The Formation of a City:

Trade and Politics

in Nineteenth-Century Cebu

Resil B. Majores

o understand a city one needs to see it in relation to its hinterland and to

the larger systems to which it is linked. The central Philippine city of
Cebu is a fine example for this frame of analysis.

The nineteenth century saw the birth of Modern Cebu City. Its settlement his-
tory, of course, goes farther back. It was (owing to its strategic location and fine
harbor) an important trading center in the archipelago in pre-colonial times, its
embryonic urbanism nourished by participation in a developing interisland
and intra-Asian trade. By 1565, Legaspi's coming, the central settlement of Sugbo
or Cebu had around 300 dwellings and 2,000 inhabitants.

Colonialism arrested its development. For a while the Spaniards used it as base
and capital of their colony-in-the-making and here they proceeded to sketch
the outlines of a colonial city. ASpanish settlement (the first in Southeast Asia),
christened Vl1la deSan Miguel, was laid out on May 8,1565, and provisions made
for a fort, church, and Spanish quarters adjoining the area where the Cebuanos
lived. However, the transfer of the Spanish base of operations to Panay in 1569,
and then to Manila, left Cebu with the skeleton of a Spanish colonial outpost.
More important, the disruption of Cebu's old trading links with other Asian
ports, restrictions on interisland trade, and the institution ofthe Manila-focused
galleon trade in the 1570's, relegated Cebu to the economic backwaters. Cebu
went through a long period of decline in the first 200 years ofSpanish rule (ca.
1565-1760). Throughout this period, Cebu remained a key Spanish regional ad-
mi nistrative, military and religious center, with the honors of being a province
(as early as 1582, encompassing within its territory neighboring islands like
!lohol and Leyte), military headquarters for the Visayas, and seat of a bishopric.
80 Resil B. Mojares' The Formation of a Oty: Nineteenth Century Cebu
It had little else, however. The lack of the economic opportunities led to a decline
of both native and alien populations in the port area. (In the mid-eighteenth
century. there were only one or two Spaniards in the city who were not officials,
soldiers, or priests, and only around 18 or 20 Chinese residents). In the eighteenth
century. the French scientist Le Gentil was to report that "the city of Cebu -which
really should not be called a city-is an assemblage of a few miserable huts:'
The birth of modern Cebu City is a nineteenth-century phenomenon. It is a
product ofwider changes taking place in the colony and the world. In the closing
decades of the eighteenth century, the Spanish government-responding to
such factors as the decline of the galleon trade, the loss of the Mexican situado,
and changes in the world economy-began to liberalize trade and promote
agriculture and commerce in the archipelago. Early efforts were tentative and
the monopolistic position ofManila in Colonial trade continued to peripheralize
Cebu and the other Philippine ports. The report of Tomas de Comyn, who had
served as general manager of the Royal Philippine Company (established in
1785), shows that the cultivation of agricultural export crops had not begun
replacing subsistence agriculture in Cebu Province as late as 1810.
The early nineteenth century, however. saw a quickening of interisland trade.
The increased importance of commercial agriculture opened up the Philippine
countryside as merchants, land speculators, and trading agents fanned to the
provinces to acquire lands and fmance cash-crop cultivation, stationing them-
selves in key provincial ports to profit from the flow of goods. By the 1840's, the
complexion ofCebu City had changed. This is shown in the increase of popula-
.tion (in the 1840s, Cebu City. except San Nicolas, had apopulation of 10.921), and
the growing ethnic diversity of the port population (in the 184Os, there were
around 3,000'Chinese mestizos and the beginnings of a new Chinese immigra-
tion such that the city's Chinese population rose from 18 to 1.500 between 1840
and 1895). Cebu became a major participant in the export economy. In the 1840s
Cebu was the third leading sugar-producing province in the Philippines. after'
Parnpanga and Bulacan. In 1856, Cebu produced 5,698 tons ofsugarwhile Negros
(which emerged as a producer only after 1860) produced only around 900 tons.
However. it was less Cebu's role as producer as its function as a distribution
center which primed urban prosperity in the port area. Cebu was a market city.
a focal point for the collection. handling, and distribution oftrade commodities.
The Journal of History 81
Nineteenth-century Cebu was an entreport for such products as hemp, sugar,
tobacco. rice, corn. and coffee from Negros, Leyte, Bohol, Samar, and Northern
Mindanao. It was, on one hand, a major point for the transhipment ofgoods to
Manila and markets in Australia, United States, Great Britain, and Spain. It was,
on the other hand, a distribution center for inbound commodities for the cen-
tral and eastern Visayas and northern Mindanao.
The opening of Cebu to world trade. by virtue of the Spanish royal decree of july
30, 1880. confi rmed the status of Cebu as one of the nerve centers of the revital-
ized colonial economy. Between 1868 and 1883, the total value of the export trade
of Cebu City more than doubled (from 1,1 81 ,050 pesos to 2,429,048 p~sos ) .
Changes in the city transformed the hinterland. Nineteenth century develop-
ments brought about the closer integration of city and countryside. In Cebu
Province. town-building dramatically increased. As late as the eighteenth cen-
tury. the provincial settlement pattern was highly dispersed and the cabeceras
created by the Spaniards were largely unpopulated.As late as 1737, an Augustin-
ian priest said that usually only 8 or 10 houses were located in the cabecera of
towns with apopulation as large as 1,000 or 2,000 as peoplepreferred to liveclose
to their clearings or farms. Until 1825, there were only l3 towns in the province
of Cebu. Between 1825 and 1898, forty-four new towns were created.
Commercial agriculture and trade created a more fleshed-out hierarchy ofsettle-
ments in the province (and. at another remove, the region): fi rst, the city, the
head-link to the colonial capital and the outside world; then the cabeceras or
poblaciones strategically located throughout the Island; and finally, the barrios or
sitios where the primary producers worked and lived. It was not just progress
which created this system. Darker fo rces were also at work: the dispossession of
cultivators and petty landowners, peasantization and the rise of tenancy,the rise
of the haciendas and the concentration of the wealth in the hands of a few
(usually city-based) fa milies, the emergence of a cash economy, and the weak-
ening of local autonomy. All of these provided the ground for class and rural-
urban tensions which are as much a part of the history of the city as the statistics
on urban infrastructure and volume of trade.
Trade ushered in a period of rapid urban growth in the Cebu port area. All these
created the modern form of Cebu City. By 1900, Cebu City had a population of
,I:
 Resif 8. Mojares • The FonnaUol!j;lf a City: Nineteenth Century Cebu
82
15.000 (30,000with adjoiningSan Nicolas included), includingmore than a thou-
sand foreign residents, and some 2,000buildings and houses. Increasinglydiver-
sified. the city encompassed 18'districts or barrios.
The character of the city was to be seen in the way urban space was organized.
The city's main functional components were, to begin with. the port and its
associated complex ofwharves. warehouses. factories or sheds (for bulk-break-
ing. sorting. and grading), and shipping services (coaling station. shipyard).
This was the door through which commodities. bills of exchange, and men
entered and exited.
Close to the port were three associated administrative centers. First were the
economic institutions through which capitalism exercised control: banks. trad-
ing companies, brokerages. shipping firms, and insurance agencies. Chiefamong
this were the English houses of Smith Bell & Co. (ca 1865) and Loney. Kerr & Co.
(ca. 1867), and the American firm of Russell & Sturgis (ca. 1868). which com-
bined the functions of traders, banks, shipowners. and shipping and insurance
agents. Second. we have the politico-military institution that maintained civil
order and facilitated political control of the surrounding territory: the Casa
Gobierno (the seat of the provincial government). Ayuntamiento (the city gov-
ernment), Fort San Pedro, and the offices of the colonial government. Third, we
have the various religious and ideological sites which created the substance and
semblance of moral order: the Bishop's Palace. churches and convents, schools,
and even the public parks-Plaza Maria Cristina (Independencia ), Plaza del
General Lono (Rizal), Plaza Alcolea (Freedom Park). and Plaza Parian - which
functioned not only as recreational places but as open spaces to highlight the
ceremonial power of government and church. All three centers were concen-
trated in the ciudad proper (roughly the six-hectare area bounded by present-
day Magallanes. Juan Luna, Manalili and Martires streets).
Close to these centers was the market. Corresponding to the scale of the city,
there was agreat deal ofsurfacediversity in market establishments and activities.
In Cebu, this ranged from European-style bazaars, jewellers, and tobacco shops
(which dominated the main business street, Calle Magallanes) - catering to a
rising demand for customer items among a cosmopolitan, urban popuIati?n -:-
then to the public market (In Lutao district. now Carbon Market area) With Its
The Joumal of History 83
petty Chinese shops, butchersheds,hawkers,and retailers offish, meat, vegetables,
and other fo od and household items. In sections and interstices of the
commercial area were to be found small-scale manufacturing establishments as
well as an assortment ofprofessional and service shops and offices (livery stables,
funeral parlors. drugstores. pawnshops. printshops, and others).
The location ofresidences was highly mixed. Though the Spaniards had carried
out a policy of residential segregation for racial groups (the ciudad for Span-
iards, Parian for Chinese mestizos, Lutao for the Chinese. and San Nicolas for
indios), racial lines, like class divisions. tended to be indistinct and half-articu-
lated. The wealthy merchant families. however, gravitated around Parian (before
suburbanization began in .the early twentieth century with the westward expan-
sion of the city). Lower-class dwellings and nascent slums were to be found at
the edges as well as the inner interstices of the city.
As a colonial provincial city, Cebu was essentially an economic intermediary -
a middleman - between the industrializing countries and the largely captive
source of raw materials; between. on one hand. the colonial capital and the
metropolitan powers. and, on the other. the province and region in which Cebu
was located. In the colonial system, it was less an economic center as a way-
station. Hence, like colonial cities elsewhere, much of the city economy was
taken up by the tertiary sector. Cebu was quintessentially a city of administra-
tors, clerks, agents, retail merchants, grocers, peddlers, domestics, and transport
workers. A 1900 occupational census of the city shows that 6,014 were in trade
and transportation, 5.170 in domestic and personal services, and 814 in agricul-
ture. The lack .of industrial development prevented employment opportunities
in the city from expanding. or expanding in other directions. Manufacturing was
limited to small-scale, cottage-type industries: soap and candlemakers, coco-
nut-oil factories. corn mills, shoemakers, native distilleries, and foundries.
Cebu City is to be understood in relation to internal and external worlds. On one
hand, Cebu is a focal point for the concentration ofeconomic wealth drained off
not only from other places in the island province of Cebu but from the
surrounding region. particularly eastern Visayas and northern Mindanao. It stands
at the center of a network of provincial ports, towns, and villages that. in turn.
were collecting-and-distributing points for their own immediate hinterland.
84 Resil B. Mojares • The Formation of a City' Nineteenth Century Cebu
On the other hand, Cebu is a center subordinated to larger, more powerful
centers: Manila and beyond, such capitals of world commerce as New York,
London, or Amsterdam. Such links underlie its prosperity but also its vulner-
ability, arising from its dependence. on larger systems on which it exercises
limited control.
To what extent, or in what ways, has the character of Cebu defmed its function as
innovator or generator of social and political change? There are two general
views on the role of cities (and, in particular, colonial cities). One stresses their
generative functions: they are forward points ofsocial progress, advanced forms
of social organization, centers of creativity. The other stresses their parasitic
character: they drain off the wealth of the countryside and hinterland, exploit
primary producers, concentrate resources and consume surpluses, and redis-
tribute inequitably to centralize power and maintain hegemony over the sur-
rounding territory.
In colonial and post-colonial Southeast Asia where the urban hierarchy is domi-
nated by a "primate" city, secondary cities like Cebu experience a further dual-
ism: they do not only profit from the cyclical booms of world commerce but
suffer as well a double subordination to the centers' of the world economy and
the capital of the nation-state itself.
These dualisms shape the political ethos of Cebu City. This is illustrated in the
city's response to the two important events of turn-of-the-century Philippine
history: the anti-Spanish revolution and the American occupation. In the nine-
teenth century, economic prosperity and such concomitants as higher educa-
tion, literacy, and exposure to the outside world empowered the Cebuano elite of
the port area. The Seminario-Colegio de San Carlos (with a discontinuous history
that goes back to 1595) began accepting students on a regular basis in 1825 and,
between 1881 and 1895, its enrollment increased from 310 to 662. Aschool for
women, Colegio de la lnmaculada Concepcion, was established in 1879. A fair
number of Cebuanos went on to higher education in Santo Tomas and Ateneo in
Manila. Printshops and newspapers came to be established: Imprenta de
Escondriilas, the first Cebu printshop, in 1873; El Boletin de Cebu, the first Cebu
newspaper, in 1886. Increased maritime traffic (by the end of the 1860s it took
less than two days to travel by steamship between Manila and Cebu) brought
into the city not only commodities and men but new ideas.
The Journal of History 85
This empowerment was expressed in two ways: first, in local assertiveness (with
class and ethnic overtones) on the part of the local elite; and, second, in an
emerging nationalism. Two illustrations can be cited for the first. From 1828 to
1879, the Chinese mestizo elite of the city waged a drawn-out legal battle against
the Augustinians and local Spanish officials over the civil and ecclesiastical
jurisdiction of the rich Parian district (which existed as a separate town from
1755 to 1849 and had expanded to include the districts of Mabolo, Lahug, and
Banilad). In the feud, Parian residents had lawyers send petitions to the Spanish
King. Though its status as a separate town and as an independent parish ended
in 1849 and 1879, respectively, the Parian demonstrated its will to autonomy and
power. In this conflict, the wealthy city residents showed both an appetite for
power and a capacity to work against the wishes of local church and civil au-
thorities.
Another instance of this assertiveness came in 1888. In the face of the sugar
crisis in the 1880s (when prices and production dropped due to the competition
of the European sugar beet industry), the leading Cebuano merchants and land-
owners met on April 26, 1888 and formed a society called La Esperanza. Its
officers were the elite of the port area: Don Buenaventura Veloso, Don Victoriano
Osrnefia, Don Pedro Cui, Don Francisco Llorente, Don Valeriano Climaco, Don
Florentino Rallos, Don Juan Base de Villarosa, and Don Alfredo Velasco. The
society called for the promotion of agriculture by demanding higher prices
from the foreign firms for export crops. It also sought to protect its investments
and mitigate dependence on foreign houses by establishing large warehouses
for the storage of sugar. Manila, however, sat on its application for recognition
and by the time its statutes were returned to Cebu for revision in 1891, the
upturn in the sugar trade had dissipated the interest of the members of the
society.
On the eve ofthe Revolution, the Cebuano urban elite, plugged into the channels
of world commerce and dealing directly with British and American trading
houses, must have felt that the Spanish colonial presence had become excess
baggage. It was for this reason that some of them supported the Revolution and
most welcomed the change of government. In the main, however, they adopted
a cautious, conservative position. The city elite responded to the Tagalog rebel-
lion of 1896 by donating money to the Spanish cause and by either supporting or
joining the voluntarios leaies. the pro-Spanish local militia. In the Cebuano
86 Resil8. M oja res • The Fonnation of a City: Nineteenth Century Cebu
rebellion of April 1898, they largely stayed out of harm's way. They began to
manifest their support for the Revolution only late in 1898 when it was clear that
the tides of war had shifted in favor of the Republic with the escalation of
Cebuano resistance and the entry of the Americans. They had serious reserva-
tions, however, as the armed resistance was led by men that included 'Tagalogs',
strangers, and declasse elements in local society. There were anxieties about the
turning 'upside-down' of a familiar order. Thus, when the Americans occupied
Cebu City in February 1899, the elite again shifted their allegiance to the occupy-
ing power. In the days that followed, they called for the cessation of hostilities,
the normalization of business conditions, and the stationing of more U.S. troops
in the island.
Urban society, however, also spawned social elements of a less conservative bent
than the city's merchant elite. The anti-Spanish revolution and anti-American
war were led by three discernible groups of men. The first were members of an
inchoate urban bourgeoisie (what an observer of the time called media
ilustrados): civil servants, students, small property owners, and skilled artisans.
The second were members of the municipal elites from outlying towns (like
Toledo, Tuburan, and Bogo). The third were migrants and revolutionary agents
from Luzon and other places. The social complexion of the resisters shows that
they were men exposed to urban influences, inhabiting the edges and interstices
of the urban social order. Of interest is the role of mobile, free floating elements
like seamen (who provided the early links between the leaders of the Revolution
in Luzon and those in the provinces), migrants, and political agents. Of further
interest is the role ofthe municipal elites: these were men linked to the port area
by trade, who participated in the profits of that trade but were disadvantaged in
relation to the foreign houses and the business elite of the Cebu Port area. Based
in the towns, their distance from the coercive instruments of the state also
equipped them with a certain autonomy of action.
The bulk of the fighters was, of course, made up of peasants and rural dwellers
(often referred to as bukidnon or taga-bukid}, men of the city's hinterland, who
were impelled by a mix of motives: peasant egalitarianism, grievances over the
effects of peasantization, patron-client reciprocities, racial pride and visions of
a millenarian order. These were men who had little stake in the social order and
they were the ones who continued the struggle, along more indigenous lines,
after the surrender of the republican leaders in Cebu in October 1901.
The Journal of History 87
In sum, urbanization in Cebu linked local society to world commerce. Such a
linkage shaped the contradictory tendencies - conservation, reform, rebellion
- in the political ethos of urban Cebu. Conservatism, however, was the domi-
nant tendency: it underlies theearly support for Spain, the ambivalence towards
the Republic, and the capitulation to the Americans on the part of the Cebu
urban elite.
The period dealt with in this paper is important since the history of Cebu City
from the nineteenth century to the present has been marked by a distinct con-
tinuity. In its outward aspects,Cebu Cityhas changed dramatically. It has, in 1980,
a population of 490,281, and has grown to be the axis ofa metropolitan area that
includes two other cities and six municipalities (the population of Metropolitan
Cebu in 1980 is 92 ~,754) . Its economic character, however, remains basically
unchanged. If anything, the change has been towards an even closer integration
of Cebu to the networks of the global economy. There are current moves to
"bypass" primate Manila through greater administrative and fiscal autonomy in
such areas, or through such instruments, as the creation of a Metropolitan Cebu
Authority, greater autonomy in the management of Cebus international air and
sea por~, the expansion of foreign investments, and the creation of new export-
processing zones.
All these may herald the beginning of a new phase in Cebus history.Yet,while the
past shows to us the logic of this development, it does not inspire confi dence
that this will necessarily bring about the long-term progress of the interlocking
systems of city, region, and nation.
References
The following are the major sources of Cebu City history used in this study:
IIruce L Fenner. eebu UndertheSpanish Flag (I521- 1896): An Economic and Social History
(Cebu: San Carlos Publications, 1985).
11<'.\11 11. Mojures, elISaGorordoin eebu: UrbanResidence in aPhilippine Province(Cebu: Ramon
Allt lil iz Fo undation, Inc., 1983).
Mil 1I,It,I( :l ll l i llil IIC." ·r! IC: Changing Nature of the CebuUrban Elite in the 19th Century, "Philippine
Sodll / J //\1111' \': Ulobl~l Trade ul/ll l.ucal1'ra/lsforrnatiotIS, A.W,McCoy & E.C.de Jesus, (eds.)
(l)tll'wn Cuy: Aten«l de Munila University Press, 1982),251-296.
88 Resil B. M ojares • The Formation of a City: N ineteenth Century Cebu

Resil B.Mojares. Th eWarAgainst theAmericans: Resistanceand Collaborationin Crbu, 1898-

1906 (Cebu:Maria Cacao, forthcoming).
Daniel F. Doeppers,"The Development of the Philippine Cities Before 1900; JournalofAsian
Studies 31:4 (1 971 -72), 789-792.
Frederi ck L. \Vernstedt,"Cebu: Focus of Philippine InterislandTrade;' EconomicGeography,
32:4 (October 1956), 336-3 48.

For a general view of colonial cities in Southeast Asia, see:

T.G. McGee, The Southeast Asian City (NewYork:Frederick A.Praeger, 1967).
YM.Yeung & C.R Lo, eds., ChangingSoutheastAsianCities:Readingson Urbanization (Singapore:
Oxford University Press, 1976).