brief history of philippine economics

brief history of philippine economics

The pre-Spanish Philippines was a small community, demographically and politically fragmented. It, however, had a form of organization named the barangay, originally a kinship group headed by a datu (Agoncillo 1990). The concept was one of dependency or authority over people rather than on territory. Each barangay was an independent social, political, and economic unit. There were no streets in the native settlements and no roads linked one barangay to another. As a result, the Filipinos economic contacts with others were limited, as they were not regular participants in the regional or foreign trade of Southeast Asia. The barangay were neither suppliers nor producers of exotic, specialized, high value wares or goods that attracted foreign traders (Corpuz 1997).

The economic life of the barangays during the pre-Hispanic period was characterized by agricultural cultivation. Wet rice agriculture was supplemented by dry rice agriculture (Sison and de Lima 1998: 68). Besides rice, there was an abundance of coconuts, sugar cane, cotton, hemp, bananas, oranges and many kinds of fruit and vegetables. In the early times, the system of production was still modest, before it was increased by the use of irrigation, as evidenced by the world-famous Ifugao rice terraces in Luzon. This system increased productivity significantly, so that from here on, the Filipinos could improve their economic life.

Although gradually improved, the pre-Hispanic economic life of the barangay was limited by the structure of native society (Corpuz 1997). They were largely self-contained economic units producing little more than a sufficiency for their own needs in a delicate balance between nature and people and as a result there was probably little taxable surplus. Nevertheless, the Filipinos made trading voyages to Indochina and elsewhere. In contrast, there were foreign traders voyaging to the Philippines Archipelago among them Arabs and Chinese who were the most active. There were also...