The initial Spanish conquest of the Philippines was not without troubles and featured the establishment of a Spanish presence in some of the trading posts that had grown up as a result of Sino-Malay-Javanese maritime trade. It subsequently spread both more widely and more deeply in Philippine society as waves of monks and priests of various denominations arrived and took up their missions.
This was resented in Manila, both because the local people resented foreign domination and because the merchant classes resisted the loss of the free trade privileges they had previously enjoyed. Violence was a constant possibility in the city, therefore, and the Spanish attempted to exert firm control. In 1571, the native people burned Manila (mostly made of wooden buildings) to the ground and fled to nearby Tondo. In 1574, a Chinese force of some 3,000 men and 64 warships mounted an attack with a view to driving out the Spanish and restoring the Philippines to independence. This force was led by Limahong (also known as Lin Feng), who was a well-known pirate who had established a reputation for himself and his gang for attacking ports in Guangdong and Fujian provinces and elsewhere.
The attempt was unsuccessful as the Chinese ships were unable to resist the artillery deployed by the Europeans. Limahong sailed away to Luzon and away from the gaze of history. The last report of him dates to 1489 when his former comrades-in-arms are recorded as having taken up residence on Hainan Island where they busied themselves repeatedly attacking the pearl beds. Limahong himself had disappeared, no one knew where. Nevertheless, he had seemingly enjoyed a long and mostly successful career living by stealing other people's work and efforts.
The Chinese remaining in Manila after the 1574 attack were now treated with ever greater suspicion by the Spanish and confined to a ghetto known as Parian de Alcaceria. While they were permitted to enter Manila by day, they could not stay there overnight and they were also uniquely subject to a wide range of taxes. Only by converting to Christianity could they escape there restrictions and some take advantage of this possibility.
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