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- Title:
- AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
- Date Created:
- 2021-07-08
- Description:
- Into the second century of Spanish colonisation, much of the islands still needed to be cultivated. Spanish farmers and their families sent in the first century turned to trade rather than coping with agriculture hardships. Missionaries not only cultivated souls but fields, as a result. By the mid-1800s their efforts paid off. It was estimated that parishes generated “one peso fuerte [paper bill] a year from each family,” according to Gervasio Gironella. Every parish still continued to receive a royal stipend of 5,000 duros through the Archbishop’s office. (A duro was the old peso in hard metal coinage.) Big parish populations supported parishes economically through their annual tithing. Zambales was still hinterland in 1680. “Unaccustomed to the cultivation of the soil and not know[ing] how to plow, or dig, and [not having] instruments for that, nor even seed for planting,” the Dominican missionaries provided all.
- Subjects:
- Gervasio Gironella Cultivation Missionaries
- Exhibition:
- Philippine Food 200
- Source:
- A Dominican in black and white with a Franciscan. Detail. Comunidades religiosas by Jose Lozano. In the Gervasio Gironella Album 1847. Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid Collection.
- Type:
- Image;Still Image
- Format:
- image/jpeg
Source
- Preferred Citation:
- "AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT", Philippine Food History, Felice P. Sta. Maria
- Reference Link:
- felicepstamaria.net/items/coll257.html