Archaeology and our territorial dispute with China

Textbook history often organizes the story of our nation into periods marked by our colonial experiences: the Spanish period 1565-1898, the American period 1898-1946, and the Japanese period 1941-1945. Before Spain planted her flag and asserted control over the islands, we had the Pre-Spanish or Precolonial period. With the recognition of Philippine independence after World War II, our story becomes ours alone, without a colonial master to blame for our folly.

What has been overlooked in this scheme of things is the short British occupation from 1762 to 1764, as well as our long relationship with China and the Chinese that goes beyond recorded history.  China and the Philippines have had a trading relationship for 1,000 years, as shown by archeological finds of Chinese porcelain all over the archipelago, the oldest of which date back to the ninth century. One would think that this millennium-old relationship counts for something in our dispute with China over Scarborough Shoal, but it seems our shared archeological heritage has taken on political color. Last year a Philippine-French underwater archeological expedition was forced to leave the disputed area because China now asserts its ownership over all shipwrecks and their cargo in the South China Sea. This development is quite sad because China seems to be using underwater archeology not to establish relations with its neighbors, but as a way to assert its territorial claims.

Ancient Chinese ceramics have turned up in many places where earth is moved for planting or dug up for roads and buildings. Nineteenth-century French and German travellers in the Philippines tell us of parish priests and private citizens who built collections of ceramics unearthed during public works. At the height of ceramic collecting in the 1960s, thousands of ancient pieces from China, Thailand and Vietnam were excavated from land and sea in the Philippines, providing artifacts for museums and antique shops. These pieces have come down to us as interior decoration for homes of the period rather than as relics of a trading system that goes back before the recorded history of the Philippines.

The late E. Arsenio Manuel got me interested in Oriental ceramics and Philippine earthenware when he challenged me to shift from history to archeology by declaring, “Where history ends, anthropology begins.”

Gregorio Zaide opens his 10-volume compilation of historical sources with the “Wen Shiann Tung Kuo” (A General Investigation of the Chinese cultural Sources). While the work was actually written from 1317 to 1319, there is a stray reference to the Philippines dating to 982 A.D. that Zaide highlights as “the first recorded date in Sino-Philippine relations.” The short text reads: “There were traders of the country of Ma-yi carrying merchandise to the coast of Canton [for sale] in the seventh year of Tai-ping-shing-kuo.” From this text we see that trade was not a one-way affair with the Chinese coming to the Philippines to trade. Sometimes pre-Spanish “Filipinos” went to Canton with their wares.

Another pre-Hispanic source is the “Tao-i-chih-lio”  (Description of the Barbarians of the Isles) by Wang Ta-yuan dated 1349 A.D., with reference to Ma-yi (Mindoro) as follows:

The people boil seawater to make salt and ferment molasses to make liquor. The natural products exchanged for Chinese goods were: kapok, yellow beeswax, tortoise shell, betel nuts, and cloth of various pattern, rare wood, pearls, deerskin, birds’ nest, etc. The Chinese goods traded for these were: cauldrons, pieces of iron, red cloth or taffetas of various color stripes, ivory, “ting” (a kind of Chinese silver money) or the like, tin, wine, silk, etc. After agreeing on prices, the barbarian traders carry off the goods for bartering the native products and bring these products back to the Chinese in the amount agreed on. The Chinese vessels’ traders (the Pinoys) are trustworthy. They never fail to keep the agreement on their bargains.

Chinese traders travelled southward from China to the Philippines and Indonesia, dropping goods along the way and waiting several months for the winds of September and October to bring them back home. When they returned to the places where they had consigned their goods with middlemen, the payment was ready and waiting. The honesty of precolonial Filipinos seems unbelievable today…

Excavated Oriental ceramics support written records like this description of Ma-li-lu (Manila?):

“…There are very few forests. The fields are in the high land and their soil is lean. The people often cultivate potato or taro. The climate is hot… Both men and women do up their hair in a flat tress. All wear short shirt of blue cloth, and tie around them a red cloth turban. … They make beds by weaving up pieces of bamboo, and burn raw wax for light. The natural products are tortoise shell, yellow beeswax, la -ka,  Jwu-buh, and kapok…”

History thus depends on written sources, but it can be supplemented by archeological finds. Oriental ceramics provide proof of precolonial Philippine trade and civilization.

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