Putting aside Spanish imperialist or Nationalist/indigenista histories of resistance, Kristie Flannery highlights the importance of local cooperation to explain the long Spanish presence in the Philippines. She analyzes this history of collaboration through the lens of Catholic anti-piracy narratives. These narratives appeared in the early eighteenth century and brought together Indigenous Filipinos, who were regular victims of maritime depredations, with Spanish clergy and authorities. Both groups were invested in eliminating this piracy threat. The proselytizing efforts of the Spanish clergy had an important effect in driving these messages. She shows that the resilience of the Spanish Asian empire depended on constant negotiation between the Spanish state, the Spanish clergy, and local peoples of multiple ethnic and linguistic backgrounds.

In Chapter One, Flannery takes the reader to the first half of the eighteenth century, explaining the real and perceived threat that Muslim pirates presented to the survival of the Spanish presence in the Philippines. These confrontations, which were conceptualized as “Moro wars,” despite the multiethnic and multireligious nature of the pirates, were anchored in anti-Muslim ideology that had first propelled the Spanish expansion in the Iberian Peninsula and then in the Mediterranean and across the Atlantic. While acknowledging the conflict as a definite threat, the author effectively argues that it simultaneously defined the Spanish presence in the region. This was manifested through the creation of 29 presidios and fortified churches across the archipelago, the deployment of patrolling fleets, and diplomatic entreaties with other regional polities (including Muslims), all part of what she aptly terms “Catholic anti-piracy.” At every step of the way, local Filipinos were at times conscripted for the war effort, but also often full partners in the anti-piracy efforts across the region, which could have never happened without them. Flannery’s comparison with the Tlaxcalans in Mexico seems very appropriate.

In Chapter Two, the author pivots to what was often depicted as the enemy within: the Chinese population residing in Manila, whose population reached ten times the number of Spaniards, and the shifting perceptions about the consequences of their presence. Spanish authorities and the clergy often depicted Chinese people, even those who converted to Catholicism, as insincere, opportunistic, parasitic, and worst of all, a fifth column ready to ally themselves with China to take control over the colony. Three massacres in the seventeenth century with at least 15,000 dead highlight the level of paranoia that Spanish officials reached at a time in which the civil war in China led to a sharp increase of Chinese pirate activity. By the eighteenth century, as the Qing dynasty took control of the seas, the increasing threat of Moro pirates assuaged Spanish fear, and there was an increased emphasis upon Chinese assimilation and understanding of the very important roles they played in Manileño society.

The following two chapters focus on different aspects of the British invasion and occupation of Manila in 1762. In Chapter Three, Flannery analyzes the siege and fall of Manila, where the British behaved in ways that local people interpreted through the familiar lens of Catholic anti-piracy efforts. A Spanish government in exile outside Manila then leveraged this same Catholic anti-piracy rhetoric to mobilize a loyalist resistance, effectively strangling British control and limiting it to the capital. At the same time, seeing the Spanish control weakened, Luzon experienced the rise of a Catholic anticolonial movement that intended to permanently dislodge the Spaniards from the island, while the Spanish forces, composed overwhelmingly by indigenous Filipinos, saw themselves fighting a war on two fronts.

A study of this loyalist army is the subject of Chapter Four, which is described as “arguably the most diverse fighting force that saw action in the eighteenth-century world” (131). The language of Catholic holy war continued to be at the heart of this military effort, which brought together this heterogenous army using not only force to coerce these fighters, but also a great amount of negotiation. Flannery reminds the reader that it is only through our understanding of the agency that these men and women exercised that we can come to understand the longevity of the Spanish Asian empire in the Philippines.

In the last chapter, Flannery focuses on one of the consequences of the British invasion and occupation: the transformation of the Spanish relationship with the Chinese population in the Philippines. The Spanish government put into motion a brutal movement of expulsion of the Chinese population in the archipelago, which was ruthlessly executed by Indigenous Filipinos, Chinese mestizos, and Chinese migrants of different ranks in colonial society. Dispossession, imprisonment, and deportation became the steps most Chinese residents experienced during these years. The author focuses on the painful series of experiences these men went through (women and children under age 12 were allowed to stay). By 1772, there were less than 100 Chinese in the Philippines, while a decade before there had been about 7,000.

This is a painstakingly documented book. Flannery has dug very deep into the archives and has reconstructed a profoundly multicultural and multiethnic story that reveals the complexity of Spanish colonial society in the Philippines. While driving home the point of local collaboration with imperial efforts, she does not shy away from describing some of the most disturbing and abusive aspects of Spanish colonization. This is a nuanced story in which colonization, resistance, and mutual dependence are intimately intertwined.

This study starts in the eighteenth century and even though the author includes some references to earlier periods, the audience of this book would have probably benefited from an introductory chapter with a history of the Philippines from the mid-sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century. The book also has a wonderful and very useful collection of images and maps, but lacks a list of illustrations that would have helped to find them afterwards. These are, nonetheless, minor quibbles, and do not detract from an extraordinary work that should be obligatory reading for anyone interested in the Spanish Atlantic and Pacific world.