Globalization is a concept that is firmly rooted in the 20 and 21st century; as a matter of fact, the term “globalization” was only coined in the 20th century and was first used by Theodore Levitt in his 1983 article “Globalization of Markets”. In actuality, globalization has been a slow on-going process from the very first element of human contact; taking on new shapes and forms with the spread of military, cultural and economic empires.
There have been many events and developments that have pushed it along such as the Silk Road, the rise of the Roman Empire, the telephone, the internet, etc. One such event occurred five hundred years ago with the birth of one man, Augustinian Friar Andres de Urdaneta.
Friar Urdaneta was born in the small Basque town of Ordizia in 1508. He would later go on to become a renowned navigator and soldier before joining the Augustinian order at age 48. While he is more familiar to us as the Augustinian friar who accompanied Don Miguel de Legaspi, his contributions to globalization are significant and two-fold.
In 1565, the Legazpi expedition departed from Acapulco, Mexico for the Philippines. Urdaneta was the primary driver behind the expedition, and because of its mission, the most important member. While Legazpi was tasked to colonize the Philippines, Urdaneta had arguably a more difficult job, which was to discover a stable and usable return route from what would become Manila to the Port of Acapulco.
In August 1565, Urdaneta left the Philippines after only four months, on a single ship bound for Acapulco. On October 8, 1565, they successfully arrived in Acapulco, tired, dehydrated and with only two men capable of dropping anchor; Friar Urdaneta and the nephew of Don Miguel de Legazpi, Felipe de Salcedo.
Prior to Urdaneta mapping out “Urdaneta’s route,” return trips from Asia to Mexico were highly risky and had a limited success rate. After Urdaneta, the trip was significantly easier; to the point that the merchants of Seville in 1593 petitioned the Spanish government to limit the number of ships that could make the round trip to two a year because the galleon trade was cutting into their profits. Urdaneta’s route would be used for 250 years, until March 1815.
The second contribution of Urdaneta was smaller, but no less significant for the Philippines. Before leaving, he tasked his Augustinian missionaries with spreading the word of God; but only if it was in Tagalog. As we know, language is the heart and soul of a culture and people and by ensuring that the missionaries spoke the Philippine language, he preserved our heritage. In a way, this can be interpreted to mean that he was the first exponent of Tagalog as our national language.
Because of Friar Urdaneta, the Philippines has a special place in history. We were the vanguard of globalization and the Spanish empire became the first to be called, “The empire where the sun never sets”.
2008 marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of Friar Andres de Urdaneta. To commemorate the event, a commission has been set up here in the Philippines and is headed by Father Pedro G. Galende, OSA and Don Antonio M. de Ynchausti. We look forward to many events next year celebrating this remarkable man.