Count a Maranao princess and an American spy among this author’s ancestors. Albert Samaha, author of Concepcion: An Immigrant Family’s Fortunes, guests in this episode as he discusses his critically acclaimed book.

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The book version of this podcast, entitled Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves: Lost Tales from the Philippine Colonial Period, 1565-1946, is now available. Visit my publisher’s website for availability. (An ebook version is also available on Amazon.)

References:

Samaha, Albert (2021). Concepcion: An Immigrant Family’s Fortunes. Riverhead Books. 

Samaha, Albert (22 February 2022). Personal communication (Zoom interview).

To combat an outbreak of bubonic plague in turn-of-the-century Manila, the American authorities assembled a crack force of ratcatchers and waged a war against rodents.

Over the course of the Galleon Trade, the Spanish bought silk from China for millions of silver pieces. But what if, some canny entrepreneurs thought, the Philippines made its own silk industry?

For centuries, the forbidding stone walls of Intramuros protected the forces occupying the archipelago. How were they built? How were they tested? And how did they eventually fall? 

In 1872, the year of the execution of Gomburza, a king visits the Philippines… and falls head over heels in love with a lady from Bulacan.

From missionary reports to primetime sitcoms, the occupiers of the Philippines have obsessed about Filipinos, monkeys, and that strange question of whether the inhabitants of the archipelago possessed tails.

When we think of the Galleon Trade, we usually think of rich cargoes of silver, or spices, or silk. But it also carried human beings, in chains, from Manila, to be sold in Mexico. This was the Transpacific slave trade. 

Follow us on IG: @thecolonialdept

Follow us on TikTok: @thecolonialdept

Email us: [email protected]

The book version of this podcast is called Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves: Lost Tales From the Philippine Colonial Period, 1565-1946. You can find out more about it here. (An ebook version is also available on Amazon.)

References:

Seijas, Tatiana (2014). Asian Slaves in Colonial Mexico: From Chinos to Indians. Cambridge University Press.

“The Amistad Case” (undated).  National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/amistad

Scott, William Henry (1991). Slavery in the Spanish Philippines. De La Salle University Press.

Legarda, Benito (1999). After the Galleons: Foreign Trade, Economic Change, and Entrepreneurship in the Nineteenth Century Philippines. Ateneo de Manila University Press.

As The Colonial Dept moves onto a new season, we look back at our first thirteen episodes... and give a sneak peek of the stories that are coming next. The archives of the occupied Philippines are rich with untold stories, and we're here to bring them to light.

Magellan may have been the first European to sail to the Philippines, but it would be an aged friar, charts in hand, eye to the east, who would steer the Philippines into the colonial age.

In the aftermath of the British conquest of Manila, the East India Company had to answer an important question: How will they wring every penny they could out of their new prize?