Religion, Disaster, and Colonial Power in the Spanish Philippines in the Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v6i2.215Keywords:
historical disaster studies, environmental history, religion in Southeast AsiaAbstract
In the ?eld of disaster studies, scholars have focused on the social construction of disasters in various historical periods, but they have not attended to the ways in which these social constructions were differentiated within the same period. During the Spanish colonization of the Philippines in the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries, two types of disaster discourses existed. In ‘internal cases’, where Spanish elites had to deal with one another over issues of distribution of power, decision making capacity, and the allocation of resources, there were multiple and competing constructions of disasters. Conversely, in ‘external cases’, where the Spanish elites had to deal mainly with the ‘other’ (Filipinos) over issues such as colonization and Christianization, there was a convergence in the constructions of disasters, which facilitated conquest and the consolidation of power for the Spanish Crown. The act of interpreting disaster was intimately tied with the legitimation and exercise of power.References
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Asdal, Kristin. 2003. ‘The Problematic Nature of Nature: The Post-Constructivist Challenge to Environmental History’, Environment and History 42: 60-74.
Bankoff, Gregory. 2004. ‘In the Eye of the Storm: The Social Construction of the Forces of Nature and the Climatic and Seismic Construction of God in the Philippines’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 35.1: 91-111. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022463404000050.
———. 2007a. ‘Fire and Quake in the Construction of Old Manila’, Medieval History Journal 10.1/2:411-27. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1/2:411-27.
———. 2007b. ‘The Dangers of Going it Alone: Social Capital and the Origins of Community Resilience in the Philippines’, Continuity and Change 22.285-306.
———. 2007c. ‘Bodies on the Beach: Domesticates and Disasters in the Spanish Philippines 1750–1898’, Environment and History 13.3:285-306. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3197/096734007X228282.
Blair, Emma Helen, and James Alexander Robertson (eds.). 1911. The Philippine Islands, 1493–1898: Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the beginning of the nineteenth century (55 vols.; Cleveland: The A.H. Clark Company).
Combes, Francisco. 1911 [1667]. ‘The Natives of the Southern Islands’, in Blair and Robertson 1911: V. 40: 99-182.
Corcuera, Sebastian Hurtado de. 1911 [1636]. ‘Letter from Corcuera to Felipe IV’, in Blair and Robertson 1911: V. 27: 346-63.
Diaz, Camisiro. 1911a [1718]. ‘History of Augustinians in the Philippines’, in Blair and Robertson 1911: V. 37: 149-284.
———. 1911b [1718]. ‘The Augustinians in the Philippines, 1670–94’, in Blair and Robertson 1911: V. 42: 118-313.
Juneja, Monica, and Franz Mauelshagen. 2007. ‘Disasters and Pre-Industrial Societies: Historiographic Trends and Comparative Perspectives’, The Medieval History Journal 10.1/2: 1-31. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1/2.
Lopez, Gregorio. 1911 [1610]. ‘Relation of 1609–1610’, in Blair and Robertson 1911: V. 17: 102-42.
Meier, Mischa. 2001. ‘Perceptions and Interpretations of Natural Disasters during the Transition from the East Roman to the Byzantine Empire’, The Medieval History Journal 4.2: 179-202. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/097194580100400202.
———. 2007. ‘Natural Disasters in the Chronographia of John Malalas: Re_ections on their Function—an Initial Sketch’, The Medieval History Journal 10.1/2: 237-66. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1/2.
Oliver-Smith, A. 2003. ‘Theorizing Vulnerability in a Globalized World: A Political Ecological Perspective’, in G. Bankoff, G. Frerk, and D. Hilhorst (eds.), Mapping Vulnerability: Disasters, Development and People (London: Earthscan): 10-24.
P_ster, Christian. 2007. ‘Climatic Extremes, Recurrent Crises and Witch Hunts: Strategies of European Societies in Coping with Exogenous Shocks in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries’, The Medieval History Journal 10.1/2: 33-73. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1/2.
Phelan, John. 1959. The Hispanization of the Philippines: Spanish Aims and Filipino Responses, 1565–1700 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press).
Rios Coronel, Hernando de los. 1911 [1620]. ‘Reforms Needed in Filipinas (to be concluded)’, in Blair and Robertson 1911: V. 18: 289-342.
Rohr, Christian. 2003. ‘Man and Natural Disaster in the Later Middle Ages: The Earthquake in Carinthia and Northern Italy on 25 January 1348 and its Perception’, Environment and History 9.2: 127-49. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3197/096734003129342791.
Salazar, Domingo. 1911 [1588]. ‘Letter to Felipe by Domingo de Salazar’, in Blair and Robertson 1911: V. 7: 56-69.
Santa Cruz, Baltasar de. 1911 [1693]. ‘Dominicans in the Philippines’, in Blair and Robertson 1911: V. 35: 25-59.
Schenk, Gerrit. 2007. ‘ “...prima ci fu la cagione de la mala provedenza de’ Fiorentini...” Disasters and “Life World” Reactions in the Commune of Florence to the Flood of November 1333’, The Medieval History Journal 10.1/2: 355-86. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1/2.
Smoller, Laura. 2000. ‘Of Earthquakes, Hail, Frogs, and Geography: Plague and the Investigation of the Apocalypse in the Later Middle Ages’, in C. Bynum and P. Freedman (eds.), Last Things: Death and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press): 156-88.
Soergel, Philip. 2007. ‘Portents, Disaster, and Adaptation in Sixteenth Century Germany’, The Medieval History Journal 10.1/2: 303-26. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1/2.
Unknown. 1911 [1610]. ‘Jesuit missions, 1608–1609’, in Blair and Robertson 1911: V. 17: 53-79.
Unknown. 1911 [1683-89]. ‘Pardo Controversy’, in Blair and Robertson 1911: V. 39: 149-276.
Published
2012-07-16
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Camba, A. A. (2012). Religion, Disaster, and Colonial Power in the Spanish Philippines in the Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 6(2), 215-231. https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v6i2.215
