Where in the World is New Philippines?𖤓

 𖤓 Clue: nowhere near the South China Sea

358 words

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Most folk know where the Philippines is, or at least they could point out on an atlas roughly what part of the world map it sits in. But who’s ever heard of (the) “New Philippines”? Probably not too many, unless you live in the Lone Star state and have more of a passing knowledge of early (pre-US) Texas/Tejano history. New Philippines, when it existed, was in what is now (central-north) Texas, a parcel of Spanish-controlled territory lying between the Nueces and Medina Rivers. Nuevas Filippinas, as it was known in Spanish, was named in honour of the then-sovereign King Philip V of Spain, becoming a province of New Spain in 1722. The first governor was the Second Marqués de Aguayo. 

A highly significant event during New Philippines’ provincial existence was the 1819 Adam’s–Onis Treaty between two imperial powers with skin in the game in that part of the continent, Spain and the US. The wash-up of the deal saw Spanish Florida acquired by the US in exchange Washington conceding that all of Texas, including New Philippines, was the property of the Spanish crown. When the Mexicans won independence from Spain in 1821 New Philippines ceased to be a legal entity and the territory was renamed Provincia de Texas…when the United Mexican States was formulated under the 1824 Constitution it became one of the new nation’s states, called Coahuila y Tejas. From 1821 to 1835 an influx of Anglo-American settlers poured into Provincia de Texas.

New Spain and Nuevas Filipinas, 1819

Endnote: A footnote in the history of New Philippines province concerns an 18th century American chancer named Philip Nolan. Nolan was a mustang trader (generous “job description”) and freebooter§, at one time in the services of US senior general and Spanish spy James Wilkinson…his link with New Philippines was that in the course of his horse “collecting” in the province Spanish troops caught up with him and his men killed Nolan in the Hill County region of the province (a river and a Texas county are named after Nolan). 

§ someone who undertakes an unauthorised military incursion into a foreign country