2012: Remembering the past, focusing on the future

As the year ends, thoughts typically turn to events over the past year. For Britain, memories of the Olympics, Paralympics and Queen’s Diamond Jubilee remain most vivid. For me, welcoming President Aquino to London was a great honour. Less prominently, 2012 was also significant in the history of Philippine-British relations, being the 250th anniversary of the British occupation of Manila.

Remembering such anniversaries is a sensitive matter: I do not celebrate colonialism. So anniversaries like this are not to be celebrated, but neither should they be ignored. The British philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke was alive at the time of the occupation. Although he did not visit Manila, it is worth recalling his words: “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” Appropriately, this anniversary was marked sensitively by an excellent exhibition at the Yuchengco Museum of maps and pictures from the period by the Philippine Map Collectors Society.

The British occupation of Manila is not well known in the Philippines or Britain. It was Spain’s entry into the Seven Years War of 1756 to 1763 which led to the British East India Company in Madras taking control of Manila from the Spanish in October 1762. When the war ended with the Treaty of Paris in February 1763, the scene was set for the occupation to end, although it took until July 1764 for the British fleet to depart.

The British occupation was limited in time and geography. The British were only able fully to secure Manila and Cavite. However, at different times they occupied Pasig, and parts of Bulacan, Pampanga and Laguna. The occupation inspired the uprising of Diego Silang y Andaya in Ilocos. The occupying forces also contained a large number of sepoys or Indian soldiers, many of whom chose to remain in Cainta, Rizal, taking Filipina brides. Their descendants remain to this day, and I was honoured to meet their community when I visited Cainta as guest of Mayor Mon Ilagan in September. 

British merchants returned peacefully after the occupation. Trading houses like Smith Bell & Co and Ker & Co prospered into the 20th century when they became Philippine-owned. British banks were established and do business to this very day. One of them was banker to Jose Rizal; the other predicts that the Philippines will be the world’s 16th largest economy by 2050. British engineers built railways (and golf courses), and developed the Visayan sugar industry. A statue of Englishman Nicholas Loney at the harbour in Iloilo pays tribute to one of those pioneers.

The world order has changed dramatically since 1762. The Philippines is a respected member of the United Nations, a regional power in East Asia and a leading member of ASEAN. The British Empire has given way to the Commonwealth, a voluntary association of 54 sovereign countries who support each other in shared goals of democracy and development.

As the year ends, I recall this part of the history of our relations. But I do so in the context of what is now a modern and vibrant friendship between two democracies, bound together by shared values and a wealth of personal connections. We remember the past, but as the New Year fast approaches, Britain and the Philippines are looking very much to the future.

(Stephen Lillie is British Ambassador to the Philippines.)