ABSTRACT
Societies continually experience social and economic change in a myriad ways, some unnoticed at the time, but with hindsight observers often perceive transitions that mark out phases of relatively slower change. Unfortunately for the analyst of an extensive archipelago such as the Philippines, no single scheme of periods applies to all of its regions.The islands and ethnic groups of the Philippines varied in the timing of their exposure to trade links to other parts of Asia, their contact with Islam, conquest by the Spanish and trade with industrializing capitalist countries.The significance of those differences further varied with the cultures of different groups, with their migrations and with their biophysical environments. Amongst other things, this means that the boundaries of meaningful regions could vary over time. Consequently, short of an encyclopaedic approach, any account of Philippine development must be generalized, and brief references to major, local variations are open to question by specialists.
