Earthquake Building Overseas: Military Engineers, Cyclonic-Seismic Affinity and the Spanish Dominion in the Philippines, 1860–1898

Abstract

Between the 1860s and the 1890s, Spanish military engineers assigned to the Philippines carried out important advances in earthquake-resistant construction. Within the context of military campaigns against Moro rebels in Mindanao and other islands, engineers like Rafael Cerero and Manuel Cortés sought anti-seismic solutions in rational mechanics. By 1880, the Philippines had become a benchmark: the Spanish colony had one of the earliest established regulations in the world for earthquake construction. This story sheds new light for a revision of the history of early earthquake engineering; i.e., an approach and achievements based on military expertise, rather than on experimental science or civil engineering. This revision also includes the innovative role played by these engineers in studying simultaneously – from the perspective of a unity of action – the effects of earthquakes and cyclones on the stability of buildings.