China Against the World #252835

Still more deplorable was the impression made by the Span iards. After they seized the Philippine Islands in 1543, a great expansion of trade with China resulted; and such large numbers of Chinese settlers went there that in time they outnumbered the Europeans in the proportion of twenty-five to one. The Spaniards saw in this great influx of Chinese immigrants a menace to their own sovereignty, and they massacred the larger part of the de fenceless and innocent Chinese.* The impression which such savage butchery of its people made on their native province of Canton may easily be imagined, and partly accounts both for the reception which the English met with in the following century when they first entered the Canton River, and for the fact that the people of that province are, with the exception of those of Eu — nan, the most truculent haters of foreigners in China.