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 Empire
With the conquest and settlement of the Philippines, the Spanish Empire reached its greatest extent. In 1564, Miguel López de Legazpi was commissioned by the viceroy of New Spain (Mexico), Don Luis de Velasco, to lead an expedition in the Pacific Ocean to find the Spice Islands, where earlier explorers Ferdinand Magellan and Ruy López de Villalobos had landed in 1521 and 1543, respectively. The westward sailing to reach the sources of spices continued to be a necessity with the still Ottomans controlling major choke points in central Asia. It was unclear how the agreement between Spain and Portugal dividing the Atlantic world affected finds on the other side of the Pacific. Spain had ceded its rights to the "Spice Islands" to Portugal in the Treaty of Saragossa in 1529, but the appellation was vague as was their exact delineation. The Legazpi expedition was ordered by King Philip II, after whom the Philippines had earlier been named by Ruy López de Villalobos, when Philip was heir to the throne. The king stated that "the main purpose of this expediiton is to establish the return route from the western isles, since it is already known that the route to them is fairly short." The viceroy died in July 1564, but the Audiencia and López de Legazpi completed the preparations for the expedition. On embarking on the expedition, Spain lacked maps or information to guide the king's decision to authorize the expedition. That realization subsequently led to the creation of reports from the various regions of the empire, the relaciones geográficas. The Philippines came under the jurisdiction of the viceroyalty of Mexico, and once the Manila Galleon sailings between Manila and Acapulco were established, Mexico became the Philippines' link to the larger Spanish Empire.