The mid modern Wasian Meetup vs. chad OG Wasian Meetup

The first Wasian meetup was more historically consequential I guess.

By the 1800s the Spanish Colony of the Philippines- ruled for almost 250ish years by that point- was sick & tired of being treated & oppressed as colonial subjects. Influenced by the spread of Liberal-Enlightenment thinking, the people of the Islands- Natives, Chinese migrants, and even white settlers- all began kicking & screaming at their colonial masters for social & political reforms. Spanish authorities repeatedly said no to these demands for a wide array of racist, political, & sometimes wholly bullshit reasons and this jumpstarted the Philippine Reformist Movement by the mid 1800s

This Reformist movement was spearheaded by Posh-ass rich kids. **Ever since the earliest years of Spanish rule, the upper crust was made up of the descendants of the earliest European settlers (the Creoles), native Philippine nobility (the Principalia), and Chinese merchant settlers (the Sangleyes). Over 200ish years the 1%ers intermarried (or had kids out of wedlock) which led to the emergence of a large segment of Eurasian or Filipino Chinese mixed families amongst the Local Elite, creating the Mestizo (Mixed-Race) socio-racial category.**

In the 1800s, when Spain ended the Manila Galleon trade & opened the Philippines up to export agricultural trade, these mfers became very rich (many of them were landlords). So rich, that they were able to afford to send their children to the great universities of Europe (mostly in Madrid) where their kids got bitten by the Liberal-Enlightenment bug.

Inspired by the ideals of the French & Latin American Revolutions, and resentful of how the Philippines’ people were oppressed & treated unfairly due to race & colonial laws no matter how rich or poor they were, Elite, mostly Mestizo, Philippine intellectuals began smugly calling themselves “*Illustrados*” (lit. the Enlightened Ones) and began protesting for radical reforms by the 1860s. They wanted equal rights between Spanish & Asians in the colony, representation of the Philippines in the Spanish parliament, and ultimately for the Philippines to be a Spanish Province, with its people becoming Spanish Citizens regardless of their race.

During this time Spain’s Parliament was dominated by salty Conservatives who ignored all this. When cries got louder, neglect gave way to intimidation, executions, and arrests of leading activists. **This ridiculously backfired at Spain as all it did was pissed off Philippine activists enough to start organizing into large activist groups and travelled to Madrid, Spain to pressure the Spanish government directly for reforms.** With the greatest of this being the ***”La Solidaridad (the Solidarity)”*** Philippine elite Liberal activists joined forces with Liberal Spanish thinkers and held protests, press campaigns, and political petitions for equality & representation for the Filipino people.

In the end, Spain’s leaders answered these calls with even more neglect and cruelty, which transformed the reform movement into a revolutionary movement, that spiraled into the Philippine Revolution of 1896, which contributed to the anti-climactic end of the Spanish Empire by 1898, and the birth of the short lived Philippine Republic, Asia’s First Constitutional Democracy, by 1899. Even when American colonization ended that Republic, the descendants of the *Illustrados* dominated the American colonial democratic bureaucracy & continued to propagate democratic & national ideals among the Filipino people until final independence was achieved by 1935-46

tl;dr the OG Wasian Meetup helped end an Empire.

“Based.”

-last words of Dr. Jose Rizal, 31st December 1986

Probably the quietest community ever