Anonymous
10/15/2025, 5:59:52 AM
No.64399310
>>64396556
The Philippines was part of the Old World so steel, gunpowder, didn't exactly scare off the native tribes as they had all of those. Sure Spanish armor & guns were better, but in the 1500s & 1600s, a time when transporting huge forces across oceans was not possible AND when most Spaniards were fine with settling in America AND when Europeans died like flies from tropical Asian diseases, there were too few Spaniards & willing to travel, live & stay in the Philippines to make a pure military conquest of the Islands possible. Hence diplomacy by the Friars did the heavy lifting in Spanish Colonial efforts as Spanish Catholic priests negotiated with weaker tribes & converted/united enough of them under the Spanish banner to make colonialism possible.
Then there was also logistics. European swords were made by blacksmiths steeped in European swordsmithing traditions and (most importantly) European plate armor needed a lot of skilled work & infrastructure to repair and these were skills & infrastructure that simply wasn't fucking present in the Philippines. All the European trained blacksmiths and armorers are in fucking Latin America and too few if not 0 of em were willing to live in the Philippines, the furthest & most dangerous colony of Spain's. Logistically this meant that any piece of sophiticated armor or weaponry brought from Europe would eventually degrade over use in the Philippines with precious little resources to repair them. In addition to other factors like the climate & small scale local warfare, these led the Spaniards to armor-down: wearing only breastplates/helmets, chainmail shirts (easily repairable), and more interestingly: used whatever local gear available like Sino-Japanese weapons & armor and Aztec Quilted armor (that was actually good for the shitty tropical climate).
The Spanish Soldier in the Philippines was less the glittering Tercio of continental Spain and more like some lightly armored RPG character with mishmash arms & armor.
The Philippines was part of the Old World so steel, gunpowder, didn't exactly scare off the native tribes as they had all of those. Sure Spanish armor & guns were better, but in the 1500s & 1600s, a time when transporting huge forces across oceans was not possible AND when most Spaniards were fine with settling in America AND when Europeans died like flies from tropical Asian diseases, there were too few Spaniards & willing to travel, live & stay in the Philippines to make a pure military conquest of the Islands possible. Hence diplomacy by the Friars did the heavy lifting in Spanish Colonial efforts as Spanish Catholic priests negotiated with weaker tribes & converted/united enough of them under the Spanish banner to make colonialism possible.
Then there was also logistics. European swords were made by blacksmiths steeped in European swordsmithing traditions and (most importantly) European plate armor needed a lot of skilled work & infrastructure to repair and these were skills & infrastructure that simply wasn't fucking present in the Philippines. All the European trained blacksmiths and armorers are in fucking Latin America and too few if not 0 of em were willing to live in the Philippines, the furthest & most dangerous colony of Spain's. Logistically this meant that any piece of sophiticated armor or weaponry brought from Europe would eventually degrade over use in the Philippines with precious little resources to repair them. In addition to other factors like the climate & small scale local warfare, these led the Spaniards to armor-down: wearing only breastplates/helmets, chainmail shirts (easily repairable), and more interestingly: used whatever local gear available like Sino-Japanese weapons & armor and Aztec Quilted armor (that was actually good for the shitty tropical climate).
The Spanish Soldier in the Philippines was less the glittering Tercio of continental Spain and more like some lightly armored RPG character with mishmash arms & armor.