History of the Philippines (1521–1898)
The history of the Philippines from 1521 to 1898, also known as the Spanish colonial period, was a period during which Spain controlled the Philippine islands as the Captaincy General of the Philippines, initially under New Spain until Mexican independence in 1821, which gave Madrid direct control over the area. It was also known as Spanish East Indies to the colonialists. It started with the arrival in 1521 of European explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailing for Spain, which heralded the period when the Philippines was a colony of the Spanish Empire, and ended with the outbreak of the Philippine Revolution in 1898, which marked the beginning of the American colonial era of Philippine history.
Spanish language in the Philippines
In Manila, the Spanish language had been more or less widespread, to the point where it has been estimated at around 50% of the population knew Spanish in the late 19th century. In his 1898 book "Yesterdays in the Philippines", covering a period beginning in 1893, the American Joseph Earle Stevens, an American who resided in Manila from 1893 to 1894, wrote:
Long contact between Spanish and the local languages, Chinese dialects, and later Japanese produced a series of pidgins, known as Bamboo Spanish, and the Spanish-based creole Chavacano. At one point these were the language of a substantial proportion of the Philippine population. Unsurprisingly, given that the Philippines was administrated for centuries from New Spain in present-day Mexico, Philippine Spanish is broadly similar to American Spanish, not only in vocabulary, but in pronunciation and grammar.