Zamboanga City, officially the City of Zamboanga (Chavacano/Spanish: Ciudad de Zamboanga; Subanen: Bagbenwa Sembwangan; Sama: Lungsud Samboangan; ; ; ), is a highly urbanized city in the Zamboanga Peninsula region of the Philippines, with a total population of 1.02 million inhabitants. It is the third-largest city by land area in the Philippines, and is also the sixth-most populous city in the archipelago; additionally, it is the second most populous in Mindanao after Davao City. It is the commercial and industrial center of the Zamboanga Peninsula Region.
According to the 2024 census, the City of Zamboanga has a population of 1,018,894 people.
On October 12, 1936, Zamboanga became a chartered city under Commonwealth Act No. 39. It was inaugurated on February 26, 1937.
Zamboanga City is an independent, chartered city and was designated a highly urbanized city on November 22, 1983.
Although geographically separated and an independent, chartered city, Zamboanga City is grouped with the province of Zamboanga del Sur by the Philippine Statistics Authority for statistical purposes, yet it is governed independently of it. And also, it is the largest city of that province and in the entire Zamboanga Peninsula Region.
In 2028, the city's population is projected to hit the 1,200,000 population mark, which will make the city fall under the NEDA's classification of a Metropolitan City.
Etymology The name of Zamboanga is the Hispanicized spelling of the Sinama term for "mooring place" - samboangan (also spelled sambuangan; and in Subanen, sembwangan), from the root word samboang ("mooring pole"). "Samboangan" was the original name of Zamboanga City, from where the name of the peninsula is derived. "Samboangan" is well-attested in Spanish, British, French, German, and American historical records from as far back as the 17th century.
A commonly-repeated incorrect modern folk etymology instead attributes the name of Zamboanga to the Indonesian word jambangan (claimed to mean "place of flowers", but actually means "pot" or "bowl"), usually with claims that all ethnic groups in Zamboanga were "Malays". However, this name has never been attested in any historical records before the 1960s. The city's nickname "City of Flowers" is derived from such folk etymologies.
History Rajahnate of Sanmalan
The Zamboanga Peninsula was settled in the late 12th or early 13th century by the Subanen people; along with the Subanen, it was also the homeland of the ancestors of the Yakan, the Balanguingui, and other closely related Sama-Bajau peoples.
The 11th-century Chinese Song dynasty records also mention a polity named "Sanmalan" (三麻蘭) from Mindanao, which has a name similar to Zamboanga and has been tentatively identified with it by some authors (Wang, 2008; Huang, 1980). Sanmalan is said to be led by a Rajah "Chülan". His ambassador, "Ali Bakti", and that of the Butuan's "Likan-hsieh" are recorded as having visited the Chinese imperial court with gifts and trade goods in AD 1011. However, the correlation between Zamboanga and Sanmalan is based only on their similar-sounding names. Sanmalan is mentioned only in conjunction with Butuan (P'u-tuan), and it is unknown whether Sanmalan is indeed Zamboanga. The historian William Henry Scott (1989) also posits the possibility that Sanmalan instead referred to a polity of the Sama-Bajau ("Samal") people.
During the 13th century, the Tausūg people began migrating to the Zamboanga Peninsula and the Sulu Archipelago from their homelands in northeastern Mindanao. They became the dominant ethnic group in the archipelago after they were Islamized in the 14th century and established the Sultanate of Sulu in the 15th century. A majority of the Yakan, the Balanguingui, and the Sama-Bajau were also Islamized, though most of the Subanen remained animist (except the Kolibugan subgroup in southwestern Zamboanga).
Spanish rule
Spanish explorers, led by Ferdinand Magellan, arrived in the Philippine archipelago in 1521. Zamboanga was chosen in 1569 as the site of the Spanish settlement and garrison on La Caldera (now part of Barangay Recodo). Spain granted the former polity in the area protectorate status against the Sulu Sultanate, its former overlord and the settlement's name was hispanized into Zamboanga and made a city. Zamboanga City was one of the main strongholds in Mindanao, supporting colonial efforts in the southern part of the island and paving the way for Christian settlements. It also served as a military outpost, protecting the island against foreign invaders and Moro pirates.
In 1599, the Zamboanga fort was closed and transferred to Cebú due to great concerns about an attack by the English on that island, which did not occur. After having abandoned the city, the Spaniards, as well as some Spanish-American soldiers from Peru"Second Book of the Second Part of the Conquests of the Filipinas Islands, and Chronicle of the Religious of Our Father, St. Augustine" (Zamboanga City History) "He (Governor Don Sebastían Hurtado de Corcuera) brought a great reënforcements of soldiers, many of them from Perú, as he made his voyage to Acapulco from that kingdom." and New Spain (Mexico) led by the former Governor of Panama, Don Sebastián Hurtado de Corcuera, who also brought along Genoese crusaders"Imperial Ambition in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Genoese Merchants and the Spanish Crown" By Céline Dauverd (Published by Cambridge University Press) Chapter 2, Page 68. who had settled in Panama, joined forces with troops from Pampanga and Visayan soldiers (from Bohol, Cebu and Iloilo) and reached the shore of Zamboanga to bring peace to the island against Moro Muslim pirates.
In 1635, Spanish officers and soldiers, along with Visayan laborers, settled in the area, and construction began on Fort San José (now known as Fort Pilar) to protect the inhabitants from Moro piracy. Specifically, on April 5, 1635, Cebu sent a force of 300 Spanish and 1,000 Visayan troops to settle and colonize Zamboanga City under the command of Captain Juan de Chavez."Jesuits In The Philippines (1581-1768)" Page 325 "The acting governor at the time, Juan Cerezo de Salamanca, saw the merits of this proposal as soon as it was presented to him, and he decided to put it into execution at once. Towards the end of March 1635, two forces of 300 Spanish and 1,000 Visayan troops set sail from Cebu under the command of Captain Juan de Chavez. But instead of proceeding to Jolo as in previous years, they went ashore at what is now the site of the city of Zamboanga and fortified themselves there. The date, a memorable one, was 6 April 1635. Zamboanga became the main headquarters of the Spaniards on June 23, 1635, upon approval of King Philip IV of Spain; the Spanish officially founded the city. Thousands of Spanish troops, headed by a governor general from Spain, took the approval to build the first Zamboanga fortress (now called Fort Pilar) in Zamboanga to forestall enemies in Mindanao like Moro pirates and other foreign invaders. There were also a hundred Spanish troops sent to fortify the nearby Presidio of Iligan.San Agustín, Conquistas, lib. 2 cap 37: 545 During the years 1636 and 1654, the Presidio of Zamboanga received companies of 210 and 184 reinforcements of Mexican soldiers.Convicts or Conquistadores? Spanish Soldiers in the Seventeenth-Century Pacific By Stephanie J. Mawson AGI, México, leg. 25, núm. 62; AGI, Filipinas, leg. 8, ramo 3, núm. 50; leg. 10, ramo 1, núm. 6; leg. 22, ramo 1, núm. 1, fos. 408 r –428 v; núm. 21; leg. 32, núm. 30; leg. 285, núm. 1, fos. 30 r –41 v . The Zamboanga fortress became the main focus of several battles between Moros and Spaniards during Spanish rule in the region from the 16th century to the 18th. Spain was forced to abandon Zamboanga temporarily and withdraw its soldiers to Manila in 1662 after the Chinese under Koxinga threatened to invade the Spanish Philippines. Despite the official Spanish forces leaving, the Jesuits remained in Zamboanga. They shepherded the civilian Christian population and treated Zamboanga much like their reductions in Paraguay,Image–Object–Performance: Mediality and Communication in Cultural Contact Zones of Colonial Latin America and the Philippines, ed. Astrid Windus and Eberhard Crailsheim (Munster: Waxmann Verlag, 2013) until the Spanish returned.
The Spanish returned to Zamboanga in 1718, and rebuilding of the fort began the following year. The fort would serve as a defense for the Christian settlement against Moro pirates and foreign invaders for the coming years. There was the deportation of mostly Spanish-American and Spanish vagrants from Manila to Zamboanga, which helped advance a colonizing program against the Muslim south, further illustrating how the resistance to Spanish sovereignty in Mindanao and Borneo determined imperial policies on the islands.CSIC riel 311 leg.1 (1758).
While the region was already dominated by Catholicism, Muslims kept up a protracted struggle into the 18th century against the ruling Spaniards. A British naval squadron conducted a raid on Zamboanga in January 1798, but was driven off by the city's defensive fortifications. As a result of the census of 1818, there was a surveyed number of 8,640 souls in the province of Zamboanga.
There was a detachment of 100 Spanish soldiers from Manila. In addition, 2 companies of Spanish soldiers from other parts of the Spanish Empire (A standard company size is 100 men), resulting in 200 Spanish soldiers, as well as a company (100) of Kapampangan soldiers, were also garrisoned in Zamboanga. A large but unspecified proportion of the population were deployed by the Spanish military and were part of the Spanish Artillery and Navy, mostly made up Spaniards and Mexicans.
During 1821, the Uruguayan, Juan Fermín de San Martín, brother of the leader of the Argentinian Revolution, José de San Martín, was commander of the fortress-city of Zamboanga for a year.In Spanish: Before his assignment in Zamboanga he trained the native Guarani in the Jesuit Reductions of Paraguay, in wars against the Portuguese Empire's Bandeirantes slavers, supporting them in their independence wars against enslavement, before the Suppression of the Jesuits (Accused of supporting Native Americans against colonial interests) left the Paraguayans alone and without royal support. Without the Jesuits present to protect native interests, revolutions and wars of independence against the injustices committed by the Imperial powers towards the natives they ruled transpired. At 1823, inspired by the Spanish-American Wars of Independence, the Spanish-Americans who had been sent to Zamboanga and the Philippines as soldiers, joined in the revolt of Andres Novales; he fought for sovereignty and became the short-lived Emperor of the Philippines. Due to the era of the Latin American Wars of Independence, Spain feared that the large Mexican and South American population in the Philippines would incite the Filipinos to rebel, thus the Spaniards direct from Spain were imported (Peninsulares) and the Latin American class in the Philippines were displaced and were forced into a lower rank of the caste system, which they reacted negatively to.The economic background of Rizal's time By Benito J. Legarda Jr (The Philippine Review of Economics Vol. XLVIII No. 2 December 2011 pp. 4) In 1831, the custom house in Zamboanga was established as a port, and it became the main port for direct communication, trading some goods and other services to most of Europe, Southeast Asia and Latin America. The American invaders arrived in the Philippines during the time of Spanish Governor General Valeriano Weyler, with thousands of troops to defeat the Spaniards who ruled for over three centuries.
Other descriptions of Zamboanga also speak of the mixed origins of its residents. Thus,