The Price of The Philippines

In schools, we have all been taught that the Philippines was sold by Spain for 20 million dollars to the Americans in 1898. In today's world, such information would have been flagged as false news because it lacks context.

So let us provide context. In those days, any dollar amount was convertible into a certain weight of gold and in 1898, $20.67 were equivalent to a troy ounce of gold. In other words, the Philippines was sold to the Americans for 967,586 troy ounces of gold. In today's spot market prices, this would be equivalent to $1.7 billion.

According to the World Bank, our economy is currently worth $361.5 billion. So did Spain get a bad deal?

Another thing that will add context to all this is knowing that Spain lost the war with the United States and the "sale" (if you can call it that) of the Philippines and other territories was part of the terms negotiated in the treaty of Paris that Spain agreed to. If you play Civilization V, you may have experienced losing a war and when negotiating a peace treaty, your victorious opponent might demand that you hand over some territories.

If Spain lost the war badly, meaning it faced obliteration if they didn't surrender, then it makes a lot of sense for them to have "sold" the Philippines at a very low price.

It is also important to consider that most of our gross domestic product today comes from the services sector which includes the BPO industry as well as OFW remittances, something that have only existed in modern times. During the 19th century, our economy was mainly agricultural exports consisting of sugar, hemp, and tobacco and our population was only 6.5 million (by the end of the 19th century).

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