• DOI:10.1163/22134379-90003800
• Corpus ID: 159768688

Flooded with foreign coins: Spanish and American administrators dealing with currency problems in the Philippines, 1890-1905

@article{Wolters2001FloodedWF,
  title={Flooded with foreign coins: Spanish and American administrators dealing with currency problems in the Philippines, 1890-1905},
  author={Willem G. Wolters},
  journal={Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde},
  year={2001},
  volume={157},
  pages={511-538}
}

• W. Wolters
• Published 2001
• Political Science
• Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde

that the colonial state, like a business firm, had to be built up with the means by which it could produce itself. This entailed reforming the administrative system, balancing tax revenues with expenditures and streamlining the gov ernment apparatus. With the ongoing socioeconomic changes in society and the growth of commerce, government functions and thus expenditures increased. The expanding colonial state apparatus could no longer be staffed solely with foreigners; qualified local personnel had to be recruited to carry out increasingly complex technical and administrative tasks. The need for education and the mobilization of personnel in the service of the state creat ed a stratum of people who were no longer rooted in their regions, but who acquired a national consciousness, focused on the national state.1 This proposition holds for the Philippines as well: the final two decades of Spanish rule were a period of administrative reforms, and the first two decades of American rule completed that transformation. The Spanish administrators centralized the government, increased the efficiency of the revenue and tax collection system, improved public instruction, public