Foreign ships—Western non-Spanish that is—were allowed to dock and trade in Manila only beginning in the late 1700s.  Foreign merchants set up shop from the 1820s among other things to export sugar, abaca, coffee, indigo, tobacco, and import food products, textiles, mineral oil, and luxury items (e.g., Vienna bentwood furniture and ice).

P.K.A. Meerkamp van Embden (1862-1931), Belgian by birth and Dutch by business, stayed some forty years and served as Dutch Consul from the 1890s to the 1920s.  His notes and photograph albums constitute the basis of a fascinating book, “The Philippines Through European Lenses,” by Otto van den Muijzenberg (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2008).

Meerkamp was in insurance, shipping, labor recruitment (cigar workers bound for Indonesia), and general import-export trade, but was primarily in tobacco manufacturing.  He owned a Malabon cigar factory named “La Maria Cristina” and employed 400 cigarreras.

He played cameo roles in the Philippines’ continuing saga.

Coming from Europe in 1891, he and his wife were on the same ship as Jose Rizal.  He had one of the first telephones (1894) and was present when Manila’s first electric street lights were turned on (1895).

As Dutch Consul, Meerkamp was approached by the Aguinaldo government seeking help for international recognition and was invited to the September 29, 1898 festivities at the opening of the Malolos Congress.  With heads of other trading firms, he signed an unsuccessful 1899 petition addressed to Aguinaldo requesting the release of thousands of Spanish prisoners.

The day the first shot of the Filipino American War was fired (February 4, 1899), Meerkamp was in the palatial Sta. Ana home of Englishman James Sloan; many expats fled to ships at Manila Bay.

Favored expat housing was in Ermita, Paco and Sta. Ana.  In 1893, the Meerkamps bought a grand house on Calle Observatorio (now Padre Faura) corner Alhambra, where an office building with a “Moldex” billboard now is.  A wide flight of stairs led up to an open porch with wood filigree arches.

There was no Roxas Boulevard yet and a long bamboo pier from beach behind the house ended at a nipa bath house.

Meerkamp liked to hunt and was often at Belgian Jean Philippe Hens’ 430-hectare San Mateo (now Rodriguez) hacienda to shoot birds, deer and wild boar.

He traveled extensively.  On trips from 1883 to 1885 he thought Romblon was a “Little Garden of Eden,” described Cebu as the “Great Hemp Center of the South” and noted that the best hemp was pressed in Surigao.  Cagayan de Misamis (now de Oro) was the “Spanish Frontier,” noteworthy for a senior Spanish official and his wife who insisted on posing for a photo dressed as King and Queen of Aragon.

Expats moved in their own social circles that rarely intersected those of Spanish and Chinese mestizos.  The only natives they knew were domestics and employees.  In two letters, Rizal referred to the Meerkamps; the latter didn’t even notice him.

Not too long ago, indios were on the outside looking in.

Comments are cordially invited, addressed to walalang@mb.com.ph.