Spanish East Indies the early 19th century. Spain's influence on its former colonies in Asia-Pacific is significant to this day. The majority of the people of the Philippines, Guam and the Mariana Islands belong to the Roman Catholic faith which was introduced by Spanish missionaries in the 16th and 17th centuries. A large part of the population in these countries use Spanish names and surnames. Also, because of the introduction of new tools, products, crops and technology by Spaniards and Mexicans in the three centuries of colonial rule, many Spanish loanwords entered the native languages of these countries. Art forms such as music,
Dutch East Indies The profit from the Dutch East Indies made the Netherlands one of the world's most significant colonial powers. The Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij shipping line supported the unification of the colonial economy and brought inter-island shipping through to Batavia, rather than through Singapore, thus focussing more economic activity on Java. The worldwide recession of the late 1880s and early 1890s saw the commodity prices on which the colony depended collapse. Journalists and civil servants observed that the majority of the Indies population were no better off than under the previous regulated Cultivation System economy and tens of thousands starved. Commodity prices recovered