This Article aims to trace the historical roots of the foreign enterprise presence in the Philippines. Initially their presence cannot be separated from the history of colonization in the country. This occurred a long time ago in a process negotiated by varied powers and involved domination and resistance. To some extent, foreign enterprises historically have expanded into transnational corporations (TNCs); structurally connected with the transformation of the global market. ‘The TNCs’, however, are possibly different from ‘the enterprises’. Nevertheless, the origin of the TNC phenomena in the contemporary era can be traced through the history of European enterprises which in the past were placed in the structure of the colonial political economy. In subsequent periods of Philippines history, US enterprises replaced the Spanish enterprises. This replacement only changed the agent; while its structure continued to exist. This paper will only show the issues pertaining to the economic history of the Philippines, especially in the colonial period.
In the first part of this Article, following the example of Scott (1998), I will discuss ‘legibility’ and ‘simplification’ used by the colonial state to control nature and society, especially during the early colonization history. It was a kind of politics of state hegemony, in Gramscian terms, which accelerated the Spanish and then the American capitalist power to penetrate the structure of the Filipino political economy. Furthermore, it was done, for example, by collecting all the scattered barangay (community) in a resettlement and catalogued the Filipinos by the gift of personal identity papers. In other parts, the Church was used by the State to reorganize native society. The barangay were resettled into pueblos and parishes. The relations between the Church and the State in the Philippines, is noted as the most successful in the Christianized history in Asia. At other times, however, the Church has had a significant role as an impetus of popular unrest among the Filipinos.
This Article is addressed also to briefly explain ethnicity and class relations in the issues of the economy and what it means in the debate of political discourse. The European enterprises, however, were developed through collaboration with local partners. In the Philippines, besides the native landlords, the Chinese and Mestizos were the middle class that benefited from the colonial presence. They have economic capacity to respond to the transformation, enter higher education institutions and talk and style themselves like their Spanish counterparts. They were often called the Ilustrados class. They consisted essentially of the educated children of landlords, bureaucratic and merchant families who adopted the ideology of the liberal bourgeoisie (Sison and de Lima 1998: 70).
The economic history of the Philippines, however, must be placed in the market transformation. The penetration of the European capitalists has opened the Philippines to the global market. In this sense, capitalism became the mode of production behind colonialism. Therefore, the term globalization has the same meaning as capitalization. Before the coming of the Europeans some traders from various nations, especially the Chinese, Indians and Arabs, visited the Philippines and conducted commerce there. At the end of the 19th century, while the Spanish rule declined, the US opened the Philippines market wider to foreign investors. Although the competition among the investors was really excited this was based on economic factors. This paper will trace the power relations against the wider perspective that has become the background to comprehending the presence of foreign enterprises in the Philippines.
The Formation of Native Society
The pre-Hispanic Philippines was a small community, demographically and politically fragmented. It, however, had a form of organization named the barangay, originally a kinship group headed by a datu (Agoncillo 1990). The concept was one of dependency or authority over people rather than on territory. Each barangay was an independent social, political, and economic unit. There were no streets in the native settlements and no roads linked one barangay to another. As a result, the Filipinos economic contacts with others were limited, as they were not regular participants in the regional or foreign trade of Southeast Asia. The barangay were neither suppliers nor producers of exotic, specialized, high value wares or goods that attracted foreign traders (Corpuz 1997).
The economic life of the barangays during the pre-Hispanic period was characterized by agricultural cultivation. Wet rice agriculture was supplemented by dry rice agriculture (Sison and de Lima 1998: 68). Besides rice, there was an abundance of coconuts, sugar cane, cotton, hemp, bananas, oranges and many kinds of fruit and vegetables. In the early times, the system of production was still modest, before it was increased by the use of irrigation, as evidenced by the world-famous Ifugao rice terraces in Luzon. This system increased productivity significantly, so that from here on, the Filipinos could improve their economic life.
Although gradually improved, the pre-Hispanic economic life of the barangay was limited by the structure of native society (Corpuz 1997). They were largely self-contained economic units producing little more than a sufficiency for their own needs in a delicate balance between nature and people and as a result there was probably little taxable surplus. Nevertheless, the Filipinos made trading voyages to Indochina and elsewhere. In contrast, there were foreign traders voyaging to the Philippines Archipelago among them Arabs and Chinese who were the most active. There were also Indian traders who spread the Indianized State of Southeast Asia. Like the other regions in this area, the Philippines were penetrated by grand world traditions from China, Arabia and India.
The circumstances in the southern region of the Philippine, however, were rather different. Here Islam was established in around 1500 and introduced a political concept of territorial State rule by rajas or sultans who exercised sovereignty over the datu. This Islamic political consolidation brought the people of Sulu and Magindanao under the central authority of the sultanates (cf. Mastura 1984). Mason and de Lima (1998: 68) note that the Sulu sultanate had reached the highest sociopolitical formation among the natives of the Philippine in the pre-colonial era. Under the Sultan, a ruling council whose officers had well defined functions assisted him in his autocratic rule. There was also a well-developed structure of political and religious leaders. In the colonial era, the strength of Islam in the southern Philippines was a persistent impetus for popular resistance against colonial rule. In comparison with the concept of barangay, the sultanate of Islam had an ability to transform itself into more cosmopolitan relations.
Since the mid 16th century, native society faced European mercantilists who come with the prominent agenda of: Gold, Gospel and Glory. While the Europeans had modern technological capacity to accelerate their agenda, the natives modestly still used the old ways to maintain their lives. Nevertheless, the natives were not off hand subdued by the Europeans. There was resistance occurring along with the Spanish colonization of the Philippines. Especially in the south, the resistance against the Spaniards was endless. A subsequent part will discuss this process further.
The Spanish Hegemony
Ferdinand Magellan on 16 March 1521, was the first Europeans to land in the Philippines. He came with five ships and a complement of 264 personnel. Magellan claimed the land for Charles I of Spain, but was killed a month later by a local chief. Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, was the first man to establish a permanent settlement for the Spanish. Different from their European counterparts, the Spanish settlement policy conserved and mixed the native population with Spanish and Christian elements. Some historians extravagantly noted that ‘before Legazpi there were no Philippines and no Filipinos.’ (Legarda 2002: 17). De Legazpi arrived in Cebu from Mexico and established the capital of Manila six years later after the defeat of the Muslim local ruler. Manila became the centre of Spanish civil, military, religious and commercial activity in the islands. At that time, the islands were given the present name in honour of Philip II of Spain (http://countrystudies.us/philippines)
Spain had three objectives in its policy towards the Philippines, its only colony in Asia: to acquire a share in the spice trade, to develop contacts with China and Japan in order to further Christian missionary efforts there and to convert the Filipinos to Christianity (http://countrystudies.us/philippines). This conversion of the Filipinos to Christianity was one of the most successful Spanish activities in the Philippines. The Church and State were inseparably linked in carrying out Spanish colonial policy. Even we are told, the success of Spanish colonization in the Philippines was built on a foundation of Church stanchions. Christianisation of the Philippines went hand in hand with the establishment of autocratic civilian rule. One of the Church contributions to colonial political authority was the reorganization of barangay into the pueblos-parishes. It was a structure that became the basis of the socio-economic system in which the natives were to produce surpluses and inspire the surpluses and native labour for the support of the new regime.
The reorganization of native society was slow, lasting from 1565 to 1700. During the preliminary phase, the families or survivors of each conquered barangay were denominated as reduccion or community in the process of being prepared or trained for civil government. At the same time, for the religious administration, the people of reduccion were also a doctrina, a community undergoing lessons in the doctrine or new faith and being prepared for baptism as Christians (Corpuz 1997)
The resettlement of scattered barangay into large villages, named pueblos, became the most successful politics that may be discerned of the Spaniards. The pueblos were established concurrently with the Church and the convents. In Filipino terms, as cited in Agoncillo (1990): ‘all the scattered Filipinos together in a reduccion (resettlement) bajo el son de la campana (under the sound of the bell) or bajo el toque de la campana (under the peal of the bell)’. To the Spaniards, the reduccion was a ‘civilizing’ device to make the Filipinos law abiding citizens of the Spanish crown and in the long run, to make them ultimately ‘little brown Spaniards,’ adopting Hispanic culture and civilization.
The viability of the pueblo-parish system, however, depended on keeping the natives, most of whom had been uprooted from their ancestral home sites, settled in the new pueblo. This meant that they had to have a steady and adequate food supply. Therefore, the pueblo system and pueblo agriculture combined to produce a profound socio-economic transformation: the pueblo families were all reduced to a single occupational class, of small farmers cultivating equal-sized fields (Corpuz 1997: 28). This would be an enduring characteristic of pueblo society and economic life that the Spanish conquest had established during this period.
After the natives were reorganized into pueblo-parishes, the Spanish introduced the encoumenda system. According to Jose Ma Sison and Julieta de Lima (1998), this system was used to integrate the small, disparate pre-colonial societies, collect tributes, spread the Catholic faith and organize labour and military conscription. In other words, this military-feudal device was transitional to the formation of a colonial and feudal society. Corpuz (1997) observes that the essence of the encoumeinda system was that it was a device for exacting produce and labour services from the subject natives.
Trading Contacts
There was no dramatic economic development during the Spanish rule in the Philippines. Spain was an industrialized country. When Jose Basco y Vargas was appointed Governor in Manila in the late eighteenth century, he tried to promote the development of the Philippines economy. But after his departure, the Economic Society was allowed to fall on hard times and the Royal Company showed decreasing profits (http://countrystudies.us/philippines). Meanwhile, the independence of Spain’s Latin American colonies at the beginning of the nineteenth century had a significant impact on policy reorientation The Philippines, after this, were more open to free trade.
Since the previous century, Manila became famous as the predominant port in Asia, with the galleon trade that linked the Pacific to America. In the context of the late sixteenth century, it was the one completely new and important creation, stimulating a greatly increased traffic in Asia, America and Europe. The Philippines through the era of the galleon trade, became part of what has been called the first-world economy of modern times based in Seville and the Atlantic (Legarda 2002).
Unfortunately, the restrictive system made the galleon trade stop. (Legarda 2002; Corpuz 1997). Some writers argue about the causes of the galleon trade failure. They deplore the formation of an indolent, unimaginative, monopolistic and numerically small merchant class; the failure to realize Manila’s full potential as an entrepot; the tolerance or encouragement of widespread official corruption and evasion of the law; and the neglect of the country’s agricultural and industrial development. The galleon trade ceased in 1815 and from that time onward the Royal Company of the Philippines which had been chartered in 1785, promoted direct and tariff free trade between the Philippines and Spain. Nevertheless, it is important to note that Manila was the first city in Southeast Asia and the incorporation of the Philippines into the first world was based on Seville and the Atlantic.
In another way, there were official restrictions against residence of non-Spanish Europeans but in fact British, American, French and other foreign merchants circumvented this prohibition by flying the flags of Asian countries or conniving with local officials. As a result, in 1834 the government recognized free trade and opened the region to foreign commerce. The colonial government implemented some policies that theoretically were synergistic but in practice contradictory (Legarda 2002). The main objectives, possible to discern seem to have been the following:
- Expansion of Philippines trade;
- Development of internal Philippines resources;
- Closer communication with Spain through trade;
- Protection and encouragement of Philippines industry;
- Favoured treatment for Spanish goods;
- Encouragement of national (Spanish and Philippines) business;
- Encouragement of national (Spanish and Philippines) shipping.
After the adoption of an open economy policy, foreign traders built their enterprises in the Philippines. By 1856 there were thirteen foreign trading firms in Manila, of which seven were British and two American. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 contributed to spectacular increases in the volume of trade. British and American merchants dominated Philippines commerce, the former in an especially favoured position because of their bases in Singapore, Hong Kong and Borneo. The plantation crops, especially tobacco, abaca and sugar dominated Philippine exports
Table 1: Foreign Trading Houses founded in Manila in the mid 19th century.
|
Country |
Enterprise |
|
British |
Butler, Sykes and Company Holliday, Wise, and Company Kerr and Company Patterson, W.R. and Company Martin, Dyce and Company Constable, Wood and Company Philips, Moore and Company Bartolome Antonio Baretto and Company
|
|
United States |
Peele, Hubbel and Company Russel, Sturgis and Company |
|
Gernan, Swiss |
Peter Jenny and Company Peters and Company Engster, Sabhart and Company |
|
French |
Augusto, van Palanen Petel and Company Juan Augusto Guichard e Hijos |
(Sources: Corpuz (1997: 176))
The profits of trade no longer went predominantly to a few privileged Spaniards and Creoles in the galleon trade but to some extent also to native producers of export corps in many regions of the country. These Filipinos were to form the educated, aspiring class that was increasingly to demand reforms and liberal government and finally national independence in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, most of the Filipinos were still underdeveloped economically. The disparity between the natives and others was seemingly too wide. The Chinese and Mestizos were a privileged class in the colonial economy.
The Role of the Chinese
The Chinese in the Philippines are the largest minority group, accounting for 2 % of the country’s total population. Although quantitatively small, they historically had an important role in the formation of the Filipino identity. They were the immigrants who came to the Philippines mostly during the 19th century and were predominantly male. It was only in the 20th century that Chinese women and children came in large numbers. As a result, the Chinese married the indigenous Filipinas and the Spanish. The Chinese mestizos were the product of these intermarriages and cultural encounters. In subsequent development, there were the Chinese mestizos who become prominent as the political elite, like Jose Rizal, Emilio Aguinaldo and Ferdinand Marcos and Corazon Aquiono in the contemporary era.
The Chinese in the Philippines are mostly business owners. They have small and medium enterprises that play a significant role in the Filipino economy. Their sense of entrepreneurship has been prominent since the colonial era. The colonial government used their strategic position in the structure of the Filipino economy to enlarge their authority. Although suspect, the Spanish recognized the role of the Chinese in the development of the Philippines economy since the galleons era. They, besides managing trade transactions, were the source of some necessary provisions and services for the capital. The Spanish regarded them with distrust but acknowledged their indispensable role. The Spanish tried to control them with residence restrictions, periodic deportations and actual, or the threat of, violence that sometimes degenerated into riots and massacres of Chinese during the period between 1603 and 1762 (http://countrystudies.us/philippines). Therefore, the sociopolitical position of the Chinese in the Philippines has always been weak. Chinese expulsion orders issued in 1755 and 1766 were repealed in 1788.
Most of the Chinese were urban dwellers. Since the colonial era, the Chinese Filipinos have lived within Manila. Now almost 60 % of them, and in 1849 more than 90 % of the approximately 6,000 Chinese, lived there, whereas in 1886 this proportion decreased to 77% of the 66,000 Chinese in the Philippines at that time, declining still further in the 1890s. Since the latter half of the nineteenth century the population of Chinese grew along with immigration into the archipelago, largely from Fujian on the southeastern coast of China. The later Chinese spread into the hinterland went hand in hand with the transformation of the insular economy. Some of them became agricultural labourers; some became gardeners, supplying vegetables to the towns but most shunned the fields and set themselves up as small retailers and moneylenders. The Chinese soon gained a central position in the cash-crop economy at the provincial and local levels (http://countrystudies.us/philippines).
The Chinese Mestizos settled in big towns and at the beginning of the nineteenth century they accounted for about 5% of the total population of around 2.5 million. Moreover, they converted to Catholicism and spoke Filipino languages or Spanish rather than Chinese dialects. Legally, their status was equal with the Spanish. Edgar Vickberg, a historian, notes that unlike the mixed-Chinese of other Southeast Asian countries, the Chinese mestizos in the Philippines were not ‘a special kind of local Chinese’ but ‘a special kind of Filipino.’ (http://countrystudies.us/philippines).
The United States and the Economy of Special Relations
American colonial rule in the Philippines was unique. In Filipino eyes, the US was regarded more a guide than colonial ruler. For many of the Filipinos, the US was the model to develop their country. Especially in political economy ideas, the US contribution was very significant. For instance, the US always felt itself as the spokesperson of liberal democracy and in the Philippines this idea was adopted without reserve. At the same time, the Spanish legacy was still deeply rooted. Nevertheless, the US model gradually but strongly replaced the Spanish legacy so many of the Filipinos proudly identified themselves with American ideas.
The impact of the Spanish decline in the Philippines on the European enterprises was still not clear. This was related to the character of Spain itself which had no grand ideas on economic policies. The major concern of the Spanish colonial power seemingly was not in economics but in religious conversion. Meanwhile, the presence of the US brought a new climate to the economy of the Philippines. Even when the Spanish rule still existed, the US and British merchants had dominated Philippines commerce. By 1856 there were thirteen foreign trading firms in Manila, of which seven were British and two American (http://countrystudies.us/philippines).
United States rule over the Philippines had two phases. The first was from 1898 to 1935, during which time Washington defined its colonial mission as one of tutelage and preparation of the Philippines for eventual independence. The second, from 1936 to 1946, was characterized by the establishment of the Commonwealth of the Philippines and occupation by Japan during World War II. Under US rule, political organization of the Philippines developed quickly. This was proved when the Filipinos succeed in electing the Philippines Assembly. Political parties emerged and played a significant role in the context of Filipino politics. One of the political parties, the Federelista, was formed by the Ilustrados. This party dominated the politics of the Philippines until after World War II.
In economics, Corpuz (1997) notes that the major concern of the US economics policy in the Philippine was how to make the Philippines a market for US exports on the one hand and source of cheap raw materials for US industry on the other. This major concern was formulated in the term of ‘the economy of special relations’. Imports from the US were 8.7 % of imports from all other countries in 1900, 20 % in 1909, and 64.2 % in 1911; in 1915 imports from the US first exceeded and then eventually outdistanced, imports from all other countries. The trend for Philippines exports was very similar, with 1916 as the turnaround year when exports to the US began to exceed exports to all other countries.
The success of the US expansion in the Philippines market, however, did not succeed easily. In 1900, a Commission was sent to Manila to research economic policy. It found that the business climate was hampered and endangered by the scarcity of currency and there was no law under which currency could be supplied from either public or private sources. The Commission regarded the Philippines as an ‘immense field for the sale of American goods’ and furthermore recommended that American business ‘create a demand among the Filipino people for those articles which the United States can make and ought to sell in these islands’ (Corpuz 1997)
Table 2: Foreign Trade of the Philippines with the U.S. and with All Other Countries (in Pesos)
|
Year |
Imports from the U.S All Other Countries |
Exports to the U.S. All Other Countries |
Total |
|
1899 |
2,301,226 23,931,908 |
7,081,788 22,198,536 |
55,513,458 |
|
1914 |
48,022,802 49,154,504 |
48,855,420 48,523,848 |
194,556,574 |
|
1930 |
156,366,057 89,819,850 |
210,684,122 55,650,133 |
512,520,585 |
|
1938 |
180,714,457 84,500,638 |
178,889,989 52,700,565 |
446,367,725 |
Sources: some official reports noted via Corpuz (1997)
Based on the composition of the national background, there is an interesting factor that can be analyzed. In the early period, American capital investment in the Philippines was very limited. Most American investors were residents, either ex-military or former civilian employees with small savings. The government reported back in 1906 that it was difficult to attract US corporate investment. The Chinese held significant resources but they traditionally limited their activities to domestic trading and a key role in foreign trade. Meanwhile, Filipino capital traditionally was invested in land. Some of the rich Filipinos reinvested their profits in export agriculture, where operations involved low labour costs and inexpensive technology relative to the requirements in manufacturing and industry. In the early decades of the 20th century, the only Europeans who invested massively in the Philippines were the British. Statistics in Table 3 in 1919 show the foreign capital invested in the Philippines (Corpuz 1997). It is interesting because among the five biggest foreign investors, there were no Spanish investors.
Table 3: Foreign Capital Invested in the Philippines, by Country, as of 1919 (in Pesos)
|
Great Briain |
P 968, 607,682 |
|
United States |
555,002,200 |
|
Germany |
174,486,264 |
|
Japan |
131,500,000 |
|
The Netherlands |
23,919,00 |
(Sources: Corpuz (1997))
Beyond the Market Economy
Penetration of foreign enterprises into the structure of the Filipino economy had succeeded in dismantling the previous limitations. Theoretically, from a liberal perspective, when the market for Filipino products expanded greatly from about 1829, it would determine growing occupational and regional specialization. But in fact there were factors conspiring to blur the theory and confuse the trends. For instance, the annual growth of trade volumes to the mid 19th century was characterized as explosive at about 10 %. Thereafter, this annual rate slowed, and from the mid 1880s it was reduced to about 3 %, although the terms of trade had improved since about 1840. Moreover, the dependence of the Philippines on the global market often trapped the economy in instability, like the crisis of the 1870s and 1890s in Great Britain and the panics and depressions of the US in 1873 and 1893 (Legarda 2002: 334-335)
The global market, therefore, did not always have a useful impact on the development of the Philippines economy. Under those conditions, the indigenous Filipinos always became the victims. The transformation of colonial power did not bring a change to them. At the end of the US occupation, the small farmers were in the same position they were in during the Spanish era (Corpuz 1997: 265). Jose Ma. Sison and Julieta de Lima (1998) allege that the comprador class who dominated the economy in the cities of the Philippines was a privileged group in the colonial economy. They acted as the trading and financial agents of the foreign monopolistic firms. In the countryside, the landlords were the ruling class which dominated the economy and succeeded in accumulating land for the production of export crops and staple crops for domestic consumption.
After independence, the condition of the Philippines political economy structurally did not change. The national government inherited the decolonizational problems. The most crucial of which was the dependence of the national economy on the metropole. In this sense, the emergence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in 1945 essentially has been a device for dictating economic, monetary and fiscal policies in the postcolonial countries in order to follow the capitalist political economic agenda. The global market order structurally only elongated from the Western colonial dreams. The national governments seemingly are not powerful enough to reject that pressure. Leftist writers like Sison and de Lima (1998) regard the regimes from Magsaysay to Marcos as ‘puppets’ to protect assets of the capitalists in the Philippines.
Recently, critics of the market economy ideology have involved consciousness and cultural analyses. A critical writer like Susan George (2000) says that the neo liberal priests created networks to spread the idea of a market economy. They understand what Antonio Gramsci was talking about in the concept of cultural hegemony. In George’s words, ‘if you can occupy people’s heads, their hearts and their hands will follow’. Theoretically, the market economy now is formulated in the idea of neo liberalism. In postcolonial countries like the Philippines, the colonial ideas legacy continued through the educational system. The officials and cultural leaders soaked in the US, for instance, to propagate pro neo liberal and antisocialist ideas as did US textbooks and other cultural materials. Mason and de Lima (1998) loudly state that the continued dominance of English over the national language facilitated the persistence of a colonial mentality.
Conclusion
The European and then American enterprise presence in the Philippines initially was facilitated by the colonial structure. In the early period of colonization, the Spanish tried to reorganize the native settlements order to subdue them easily. The traditional concept of barangay was replaced by the pueblo-parish. In this sense, the state collaborated with the Catholic Church. At the same time, Spanish missionaries spread Roman Catholicism among the indigenous Filipinos. Because there was no great religious tradition previously, the indigenous Filipinos converted to the new religion easily, except in the south of the Philippines where there was some of Islamic political authority which rejected the Spanish.
Although there was resistance against its presence, the Spanish colonial authority set up a regulation system to govern the Philippines. In the economy, the Spaniards seemingly did not have a grand design to plan economic development. The government did not show a serious concern for this. At the same time, there were the traders from various countries who came to the Philippines and conducted exciting business activities there. They came from China, the Arab countries, India, Europe and other Southeast Asia countries. Besides conducting business, they were involved in the everyday life which resulted in interesting cultural encounters. In this sense, ethnicity and class relations among the others and the Filipinos had become a background to comprehend the economic history of the Philippines. A racial policy introduced by the colonial rulers, however, had caused a serious problem in the plural society. In the Philippines, the Chinese and the Mestizos had a special position which enabled them to gain economic advantage from that. Due to this advantage, the Chinese and Mestizos were of the middle class who became political cultural leaders in the development of the Philippines. They prominently were called the Ilustrados class which led the Philippines Revolution at the end of the 19th century.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the US came up as the new ruler of the Philippines. They planned market-oriented policies to dismantle regulation limitations which previously governed the development of the economy. Liberalization was run almost in all sectors, including the reorganization of church land property. Consequently the role of the Church dwindled gradually. In the political arena, the US propagated the idea of liberal democracy which was practically proven with the opening up of the opportunity for political party involvement in the Assembly in the frame of the Commonwealth. Nevertheless, the great agenda of the US in the Philippines was as set by the Commission ‘to create a demand among the Filipino people for those articles which the United States can make and ought to sell in these islands’. From the dependency perspective, the Philippines as well as other developed and underdeveloped countries are ‘the periphery’ from ‘the metropole’. The great benefits from the development of the Philippines economy were brought to the US. This capitalization, however, did not end with the declaration of independence but was continued by the national government. Mason and de Lima (1998) infuriatingly say that ‘bureaucratic corruption augmented monopoly capitalist and feudal exploitation in plundering the country and sucking dry the blood of the Filipino people’.
At least it can be told, the economic history of the Philippines is the history of victorious capitalism. The transformation of European and then American enterprises which became trans-national corporations (TNCs) in recent periods has been proved for this argument. Nevertheless, the enterprises’ foreign presence remains making a contribution to the development of the Philippines economy. The other papers in this research view the arguments that the enterprises’ presence contributed to the Philippines, especially in the displacement of technology and capital spillover. But the useful impact of its presence to the population remains the question which must be answered in a subsequent historical process.
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(Artikel ini dimuat dalam European Transnational Corporations and Philippines Development, Jakarta: LIPI Press,2006)
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