ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the author findings to date as well as some rather new interpretations of Philippine history that come to as a result of the work done thus far. From the time that Chinese mestizos became numerous enough to be classified separately, the population of those parts of the Philippines that were controlled by Spain was formally divided into categories. Spanish policy may have been grounded more in economic and social reality than in bio-economic theory. The development of a Chinese mestizo group in the Philippines can be understood only by first considering briefly certain features of the history of the Chinese in the Philippines. By 1741 the Chinese mestizos had been recognized as a distinct element in Philippine society, sufficiently numerous to be organized and classified separately. For the mestizo the last half of the nineteenth century was a period of occupational rearrangement and social Filipinization.
