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.
History of the Philippines (900–1521)
Other sources of pre-colonial history include archeological findings, records from contact with the Song Dynasty, the Bruneian Empire, Japan, and Muslim traders, genealogical records of Muslim rulers, and the collected accounts which were put into writing by Spanish chroniclers in the 17th century, as well as then-extant cultural patterns which had not yet been swept away by the coming tide of hispanization. The period prior to Spanish colonization made the Philippines a part of both the Indosphere and Sinosphere.