Precolonial era Background The Bicolandia was closely allied with the
Kedatuan of Madja-as Confederation, which was located southeast on
Panay Island. According to the epic
Maragtas, two
datus and their followers, who followed Datu Puti, arrived at
Taal Lake, with one group later settling around
Laguna de Bay, and another group pushing southward into the
Bicol Peninsula, placing the Bicolanos between people from
Luzon and people from the
Visayas. An ancient tomb preserved among the Bicolanos, discovered and examined by anthropologists during the 1920s, refers to some of the same deities and personages mentioned in the
Maragtas. It is however worth noting that no other material written records remain that can accurately back the epic's narrative.
Precolonial duluhan of Naga Prior to the arrival of the first Spanish
conquistadors in what is now present day Naga City, the pre-colonial settlement of Naga was a regionally
hegemonic polity geographically located on a strategic
tributary, now known as the
Naga River, flowing from
Mount Isarog to the
Bicol River. According to historians
William Henry Scott and Danilo Madrid Gerona, precolonial societies were referred to by the natives as
duluhan, a broader socio-political structure than the purported familiality of the natives. In Naga and in the rest of Bicol during that period, the only known tripartite social classes derived from Visayan
barangays were the
maguino ("
maginoo" in Tagalog), the richest noble class addressed as
Kagoangnan ("
elder" in Bikol) that were only permitted to datoship;
timagua, or
timawa, the commoners that constituted the general population; and the
oripon ("
alipin" in Tagalog), a slave class composed of other subclasses, such as the
guintubo (pandoan in plural). From the
igenous composition of Mount Isarog and within the vicinity of the Bicol River as the peninsular
drainage basin, the
soil of Naga was highly
fertile in nature, attesting to its natural wealth. from foreign Asian traders, evidently Chinese traders of the
Ming dynasty from the
Silk Road. . Reporting Naga's
craftsmanship in
metallurgy and affluence from maritime trading afforded the establishment of a
garrison and Bicol's first
Catholic mission base, now the San Francisco Parish Church, formerly made of
wood and
hay; on the western bank of Naga's river. In 1575, Captain Pedro de Chávez, the commander of the garrison left behind by Salcedo, founded on garrison grounds a temporary settlement. He christened the settlement after incumbent Gov.-Gen. Sande's hometown of
Cáceres, Spain. On 27 May 1579, Capt. Juan Arce de Sadornil, the garrison commander in Naga, received instructions from the Imperial administration in Manila pertaining to the appropriate selection of a Spanish settlement in Bicol.
Administrative bureaucracy of the locality From 1580—1581, the burgeoning Spanish community in Nueva Cáceres laid the framework for the earliest city-styled
local governance in Southern Luzon. Inspired by Latin American municipal bureaucracies, the
alcaldia (the province) Nueva Cáceres had an
alcalde mayor with a salary of three hundred
pesos, serving as its
Capitan de Guerra (
military commander); counciled by a lower echelon of
public officials referred to as the
cabildo (municipal council), which consisted of 2 alcaldes-in-ordinary and 6
regidores, the council of elderlies, appointed by the governor-general.
Request to the King In 1586, recognizing the cruciality of the
cuidad (city) status, a formal letter was sent to Philip II, thereby requesting the King: In this document, the Spanish officials mentioned were Luis Briceño,
alguacil mayor; and Juan de Guzman and Sebastian Garcia,
regidores. Encouragement from authorities to
interbreed with the native population was decisively a means to maintain the growth of the city, "even blurring the racial gap." reinforced by migrations from
Mexico during Capt. Maldonado's expedition. From a report by Don Antonio Morga of the
Oidor of the
Royal Audencia, he characterized the urban life of Nueva Cáceres as:
Ciudad de Nueva Cáceres in the 18th century Nueva Cáceres during the Philippine Revolution (1896-1899) The "Fifteen Martyrs of Bicol" After the discovery of
Andrés Bonifacio's Katipunan in 1896, Gov.-Gen.
Ramón Blanco's colonial administration escalated crackdown efforts throughout the archipelago on similar large-scale and non-clerical societies such as the
Freemasonry. From August to December 1896, the civil government of
Ambos Camarines under Gov. Ricardo Lacosta had issued several orders of arrest against certain individuals across the province, especially those with ties to
fraternal societies modelled similarly to the Katipunan. In protest, an influential native of Nueva Cáceres, Ramon Feced, formed the revolutionary
militia unit called the "
Cuerpo de Voluntarios." Initial frights of an organized mass execution by Spanish auxiliaries immediately escalated into an internal
revolutionary plot in the span of a single day, organized by
Corporals Elias Angeles and Felix Plazo with majority support among the units against the Spanish. Their uprising was partly inspired by Ildefonso Moreno's quelled revolt in Daet, being a part of the contingent that quashed the rebellion. During Nueva Cáceres'
Peñafrancia Festival on 18 September, the Spanish decided to rearm the Guardia Civil upon considerations of an insufficient Spaniard police force incapable of crowd control. The Guardia Civil rebels utilized the festivities throughout the day as cover to the preparatory prelude of Nueva Cáceres' uprising. At midnight, the
revolutionaries caught the civil authorities by surprise in their sleep, forcing a citywide battle throughout the entire night. The rebels executed key Spanish officials such as Capt. Francisco Andreu, Ambos Camarines' Guardia Civil commander, along with his family; and Lt. Miguel Dias de Montiel with his wife sharing a midnight
coffee.
Invasion of Nueva Cáceres during the Philippine-American War (1900) The United States' refusal to recognize both the terms of the Filipino delegates enshrined in the
Treaty of Paris and the First Philippine Republic's sovereignty and state independence altogether eventually sparked the first engagement of Filipino combatants with American forces in the
Battle of Manila on 4 February 1899. Shortly after the battle,
President Emilio Aguinaldo relegated Gen. Antonino M. Guevarra under Gen. Lukban's command in the defense of Ambos Camarines and Nueva Cáceres. In early 1899, approximately 1,700
Republican soldiers and additional municipal militias collectively referred to as the
Sandatahanes comprised Guevarra's main fighting force, with a roster of native commanders such as Colonel Bernabe Dimalibot, Col. Ludovico Arejola, Col. Ursua, and Lt.-Col. Elias Angeles. On the same day, a battalion of the 40th Regiment, led by a Maj. McNamee, landed on a marshy shore three kilometers from Barcelonita, with the regiment commander, Col. Godwin, leading the push inward. This detachment encountered fierce resistance in the town of
Libmanan led by Col. Ursua, leading to a notorious two-day skirmish that resulted in the deaths of 64 Filipinos and wounding 21 others in total on both sides. On May 1, 1942, the Camp Isarog Guerilllas from
Upper Partido, led by Teofila Padua and Faustino Flor, along with other local resistance contingents, stormed the Japanese garrisons in Naga to liberate American and Filipino prisoners from the Naga Provincial Capitol (now the site of
Puregold Naga) . After two days of besieging the Naga Provincial Capitol, the guerilla forces liberated Naga from
Imperial Japanese forces and released the prisoners. In response,
Governor-General Masaharu Homma, on May 5, dispatched 8,000 Japanese soldiers from
Manila to relieve the garrison in Naga, prompting the contingents to flee and concede. In March 1945, heavy
Allied firebombing from the
United States Army Air Forces’
Fifth Air Force levelled most of Naga’s infrastructure, with only the Cathedral, Capitol, Seminary,
Peñafrancia Shrine, and a house north of Naga being left unscathed. This elicited the Japanese garrisons to resort to more stalwart strongholds and to strengthen their local counter-intelligence capabilities. On April 5, 1945,
Allied Intelligence Bureau (AIB) officer Major Russel Barros, in a meeting at Pamukid Central School,
San Fernando, organized a local taskforce to liberate Naga.
Major Juan Q. Miranda, one of the famed commanders of the Tangcong Vaca Guerilla Unit, was voted as its overall commander. The task force was composed of six other company columns; Capt. Mamerto Sibulo, Lt. Honorato Osio, Lt. Nicolas Penaredondo, all of the Tancong Vaca Guerilla Unit (TVGU); The Blue Eagle under Lt. Felicisimo De Asis; the
Philippine Army Air Corps under Lt. Delfin Rosales; and the Blue Eagle under Capt. Serenilla. On April 9, the joint task force recaptured the abandoned garrisons of
Ateneo De Naga campus and Naga Provincial Capitol, engaging only then with the encamped Japanese garrison at the Abella residence by the Panganiban Bridge and the
MRR-owned Naga Station at Tabuco. This governmental flexibility was not without its issues however; the provincial capitol was heavily damaged during the American bombings, with only one section of the edifice viable for administrative purposes. Without any other feasible sailent to relocate the provincial head, the Municipal Council was shoehorned into this small part of the building until further renovations. On 3 March 1947, Dr. Melchor Villanueva founded
Naga Teacher's College at a certain Villafrancia's mansion by Peñafrancia Ave, offering a 2-year Junior Normal Curriculum to 114 enrollees in the first year alone. Then, on 5 June, a men's college in Ateneo de Naga opened with 87 students. On 1 July, Dr. Jaime Hernandez opened the
Nueva Caceres Colleges "with initial courses in Liberal Arts, Commerce, Education" and 958 students in the High School Department. Vocational and technical courses also arose during this period, with new academic institutions of the Southern Luzon College, Garcia Business Institute, Elegant Fashion Academy, and etc., funded privately by the emergent caste of the town's intellectuals.
Chartered cityhood (1948) Before the introduction of Naga's cityhood in Congress, many attempts to stir popular support were made by the Municipal Council. In early 1948, Patricio Amanse, a Naga lawyer, wrote an article for the Bicol Star detailing how the city's revenue would double without tax increases through the elevation to chartered cityhood status, inviting substantial lobby support from many of the city's commercial demographics. ==Geography==