WITH the recent death of Queen Elizabeth 2nd at the age of 96, I saw a few scattered social media posts discussing the brief 'British Interlude in Manila' from 1762 to 1765. Of these, I encountered a few that imagined how the archipelago would have turned out had the British booted the Spanish out of the colony for good. Even as a counterfactual, this daydream would not pass.

One thing needs to be emphasized, based on the studies of scholars on the subject: the British had no intention of seizing and taking the Philippines away from Spain.