1 - Land and Law in Spanish Colonial Philippines: A Legal-Historical Perspective

How did the regulation of land change in the Philippines as a consequence of Spanish colonialism? This question has been one of the key interests of scholarship on land in the Philippines. Though there seems to be consensus on the fact that Spanish colonialism transformed the pre-existing modes of land tenure, scholars seem to agree less on the legal framework that resulted. Some authors have argued that the Spaniards introduced individual ownership of land, while others have asserted that pre-Spanish patterns continued until the late 18th century. Though such disagreements may reflect local differences revealed through primary sources, they also show that Spanish colonialism allowed for the development of many different modes of land tenure. This paper seeks to provide a framework for understanding land and law in Spanish Colonial Philippines from a legal-historical perspective. First, the contribution will present a detailed state of the art to argue that the legal framework used by historians of the Philippines should be adapted to recent insights from legal history. Second, the paper will provide an overview of the Spanish normative worldview to highlight the importance of local law in the early modern period. Finally, taking cases from Central and Northern Luzon, the paper will try to exemplify how the interaction between local practices and imperial directives shaped land tenure arrangements. The goal of the paper is to suggest that legal history can provide new ways of studying land and law in the Philippines.