the expense of the decades-old image that reflected Magellan’s itinerary. In this process, though, he failed to identify that the island named ‘Palohan’ was the same as the one lying to the west of Homem’s Cebu, which means that cartography based on Mercator displays the island of Palawan twice, each proceeding from a different cartographic template. After this, cartographic works displaying the region by wellknown mapmakers and engravers, such as Abraham Ortelius’s Typus Orbis Terrarum (1570) and Gerard de Jode’s Asiæ Novissima Tabula (1578), came to replicate this model. Ultimately, it was a short-lived one. The systematic occupation of the Philippines after 1565 allowed for new depictions of the archipelago that were incorporated in both manuscript and printed cartography in the last decades of the 16th century, to the detriment of the Homem model.
Schematic representation of the information transfers from cartographer to cartographer
Final remarks
European interest in Iberian explorations on the continents of Africa, America and Asia was responsible for a growing trade in literary works that narrated the presence of the Portuguese and Spaniards in these geographies, as well as maps, manuscript or engraved, that illustrated them. Obtaining information to be translated into print or adapted into a cartographic medium was not straightforward, though, and depended on each individual’s personal networks, which resulted in the circulation of a plurality of accounts and images of any given geography.
In non-Iberian Europe, the cultural fruition from reading new written accounts of navigations went side-by-side with the need to visualise those geographies in maps, leading mapmakers to adjust available cartographic models to accommodate new information (see schematic representation above) The 1554 and 1561 Gastaldi maps, in which he tried to visually translate the accounts of both Antonio Pigafetta and Juan Gaitán in recent editions of Ramusio’s Delle Navigationi et Viaggi, are good examples of this practice. The success achieved by these maps as cultural items justly led scholars to
recognise their relevance for the history of cartography; those maps became ‘notable’ or ‘iconic’ because of their depictions of specific geographies ‒ landmarks in a long chronology of cartographic examples.
In the history of cartographic representations of the Philippines, however, I believe that the status of ‘iconic’ maps has long overshadowed other images of the archipelago that could provide more relevant information on the actual human or nautical experience of Europeans in the islands and how that generated new cartographic information. These ‘forgotten renderings’ include the manuscript charts created by Portuguese cartographers over the course of the 16th century.
On the one hand, their works reflect experiences of navigation and interaction with the archipelago now known as the Philippines that resulted in models inherited from Spanish explorers being discontinued. But, on the other hand, analysis of the genealogies of coastal shapes and toponymy allows us to ascertain that it was the Portuguese cartographic models ‒even when these were themselves adapted from Spanish ones ‒ that European engravers resorted
to when wanting to display revised images of the archipelago. While the formation of the European image of the Philippines rested on the circulation of printed maps by Gastaldi, Mercator and Ortelius, a broader analysis of Portuguese manuscript cartography is required to understand the novelty ‒ or lack of it ‒ in each of them
Selected Bibliography
Miguel Rodrigues Lourenço is a researcher with the Centro de Humanidades, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa in Lisbon; he specialises in the history of Macau and the Philippines in the 16th and 17th centuries. He is indebted to Jessica J. Fowler and Peter Geldart for their comments and revisions to this article, which expands the presentation the author gave to PHIMCOS on February 24, 2021.
‘Relación de García de Escalante Alvarado’, in El viaje de don Ruy López de Villalobos a las islas del Poniente, 1542-1548, Consuelo Varela (editor), Cisalpino-Goliardica, Milan, 1983.
Edgardo J. Angara, José Maria A. Cariño and Sonia P. Ner, Mapping the Philippines: The Spanish Period, Rural Empowerment Assistance and Development Foundation, Quezon City, Manila, 2009.
Ivo Carneiro de Sousa, The first Portuguese maps and sketches of southeast Asia and the Philippines 15121571, Centro Português de Estudos do Sudeste Asiático (CEPESA), University of Porto, 2002.
Armando Cortesão and Avelino Teixeira da Mota (editors), Portugaliæ Monumenta Cartographica (PMC), Comissão Executiva das Comemorações do V Centenario da Morte do Infante D. Henrique, Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra, Lisbon, 1960-62.
José Manuel Garcia, As Filipinas na historiografia portuguesa do século XVI, Centro Português de Estudos do Sueste Asiático, Porto, 2003.
Donald F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, Vol. 1:The Century of Discovery, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, (1965) 1994.
Miguel Rodrigues Lourenço, ‘De São Lázaro às Filipinas: imagens de um arquipélago na cartografia náutica ibérica do século XVI’, in Mapas de metade do mundo. A cartografia e a construção territorial dos espaços americanos: séculos XVI a XIX, Francisco Roque de Oliveira and Héctor Mendoza Vargas (editors), Centro de Estudos Geográficos da Universidade de Lisboa and Instituto de Geografía de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2010.
, ‘Selected Passageways: The Philippine Islands’ Straits in 16th Century Portuguese Cartography’, in Asian Sea Straits: Functions and History (c.500 to 1700), Orientierungen Themenheft, Roderich Ptak and Ralph Kauz (editors), Munich, 2013.
, ‘A cristalização de um modelo: as Filipinas na cartografia portuguesa (1554-1580)’, in Cartógrafos para toda a Terra: produção e circulação do saber cartográfico ibero-americano: agentes e contextos, Vol. 2, Francisco Roque de Oliveira (editor), Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal; Centro de Estudos Geográficos da Universidade de Lisboa; and Centro de História d’Aquém e d’Além-Mar da Universidade Nova de Lisboa / Universidade dos Açores, Lisbon, 2015.
, ‘Before the Philippines: textual and cartographical representations of Mindanao in sixteenthcentury Portuguese sources’, in South East Asia Research, Vol. 30 Issue No. 1, SOAS University of London, 2022.
Manel Ollé, ‘The Straits of the Philippine Islands in Spanish Sources (Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries)’, in Journal of Asian History, Vol. 46, No. 2, Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2012.
Paulo Jorge de Sousa Pinto and Miguel Rodrigues Lourenço (editors), The Islands Beyond the Empire: Portuguese Essays on Early Modern Philippine History (16th-18th Centuries), Foreign Service Institute, Manila, 2023.
Carlos Quirino, Philippine Cartography, 1320-1899, N. Israel, Amsterdam, 1959, and Fourth Edition, Carlos Madrid (editor), Vibal Foundation, Quezon City, Manila, 2018.
Thomas Suárez, Early Mapping of Southeast Asia: The Epic Story of Seafarers, Adventurers, and Cartographers Who First Mapped the Regions Between China and India, Periplus Editions, Hong Kong & Singapore, 1999; Tuttle Publishing, Boston, 2012.
Notes & References
1. Quirino (op. cit.), pp. 15-18, briefly discusses the Suma Oriental, a manuscript account of trade in Asia by Tomé Pires; a sketch by Francisco Rodrigues; and atlas charts by Lázaro Luís and Fernão Vaz Dourado that include the Philippines. In addition to these, his ‘Chronology of Maps, Charts, Plans, and Views’ (pp. 120-246) lists maps by Pedro Reinel, Diogo Ribeiro and Diogo Homem.
2 Portuguese cartography provides more than one example of how later cartographic specimens do not necessarily provide sounder geographic knowledge. Rather, the specificity and continuous nature of interactions with a specific region could result in the discontinuation of cartographic models that could be viewed as more advanced/precise in favour of lesser ones.
3. In this regard, I follow the understanding of maps as a locus of several stages of knowledge that exist in an apparent synchronicity as discussed by J.B. Harley in ‘Deconstructing the Map’ (Cartographica, Vol.26, No. 2, 1989) and Christian Jacob in L’Empire des Cartes: Approche théorique de la cartographie à travers l’histoire (Albin Michel, Paris, 1992, pp. 308-10).
4. Lach op. cit. pp. 603 & 624-5.
5. Giovanni Battista Ramusio, ‘La detta nauigatione scritta per messer Antonio Pigafetta Vicentino, il qual vi si ritrouô in persona sopra la naue vittoria’ and ‘Relation di Iuan Gaetan Castigliano del discoprimento dell’isole Molucche per la via dell’indie occidentali’, Delle Navigationi et Viaggi, Stamperia de Giunti, Venice,1554, pp. 389v-408 and 416-417v.
6. Lach op. cit., p. 643; Suárez op. cit., p. 131.
7. Alfonso González González, ‘Los requerimientos portugueses a Legazpi sobre la pertenencia de las Filipinas’, in El Tratado de Tordesillas y su Proyección, Vol. 1, Seminario de Historia de América, Universidad de Valladolid, 1973, pp. 255-291.
8. The only geographic updates to this model seem to have been Mindanao Island and the Sulu archipelago. By 1554, either Gastaldi or Ramusio had gained access to new cartographic models for this region based on Portuguese maritime surveys, which explains the differences vis-à-vis the 1548 map.
9. On these cartographers, see Armando Cortesão, ‘The cartographer Lopo Homem and his Work’, in PMC Vol. 1 op. cit., pp. 49-53, and ‘The cartographer Diogo Homem and his Work’, in PMC Vol. 2 op. cit., pp. 3-10.
10. See Suárez op. cit., p. 143; in its plural form, however, the toponym had already been introduced at least three years earlier by Sancho Gutiérrez in his planisphere, kept in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (K I 99416, Tf. 1).
11. Suárez op. cit., p. 143.
12. During the Villalobos expedition, the crewmembers followed a practice of naming islands of the ‘Islas del Poniente’ after members of the ruling House of Habsburg or their viceroys. While scholars have shown a lack of consensus in identifying the island ‘Filipina’ with either Samar or Leyte, sources are unequivocal in that they reveal that the toponym has been attributed to both islands. It was not until the San Juanico Strait was reconnoitred by Bernardo de la Torre in the first days of 1544 that ‘Filipina’ became ‘Filipinas’. See Alvarado op. cit., pp. 138-9; Lourenço (2015) op. cit.
13. Lourenço (2022) op. cit.
14. Cortesão, ‘Anonymous‒Chart of c. 1535’, in PMC Vol. 1 op. cit., pp. 123-4; Lourenço (2010) op. cit.
15. See Teixeira da Mota, ‘Gaspar Viegas, chart of 1534’, and ‘Anonymous‒Gaspar Viegas, two atlases of 1537’, in PMC Vol. 1 op. cit., pp. 115-121.
16. Lourenço (2010) op. cit.
17. Fernão Lopes de Castanheda, História da Conquista e Descobrimento da Índia pelos Portugueses, Vol. 4, P.M. Laranjo Coelho (editor), Imprensa da Universidade, Coimbra, 1933, pp. 382-4.
18. Andrés de Urdaneta, ‘Relacion presentada al Emperador por Andres de Urdaneta sobre sucesos de la armada de Loisa desde 24 de Julio de 1525 hasta 1535’, dated 26 Februrary 1537, in Colección de los viages y descubrimientos, que hicieron por mar los espanoles desde fines del siglo XV , Vol. 3, Martín Fernández de Navarrete (editor), Imprenta Real, Madrid, 1837, p.429.
19. Garcia op. cit., pp. 88-94.
20. Teixeira da Mota, ‘Anonymous‒Chart of c. 1540’, in PMC Vol. 1 op. cit. pp. 147-8; Lourenço (2010) op. cit
21. Garcia op. cit., pp. 94-102.
22. Teixeira da Mota, ‘Planisphere of c.1550’, in PMC Vol. 1 op. cit., pp. 157-9.
23. Alvarado op. cit., pp. 139-140; Lourenço (2013) op. cit; Lourenço (2022) op. cit
24. However, it should be noted that neither Butuan nor Maçagua is attested in the cartography of the Homem family but only in later reproductions of this model made in the 1560s and 1570s.
25. António Galvão, Tratado dos Descobrimentos, 4th edition, Visconde de Lagoa (editor), Livraria Civilização, Porto, 1987, p. 298; English translation in Garcia op. cit., p. 113.
26. Garcia op. cit., p. 113-4.
27. Francisco Roque de Oliveira, ‘A construção do conhecimento europeu sobre a China c.1500 – c.1600. Impressos e manuscritos que revelaram o mundo chinês à Europa culta’, doctoral dissertation, Department of Geography of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, 2003, p. 842.
28. Teixeira da Mota, ‘The Cartographer Bartolomeu Velho and his work’, in PMC Vol. 2, op. cit., pp. 8992; ‘Bartolomeu Velho, Group of Four Charts of 1561’, in PMC Vol. 2, op cit. pp. 95-7; and ‘Anonymous ‒ Bartolomeu Velho, Atlas of c.1560’, in PMC Vol. 2 op. cit., pp. 107-9.
29. ‘Relación de los acontecimientos del viaje y jornada que hizo la armada de SM. al mando del general Miguel López de Legazpi en el descubrimiento de las Islas del Poniente’, dated May 1565, in Los Primeros de Filipinas: Crónicas de la Conquista del Archipiélago de San Lázaro, Patricio Hidalgo Nuchera (editor), Miraguano Ediciones / Ediciones Polifemo, Madrid, 1995, pp. 171-2.
30. Lourenço (2015) op. cit.
ACROSS THE PACIFIC: Art and the Manila Galleons reviewed by Felice Prudente Sta. Maria
ACROSS THE PACIFIC:
Art and the Manila Galleons
Clement Onn, principal exhibition curator; Alan Chong and Benjamin Chiesa, editors; Florina H. Capistrano-Baker, Alan Chong, Circe Henestrosa, Roberto E. Junco, Yoshie Kojima, Sonia Ocaña-Ruiz, Clement Onn, William R. Sargent, Helen Persson Swain, Iván Valdez-Bubnov, Cuauhtémoc Villamar and Abraham Villavicencio, authors; Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore, March 2024; ISBN 978-981-18-9206-6; hardbound; 30 cms. x 24 cms.; 240 pp. with over 224 coloured images; S$70
THIS BOOK is the catalogue for the exhibition MANILA GALLEON: From Asia to the Americas, presented at the Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore from 16 November, 2023 to 17 March, 2024. For the exhibition, the museum assembled over 130 extraordinary works of art from the 16th to the 20th centuries. They were lent by 31 collectors and institutions: 14 from Mexico, 11 from the Philippines, four in Singapore, and one each from the United States and Italy. The dramatically installed exhibits promised to salute ‘the art of a network’ created by the Manila galleons from 1565 to 1815. The ships pioneered a commercial cadence dependent on pan-Pacific Ocean winds and currents, competitive maritime technology, and good luck. Until the fall of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty in 1700, the Manila galleon trade luxuriated in a golden age.
Manila became an entrepot for the international exchange of goods, inventions, peoples, ideas, customs, and attitudes. Silks, porcelain, lacquerware, religious images, silver holloware, paintings, engravings, maps, furniture, clothes and other creative products circulated. This august catalogue may volunteer meagre art criticism, but it is lavish with its socio-historical annotations for the show’s exemplars of transculturation. In his foreword, Kennie Ting, the museum’s Director, notes: “One of the exhibition’s major themes is the important role Asia played in the spread of
material culture to the Americas, where it precipitated new forms of identity and cultural expression.”
Maps and Vistas
The catalogue’s text consists of 14 essays by leading international scholars examining different aspects of the trade. In ’The complexities of the Manila galleon trade’, Cuauhtémoc Villamar reminds us that the commercial system began with 60 years of grandness, and then underwent depression in the 18th century ’mostly because of changing tastes in the Americas and Europe, economic and political crises and, in the last period, the opening of alternative routes’. Accompanying his article are photographs of a plain, wooden arcón (travelling chest) from the 1650s made in the Philippines and naively painted on the inside cover with ‘what is probably the oldest view of Manila’. The prominence of Chinese activities in the depiction is considered an indication that the scene was likely executed by a resident Chinese artist. The chest is now in the Museo de Arte José Luis Bello y González in Puebla, Mexico
In stark contrast is an outstanding folding screen in ten sections painted on one side with an idealised, panoramic vista of Mexico during the 1690s. It is speculated that it was made by the accomplished Mexican artist Diego Correa. The other side has an imagined construct of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, that lasted from 1519 to 1521. Its treatment uses graphical perspective and conventional Western rendering of personages. Folding screens, invented in China and adopted in Korea and Japan, first reached Mexico in the early 17th century. Mexico became part of Spain in 1521. It was a viceroyalty seeking splendour, and the distant colony of Filipinas became a portion of its portfolio in 1565.
Prominently displayed was the 1734 Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica delas Yslas Filipinas by the Spanish cartographer Fr. Pedro Murillo Velarde (from the Fernando and Catherine Zobel de Ayala Collection). It was adeptly engraved and artistically illustrated by Nicolas dela Cruz Bagay, who proudly signed himself as a native ‘Indio Tagalo en Manila’. The catalogue also notes that the small maps of Intramuros and Cavite in one of the side panels are signed by Francisco Suarez, identifying him as a second Tagalog illustrator.
Religious Sculpture
The Spanish court sponsored Christianisation throughout its empire. Sculpture, painting, engraving and silverwork supported both missionary proselytising and institutionalisation of the church as experiential spectacle. Alan Chong’s essay ’Networked objects: 17th-century Chinese ivory sculptures from the Philippines’ quotes Domingo de Salazar, Manila’s first bishop, who in 1590 acknowledged the ability of Manila’s Chinese artists to copy with perfection the images that came from Spain. Chong underscores that ivories carved in the Philippines by Chinese artisans ’depended on a trade between four continents – Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe’.
We are reminded that although garing is an antique local term for ivory, and prehistoric remains of several elephant species have been excavated in the Philippines, live elephants were found only in Jolo and nowhere else in the archipelago; they are believed to have been
introduced as a gift to Jolo from the Hindu rulers of Java in 1395. Consequently, carving ivory did not happen among Tagalogs because they had no regular supply of ivory. In contrast, Chong writes: “Ivory carving was a highly praised art in China and there is some evidence it was a specialty of Fujian province, where most of the Chinese in the Philippines originated.”
Prototype sculpture that reached Asia was a progressive acquisition of artistic modes set by the church and desired by Europeans. The catalogue includes a pair of fine Philippineoriginated ivories from the mid-17th century depicting the Christ Child as Saviour of the World and Saint Sebastian. The spread of Christian art made by Asians in the 17th century is further exemplified by a Virgin and Child from Sri Lanka and another, found near Salamanca in Spain, that was documented in 1617 as from the Philippines. The link of drawings and engravings to sculptures is represented by a superb 17th-century ivory relief of the Christ Child as Navigator, from the Philippines and now in the Asian Civilisations Museum’s collection.
Church Painting, Lacquer and Silverwork
As in all the arts circulated by the Manila galleons, Western-style painting acquired indelible Asian and New World elements. Yoshie Kojima recounts in ’Japanese seminary paintings in Nagasaki, Macao, and Manila’ that the first Western painter to arrive in Japan was Giovanni Cola (1558-1626), an Italian Jesuit who established a seminary for painters in Nagasaki. By 1614, because of the Japanese persecution of Christians, the school was moved to Macao. A work from 1579 by his Chinese-Japanese follower Jacob Niwa (Ni Yichen in Chinese) exemplifies how Cola’s technique was being absorbed by Asian students. Works resulting from the seminary’s tutelage became visual guides for developments in art production.
A striking section of the book is dedicated to Chinese and Japanese lacquer. Sonia Ocaña-Ruiz writes in ’The paths of Asian lacquer in New Spain’ that ’Spanish-American audiences became as fond of locally made objects inspired by Asian art as they were of the Asian originals themselves’. A similarity to but departure from Asian lacquers is evident in the enconchados (from concha, the Spanish for shell) that add
mother-of-pearl inlays to lacquer work created in the New World. In candlelit sanctuaries, outstanding examples seem to glow. An extraordinary example is the early 18th-century Virgin of Guadalupe by Agustin del Pino (in the Museo Franz Mayer in Mexico City) that combines oil paint and gold on wood ornamented by mother-of-pearl. Paintings were also made on paper and copper. Not limiting themselves to paint, New World artists additionally rendered religious themes in pictures using their traditional medium of plumeria (featherwork).
Among many fine religious specimens exhibited, three 18th-century lecterns, two from Mexico and one from Manila, characterise silverwork ornamented with dexterously executed repoussé, engraving and punchwork. While two Mexican incense boats of the 17th and 18th centuries ’may have provided reminders of seaborne trade’, we should remember that the ship has been a long-lived symbol for the church as a vessel of salvation in life’s stormy seas.
Household Art
Chinese export porcelain assembled in Manila for shipment to Acapulco is highlighted. Most prized were ‘monumental’ decorative vases and jars, exquisite animal-shaped tureens, and armorial and commemorative plates. The show assembled a singular array that includes a late 16th-century plate with the arms of the Marqués de Cañete and, from the 18th century, armorial plates of the visitador (royal inspector) José de Gálvez and the Solar de Tejada family, and medals marking the accession of King Carlos IV in 1788. William R. Sargent records in ’The Spaniards buy them to bring to Mexico in New Spain: Chinese export porcelain for Mexico’ that ‘the most consequential influence of Chinese porcelain on the ceramic tradition of Mexico was the production of blue-and-white earthenware in Puebla, a ceramic technique brought from Talavera in Spain’. Abraham Villavicencio contributes an article on ‘The legacy of the Manila galleons in the arts of Mexico: Porcelain and lacquer’.
In ‘Chocolate: A gift from Quetzalcoatl’, Sargent notes how the Mesoamerican beverage was transformed and ‘quickly became a much-loved indulgence [at] the Spanish court, indispensable
in high society and too expensive for others’ after it was brought to Seville in 1585. Cups for chocolate were made in Mexico of coconut shells carved with floral patterns and mounted in silver during the 18th and 19th centuries. Invented in the New World but imported from China, porcelain mancerinas were deep, handsized circular saucers with a built-in chocolate cup holder at the centre. A silver version made in Mexico during the 18th century likewise establishes the high esteem in which the beverage was held when it was new and rare. I should add that in the Philippines, mancerinas were owned by the Bishop of Nueva Caceres as documented in records of 1740 at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville (Antonio Sánchez de Mora, exhibition catalogue for Sabores que cruzaron los océanos (Flavors that Sail Across the Seas), Cooperación Española, Manila, 2016).
The oldest furniture specimens shown are from the 17th century. A wooden chest with foliate relief carving from the Philippines is cited as reminiscent of the tooled leather chests that perhaps it sought to imitate. The decorative art of bone inlay from Manila is well represented in a lovely box and several outstanding portable writing cabinets, one with the arms of Mexico City. From the next century are a cabinet of drawers and a writing cabinet with profuse decorative inlay that differ from a spareness ‘presumably [on] earlier inlaid furniture made by Chinese makers in the Philippines’. Western vines and fantastical animals join Christian symbols, as well as Chinese lions and lotuses in a mixing of ornamental patterns facilitated by the galleon trade.
Silk and Clothing
Silks reigned among luxuries of the galleon trade. Helen Persson Swain starts her piece, ‘The global success of the Manila shawl’, by reminding us that the article of apparel made in China was named after its trans-shipment port. Rare is the exhibit’s example of a carved, lacquered and gilded wooden box to store a silk shawl (mantón in Spanish). Colourfully embroidered mantónes de Manila ’were likely produced as a commercial reaction to the popularity of the Kashmir and Paisley shawls of Indian export production’, the former having become ’indispensable in the West during the eighteenth century when they were worn over
light cotton dresses and later draped over midnineteenth century crinolines’, she notes.
Florina H. Capistrano-Baker traces the development of clothing expressions in ’Fashioning national dress in the Philippines: 19th-century country types to 20th-century couturiers’. She posits that the ’pre-colonial, two-part garment constructed of local and imported fabrics persisted and mutated through time, evolving during the Spanish period into the hybrid baro’t saya (blouse and skirt) and traje de mestiza (dress of the mestiza) and ultimately into the twentieth-century terno, now widely considered the Philippine national dress’. The baro and pañuelo (scarf) from the 19th century typified exemplary Philippine whitework embroidery that includes sombrado (shadow) and calado (pulled-thread) work.
Paintings from the early 1590s through the mid19th century traced Catholic, Spanish and Chinese influences on Filipino attire that include foliate decorative patterns. Also exhibited was a distinguished sampling of pre-colonial Philippine gold jewellery, which we see pictured in 16thcentury Spanish paintings. Indigenous, preHispanic goldsmiths had an established expertise in handcrafting filigree and granulation, and their patterns and jewellerymaking techniques (as shown by the paintings in the late-16th century Boxer Codex) continued into Spanish times. Philippine and Mexican jewellery was also influenced by Spanish / Catholic styles and design, resulting in 19th-century jewellery with tambourines and scapularies. Regrettably, the catalogue does not include pictures of the jewellery that had been exhibited which, like clothing, exemplifies the galleon’s influence.
Circe Henestrosa further elucidates cultural mingling using hybrid examples of textiles and fashion along the galleon route. Goods from China became ’part of the vocabulary of textiles and dress in the Americas’ she writes, in ’Crosscultural fertilisation and borrowing: Hybrid textiles and fashion along the galleon route’. ’The domain of fashion began to encompass both the fashion trends of the colonisers and the styles and practices of Latin American people.’ The heritage wear of Puebla and, especially, Tehuana, are singled out. Zapotec women of Oaxaca on the Tehuantepec Isthmus
were ’heavily influenced by the embroidered flowers and Chinese techniques of the Manila shawl’. The Chinese peony motif, she adds, ’remains today one of the most iconic flowers portrayed in Tehuana dress, an essential element in their self-constructed identity’.
Maritime Lifeline
The shipbuilding industry anchored colonial expansion and enterprise. Iván Valdez-Bubnov summarises how the pan-Pacific trade survived amidst political and commercial transitions. In ‘Ships of globalisation: Galleon construction in the Philippines and Southeast Asia from the 16th to 18th century’ he provides a concise chronology of major factors that sustained galleon construction in the Philippines and Southeast Asia from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Establishing a permanent Philippine shipbuilding industry required firstly the ‘productive capacity of the indigenous population of Luzon and the Visayas’, he explains. ‘The second decisive factor was the growing community of Chinese (and to a lesser extent Japanese) merchants and artisans in Manila after the Spanish conquest. Together they began an ‘industrial shift’ and ‘consolidation of the transpacific route’.
In its 250th year the Manila galleon trade succumbed to the complex forces of global passage. Relics of the trade abound, on land and under the sea. In the catalogue’s final article, Roberto E. Junco discusses ‘Archaeological discoveries: The Baja California shipwreck and the Port of Acapulco’
The catalogue’s authors are curators, professors and researchers of note. While the Pacific trade’s lifetime ended in 1815, interest in the Manila Galleon remains contemporary, as manifested in the bibliography dominated by late 20th-century and early 21st-century sources from the Pacific rim and beyond. This handsome, lavishly-illustrated and well-produced catalogue is not only a fitting record of the outstanding exhibition arranged by the Asian Civilisations Museum, but is also a wellresearched overview of the many aspects of the art promoted by the Manila Galleon. It deserves to be read by anyone who is interested in the trans-Pacific galleon trade and its widespread cultural and artistic influence.
The 1762 British Invasion of Spanish-Ruled Philippines: Beyond Imperial and National Imaginaries
reviewed by Peter Geldart
The 1762 British Invasion of Spanish-Ruled Philippines: Beyond Imperial and National Imaginaries
Maria Cristina Martinez-Juan, editor; Ian Christopher B. Alfonso, Roberto Blanco Andrés, Ericson N. Borre, O.S.A., Ino Manalo, Hana Qugana, Maria Cristina Martinez-Juan, Kristie Patricia Flannery, Florina H. CapistranoBaker, Regalado Trota José, Juan José Rivas Moreno, Guadalupe Pinzón-Ríos, Eberhard Crailsheim and Lasse Hölck, authors; National Historical Commission of the Philippines, Manila and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2024; ISBN 978-971-538-373-8, softbound; xxxix + 313 pp. with 57 images; Php.400; available as a PDF free-of-charge at: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/41697/
THIS VOLUME, published in Manila by the National Historical Commission of the Philippines, is an edited compilation of selected papers from the proceedings of the annual SOAS Philippines Studies Conference held over two days in September 2022 at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.
The Introduction gives an overview of the SOAS conference, its sponsors and contributors, ancillary events, and the basis on which 12 of the papers presented at the conference were selected for inclusion as articles in the book. An addendum provides a detailed and fullyillustrated analysis of the Alegoría de la defensa de Filipinas por el alavés Don Simón de Anda y Salazar, a large 18th-century painting held in the Museo de Bellas Artes de Álava. The painting shows a portrait of Simón de Anda, a winged victory, and a map of the Philippines surrounded by 23 numbered panels depicting and describing his exploits. Anda is also the subject of the first article, in which Ian Alfonso explains how he left Manila on the eve of its surrender to the British and, as the acting Spanish governor-general of the Philippines, established the native resistance in the provinces of Bulacan and Pampanga from his bases in Bacolor and Apalit
In the second (and longest) essay Roberto Blanco provides a detailed account of the invasion, the occupation of Manila and the fighting in the adjacent provinces from eyewitness accounts written by the Augustinians, the many documents kept in the Archivo de la Provincia de Agustinos de Filipinas in Valladolid, and the works of Fr. Agustín María de Castro, Fr. Joaquín Martínez de Zúñiga and Fr. Eduardo Navarro Ordóñez.
The Order of St. Augustine was the first religious order to arrive in the Philippines (in 1565) and, because of their dominant presence in Manila and across the country, the Augustinians played a crucial role in resisting the invasion I found it of particular interest to read their accounts of the conflict given that earlier publications ‒ in particular the books by Nicholas Tracy and Shirley Fish ‒ rely principally on British sources. Fr. Castro, who was the librarian of the convent of San Agustin in Intramuros, is the subject of
the next article, by Fr. Ericson Borre Macaso, O.S.A. Fr. Castro’s chronicles, written soon after the invasion, describe the magnificent library and its treasures before it was ransacked by the British soldiers, sepoys, and native looters.
As well as those in the Augustinian archives, documents from the British invasion are held in the archives of the Jesuit and Franciscan orders in Spain, and in various libraries in Britain and the U.S. In his article, Ino Mapa Manalo writes about those still retained in the Spanish Documents Section of the National Archives of the Philippines (NAP). These have not been fully researched, since the NAP has suffered from war, natural disasters and repeated moves of its premises, but records from 1761 to 1770 held in the NAP’s Erección de los Pueblos series include a manuscript letter to Anda from Fr. Roque de la Purificación asking for help in fighting the British troops that had taken the town of Lipa.
A large number of the occupying troops were sepoys, Indian infantrymen employed in the army of the British East India Company (EIC) During the war many of the sepoys deserted and hid outside Manila in the town of Cainta, where they remained after the British forces departed in 1764. They raised families with their native partners, and today their descendants are still commemorated in Cainta. The story of the sepoys and other Indian communities in the Philippines is told in a somewhat academic essay by Hana Qugana, who also writes about historical monuments and the Filipino diaspora in Britain.
The essay which I found the most interesting was ‘Incidental Validations: Translating Pedro Manuel’ by Cristina Juan. For most of his life Pedro Manuel, an Ilocano, was Alexander Dalrymple’s manservant and companion, initially in the Philippines (where he assisted the hydrographer in charting the Sulu Sea) and then in London, where he died in Marylebone in 1810, two years after Dalrymple’s own death Although the lives of 18th-century servants are seldom documented, the author is able to use ‘textual remains’ to bring us a vivid picture of Manuel’s life in Britain with Dalrymple.
A shorter article by Kristie Patricia Flannery discusses the destruction caused by the rival armed forces and its impact on human life and
the cultural heritage of the Philippines. The invaders sacked and pillaged Manila, while Anda adopted a scorched earth strategy to deprive the British of food and supplies by torching the town of Navotas and houses in Tondo. Beyond Manila, violent uprisings against the taxes imposed by Spanish colonial rule resulted in widespread death and destruction in the provinces of Pangasinan and Ilocos.
Another relatively short chapter, by Florina H. Capistrano-Baker, examines the afterlife of the valuable artifacts that were looted and taken to England ‒ notably the ivory Niño Dormido statue on its silver filigree bed that was repatriated to Manila in 1981, and the copper plates for the Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica delas Yslas Filipinas by Fr. Pedro Murillo Velarde ‒ as well as artworks that were taken to Britain and the U.S. later, such as the albums of tipos del país painted by the Filipino artists Damian Domingo and Justiniano Asuncion.
Although Manila was one of the great bastions of the Spanish Empire, in 1762 its aging fortifications were in disrepair and were soon breached by the British guns. This could explain why, in 1766, Juan Dominguez Zamudio wrote his Theses mathemamaticas, an opus covering the costruction of fortresses using mathematical principles; how to attack and defend a fortified town; and the casting of cannon. Zamudio’s Theses, one of several such works published by the Jesuit university of Manila, is described in detail (with images of its plates and summary translations) by Regalado Trota José in his article on ‘The Military Uses of Mathematics’.
From the late-16th to the mid-19th centuries the Philippines was at the heart of trade between Europe, India, China, Southeast Asia and the Americas. Manila’s role was crucial in providing the liquidity and working capital needed for the trade, in the form of silver specie imported from Spanish America. The capital markets in Manila relied on loans provided by funds known as the obras pías, especially the Misericordia, and in his essay Juan José Rivas Moreno explains how trade was fundamentally disrupted by the British invasion. The availability of silver ceased for three years, the obras pías were bankrupted, and the ensuing disruption in trans-Pacific trade had long-lasting effects on the EIC’s trade with India and Canton, as well as in the Philippines.
Plan of Manilla Capital of the Philippine Islands Taken by Storm the 6 Octobr. 1762 by Edward Cotsford (image courtesy of the Royal Collection Trust)
The two final articles in the book discuss the effect of the British invasion on the islands to the north and to the south of the Philippine archipelago. Guadalupe Pinzón-Ríos reviews the routes taken in the early 18th century by French and British ships sailing to and from China around the north of Luzon, and recounts how Spanish interest in the Babuyanes and Batanes islands increased as an alternative route for the Manila galleons to the north Pacific was explored. As shown in contemporary maps, following the British invasion the Spanish authorities focused on the geostrategic importance of these islands and, from 1777 to 1783, proceeded to take control of the Batanes.
In a comprehensive and well-researched essay, Eberhart Crailsheim and Lasse Hölck cover the convoluted triangle of relationships between the Spanish, the British and the Sultanate of Sulu. At various times Sulu was either allied or at war with the Spanish authorities in Manila and Zamboanga, depending on the politics of the Sultan, his family and his datus, and the situation became more complicated after the arrival in Sulu of Dalrymple, who negotiated treaties with the British to allow an EIC trading settlement on the island of Balambangan. After the British departed from Manila ‒ taking the exiled Sultan home to Sulu ‒ this settlement was eventually established, only to be sacked and abandoned in 1775.
Six of the papers in the book describe or are illustrated with maps, including an 1838 Spanish map of Pampanga, charts by Dalrymple, and maps by Antonio Fernández de Roxas, Murillo Velarde, Georg Mauritz Lowitz and Robet Carr. However, I was disappointed to find that none of the authors saw fit to use or even mention any of the attractive maps and charts made during the occupation of Manila by both British and Spanish cartographers. Many of these have been digitised and can be found in the Archivo General de Indias, the Boston Public Library, the British Library, the Library of Congress, and the Royal Collection Trust. My own article on the subject, ‘Mapping the British Occupation of the Philippines 1762-64’, was published in the IMCoS Journal Issue 167 (December 2021); a copy is available as a PDF upon request.
As analysed in The 1762 British Invasion of Spanish-Ruled Philippines, the occupation ‒ little more than a sideshow in the overall context of the Seven Years’ War ‒ was an ignoble chapter in British history. However, it had far-reaching consequences for both the Spanish authorities and the native population of the country, and it deserves to be better known than has hitherto been the case. SOAS and the National Historical Commission of the Philippines are to be commended for producing and publishing this varied selection of research articles on the subject, which should be widely read
National Museum of the Philippines, Mindanao Chapter
PHIMCOS & Universidad de Zamboanga are pleased to announce
Zamboanga Encounters: Where Land and Sea Meet
The exhibition will take place at Fort Pilar, Zamboanga from 17 January to 17 April 2025
National Museum of the Philippines & PHIMCOS are pleased to announce
Classics of Philippine Cartography
from the 16th to the 20th Centuries
The exhibition will take place at the National Museum, Cebu from July 2025 to January 2026
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Manuscript mappamundi by Urbano Monte, c.1587
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