WI: Spaniards found gold in the Philippines

The main goal for colonization of the Philippine archipelago was to gain access to China for importing porcelain for American colonies and Spain and exporting silver to China. What if the Spaniards explored more the archipelago and settle in areas like in Mindoro or Butuan and there, stumbled gold reserves ready for extraction.

Would Spaniards flock more to the Philippines after the discovery similar to Latin America to extent that PH population is as mestizo and Hispanicized as Latin America?
 
It depends entirely on whether the Spanish could retain control. The Philippines with a solid gold supply becomes a very tempting target for other powers. I'd expect Britain, or the Netherlands to make efforts to take the archipelago.

In which case, we now have the East Georgian Islands :p

Or the Victorias.
 
Would Spaniards flock more to the Philippines after the discovery similar to Latin America to extent that PH population is as mestizo and Hispanicized as Latin America?
Probably not.

First, the Spaniards knew that there was gold. In 1572 and 1573 they coerced the natives in two Visayan islands to give up 190 kilograms of gold, for example. This did not lead to any particular emigration. Southeast Asia is just way too far when there's gold and silver just across the Atlantic.

Second, the population base in the Philippines is just too large. The population did fall OTL, mind you. Diseases took a heavy toll.[1] When the Spaniards arrived in Panay "a great famine among the natives of this island and pestilence" soon followed, while around 1591 some sort of disease was "killing off children and old men, although of greater danger to adults than to the young" in southwest Luzon and there was "a dangerous out-break of malignant and contagious fever" in Manila. Epidemics regularly killed large proportions of the population - 40% of the population of some missions - just as in the Americas. Worse, Spanish raids, killings, and robberies contributed to population decline: "the greater part of the island of Cebu was destroyed and the natives died of hunger and many villages were depopulated," the Spaniards themselves note of the consequences of their actions. The population fell from as much as 1.5 million to 0.6 million in the first century of Spanish conquest.[2] You'll note that this is much less of a collapse than in the Americas (the Pueblo population of New Mexico fell from 200,000 to 30,000 in the same time frame); this is probably because the Filipinos in the largest and most densely populated islands had at least partially endemic epidemics (Spaniards noted that adults often suffered less than children, a sign of endemicity), unlike in the Americas. So I don't find it very realistic that the Filipino population could have fallen much lower, considering how much it fell OTL. What this means is that in any TL, for Spaniards to represent even 10% of the population you'd need something on the level of 50,000 Spaniards, five or six times more than the number of Spaniards OTL. I don't think gold could have been that much of a draw.

[1] Most epidemic disease needs a sufficiently high population density to become endemic - 7,000 people always susceptible to disease in an interactive population of 100,000 to 200,000 in the case of smallpox - and while the Filipinos did have commerce with the Chinese and Malays, the low population density of the Archipelago (only two islands, Luzon and Panay, had more than 100,000 people) meant disease was only partially endemic. Similarly, the lightly populated Mongols were afflicted with absolutely horrible smallpox epidemics during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries even though they had been in contact with smallpox-bearing Chinese ever since their nation existed.

[2] I draw on "Conquest, pestilence and demographic collapse in the early Spanish Philippines" by Linda A Newson for most of this.
 
"First, the Spaniards knew that there was gold..."

Yikes !! I would have thought the geology was wrong !
Live and learn, live and learn...
 
"First, the Spaniards knew that there was gold..."

Yikes !! I would have thought the geology was wrong !
Live and learn, live and learn...

We do have gold deposits here.

Just that we were too far away to really bother with it, compared to administrating an entire continent which is nearer by far and has gold of its own (the whole reason for Spanish inflation). Also, dealing with European diplomacy, fighting wars against France and the Netherlands and the Turk and the Corsairs, and then switching dynastic allegiances and fighting against Austria and England, all the while dealing with an entire freaking continent after expelling the most competent civil servants and artisans because religion...

Yeah, it's a wonder we remained under Spanish rule for so long.
 
The main goal for colonization of the Philippine archipelago was to gain access to China for importing porcelain for American colonies and Spain and exporting silver to China. What if the Spaniards explored more the archipelago and settle in areas like in Mindoro or Butuan and there, stumbled gold reserves ready for extraction.

Would Spaniards flock more to the Philippines after the discovery similar to Latin America to extent that PH population is as mestizo and Hispanicized as Latin America?


There is already gold and they don't need to export population..

We do have gold deposits here.

Just that we were too far away to really bother with it, compared to administrating an entire continent which is nearer by far and has gold of its own (the whole reason for Spanish inflation). Also, dealing with European diplomacy, fighting wars against France and the Netherlands and the Turk and the Corsairs, and then switching dynastic allegiances and fighting against Austria and England, all the while dealing with an entire freaking continent after expelling the most competent civil servants and artisans because religion...

Yeah, it's a wonder we remained under Spanish rule for so long.

The main reason why the Spanish were able to keep the Philippines is because of the Spanish-Portuguese replaced by the Spanish-Dutch rivalry in the East Indies initially due to the Spice Trade, if the Spanish united with Portugal earlier without the habsburgs, the Philippines would not even needed to be colonized by the Spanish it would be a larger Portuguese East Indies under a united iberia.
 
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