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Philippine Historiography – Looking Back and Looking Forward: the History of Historical Studies BERNARDITA REYES CHURCHILL

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Philippine Historiography – Looking Back and Looking Forward: the History of Historical Studies BERNARDITA REYES CHURCHILL 141 Philippine Historiography – Looking Back and Looking Forward: The History of Historical Studies BERNARDITA REYES CHURCHILL INTRODUCTION Philippine historiography can be traced to the issues in the writing (and teaching) of Philippine arrival of Ferdinand Magellan (1521) and the history. In so doing, perhaps an agenda for future advent of Spanish colonial period (1565) when historical studies could be planned that will printed and published records, consisting of address the imbalance that seems to exist in chronicles, manuscripts and public documents Philippine historical writing. became available, documenting early Philippine HISTORICAL WRITING ON/IN THE PHILIPPINES society and culture and Spanish colonization of Filipinas. For the period prior to the 16th century, the archipelago’s society and culture can be partly, Historical writing by Filipinos did not begin though insufficiently, reconstructed from until the 1880s, and between 1880 and 1940, they archaeological remains and references to the were necessarily limited not only in number but islands in the records of other countries, like also in scope. We can cite several reasons for this: China, India, and the various states of mainland first, literacy was limited as university education and island Southeast Asia. was not made available to Filipinos until 1863, and This historiography essay will look at the public education was not effectively established history of the discipline of history in the until the beginning of the twentieth century; and Philippines, discussing the nature, characteristics second, history as a discipline was probably not and trends in historical writing, especially from considered as important and popular as literature, the period in the 19th century when educated as is still the case today. Filipinos, referred to as ilustrados, studied and Until almost the end of the 19th century, the wrote about their history, society, and culture. The history of the Philippines had been written by essay will look at the most significant themes that Spanish missionaries and government officials. have contributed towards developing a national Spanish historical writing on the Philippines before history, and also identify some of the gaps and 1887 had two outstanding characteristics. First, 142 PHILIPPINE SOCIAL SCIENCES: CAPACITIES, DIRECTIONS, AND CHALLENGES virtually all of it was written by friars of the It was not until the last two decades of the 19th religious orders, chiefly by missionaries of many century that Filipino ilustrados took courage years’ service in the Philippines who had a good (censorship was strictly enforced in the Philippines knowledge of the languages and the people. by the Spanish authorities) to write about Second, it was inseparably connected with the themselves or Spanish administration of the historiography of Spanish missions elsewhere in Philippines. Among these were the Filipino Asia—in the Moluccas, Indochina, China and propagandists in Spain, and more specifically Japan with the Philippines serving as the outpost Gregorio Sancianco y Gozon (1852-1897) who for these missionary activities. After 1887, several wrote El progreso de Filipinas (Madrid, 1881) and important secular historians enter the lists; but Jose Rizal who edited, with copious notes, Morga’s even so, the missionary influence remained very Sucesos (Paris, 1890). strong. The pioneers of Philippine historical research In general, the historical works written by and writing generally wrote in Spanish, only missionary chroniclers tended to have a strong occasionally, in Tagalog. Among the most religious (and also racial) bias, oftentimes prominent of them were Pedro Paterno (1858- hagiographic in nature, although they do contain 1911), Isabelo de los Reyes (1864-1938), T. H. Pardo interesting and varied materials about the country de Tavera (1857-1925), Manuel Artigas y Cuerva and the people than is often realized. It is, however, (1866-1925), Jaime C. de Veyra (1846-1963), and very clear that in these chronicles, the Filipinos Epifanio de los Santos (1871-1928). The two were submerged in histories which dealt mostly “giants” of this age of the pioneers were Rafael with Spanish history in the Philippines. With very Palma (1874-1939) and Teodoro M. Kalaw (1884- few exceptions, they also reflected Spanish 1940). The works of these pioneers may appear to prejudices, lack of understanding, or refusal to us today as “museum pieces” because they had understand the people they had come to colonize.1 not used the standard tools of historical research The only secular writer of the period before and methodology, but they nevertheless have 1887 was Dr. Antonio de Morga (1559-1636), a formed the foundation of historical studies on the judge of the Audiencia (the Supreme Court in the Philippines. Some of these pioneers did not only Philippines), whose Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas write on history, including local history, but also (Mexico, 1609) is one of the most interesting books on ethnography, law, politics, prehistory, folklore, on sixteenth-century Philippines. It has generally and literature. been accepted that Morga’s work was judicious Beginning with the third decade of the 20th and impartial, although he never came to regard century, when the Philippines came under the Philippines and the Filipinos with the same American colonial rule, English became a popular sympathy and affection that some of the medium of writing with most historical writers. missionary writers showed. Maximo M. Kalaw (1891-1955), Conrado Benitez The second lay history published was the (1899-1971), Leandro H. Fernandez (1899-1948), three-volume work of José Montero y Vidal, which Encarnación Alzona (1898- 2001), and Gregorio F. appeared between 1887 and 1895—Historia general Zaide (1907-1987) all wrote almost exclusively in de Filipinas desde descubrimiento hasta nuestros días English, having been educated in the schools (Madrid, 1887-1895). Montero y Vidal was very established during the American period. critical of the missionary historians. The other Historical writing by Americans from 1898 to Spanish lay historian was Wenceslao E. Retana 1940 was probably slightly better than the who had an enormous output on all aspects of the generally biased Spanish accounts, although there history, literature, and bibliography of the were also a number of books written by Americans Philippines.2 which greatly incensed the Filipinos. A good part of the literature up to 1940 were participants’ Philippine Historiography – Looking Back and Looking Forward: The History of Historical Studies 143 literature, with a few exceptions, generally movements, the nature and methods of the concerned with explaining America’s venture into conversion of Filipinos to Christianity, and the imperialism or American policy towards the responses to Catholic conversion.4 Filipinos.3 Other topics have also been dealt with. Adding In the first decade since the end of the war and to classic institutional studies on the Manila Independence in 1946, few historical studies were galleon, the Audiencia of Manila, are studies on the produced probably because scholarly attention Spanish bureaucracy and a detailed and was focused on more current events attending to preliminary study of nineteenth-century the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the Philippines. There were also studies on economic Philippines from the devastation of the Second history, such as on the late eighteenth-century World War and the Japanese Occupation. activities of the Royal Company of the Philippines, Chronologically speaking, postwar scholarship up the English “country trade” with the Philippines, to the mid-sixties focused on classical colonial the Economic Society of Friends of the Country, history dealing primarily on colonial institutions Spanish trade in the Pacific based in Manila, the established and the motives and policies of the impact of foreign trade on nineteenth-century Spaniards in Mexico (between 1565-1821, the Philippines, the Mexican real situado and the Philippines was governed from Mexico) and tobacco monopoly. Later works included studies Madrid; the Americans in Washington, D.C.; and on the cabildo secular of Manila, the US Army in in the colonial capital in Manila. This type of the Philippines, and the Philippine Constabulary.5 history was for the most part political and national The period of nationalism and revolution was in scope, and was traditionally and narrowly a particular focus of historical writing, especially defined as the chronicle of political events with the centennial celebration of the birth of the involving civil or religious governance and the National Hero Jose Rizal (in 1961), the later Manila elite. Centennials of the Philippine Revolution against By the late fifties and early sixties (and through Spain (1996), and the Declaration of Philippine the succeeding decades) modern Filipino-centric Independence from Spain (1998). Key works on history really emerged in works on the late 19th the Propaganda Movement, the Katipunan and the and early 20th century and the analysis of political Philippine Revolution, and a more critical study developments and nationalism were often made of Rizal (away from the previous hagiographic more sophisticated as historians began to employ works) were produced in the decades of the fifties the insights of other social science disciplines. The up to the 1990s and into the present century when completed body of impressive works on Philippine the Centennial Commemorations (including
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