There are complex and unique aspects of the early Spanish colonial period in the Philippines that have remained hidden in hundreds of documents that historians have so far failed to fully explore. Not surprisingly, certain assumptions remain unchallenged as a result. For instance, scholars like John Leddy Phelan have argued that at least until the Hispano-Dutch war between 1609 and 1648 there was no significant demographic decline in the archipelago, because the intense contact with Indian and Chinese traders before the European arrival had prepared the natives’ immune systems to better resist diseases that could come from Europe and other areas of Asia (The Hispanization of the Philippines: Spanish Aims, and Filipino Responses, 1565–1700, [Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967; new edition 2010]). Moreover, Phelan and others agreed that Spanish rulers were aware of the brutality of the American conquest and its demographic consequences, and thus they struggled to conduct a more “benign” conquest in the archipelago. The irrefutable logic behind these arguments served to sustain them despite the fact that the historical research behind them was, in fact, quite weak. From that conjecture, the assumption is that during the early Spanish colonial period the native population did not suffer a demographic collapse on the same scale as the Latin America native populations.

Linda Newson's latest book marshals previously unexplored evidence to challenge this assumption and show the real demographic impact of the Spanish on what she terms the “Filipino” population (a common anachronism for the time period of her study, which does not acknowledge the multiple ethnic groups in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries). Newson revisits an old question and comes up with new answers by going beyond the primary sources offered by Emma Blair and James Robertson's The Philippine Islands’ fifty-five volume work (Emma Blair and Jamer Robertson (eds.), The Philippine Islands, 1493–1803, [Cleveland: A.H. Clark, 1903–07, 55 vols.]). This is a significant step in the direction of methodological and scientific rigor for the period, and together with the nineteenth century demographic studies done by authors like Daniel Doeppers, Peter Xenos, Michael Cullinane, Bruce Cruikshank, among others, this book finally completes the colonial demographic history of the archipelago.

In her work, Newson shows how, in fact, the Spanish arrival and conquest caused a considerable demographic decline of the native population not unlike the one in Latin America. The chronological scope of her study covers the late sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, and she divides her analysis by regions, centering her work on different areas of Luzon and the Visayas. Newson looks at two variables: the impact of disease in each of the regions, and how the new socioeconomic and political changes brought by the Spaniards demographically transform the archipelago. She concludes that for Luzon and the Visayas there was an overall demographic decline during the early conquest period and throughout the seventeenth century, followed by a demographic recovery in the mid-eighteenth century. Newson remarks that although the Philippines were under the same colonial rule as Latin America, their demographic trends were in closer keeping with those of Southeast Asia. In Latin America, for instance, there was a slow demographic recovery in the seventeenth century.

Newson makes an important empirical contribution to the history of the archipelago by re-exploring an important topic. She adds to the corpus of information available about a period which is scarcely studied, using new primary sources. In addition, her mapping of the demographic decline region by region during the early Spanish conquest until the eighteenth century allows the reader to have an overall understanding of the complexity in time and space of this demographic decline, and the role of geographical variations in the impact of colonial rule on indigenous peoples. Newson's impressive marshalling and presentation of extensive demographic data makes this text a valuable reference work for historians, historical sociologists, anthropologists, and geographers alike.

However, the role of diseases in the early demographic decline gets lost in the process of their being explained on a region-by-region basis, while the information she provides on illnesses is scarce and uneven, an understandable weakness given the unevenness of data in the documentary record.

Moreover, while the book underlines the impact of the differences presented by the archipelago's geographical and ethnic diversity in demographic trends, it also depicts a frozen image of Luzon's and the Visayas’ societies. Although there is a superficial mention of the existence of Chinese mestizo communities by the eighteenth century, Newson portrays a binary society formed by natives and Spaniards. For regions such as Manila and Tondo, where non-native and non-Spanish populations were not only large but socially and politically influential, her arguments regarding long-term demographic change are seriously impaired by the fact that she does not acknowledge non-native diversity. Her demographic model serves well for areas that remained under Spanish control since the late sixteenth century, but largely out of the immediate reach of colonial institutions and the changes wrought in them, like Tayabas. Areas like Cebu or Manila and their hinterlands experienced a different and new socioeconomic relationship with the Spanish colonial government during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For some of those regions, we can distinguish a period of conquest, a period of a consolidation of Hispanic institutions framed within a scarce presence of Spanish population in the seventeenth century, and a colonial period in the eighteenth century characterized by the growing importance of non-Spanish colonials.

Another major problem with this book is that readers may find themselves overwhelmed by a wealth of information that is not always woven into successful analyses. In some chapters there seem to be several hypotheses instead of a well-built argument. Although her quantitative explanation of the fluctuations of population is rich and diverse, her analysis is based on simplifying assumptions that flatten the rich social context of the islands. In areas like the south of Luzon and the Visayas, the conqueror versus native binary simply does not work, for the presence of Chinese and Chinese mestizo residents by the mid seventeenth century necessitates the use of a more complex approach.

This book is nonetheless a valuable reference piece for students and scholars alike. The regional approach underlines how demographics in the Philippines cannot be explained using abstract generalizations. The important new data which the author puts on the table helps form an overall picture of the impact of the Spanish conquest on Luzon and the Visayas. Newson's work fills the gap on three centuries of the demographic history of the archipelago.