Conquest, pestilence and demographic collapse in the early Spanish Philippines Linda A. Newson Department of Geography, King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK Abstract Documentary evidence for the demographic impact of Spanish conquest and colonial rule in the Philip- pines suggests that the pre-Spanish population was about 1.5 million. This is higher than previous estimates and implies that the decline in the early colonial period was greater than often supposed. However, the de- cline was lower than that associated with Spanish conquest in the Americas. The more moderate impact of Old World diseases in the Philippines cannot be attributed to immunity that Filipinos had acquired through contacts with Asia in pre-Spanish times, but to the low population density and difficult communications between and within the islands that impeded their spread. Despite new colonial policies aimed at the more peaceful acquisition of new territories, conquest in the Philippines was accompanied by considerable blood- shed. However, in the longer term the impact of colonial rule was moderated by the limited Spanish pres- ence that resulted from the remoteness of the islands from Spain and the limited opportunities there for wealth creation, notably in the form of precious minerals. Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Philippines; Old World diseases; Epidemics; Spanish conquest; Demographic decline; Colonial rule Ferdinand Magellan visited the island of Cebu in the Philippines in 1521, but the Spanish con- ducted three further expeditions before Miguel de Legazpi secured a permanent foothold in the islands in 1565. In the Americas, the initial impact of Spanish conquest was devastating. Although some controversy exists over the contact population of the Americas in 1492, it is not unreason- able to suggest that the native population may have declined from about 50e60 million in 1492 to 6.5 million in 1650. 1 However, John Phelan argues that in the Philippines ‘conquest did not un- leash a sharp decline of the Filipino population’. 2 Most scholars agree that a significant factor in E-mail address: linda.newson@kcl.ac.uk 0305-7488/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2004.08.001 Journal of Historical Geography 32 (2006) 3e20 www.elsevier.com/locate/jhg