ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the historic circumstances under which the first Spanish-Muslim contacts were made in the Philippines to test these two theories. It has often been said that Spanish relations with Muslim Filipinos was dominated by a Crusading spirit. Ironically, all the attempts to tap the spice trade may very well have figured in the accounts of the Royal Exchequer as Crusades. Extreme proponents of the view have considered commercial competition a mere tactic of this Crusade: as Dominican Fray Francisco Antolin put it in 1793, the best means of waging war against an enemy power is to deprive him of his most profitable commerce. Chinese goods were brought to Manila in seagoing junks and carried into the archipelago in shallow-draft Moro outriggers, and Moro outposts on the north coast of Mindoro guaranteed this monopoly on domestic distribution.
