<P> "Until an inept bureaucracy was substituted for the old paternal rule, and the revenue quadrupled by increased taxation, the Filipinos were as happy a community as could be found in any colony . The population greatly multiplied; they lived in competence, if not in affluence; cultivation was extended, and the exports steadily increased . (...) Let us be just; what British, French, or Dutch colony, populated by natives can compare with the Philippines as they were until 1895? ." </P> <P> The first official census in the Philippines was carried out in 1878 . The colony's population as of December 31, 1877, was recorded at 5,567,685 persons . This was followed by the 1887 census that yielded a count of 6,984,727, while that of 1898 yielded 7,832,719 inhabitants . </P> <P> The estimated GDP per capita for the Philippines in 1900, the year Spain left, was $1,033.00 . That made it the second - richest place in all of Asia, just a little behind Japan ($1,135.00), and far ahead of China ($652.00) and India ($625.00). </P> <P> In 2006, the Civil Code of Spain provided that the acquisition of nationalities of Ibero - American countries, Andorra, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea, Portugal and those of the Sephardic Jews originally from Spain, does not bear the loss of their Spanish nationalities of origin that paved the way for easier route of Spanish Nationality reacquisition by the people of the Philippines . A similar law in the Philippines was enacted later in 1963 that provides "Natural born citizens of the Philippines who acquired the citizenship of one of the Iberian countries, Ibero - American Countries and United Kingdom will not lose their natural born citizen status ." </P>

Economic social and cultural development in the philippines under spain