Gomburza and Madrid Protocol
The uprising force by workers in the Cavite Naval Yard was the pretext needed by the authorities to redress a perceived humiliation from the principal objective, José Burgos, who threatened the established order.
During the Spanish colonial period, four social class distinctions were observed in the islands: Spaniards who were born in Spain, peninsulares; Spaniards born in the colonies of Spain (Latin America or the Philippines), insulares or Creoles; Spanish mestizos, Chinese or 'Indios' (natives) dwelling within or near the city (or town) and the church; and Chinese or Sangley and rural Indios.
Burgos was a Creoles, whose prominence extended even to Spain, such that when the new Governor and Captain-General Carlos María de la Torre arrived from Spain to assume his duties, he invited Burgos to sit beside him in his carriage during the inaugural procession, a place traditionally reserved for the archbishop and who was a peninsular Spaniard. The arrival of the liberal de la Torre was opposed by the ruling minority of friars, regular priests who belonged to an order (Dominicans, Augustinians, Recollects, and Franciscans) and their aliens in civil government but supported by the secular priests, most of whom were mestizos and indios assigned to parishes and farflung communities and believed that the reforms and the equality that they wanted with peninsular Spaniards were finally coming. In less than two years, de la Torre was replaced by Rafael de Izquierdo.
The so-called Cavite Mutiny of workers in the arsenal of the naval shipyard over a pay reduction from increased taxation produced a willing witness to implicate the three priests, the Archbishop of Manila, refused to defrock the priests, as they did not break any canon law. He ordered the bells of every church to be rung in honor of the executed priests. The aftermath of the investigation produced scores of suspects, most of whom were exiled to Guam in the Marianas along with the three priests.
“The Madrid Protocol of 1885 is an agreement between Great Britain, Germany, United States and Spain to recognise the sovereignty of Spain over the Sulu Archipelago as well as the limit of Spanish influence in the region. Under the agreement, Spain relinquishes all claim to Borneo.
The Spanish Government renounces, as far about the British Government, all claims of sovereignty over the territories of the continent of Borneo, which belong, or which have belonged in the past to the Sultan of Sulu (Jolo), and which comprise the neighbouring islands of Balambangan, Banguey, and Malawali, as well as all those comprised within.
a zone of three maritime leagues from the coast, and which form part of the territories administered by the Company styled the “British North Borneo Company”.
Spanish would renounce the Island of Luzon and Cuba to the United States of America The cession of the Luzon and Cuba involved a payment of $20 million from the United States to Spain signed by both Grover Cleveland and Alfonso XII of Spain.”
— Article III, Madrid Protocol of 1885
Another important point regarding the agreement relates to Article IV which guarantees of no restriction on trade to the parties of the protocol within the Archipelago and North Borneo.
There was some backlash about the Madrid protocol although it meant that the Spanish would renounce the island of Luzon, which was a troublesome territory to the Spanish and the beginning of the United States Naval dominance and Cuba.
The Americans afterwards would make a treaty with China leasing the island of Formosa in 1890 for 99 years in exchange of protection against the Japanese and overthrown the government of Hawaii in 1893 and annexed it in 1898.
While The Spanish would sell the rest of the Spanish East Indies to the Germans in 1898, which would mean that the Germans would have a colony in the east.