266 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [VOL. 50 



important factors in the long line of relations between China and 

 the West and the opening act in a deplorable series of unjust wars 

 and inhuman outrages. This event, no doubt, must have left a 

 deep and lasting impression on the minds of the Chinese world and 

 furnished good grounds for their prejudices against foreigners. 

 And not only that : the Spanish system of treating the Chinese 

 became the model of the Chinese in their treatment of foreigners. 

 This is expressly stated by an English writer, who remarked seventy 

 years ago, 1 "That the Chinese authorities are not entirely ignorant 

 of the situation of their countrymen at Manila, we infer from the 

 well-attested fact that the system which they have long been endeav- 

 oring to impose upon foreigners here [in China] has been borrowed 

 from the Spanish Government. We are informed on the very best 

 authority that Pwankequa, the father of a late well-known senior 

 Hong merchant and grandfather of him who bears the same name 

 now, saw there the harsh treatment inflicted on the Chinese in 

 order to keep them in subjection, and marked it as a 'model and 

 motive' to be acted on, after his return to Canton. He was a man 

 of considerable influence in regard to all measures concerning for- 

 eigners, and the restriction on their privileges which he caused to be 

 introduced have been gradually becoming more severe since the 

 middle of the last century." 



Indeed, if we would fully grasp the innermost causes of the Boxer 

 rebellion, we must go back to the history of the relations of the 

 Spaniards to the Chinese in the Philippines. 



When the famous governor, Pedro de Acuha, arrived at Manila, 

 in 1602, trade with China had reached its climax. Yearly thirteen 

 to fourteen thousand merchants assembled at a kind of fair, when 

 with the spring monsoons the large junks came from China. Silks 

 and nankeens, porcelain, copper and iron, besides many other prod- 

 ucts, were exchanged for Mexican silver. At that time there were, 

 according to Argensola, thirty thousand Chinese settled in Manila. 2 

 This prosperity was destined not to last, however, for in the follow- 

 ing year there appeared in Manila a Chinese mission in search of an 

 El Dorado, an expedition which, though it deserves a place among 

 the wildest and most visionary of quests after gold, yet was fraught 

 with the greatest consequences for the Chinese inhabitants of the 

 country. The story would have a humorous tinge were it not for 

 the fact that the folly of one man cost the lives of twenty-five 

 thousand. 



^Chinese Repository (1834), vol. 11, p. 350. 



" F. Blumentritt, Die Chinesen auf den Philippine!!, p. 23. 



