Philippines is Partitioned between Portugal and Spain

[kasumigenx]

I have been reading and talking with historians and it turned out that Portugal discovered Luzon and Mindanao prior to the Spanish, what if the Portuguese decided to concede Visayas and Palawan to the Castilians and decided to colonize Luzon and Mindanao instead of fighting to get all of the Philippines, what would be their effects in the Portuguese Empire as a whole.

Does this scenario even need for John Manuel of Portugal to reign or just for King Sebastian to have different regents to be actually a viable solution for the Portuguese?

[stevep]

Apr 16, 2024 9:15:29 GMT kasumigenx said:

I have been reading and talking with historians and it turned out that Portugal discovered Luzon and Mindanao prior to the Spanish, what if the Portuguese decided to concede Visayas and Palawan to the Castilians and decided to colonize Luzon and Mindanao instead of fighting to get all of the Philippines, what would be their effects in the Portuguese Empire as a whole.

Does this scenario even need for John Manuel of Portugal to reign or just for King Sebastian to have different regents to be actually a viable solution for the Portuguese?

  It would depend on the details although arguably, given the limited geographical knowledge of the time and that Portugal was strongest in the nearby SE Asia region and parts of the Indian Ocean - at least until the Dutch supplanted them - the Philippines would be a better fit with the Portuguese empire than the Spanish.  Albeit that Spain later used the Philippines as a stepping stone for trade with China across the Pacific and of course if Spain annexes Portugal as OTL it might become a moot point then.

[TheRomanSlayer]

Speaking as someone who did come from that area of the world, while the Portuguese would have been a better fit to rule the Philippines than the Spanish (at the very least, the Portuguese were far more mercantile, while as the Spanish Empire was way more into the whole convert the natives kind of thing), ultimately if the Dutch had snatched it in the 1640s, they would have actually been in a prime position to cement their control of various parts of SE Asia. The Iberian Union existing would have given the Dutch any kind of excuse to snatch up more Portuguese colonies if they wanted to. They're way better at being a mercantile colonial empire than either the Portuguese or the Spanish. Not that Dutch colonialism is any better than Iberian colonialism.

[kasumigenx]

If the Dutch takes the Portuguese partition of the Philippines, the Dutch would take only Luzon and Mindanao in that situation.

[TheRomanSlayer]

First and foremost, why would Portugal be insane to give Visayas to the Castilians when possessing the entirety of what would become the Philippines would be the single best option for them? What is the incentive for the Portuguese to give a part of the Philippine Islands to their Castilian rivals when eventually down the road, the Castilians would simply absorb the rest of them anyways?