Big Fish in Small Ponds: The Exercise of Power in a Nineteenth-century Philippine Municipality

Abstract

The basic administrative unit in the Spanish Philippines was thepuebloor municipal township. The pueblo encompassed both settled and unsettled districts within its geographical boundaries. The town centre Known as thepoblaciónwas the largest single residential zone within the municipality but was surrounded by smaller satellite communities. Beyond these areas of settlement were the sparsely populated regions of swamp, forest, plain or mountain. Size varied enormously both in geographical extent and population density from a few hundred families clustered in a single village or barangay in frontier areas to many tens of thousands of persons spread over a number of settlements in the lowland provinces of Luzon and the central Visayas.2 The administrative boundaries of one pueblo, however, bordered upon another so that all areas under Spanish suzerainty fell within one or other of these municipalities.