30 MARCH

1591 - During the Spanish colonial period, Governor Perez Dasmarinas issues an ordinance in the city of Manila, Philippines that forbids the native indios to wear silk and other fabrics from China supposedly because such it is detrimental to the general welfare and that of the city government; the ordinance has been prompted by agitation to either ban or restrict the importation of Chinese silk, as well as cotton, which were very popular because of its incredibly low prices, thus threatening the elimination of Peninsular silk in Spain and of draining gold and silver from the treasury; only a few decades earlier, Western colonization of the Southeast Asian archipelago began in 1565 when the Spaniards first established settlements in Cebu; the Philippine islands were first "discovered" [translation: first learned about]  by Spain following  the ill-fated 1521 expedition of Ferdinand Magellan who was killed by Mactan island chieftain Lapu-Lapu, and then followed up with several other expeditions, with the 1565 expedition by Miguel Lopez de Legaspi as signalling the beginning of the actual Spanish colonization of the Philippines.


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