First Philippine expedition to Indo-China

Abstract

The Philippines today has a battalion of soldiers in Vietnam, popularly kno as the Philippine Civil Action Group or PHILCAG for short, and a controversy has risen as to whether or not it is justified to have done so. This is the third Philippine expedition to Indo-China. The second was sent in the 1870's, and the first late in the sixteenth century. A few years ago, Alain Bulie Miailhe, honorary consul in Bordeaux, France, acquired from a British bookseller a manuscript containing the minutes of the Manila government's deliberations regarding this first expedition to that region. An English transcript of the minutes in Spanish is being given, so that we can gather what motives prompted the Manila officials to meddle in the internal affairs or a neighboring country. In 1594, the King of Cambodia sent an embassy to the Philippines requesting military assistance, in as much as his country was being invaded by the King of Siam. Praunkar Langara was forced to andon his capital at Phnom-Penh shortly afterwards and take refuge with his family in the adjoining northern kingdom of Laos. This embassy was headed by a Spaniard named Blas Ruiz whose companion, Diego Belloso, a Portuguese adventurer, escaped from his Siamese captors and arrived some months later in Manila on a junk that he had appropriated in his escape.