BRITISH PLANS FOR MANILA'S OCCUPATION

Manila played an important role in eighteenth-century global trade. It was on the western edge of the Spanish trade across the Pacific, part of southern Chinese trading networks across the South China Sea, and on the easternmost limb of British networks in the Indian Ocean. For the Spanish, Manila was a crucial node in the galleon trade linking Spain and the Americas with China across the Pacific. At Manila, American silver was exchanged for luxury goods from China, which were shipped to the Americas and eventually to Spain.Footnote ⁷ From China's southern coast, merchants, artisans, and seafarers knew Manila as part of the South China Sea trading networks. Those networks were essential for the “Spanish” city; Chinese junks brought porcelains, silks, and other goods to Manila, and the commerce of the city was more Chinese than Spanish.Footnote ⁸ Periodically, the Spanish administration wrought violence on the Chinese in Manila, and in 1755 non-Christian Chinese were expelled; hundreds had become baptized in order to stay.Footnote ⁹ At the time of the British occupation, Manila and its surrounding suburbs and towns probably had a population of between 70,000 and 100,000.Footnote ¹⁰

The plan to occupy Manila was in part a continuation of the East India Company's China trade. Manila was on the eastern periphery of its Indian Ocean trade, and a crucial source of silver, valued in Canton unlike British and Indian goods. Though technically barred from trading in Manila, British merchants regularly circumvented the ban, trading for silver that in Canton bought the luxury goods so valued in Europe.Footnote ¹¹ Seeking an alternative to silver, the Company had, for some time, aspired to establish a base in the realm of the Sultan of Sulu (which extended north to Palawan, west to Borneo, and east to Mindanao), where they hoped to exchange British and Indian goods for regional forest and sea products that were highly valued in Canton. When Spain belatedly joined the French side of the war against Britain, Manila became an enemy target, and its occupation an opportunity for the Company to pursue its trading base plans. The Company also hoped to seize silver arriving in Manila from the Acapulco galleon, to fund investments in the upcoming trade season at Canton. For the Crown, occupying Manila had strategic value as a bargaining chip to be used in negotiations with Spain and France at the war's end. The British occupation of Manila, then, was envisioned not so much to secure that port's trade for Britain, but instead to secure British trade with Canton.

Manila was also thought to be an economical target, requiring only a relatively small investment of British troops and capitalizing on the proximate location of relatively inexpensive South Asian military labor based in the Company's presidency of Madras on the Coromandel coast. The institutional processes and pressures that came to bear on these plans, however, would shape the force in ways not originally envisaged. As the planning process unfolded, we see much more concern about the Company's position in India than about what would actually be required to take and hold Manila.

Plans were first drawn up in London but significantly revised in Madras in ways that reflect the Company's strong priorities for maintaining security along the Coromandel coast of the Carnatic, and British conviction that European troops were more valuable than Indian troops. Initial plans hatched in London called for about 2,000 infantrymen, accompanied by “a moderate train of artillery”, officers, and an engineer.Footnote ¹² Of the infantrymen, between seventy and eighty per cent were to be Europeans, and between twenty and thirty per cent would be “sepoys”, South Asian infantrymen trained in European styles of warfare but paid just over half what European infantry were.Footnote ¹³ Because of company concerns that security on the Coromandel coast might be compromised by sending so large a force,Footnote ¹⁴ the commander of the expedition, William Draper, was to make the final determination about the composition of forces in consultation with Company officials in Madras.Footnote ¹⁵ In Madras, the proposal became more ambitious than the original London plans in terms of overall numbers, increasing the total by forty per cent (from 2,000 to 2,805), mostly by quadrupling the number of sepoys (from 500 to 2,000), but also by adding the labor of eighty-four “Coffreys”, about whom we will hear more below. But the plan had become more conservative in terms of using European troops, halving their numbers.Footnote ¹⁶ The council was concerned that even though the plan drastically scaled back the number of European troops to be sent, British forces in Madras would be dangerously depleted, and they approved the plan only because they hoped the troops would return before their absence would pose a danger.Footnote ¹⁷

But there were also some European Company troops whose presence in Madras worried the Company: French deserters. The French deserters were men who had been serving in the French military in India; in their struggles against the French, the British had decided in 1758 to form companies of French deserters within British ranks, “to encourage desertion among the enemy's troops”.Footnote ¹⁸ The numbers of French deserters had swollen during the brutal British siege of the French garrison at Pondicherry in 1760, when many starving soldiers defected. After this, the number of French prisoners and deserters in Madras was a source of worry for the Company.Footnote ¹⁹ The British feared that the defeated French might regroup against them, whether under their own banner or that of another hostile power.Footnote ²⁰ French soldiers, whether deserters or prisoners, needed to be kept alive but harmless, and, preferably, they would be sent away. Several months before the Manila expedition left Madras, the Military Council there was “desirous of letting no opportunity slip of getting transported to Europe as many French Prisoners as possible”, proposing to send them by way of Bombay or Canton.Footnote ²¹ In the midst of this dilemma, the Manila expedition offered an opportunity: transporting them to distant Manila seemed a reasonable way to prevent them from rejoining French forces in the Carnatic, and, at the same time, doing so allowed the Company to contribute troops that counted as “European” without actually sending troops that it valued.

Company officials likely doubted the value of the French deserters as soldiers, for reasons that did not make it into the record of these deliberations. Some French deserters were serial deserters: having deserted from French forces in Europe, they signed up for Indies service in exchange for amnesty, and so would already have deserted at least twice (in Europe and in India) before being sent to Manila.Footnote ²² To complicate matters, many French European infantrymen were not from France, but were Catholics from elsewhere in Europe. Some were, for example, Swiss mercenaries, but others were Britain's Catholics whose loyalty to the Crown was suspect: Scottish Jacobites, i.e. Catholics or supporters of a Stuart monarch, and Irish Catholics.Footnote ²³ No one in Madras considered – or more likely, no one wanted those thoughts committed to the record – that the French deserters’ Catholicism might become a liability if they were supposed to be fighting Catholics in Manila.

The commanders had other reservations and complaints. Most notably, Company officials worried that “it may be a difficult matter to find the Number of Seapoys […] required [2,000] willing to go”.Footnote ²⁴ Their solution was to offer them significant advance pay, as well as allowing their families to receive their pay directly from the company at Madras, while the men themselves were on the expedition.Footnote ²⁵ These enticements were, however, insufficient. Just before leaving Madras, Draper wrote that he expected only about a quarter of the sepoys that he had been promised, a decrease that he attributed to religious rather than financial concerns: “their averseness to sea voyage [thought to be connected with caste], the difference of religion & particular methods of diet”.Footnote ²⁶ In the end, only 600 sepoys embarked for Manila, and they were not all the experienced “disciplined” sepoys initially imagined; instead, as Draper later complained, half of them were “Raw & new raised”.Footnote ²⁷

In sum, the British in Madras planned for the occupation with their attention focused more on Madras than on Manila. The Crown and Company each stood to gain from a successful venture at Manila, but they stood to gain different things, and for the Company the attendant risks at Madras were greater. The Company felt pressures at Madras to cut down on its overall commitment of troops to the expedition, and also to compose those troops strategically, seeking to eliminate the threat posed by the presence of many French deserters in their own ranks by sending them off to Manila. Though the Company hoped their troops – particularly their British troops – would return from Manila relatively quickly, they also maneuvered to send troops whose absence they would not particularly lament.Footnote ²⁸ Thus, Draper was absolutely correct when he wrote that he thought the expedition's troops were chosen “more to ease the fears and apprehensions of the people at Madrass, than from any service I can expect from them”.

THE COMPOSITION OF BRITISH MILITARY LABOR

Overall, British land forces in the Manila operation were a crew cobbled together by economic and political forces in India and beyond. Who, in the end, comprised that crew? Sources vary, but the most comprehensive single account enumerates 1,478 total rank-and-file land troops, composed of royal infantrymen (571), sepoys (468), “The Honorable Company's Troops” (310), royal artillerymen (57), “the Nabob's Irregulars” (43), and Company artillerymen (29).Footnote ²⁹ They were accompanied by 335 officers, for a total of 1,813 land forces. British royal naval forces were also landed as part of the initial attack on Manila: 632 private seamen (with 47 officers) and 274 Marines (with 64 officers), for a total of 1,017 members of the sea forces landed.Footnote ³⁰

Of the land troops, 600 were rank-and-file “sepoys” and their South Asian officers.Footnote ³¹ In addition to being paid less that European troops, sepoys served in separate units, and while they had South Asian officers, they were always commanded at the highest levels by Europeans.Footnote ³² Sepoys were used in the South Asian militaries of European companies and Indian rulers alike, but the British and French increasingly relied on them during the Carnatic Wars.Footnote ³³ While on campaign, unlike European infantrymen who were provisioned, sepoys had to buy their own food, for which they were allotted a subsistence cash allowance called a batta. Sepoys, therefore, were “absolutely dependent on their pay and ready to mutiny or desert if payment was seriously delayed”.Footnote ³⁴ The Manila operation may have been the first time that sepoys had been deployed overseas, though it would not be the last. We have already heard Draper blame the sepoys’ reluctance to go to Manila on their “averseness to sea voyage”, but material concerns were at least as pressing. Some of these sepoys had likely previously been on campaign in Bengal, while others, as Draper complained, were inexperienced and on their first campaign.Footnote ³⁵ Most of these sepoys had family near Madras, though as part of the itinerant military market many would also have had roots further afield.Footnote ³⁶ Some were Muslim and probably most were Hindu, many low caste and Dalit; commanding ranks comprised both Muslim and Hindu men.Footnote ³⁷

Once British commanders were in the Philippines with sepoys, they articulated why these troops were, they thought, particularly useful in this case: “they are […] formidable to the [local] Indians, who hold moors in the highest Detestation”.Footnote ³⁸ Some but not all of the sepoys were Muslim, so the British perception that the locals “[held] moors in the highest Detestation” might reflect locals’ conflation of sepoy with “moro” [Muslim], or British generalization. The statement probably reflected panic in coastal Christian settlements that were sometimes raided by seafaring Muslim groups of the Sultanate of Sulu, whose captives became part of the Indies’ slave trade. But the comment also reflects a British effort to capitalize on these military laborers of empire through how they arranged types of people in relation to each other. Sepoys’ labor was more valuable when transported to the Philippines because of locals’ ideas about “moors”.

An additional forty-three to sixty of the land forces on the Manila expedition were “irregulars” on loan from the Nawab of Arcot, who, other than a few European officers, were “Topasses” in the parlance of the Company's military.Footnote ³⁹ Topasses were South Asian Indo-Portuguese Catholics, a capacious category (see Chakraborty, in this Special Issue). Many of these Indo-Portuguese in South Asia had come into the employ of the Dutch and English militaries, as well as militaries of Indian rulers, often serving as gunmen (artillerymen).Footnote ⁴⁰ They also served as infantrymen – in their own distinct units – as was the case in this instance. Their status vis-à-vis “European” was ambiguous. In troop returns, they were listed in a table alongside European troops, though in a column separate from them; in contrast, the sepoys were generally counted in a separate table. On this expedition, they were paid the same as “European” troops, but that may not have been the general rule.Footnote ⁴¹ The sepoys and topasses on the Manila expedition – rank and file as well as officers – were overseen at their units’ highest levels by officers who were European.Footnote ⁴²

As part of the infantry, the Company also contributed seventy-four “Coffreys”, men from sub-Saharan African areas historically sources of Portuguese military and seafaring labor, particularly from the Cape, the Swahili coast, and Madagascar.Footnote ⁴³ In the Company parlance of the Coromandel coast, the term “Coffrey” had gone from designating religious status (“unbeliever”, i.e. non-Muslim, a term derived from Arabic but learned by Portuguese from their Swahili allies and rivals) to having a racial meaning.Footnote ⁴⁴ As one Englishman explained in 1761 with reference to the Carnatic Wars, “Coffrees, (By the French called Cafres) is now become the general name for all negroes who are brought to India from the Cape, the coast of Guinea, or any other parts of Africa, and chiefly from Madagascar: they are brave and steady in the field”, a characterization that reflects their importance as military laborers.Footnote ⁴⁵ In the Company's Madras military of this period, “Coffrey” companies listed in infantry rolls are segregated from sepoys, and appear alongside but distinct from Europeans and topasses.Footnote ⁴⁶ “Coffreys” from Madagascar also worked, enslaved, at the Company's plantations in Bencoolen, Sumatra.Footnote ⁴⁷ According to Wickremesekera, military “Coffreys” were enslaved; at least during the British occupation, however, they were paid.Footnote ⁴⁸

Filling out the ranks of the Company's infantry were two companies (totaling 165 rank and file) of French deserters, about which we have already heard.Footnote ⁴⁹ The only rank and file with English origins were 571 royal infantrymen, those whom the Company was most anxious to have returned to Madras as soon as possible, and probably the Royal Artillery's 57 gunners and matrosses (gunner's assistants). Less clear are the origins of the Company's 29 artillerymen and 71 “Pioneer” infantrymen (categorized with Europeans).Footnote ⁵⁰

Somewhere amongst these British military personnel who set foot on Philippine soil were a good number of men referred to in other records as “lascars”, though it is unclear from the sources in which of the above categories, if any, they may have been counted. This term is even more slippery than the other somewhat arbitrary categories through which the company understood its military labor.Footnote ⁵¹ East India Company officials referred to non-European laborers who manned the company's ships as “lascars”, but also described as lascars men who performed menial labor in company encampments, including “gun lascars”, who worked as part of the artillery hauling equipment.Footnote ⁵² Lascars laboring for the Company in encampments and as part of the artillery may have been distinct from most of the seafaring lascars, whose skills would have been more specialized, but some of the gun lascars may also have been seafarers grounded between sailing seasons.Footnote ⁵³

In the end it is unclear how many lascars were part of the expedition, and how they were enumerated amongst the personnel captured in the sources treated above, but their number was significant. Just a couple of weeks before the whole embarked from Madras, Company officials were planning for a force of 350 lascars (with eighteen lascar officers).Footnote ⁵⁴ A few months into the occupation, more than 200 must have been present, because the Manila board suggested sending that number on an expedition to the countryside.Footnote ⁵⁵ Lascars in the Manila occupation performed grueling manual labor – digging, clearing, constructing fortifications, and hauling guns and ammunition.Footnote ⁵⁶ As part of the artillery, lascars on the expedition were paid more than sepoys, though, consistent with general practice in the Madras military at the time, probably only about a third as much as the lowest-ranking European artilleryman.Footnote ⁵⁷ Most of these lascars probably hailed from around Madras, as Company officials there, worrying that they would not be able to recruit enough of them, offered advance pay to them that they could leave with their families before departing – the same offer they made to sepoys.Footnote ⁵⁸ As with the sepoys, many were likely veterans of the expedition to Bengal.Footnote ⁵⁹ Some of these lascars had seafaring skills.Footnote ⁶⁰

Finally, these British forces brought from India were supplemented in the Philippines with Chinese laborers, referred to by the British usually as “Chinese coolies”, “coolies”, or “coolie lascars”, reflecting the fact that they were employed in much the same way as the lascars from Madras: hauling gun carts and other heavy loads, or performing other demanding physical labor, and indeed they are often mentioned in the same breath.Footnote ⁶¹ The coolies were paid, though officials were clear that they were not to be put on the same terms as other Company military personnel. The British had counted on Manila's Chinese welcoming them with open arms, in light of the regular and brutal expulsions that the Chinese suffered from Manila's Spanish authorities. It is not possible to give a full account here of the various ways that Chinese skills and labor were central to British dreams for the occupation, but we will see one part of it in this military labor.

The British envisioned, organized, and disciplined their military force through these categories. It is sometimes difficult to see past the British imagination to how the people who were interpolated in these categories saw their own affinities and affiliations. The categories – as well as the difficulty of pinning down their contents – reveal the motley nature of the crew, and the broad reach of forces that produced these people as British military labor en route from Madras to Manila in late 1762. As we will see when we follow them to Manila, the ties that bound them to their commanders were tenuous, and sometimes broke.

TROUBLE IN MANILA

The British occupation of Manila lasted from September 1762 until April 1764.Footnote ⁶² When British forces first arrived, they were challenged by Spanish forces (a mix of soldiers from New Spain, probably mestizos and criollos, and people native to central Luzon), but the British took Manila proper more easily than they had anticipated they would. The Spanish were caught unprepared. Manila was awaiting a new Governor General from Spain, and the acting Governor General was Archbishop Rojo, who had no military training. Furthermore, Rojo had not yet received word from Spain that they were at war with the British.

Spanish forces quickly capitulated to the British, agreeing to accept British sovereignty in Manila, and also agreeing that the city would pay a significant ransom in return for its citizens being spared from further looting of their property – looting that had begun when British troops breached the walls of the city.Footnote ⁶³ Although the British were technically in control, outside of Manila, a high-ranking Spanish official, Simon de Anda, led a growing military resistance of Spanish military and locals. The British may not even have cared about the situation outside of Manila except that the city depended on the surrounding areas for food, and also the British sought word of the galleon's arrival from Acapulco, hoping to seize its silver to fund, along with the ransom money, the upcoming season's investments in Canton. This very abbreviated account of early events sets the stage on which we can see how British commanders experienced significant problems controlling their military labor.

De Anda's resistance early on posed military and labor challenges for British officials. “The great extent of the Place & present situation of affairs in the country”, the board reported soon after the capitulation of Manila, “have induced the General to leave all the Troops that came upon the Expedition” rather than sending many of them back, as had been planned. Even with all the troops staying, they were “but barely sufficient for our Garrisons” and so the board “intend[ed] applying to the Presidency [Madras] for reinforcements of seapoys by all opportunities”, “thought by the General to be absolutely necessary”.Footnote ⁶⁴ General Draper's words were a bit spicier. Though he praised the royal infantrymen, he lamented that he could not send any of them back because “We have no Troops besides who can be Depended upon”.Footnote ⁶⁵ Amongst those least trustworthy, according to Draper, were the French deserters.

Indeed, almost immediately, the French deserters began deserting.Footnote ⁶⁶ In late December, Manila company officials wrote that “We have the Mortification to inform you that no fewer than twenty Men have deserted” and that “all of them to a Man wou'd have certainly have gone off” had they kept using them for patrols and detachments, because de Anda had sent “Numbers of Emmissaries to entice them particularly, as they are Catholicks”.Footnote ⁶⁷ Friars supporting de Anda indeed sought to encourage French deserters to join the Catholic side of the conflict; some friars offered only a “prevaricating defence” when confronted with letters showing that they had been “encouraging the Desertion of our [the Company's] People”.Footnote ⁶⁸ The losses were significant enough that the Manila board asked commanders to pardon deserters who voluntarily surrendered themselves.Footnote ⁶⁹

By February, the desertions of the French deserters had reached a crescendo such that Company commanders decided they were more useful to the occupation if they were shipped back to Madras. Since they had “deserted in great numbers” to de Anda's side, one wrote, “least [sic] the rest shou'd follow which I have great reason to apprehend we have been obliged to petition the Admiral to take them off the Island”.Footnote ⁷⁰ In early March, the Manila council, explaining why “the frequent Desertions from the French Companies have put us to the disagreeable necessity of sending them to the Coast [of Coromandel]”, blamed Catholics and Catholicism: “to have continued them here might have been attended with very bad Consequences, as they are most of the Romish Religion, the Fryars would by degrees have carried off the whole”.Footnote ⁷¹ The Admiral's assessment was characteristically more cutting. Responding to the Company's request that he ship them back, he wrote, “I learn with more concern than surprize the Considerable Desertion which has happened in the Company's Troops”, and pointedly reminded the Company that it had only itself to blame: “with regard to the French Company's [desertion] I shall say the less as my opinion was well known to the Council of Madras before they Embarked”.Footnote ⁷² He ultimately granted their request in terms that emphasized his benevolence and generosity, and suggested the incompetence of those who had overridden his objections: “If you judge the safety of the Garrison to depend on sending them away I will receive them on board his Majesty's ships[. B]ut […] I am on guard against them as Enemies”.Footnote ⁷³

It was in part because of early problems with the French deserters that, by December, officials in Manila were urgently requesting that reinforcements to the tune of 2,000 more sepoys be sent from India, as well as more armed vessels.Footnote ⁷⁴ Sepoys were both particularly valued by Company officials, but also the source of challenges. It will be recalled that British commanders worried about sepoy and lascar discontent before the troops even left Madras. In order to persuade sepoys and lascars to go on the expedition, the Company offered them two months’ advance pay – which most left with their families – and the option of having any part of their pay at Manila disbursed directly to their families in Madras.Footnote ⁷⁵ This benefit caused problems. By mid-November, the Manila council noted that since they “had left the greatest part of the pay advanced them at Madras with their families there” they had been “reduced […] to great hardships since their arrival here” – recall that sepoys had to provision themselves from their pay – and so they were to be advanced one additional month's pay out of their prize money.Footnote ⁷⁶

If many sepoys arrived in Manila with nothing, and could not expect pay until December, that might go some way toward explaining why they were blamed for the looting that took place during the early days of the siege. British commanders tended to minimize the plunder their troops had committed during the early days of the siege of Manila, though what they admitted, they blamed on the motley crew, a “Variety and Confusion of People, who differed as much in Sentiments and Language, as in Dress and Complexion”, who were not easily restrained.Footnote ⁷⁷ Sepoys were convenient scapegoats, to be sure. But likely, too, the sepoys who entered the battle for Manila without prospects for the means to sustain themselves for over a month may have sought those means in what they could seize during the battle. It helps to consider how these men might have encountered or participated in plunder elsewhere. Plunder was widely used in the Carnatic Wars, on all sides, sometimes clearly according to commanders’ orders, and other times supposedly the unsanctioned actions of unruly troops.Footnote ⁷⁸ Plunder was an established form of military pay, and so while it was only sometimes officially sanctioned, at other times it would likely have been unofficially tolerated as a way to effectively supplement troops’ pay. It may be, then, that the officers of the Manila assault encouraged their troops to plunder, despite their protestations otherwise and their condemnation of what they characterized as errant actions of unruly sepoys. Troops may also, however, have plundered in insubordination and in defiance of their commanders, as a form of direct action to ensure their pay.

Early on in the occupation, British commanders tried to take steps to ameliorate sepoys’ discontent, appealing again to sepoys’ desires to support their families: they offered that sepoys might opt to send their pay or a portion of it back to their families with the first Madras-bound ship, rather than receiving it in Manila.Footnote ⁷⁹ It quickly became clear, however, that sepoy discontent was a significant strategic problem. One of the bones of contention was around batta, the per diem allowance from which sepoys were accustomed to provision themselves while in the field. In early December, the sepoys were “disappointed” and “much dissatisfied, at not receiving Batta at the rate allowed upon the Bengal Expedition, which they alledge was promised them before embarking at Madras”.Footnote ⁸⁰ The sepoys agitated around this issue, “appealing to Captain Flint their Commandant” who confirmed their account; the board decided in their favor, noting the principle that “they are justly entitled to every reasonable Indulgence, in those distant parts”.Footnote ⁸¹ But practical matters were at least as pressing, for the board described their decision as “Politic”, both “to pacify” the sepoys as well as “to facilitate […] encouraging others to come here”.Footnote ⁸² Indeed, “every cause of disgust ought to be avoided if possible, otherwise the [Madras] Presidency may find it a difficult matter to send us the reinforcements of this useful Corps that are necessary”.Footnote ⁸³ Sepoy discontentment only increased. In March, when the Admiral wrote to the council agreeing to relieve them of the problem of the remaining French deserters, he added:

The French and sepoys were not the only problems. British commanders of the Manila garrison warned the board in March that “the desertion of the Soldiers, Seapoys and lascars has been very great”, and British records from the Manila operation are replete with accounts of their own forces deserting – French, “European” (likely also the French), sepoys, and lascars – as well as with reports of those deserters fighting with enemy forces.Footnote ⁸⁵ Pay was thought to be an issue in all cases, and the British commanders inconsistently tried to remedy discontent about pay. In late January 1763, one of the British commanders reported from the field that he planned to try to lure back the French deserters to the British side by offering them “Pardon with a Bounty”.Footnote ⁸⁶ Lascars complained that they were promised the same pay and batta as on the Bengal Expedition, but instead “are paid 8 Fanams less than at Madras”, and so the Board agreed to make up the difference.Footnote ⁸⁷ Yet, these steps did not have the desired effect. In March, commanders of the Manila garrison warned that the “clamours [of the soldiers, sepoys, and lascars] on account of their Pay being so small grow stronger dayly”, and so recommended that “an augmentation be made to their subsistence which considering the excessive Prices of the necessaries of Life is really much too small as may enable them to support themselves with Comfort and put a stop to their desertion”.Footnote ⁸⁸ In response, the Manila board ordered that “the Military &ca [presumably European troops] be daily allowed 2 Drams” of alcohol – apparently hoping that increased rations of booze would be sufficient to stem their discontent – and that “the Sepoys and Lascars [be allowed] 1 Dollar Pr. Month Gratuity”.Footnote ⁸⁹ These small steps were not enough to effectively combat desertion.

The issues of pay and food were connected ones, not just for the military personnel in the Manila garrison, but for commanders as they planned efforts to get at the root of both problems. They sent parties into the countryside to secure food, and also in search of the silver supposed to be arriving in the galleon from Acapulco. They worried that should the galleon's silver reach de Anda first, he would even more effectively woo deserters from British forces. In fact, that seems to be exactly what happened. The commanders of the Manila garrison reported in March that their intelligence told them that British soldiers were being offered by de Anda's agents one hundred dollars up front, and a dollar a day, to desert.Footnote ⁹⁰ The material rewards promised by de Anda's agents – or perhaps even the rumor of them – might have spoken volumes to these men, aggrieved as they were over pay. Though the Manila board approved only paltry pay increases, they offered a two-hundred-dollar reward for helping to convict those who were recruiting British forces to join the Spanish resistance, planned to hire one hundred Chinese to patrol the bridges over which garrison deserters had to pass, authorized a thirty-dollar reward for catching a deserter, and banned the use of covered litters, in which soldiers were thought to escape the city.Footnote ⁹¹ While many deserted from the field or while on detachment, these measures show that some soldiers deserted from their garrison within the walled city of Manila itself; the bridges that connected it to its suburbs, and the covered litters in which its wealthier residents would themselves travel, were routes by which garrison soldiers could escape the more easily surveilled interior of the walled city into the more populous suburbs which housed so many of the city's markets, its commerce, and many other laborers.

The situation only deteriorated: a year into the occupation, the Governor of Madras wrote to London that “We have reason to believe the Troops we sent to Manilha, are greatly reduced by death and desertion, if we receive one half of the number sent it will exceed our expectation”.Footnote ⁹² Several months later, they received word that “Our Troops were reduced by Death & desertion to about 400 Europeans & as many Seapoys”, and that “upwards of 100 of Our Deserters” were fighting for de Anda.Footnote ⁹³

Members of the sea forces were troublesome, too, when they were on Philippine soil. One of the commanders of an expedition around Laguna de Bay, in search of food and the galleon's silver, expressed “great Mortification and sorrow that the Sailors [who were on patrol in the large lake] have plundered some of the Houses in the Village” and deplored “the actions of those Villians”, as they undid his careful work to win over locals’ cooperation.Footnote ⁹⁴ For this reason, he preferred to take on patrol lascars and Chinese coolies, whom he trusted better. The same commander praised both the coolies and the lascars on his expedition as having “behaved like Angels”, and noted that the lascars in particular had “done more in the working way than ever the same number of Men did in the time”, despite enduring extreme hardship.Footnote ⁹⁵ Because they had behaved so well, he “found it necessary to be liberal” with some of them on account of their hard work under dire conditions.Footnote ⁹⁶

In the reports of this expedition, we can see some of the ways that the categories of British labor were enacted, and other ways that they were flexible. Though the expedition had lascars and coolies, the Pioneers (categorized as European) were not exempt from particularly onerous physical labor: they worked alongside lascars clearing particularly thick bamboo in order to construct an esplanade around a church that had been captured.Footnote ⁹⁷ In another mark of the ways these categories might have some flexibility, the commander at one point described himself as having been “obliged to convert” a number of the royal infantrymen on the expedition “into Lascars, by rewards and fair speeches”, as he did not have enough lascars to haul the artillery equipment.Footnote ⁹⁸ Another example of flexible use of labor, and labor's categories, was when the Company decided that since the “Lascars are willing to act as Sepoys”, they would be “tought twice a Week to load and Fire”. This change in work had to be carefully categorized, however, to avoid grumbling over pay:

In other respects, however, these categories of labor could not be bridged: the same commander wrote that: “The Chinese are good Cooleys, but I have had inexpressible Trouble for want of some one among them invested with authority [so] it would still be of great use if you could get me such a person”, and the Manila council agreed to send such.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ While the Chinese coolies had some agency in determining their pay, the Manila council was determined to keep expenses down and to retain rigid boundaries between the terms of coolies’ labor and the other Company employees: the paymaster of the expedition was instructed that “the Custom of Batty should by no means be introduced” for the Chinese coolies. He could offer them one-half real more than what was paid in garrison, and even one full real if they refused to accept just one-half, but the board reminded the paymaster that “we rely on your Endeavours to settle it in the cheapest manner possible”.Footnote ¹⁰¹

Finally, on the question of troublesome or cooperative labor, we might note that by the end of this most vexed occupation, the remaining board members at Manila reported back to Company officials in Madras that “As the Coffres in the Companys Service have behaved remarkably well during the Expedition, and the times have been very hard on their earnest representation we granted to them the same pay as the Nabob's Irregulars”.Footnote ¹⁰² It may be remembered that the “Nabob's irregulars”, Indo-Portuguese, had been granted pay “as Europeans” in the way that they were accustomed to being paid by the Nawab.Footnote ¹⁰³ These African soldiers, then, persuaded the board to grant them pay “as Europeans”.