Today's rice crisis brings to mind events in the early 18th century that echoed similar strains.

But the crisis then became an occasion to promote long-term diplomatic relations with Siam (Thailand) and enforce reforms in the colony under a crusading Bourbon leadership.

In the summer of 1718 in Manila, the newly reigning Bourbon governor-general, Fernando Manuel Bustamante Bustillo y Rueda, dispatched his nephew, Alexandro Bustamante, as ambassador plenipotentiary to Siam in an urgent diplomatic mission to import rice from Ayudhya (the ruling kingdom then in Siam) and renew friendly and commercial ties.

Alexandro’s own account of his mission, described therein as an embassy, spells out the reasons that prompted the governor’s action. The most immediate was a serious rice shortage in Manila and the provinces, which resulted from a widespread locust infestation (una plaga de langosta) that devastated rice fields "from Pangasinan to Panay" between the years 1717 and 1718.

The shortage was said to be "so severe" that the cost of rice jumped to three pesos per fanega (a cavan) when before it would not exceed four reales (half a peso), a massive increase of 600 per cent.

Manila was the most affected as the alcaldes mayores of the provinces petitioned the governor to be exempt from the obligation to supply rice to the city. This had grave implications for Manila, being the centre of colonial power that was sustained by the provinces in food and resources.

Governor Bustamante moved swiftly and decisively to restore order in the supply of rice. He ordered the impounding of existing stocks and ensured that all were brought to the royal warehouse, from where rice was sold to citizens at reasonable rates.

The governor undertook the economic measure of filling up the warehouse with some 100,000 cavans of rice to bring down its price. And when the supply was depleted, he turned his sights on the provinces where new harvests were abundant.

There the governor saw another dimension of the crisis. The alcaldes mayores refused to hand over part of their harvests while the religious reportedly hoarded stocks in the convents.

Not flinching before official and religious recalcitrance, the governor sent representatives to the provinces with firm instructions to requisition all available grains and apportion surpluses to Manila.

The alcaldes who resisted were promptly removed from their posts, replaced with persons of the governor’s confidence.

It was in the first quarter of 1718 that the governor convened the leading citizens of Manila to further address the situation. They spoke of the threat of total disaster in rice production and advised the governor to turn to foreign kingdoms "to solicit an adequate quantity of grains needed to remedy such grave and generalised want" until the rice fields could be sustained in the following years.

The officials of the city looked toward Siam in this plan. They particularly noted that a new mission to Siam could actually revive relations with the kingdom which had been closed for 60 years, the last contact made in 1656 when a Spanish ship traded with Ayudhya in the time of King Narai.

It was previous contacts like this, aside from Asian trade visits to Manila, which likely gave city officials knowledge of abundant rice in Siam. But Alexandro’s mission differed in importance and scope.

The occasion opened up the matter of establishing interaction between Siam and Filipinas on a more regular basis, one that was useful to trade and the larger concern of sustaining the economy of Filipinas. The officials looked forward to a broader and more permanent trade pact.

Accordingly, this would benefit Filipinas not only to meet emergency situations in rice supply but also to avail itself of long-term commercial opportunities or raw materials such as teak and iron. Teak was eyed for the construction of galleons and iron for war equipment and materiel. Renewal of relations could also provide an opening to spread the Catholic gospel in the region.

Thus, the immediate concern to remedy the rice crisis set off a bolder move in foreign policy direction. Inspired by the Bourbons, who ascended the Spanish throne in the beginning of the 18th century and personified by Governor Bustamante in Manila, the desire to renew commercial relations on a comprehensive and long-term basis could have taken shape in government economic perspectives.

On March 2, 1718, Alexandro’s embassy set sail for Siam, and on April 3, dropped anchor at the Gulf of Siam, near the mouth of the Menam River. The voyage took one month from Manila. It would take Alexandro’s mission another four months to forge a comprehensive commercial treaty.

It took quite some time to make a deal on the treaty as much of the time was consumed in establishing elaborate protocols, each side asserting the lofty stature of their respective monarchies. One of the sticky points between the two parties was the Siamese regulation that foreign visitors should leave artillery and weaponry in Bangkok before proceeding to Ayudhya. Only upon the persuasion of his officials did the Spanish ambassador concede to the Siamese policy.

Another contentious issue, especially for the Siamese officials, was whether the king of Siam (Thaisa) would personally receive the embassy and show his face to the Spanish ambassador.

By revered tradition, the Siamese sovereign seldom if at all revealed his face to visitors. But through the wisdom of Siamese officials and skillful diplomatic negotiation by Alexandro, he gained a personal audience with the Siamese king, equal as he asserted to the grandeur of his own king, Philip V.

And so on July 28, a comprehensive commercial treaty was signed. But as the diplomatic effort was immediately geared to offset a rice shortage in Manila, the Siamese king enforced an earlier action. On June 24, one month before the treaty, a Siamese official informed the ambassador that the king had promptly sent two somas (junks) of rice to the port of Cavite, ahead of the embassy’s return.

The ambassador provided letters of certification for the Siamese personnel in charge of the somas of rice so that they could be treated well in Manila and allowed to go to the provinces to buy horses that they could bring to the Siamese king upon their return.

The comprehensive treaty of amity and commerce seems more of concessions by the Ayudhya kingdom to the colonial regime in Manila. While benefitting commercial interests in Siam, the pact stipulated articles that mainly responded to the needs of Manila and the objectives of the mission.

The treaty provided for the Siamese kingdom to donate to the Manila colonial government a parcel of land in Ayudhya for residence, worship and trading activities (a facturia). It allowed Manila to build ships in Siam, intended to benefit the trade with Mexico, on the condition that Spaniards pay for the teak and iron and compensate the local craftsmen.

Another provision stipulated guidelines for monetary exchange and compelled the commander of the facturia to declare everything in every trip to prevent fraudulent currency transactions. It also allowed Manila traders to buy merchandise from Siam except saltpeter, ivory, cattle and deer hides and other products reserved for the Ayudhya king and the Dutch.

A related article exempted Manila and Siamese ships engaged in the envisioned Manila-Siam traffic from paying port duties.

Alexandro was most pleased with the results of the treaty. Accordingly, the ship-building alone in Siam would save the colonial government in Manila more than 100,000 pesos. Constructing a galleon in Filipinas cost some 150,000 pesos while doing it in Siam would involve only about 35,000 pesos, not to mention that teak, when used for the ships, could last up to 40 years without careening.

The Siamese king also gifted the embassy with precious items for the Spanish king, for the governor of Filipinas and for the ambassador himself such as elephant tusks, exotic birds, a ceramic slab from Japan, pieces of European velvet and gold and silver fabric, Persian carpets, taffetas and cotton and silk materials.

Two other gifts stand out for their value in the Siam—a one-year-old elephant (for the Spanish king) and a gold-plated, bronze-cast bathtub (for the ambassador).

Of course, the most important gift was 70 collas (a measurement of a substantial number of cavans) of rice, over and above the two junks of rice previously sent to the port of Cavite.

The mission had to leave the elephant in Bangkok as the galleon crew worried that its weight would endanger the ships’ return voyage to Manila.

The rice shortage was just one of the issues where Governor Bustamante saw how officials and clergy alike attended to their own vested interests and neglected the welfare of the people. In this crisis, everything about what was wrong with the colony converged and reared an ugly head.

When he assumed office on July 31, 1717, the Bourbon governor immediately looked into the state of the financial affairs of the colony and found that the Real Hacienda (royal treasury) only had some 30,000 pesos in deposit and more than 500,000 pesos in credit. Then another 200,000 pesos was unaccounted for by the interim governor.

The interim governor was fined. Governor Bustamante also promptly sent him to prison after he was required and unable to produce documentation of the missing amount. The investigating fiscal added more charges: failure to submit payments for the license fees of Chinese transactions, jacked-up computations of shipbuilding expenditures and rents, delays in collections, unnecessary expense for the untimely dispatch of a galleon and failure to cover the loss of possessions of the previous governor.

To recover the treasury’s losses, the governor ordered the responsible citizens to pay their debts. He placed an embargo on the silver and goods in the galleons from Mexico to oblige merchants to pay duties. Collection of tributes from foreigners was intensified. Savings were pursued and gained in public services such as the pharmacy of the royal hospital, the careening of galleons and the saw mills. Earnings of state-owned shops such as those selling wine and betel were improved.

In two years of Governor Bustamante’s financial reforms, the treasury posted positive balances.

The governor also proceeded to strengthen royal authority and control in the colony, which weakened in the face of colonial corruption and friar dominance. He rebuilt its defenses and initiated the construction of a road network in the north.

Of course, he pursued campaigns to quell rebellions. But he must have sensed in the unrests the abuses of the alcaldes mayores and the economic deprivation of the people, which was aggravated by locust infestations of the rice fields, hoarding of rice by official and religious alike, and the consequent shortage of rice and unreasonable increase of its price.

Governor Bustamante saw the big picture of what ailed the colony. It was precisely the situation that the Bourbons sought to remedy everywhere in the Spanish dominions from America to Filipinas.

In true Bourbon spirit, he acted quickly and decisively to build the colony’s finances and reform its administration. The measures he undertook were not stopgap solutions but comprehensive and long-term, and incisive enough to produce the desired effects such as in the shortage and hoarding of rice.

According to Alexandro, the arrival of rice from Siam and likely the initial measures enforced by the governor, quickly lowered the rice price to its previous level of four reales (half a peso) a cavan and put in check unscrupulous rice transactions in the city and the provinces.

The quantity of imported rice might not have been decisively substantial to correct the supply and demand situation but it surely squelched speculative and manipulative transactions in the market.

In October of 1719, Governor Bustamante was assassinated in an uprising participated in by official and religious entities and their followers within the walls of the City (now Intramuros). Historians have read the circumstances to be the vindictive action of persons and groups the governor antagonised as he carried out sweeping reforms in the colony.

After the governor’s demise, Alexandro was imprisoned in Mexico to serve a sentence for unclear charges, apparently the consequence of circumstances surrounding his uncle’s fate. He was, however, able to return to Filipinas. Once again, true to his character and professionalism, he came to write to the Ayudhya king about his fate and that of Governor Bustamante.

Alexandro expressed his apologies that whatever agreement they had contracted with his embassy could no longer be realised. This was because after his official visit, a Siamese mission that arrived in Manila to reciprocate his embassy was ignored and had to return to Siam.

Governor Bustamante and his nephew Alexandro, ambassador plenipotenciary to Siam in 1718, epitomised the personae of colonial officials who were imbued with the Bourbon spirit of reformism and determinedly sought to change colonial society.