essay for philippine history

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Pre-Spanish history of the Philippines

The spanish period in the philippines, the 19th century in the philippines, the philippine revolution, the period of u.s. influence.

• World War II
• The early republic
• Martial law
• The downfall of Marcos and return of democratic government
• The Philippines since c. 1990

history of the Philippines

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• American Historical Association - When Did Philippine History Begin?
• GlobalSecurity.org - Philippines History
• Philippine History - Synopsis of Philippine History
• Association for Asian Studies - The Philippines: An Overview of the Colonial Era
• Marimari.com - History of Philippines
• he Philippines and the University of Michigan, 1870-1935! - The Philippines: Historical Overview
• Table Of Contents

history of the Philippines , a survey of notable events and people in the history of the Philippines . The Philippines takes its name from Philip II , who was king of Spain during the Spanish colonization of the islands in the 16th century. Because it was under Spanish rule for 333 years and under U.S. tutelage for a further 48 years, the Philippines has many cultural affinities with the West. The country was wracked by political turmoil in the last quarter of the 20th century. After enduring more than a decade of authoritarian rule under Pres. Ferdinand Marcos , the broadly popular People Power movement in 1986 led a bloodless uprising against the regime. The confrontation resulted not only in the ouster and exile of Marcos but also in the restoration of democratic government to the Philippines.

The Philippines is the only country in Southeast Asia that was subjected to Western colonization before it had the opportunity to develop either a centralized government ruling over a large territory or a dominant culture . In ancient times the inhabitants of the Philippines were a diverse agglomeration of peoples who arrived in various waves of immigration from the Asian mainland and who maintained little contact with each other. Contact with Chinese traders was recorded in 982, and some cultural influences from South Asia , such as a Sanskrit -based writing system, were carried to the islands by the Indonesian empires of Srivijaya (7th–13th century) and Majapahit (13th–16th century); but in comparison with other parts of the region, the influence of both China and India on the Philippines was of little importance. The peoples of the Philippine archipelago, unlike most of the other peoples of Southeast Asia, never adopted Hinduism or Buddhism .

According to what can be inferred from somewhat later accounts, the Filipinos of the 15th century must have engaged primarily in shifting cultivation , hunting , and fishing . Sedentary cultivation was the exception. Only in the mountains of northern Luzon , where elaborate rice terraces were built some 2,000 years ago, were livelihood and social organization linked to a fixed territory. The lowland peoples lived in extended kinship groups known as barangay s , each under the leadership of a datu , or chieftain. The barangay , which ordinarily numbered no more than a few hundred individuals, was usually the largest stable economic and political unit.

Within the barangay the status system, though not rigid, appears to have consisted of three broad classes: the datu and his family and the nobility, freeholders, and “dependents.” This third category consisted of three levels—sharecroppers, debt peons , and war captives—the last two levels being termed “slaves” by Spanish observers. The status of the debt peons and war captives was inherited but, through manumission and interclass marriage, seldom extended over more than two generations. The fluidity of the social system was in part the consequence of a bilateral kinship system in which lineage was reckoned equally through the male and female lines. Marriage was apparently stable, though divorce was socially acceptable under certain circumstances.

Early Filipinos followed various local religions, a mixture of monotheism and polytheism in which the latter dominated. The propitiation of spirits required numerous rituals, but there was no obvious religious hierarchy . In religion, as in social structure and economic activity, there was considerable variation between—and even within—islands.

This pattern began to change in the 15th century, however, when Islam was introduced to Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago through Brunei on the island of Borneo . Along with changes in religious beliefs and practices came new political and social institutions. By the mid-16th century two sultanates had been established, bringing under their sway a number of barangay s. A powerful datu as far north as Manila embraced Islam. It was in the midst of this wave of Islamic proselytism that the Spanish arrived. Had the Spanish come a century later or had their motives been strictly commercial, Filipinos today might be a predominantly Muslim people.

Spanish colonial motives were not, however, strictly commercial. The Spanish at first viewed the Philippines as a stepping-stone to the riches of the East Indies (Spice Islands), but, even after the Portuguese and Dutch had foreclosed that possibility, the Spanish still maintained their presence in the archipelago.

The Portuguese navigator and explorer Ferdinand Magellan headed the first Spanish foray to the Philippines when he made landfall on Cebu in March 1521; a short time later he met an untimely death on the nearby island of Mactan . After King Philip II had dispatched three further expeditions that ended in disaster, he sent Miguel López de Legazpi , who established the first permanent Spanish settlement, in Cebu, in 1565. The Spanish city of Manila was founded in 1571, and by the end of the 16th century most of the coastal and lowland areas from Luzon to northern Mindanao were under Spanish control. Friars marched with soldiers and soon accomplished the nominal conversion to Roman Catholicism of all the local people under Spanish administration. But the Muslims of Mindanao and Sulu, whom the Spanish called Moros , were never completely subdued by Spain.

Spanish rule for the first 100 years was exercised in most areas through a type of tax farming imported from the Americas and known as the encomienda . But abusive treatment of the local tribute payers and neglect of religious instruction by encomenderos (collectors of the tribute), as well as frequent withholding of revenues from the crown, caused the Spanish to abandon the system by the end of the 17th century. The governor-general, himself appointed by the king, began to appoint his own civil and military governors to rule directly.

Central government in Manila retained a medieval cast until the 19th century, and the governor-general was so powerful that he was often likened to an independent monarch. He dominated the Audiencia , or high court, was captain-general of the armed forces, and enjoyed the privilege of engaging in commerce for private profit.

Manila dominated the islands not only as the political capital. The galleon trade with Acapulco , Mexico , assured Manila’s commercial primacy as well. The exchange of Chinese silks for Mexican silver not only kept in Manila those Spanish who were seeking quick profit, but it also attracted a large Chinese community . The Chinese, despite being the victims of periodic massacres at the hands of the Spanish, persisted and soon established a dominance of commerce that survived through the centuries.

Manila was also the ecclesiastical capital of the Philippines. The governor-general was civil head of the church in the islands, but the archbishop vied with him for political supremacy. In the late 17th and 18th centuries the archbishop, who also had the legal status of lieutenant governor, frequently won. Augmenting their political power, religious orders, Roman Catholic hospitals and schools, and bishops acquired great wealth, mostly in land. Royal grants and devises formed the core of their holdings, but many arbitrary extensions were made beyond the boundaries of the original grants.

The power of the church derived not simply from wealth and official status. The priests and friars had a command of local languages rare among the lay Spanish, and in the provinces they outnumbered civil officials. Thus, they were an invaluable source of information to the colonial government. The cultural goal of the Spanish clergy was nothing less than the full Christianization and Hispanization of the Filipino. In the first decades of missionary work, local religions were vigorously suppressed; old practices were not tolerated. But as the Christian laity grew in number and the zeal of the clergy waned, it became increasingly difficult to prevent the preservation of ancient beliefs and customs under Roman Catholic garb. Thus, even in the area of religion, pre-Spanish Filipino culture was not entirely destroyed.

Economic and political institutions were also altered under Spanish impact but perhaps less thoroughly than in the religious realm. The priests tried to move all the people into pueblos, or villages, surrounding the great stone churches. But the dispersed demographic patterns of the old barangay s largely persisted. Nevertheless, the datu ’s once hereditary position became subject to Spanish appointment.

Agricultural technology changed very slowly until the late 18th century, as shifting cultivation gradually gave way to more intensive sedentary farming, partly under the guidance of the friars. The socioeconomic consequences of the Spanish policies that accompanied this shift reinforced class differences. The datu s and other representatives of the old noble class took advantage of the introduction of the Western concept of absolute ownership of land to claim as their own fields cultivated by their various retainers, even though traditional land rights had been limited to usufruct. These heirs of pre-Spanish nobility were known as the principalia and played an important role in the friar-dominated local government.

By the late 18th century, political and economic changes in Europe were finally beginning to affect Spain and, thus, the Philippines. Important as a stimulus to trade was the gradual elimination of the monopoly enjoyed by the galleon to Acapulco. The last galleon arrived in Manila in 1815, and by the mid-1830s Manila was open to foreign merchants almost without restriction. The demand for Philippine sugar and abaca (hemp) grew apace, and the volume of exports to Europe expanded even further after the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869.

The growth of commercial agriculture resulted in the appearance of a new class. Alongside the landholdings of the church and the rice estates of the pre-Spanish nobility there arose haciendas of coffee , hemp , and sugar , often the property of enterprising Chinese-Filipino mestizos. Some of the families that gained prominence in the 19th century have continued to play an important role in Philippine economics and politics.

Not until 1863 was there public education in the Philippines, and even then the church controlled the curriculum. Less than one-fifth of those who went to school could read and write Spanish, and far fewer could speak it properly. The limited higher education in the colony was entirely under clerical direction, but by the 1880s many sons of the wealthy were sent to Europe to study. There, nationalism and a passion for reform blossomed in the liberal atmosphere. Out of this talented group of overseas Filipino students arose what came to be known as the Propaganda Movement . Magazines , newspapers , poetry , and pamphleteering flourished , most notably the biweekly paper La Solidaridad , which began publication in 1889. José Rizal , this movement’s most brilliant figure, produced two political novels— Noli me tangere (1887; Touch Me Not ) and El filibusterismo (1891; The Reign of Greed )—which had a wide impact in the Philippines. In 1892 Rizal returned home and formed the Liga Filipina, a modest reform-minded society, loyal to Spain, that breathed no word of independence. But Rizal was quickly arrested by the overly fearful Spanish, exiled to a remote island in the south, and executed in 1896. Meanwhile, within the Philippines there had developed a firm commitment to independence among a somewhat less privileged class.

Shocked by the arrest of Rizal in 1892, these activists quickly formed the Katipunan under the leadership of Andres Bonifacio , a self-educated warehouseman. The Katipunan was dedicated to the expulsion of the Spanish from the islands, and preparations were made for armed revolt. Filipino rebels had been numerous in the history of Spanish rule, but now for the first time they were inspired by nationalist ambitions and possessed the education needed to make success a real possibility.

In August 1896, Spanish friars uncovered evidence of the Katipunan’s plans, and its leaders were forced into premature action. Revolts broke out in several provinces around Manila. After months of fighting, severe Spanish retaliation forced the revolutionary armies to retreat to the hills. In December 1897 a truce was concluded with the Spanish. Emilio Aguinaldo , a municipal mayor and commander of the rebel forces, was paid a large sum and was allowed to go to Hong Kong with other leaders; the Spanish promised reforms as well. But reforms were slow in coming, and small bands of rebels, distrustful of Spanish promises, kept their arms; clashes grew more frequent.

Meanwhile, war had broken out between Spain and the United States (the Spanish-American War ). After the U.S. naval victory in the Battle of Manila Bay in May 1898, Aguinaldo and his entourage returned to the Philippines with the help of Adm. George Dewey . Confident of U.S. support, Aguinaldo reorganized his forces and soon liberated several towns south of Manila. Independence was declared on June 12 (now celebrated as Independence Day). In September a constitutional congress met in Malolos , north of Manila, which drew up a fundamental law derived from European and Latin American precedents. A government was formed on the basis of that constitution in January 1899, with Aguinaldo as president of the new country, popularly known as the “Malolos Republic.”

Meanwhile, U.S. troops had landed in Manila and, with important Filipino help, forced the capitulation in August 1898 of the Spanish commander there. The Americans, however, would not let Filipino forces enter the city. It was soon apparent to Aguinaldo and his advisers that earlier expressions of sympathy for Filipino independence by Dewey and U.S. consular officials in Hong Kong had little significance. They felt betrayed.

U.S. commissioners to the peace negotiations in Paris had been instructed to demand from Spain the cession of the Philippines to the United States; such cession was confirmed with the signing of the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898. Ratification followed in the U.S. Senate in February 1899, but with only one vote more than the required two-thirds. Arguments of “ manifest destiny ” could not overwhelm a determined anti-imperialist minority.

By the time the treaty was ratified, hostilities had already broken out between U.S. and Filipino forces. Since Filipino leaders did not recognize U.S. sovereignty over the islands and U.S. commanders gave no weight to Filipino claims of independence, the conflict was inevitable. It took two years of counterinsurgency warfare and some wise conciliatory moves in the political arena to break the back of the nationalist resistance. Aguinaldo was captured in March 1901 and shortly thereafter appealed to his countrymen to accept U.S. rule.

The Filipino revolutionary movement had two goals, national and social. The first goal, independence, though realized briefly, was frustrated by the American decision to continue administering the islands. The goal of fundamental social change , manifest in the nationalization of friar lands by the Malolos Republic, was ultimately frustrated by the power and resilience of entrenched institutions. Share tenants who had rallied to Aguinaldo’s cause, partly for economic reasons, merely exchanged one landlord for another. In any case, the proclamation of a republic in 1898 had marked the Filipinos as the first Asian people to try to throw off European colonial rule.

The juxtaposition of U.S. democracy and imperial rule over a subject people was sufficiently jarring to most Americans that, from the beginning, the training of Filipinos for self-government and ultimate independence—the Malolos Republic was conveniently ignored—was an essential rationalization for U.S. hegemony in the islands. Policy differences between the two main political parties in the United States focused on the speed with which self-government should be extended and the date on which independence should be granted.

In 1899 Pres. William McKinley sent to the Philippines a five-person fact-finding commission headed by Cornell University president Jacob G. Schurman. Schurman reported back that Filipinos wanted ultimate independence, but this had no immediate impact on policy. McKinley sent the Second Philippine Commission in 1900, under William Howard Taft ; by July 1901 it had established civil government.

In 1907 the Philippine Commission , which had been acting as both legislature and governor-general’s cabinet, became the upper house of a bicameral body. The new 80-member Philippine Assembly was directly elected by a somewhat restricted electorate from single-member districts, making it the first elective legislative body in Southeast Asia. When Gov.- Gen. Francis Burton Harrison appointed a Filipino majority to the commission in 1913, the American voice in the legislative process was further reduced.

Harrison was the only governor-general appointed by a Democratic president in the first 35 years of U.S. rule. He had been sent by Woodrow Wilson with specific instructions to prepare the Philippines for ultimate independence, a goal that Wilson enthusiastically supported. During Harrison’s term, a Democratic-controlled Congress in Washington, D.C., hastened to fulfill long-standing campaign promises to the same end. The Jones Act , passed in 1916, would have fixed a definite date for the granting of independence if the Senate had had its way, but the House prevented such a move. In its final form the act merely stated that it was the “purpose of the people of the United States” to recognize Philippine independence “as soon as a stable government can be established therein.” Its greater importance was as a milestone in the development of Philippine autonomy . Under Jones Act provisions, the commission was abolished and was replaced by a 24-member Senate, almost wholly elected. The electorate was expanded to include all literate males.

Some substantial restrictions on Philippine autonomy remained, however. Defense and foreign affairs remained exclusive U.S. prerogatives . American direction of Philippine domestic affairs was exercised primarily through the governor-general and the executive branch of insular government. There was little more than one decade of thoroughly U.S. administration in the islands, however—too short a time in which to establish lasting patterns. Whereas Americans formed 51 percent of the civil service in 1903, they were only 29 percent in 1913 and 6 percent in 1923. By 1916 Filipino dominance in both the legislative and judicial branches of government also served to restrict the U.S. executive and administrative roles.

By 1925 the only American left in the governor-general’s cabinet was the secretary of public instruction, who was also the lieutenant governor-general. This is one indication of the high priority given to education in U.S. policy. In the initial years of U.S. rule, hundreds of schoolteachers came from the United States. But Filipino teachers were trained so rapidly that by 1927 they constituted nearly all of the 26,200 teachers in public schools. The school population expanded fivefold in a generation; education consumed half of governmental expenditures at all levels, and educational opportunity in the Philippines was greater than in any other colony in Asia.

As a consequence of this pedagogical explosion, literacy doubled to nearly half in the 1930s, and educated Filipinos acquired a common language and a linguistic key to Western civilization. By 1939 some one-fourth of the population could speak English, a larger proportion than for any of the native dialects . Perhaps more important was the new avenue of upward social mobility that education offered. Educational policy was the only successful U.S. effort to establish a sociocultural basis for political democracy.

American attempts to create equality of economic opportunity were more modest and less successful. In a predominantly agricultural country the pattern of landownership is crucial. The trend toward greater concentration of ownership, which began in the 19th century, continued during the American period, despite some legal barriers. Vast American-owned plantations were forestalled, but legal restrictions had little effect on those politically well-connected Filipinos who were intent on amassing fortunes. The percentage of farmers under share tenancy doubled between 1900 and 1935, and the frustration of the tenants erupted in three small rebellions in central Luzon during the 1920s and ’30s.

Nor was U.S. trade policy conducive to the diffusion of economic power. From 1909 the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act allowed free entry of Philippine products into the U.S. market, at the same time U.S. products, mostly manufactured, were exempted from tariff in the Philippines. The free flow of U.S. imports was a powerful deterrent to Philippine industrial growth. Export agriculture, especially sugar, prospered in the protected U.S. market. Owners of mills and large plantations profited most, thus reinforcing the political dominance of the landed elite.

American preparation of the Philippines for democratic self-government suffered from an inherent contradiction, perhaps not recognized at the time. Transferring governmental responsibility to those capable of undertaking it was not consistent with building a social and economic base for political democracy. Self-government meant, of necessity, assumption of power by those Filipinos who were already in positions of leadership in society. But those men came for the most part from the landed elite; preservation of their political and economic position was incompatible with equalizing opportunity. Even the expansion of an educated middle class did not necessarily result in a transformation of the pattern of power. Most middle-class aspirants for political leadership adjusted to the values and the practices of the existing power elite.

Filipino leaders quickly and skillfully utilized the opportunities for self-government that the Americans opened to them. The Filipino political genius was best reflected in an extralegal institution—the political party . The first party, the Federal Party , was U.S.-backed and stressed cooperation with the overlords, even to the point of statehood for the Philippines. But when openly nationalist appeals were allowed in the 1907 election, the Nacionalista Party, advocating independence, won overwhelmingly. The Federalists survived with a new name, Progressives, and a new platform, ultimate independence after social reform. But neither the Progressives nor their successors in the 1920s, the Democrats, ever gained more than one-third of the seats in the legislature. The Nacionalista Party under the leadership of Manuel Quezon and Sergio Osmeña dominated Philippine politics from 1907 until independence.

More significant than the competition between the Nacionalistas and their opposition was the continuing rivalry between Quezon and Osmeña. In fact, understanding this personality conflict provides more insight into the realities of prewar Philippine politics than any examination of policy or ideology .

In 1933 the U.S. Congress passed the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Act , which set a date for Philippine independence. The act was a fulfillment of the vague pledge in the Jones Act; it was also responsive to the demands of a series of “independence missions” sent to Washington by the Philippine legislature. But this unprecedented transfer of sovereignty was decided upon in the dark days of the Great Depression of the 1930s—and with the help of some incongruous allies. The Depression had caused American farm interests to look desperately for relief, and those who suffered real or imaginary hurt from the competition of Philippine products sought to exclude those products. They had already failed in a direct attempt to amend the tariff on Philippine imports but found that the respectable cloak of the advocacy of independence increased the effectiveness of their efforts. Tied to independence was the end of free entry into American markets of Philippine sugar, coconut oil , rope, and other less important items. That those economic interests were able to accomplish what they did is partly explainable by the fact that their political clout was great compared with that of the small group of American traders and investors in the Philippines.

The Philippine legislature rejected the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Act, apparently as a result of the Osmeña-Quezon feud, much to the displeasure of American officialdom. But, when Quezon came to Washington the following year to work for a new bill, the same alliance of forces in the U.S. Congress obliged by producing the almost identical Tydings-McDuffie Act . Endorsed by Quezon and accepted with alacrity by the Manila legislature, it provided for a 10-year commonwealth during which the United States would retain jurisdiction over defense and foreign affairs. Filipinos were to draft their own constitution, subject to the approval of the U.S. president.

A constitutional convention was quickly elected and a constitution (which bore a strong resemblance to its U.S. model) framed and approved by plebiscite and by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt . The last governor-general, Frank Murphy , became the first high commissioner, with more of a diplomatic than a governing role. The commonwealth was inaugurated on November 15, 1935. The Nacionalista Party patched up its internal quarrels and nominated Quezon for president and Osmeña for vice president. They were elected overwhelmingly.

The commonwealth period was intended to be devoted to preparation for economic and political independence and perfection of democratic institutions. But even before the tragic events of World War II , the transition did not run smoothly.

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The philippines: an overview of the colonial era.

In the Beginning

Although the details vary in the retelling, one Philippine creation myth focuses on this core element: a piece of bamboo, emerging from the primordial earth, split apart by the beak of a powerful bird. From the bamboo a woman and man come forth, the progenitors of the Filipino people. The genesis of the Philippine nation, however, is a more complicated historical narrative. During their sixteenth-century expansion into the East, Ferdinand Magellan and other explorers bearing the Spanish flag encountered several uncharted territories. Under royal decree, Spanish colonizers eventually demarcated a broad geographical expanse of hundreds of islands into a single colony, thus coalescing large groups of cultural areas with varying degrees of familiarity with one another as Las Islas Filipinas. Ruy Lopez de Villalobos, claiming this area for the future King Philip II of Spain in the mid-1500s, took possession of the islands while imagining the first borders of the future Philippine state. During Spanish rule, the boundaries of the empire changed as Spain conquered, abandoned, lost, and regained several areas in the region. Had other colonies been maintained or certain battles victorious, Las Islas Filipinas could have included, for example, territory in what is now Borneo and Cambodia. When, during the Seven Years’ War, Spain lost control of Manila from 1762–64, the area effectively became part of the British Empire. The issue of shifting boundaries notwithstanding, the modern-day cartographic image of the Philippine archipelago as a unified whole was credited to Jesuit priest Pedro Murillo Velarde, Francisco Suarez, and Nicolas de la Cruz who, in 1734, conceptualized, sketched, and engraved the first accurate map of the territory.

Explorers for Spain were not the first to encounter the islands. Chinese, Arabic, and Indian traders, for example, engaged in extensive commerce with local populations as early as 1000 AD. Yet it was the Spanish government that bound thousands of islands under a single colonial rule. The maps delineating Las Islas Filipinas as a single entity belied the ethnolinguistic diversity of the area. Although anthropological investigations continue, scholars believe Spain claimed territory encompassing over 150 cultural, ethnic, and linguistic groups. Within this colonial geography, however, Spain realized that the actual distance between the capital center of Manila and areas on the margins (as well as the very real problems with overcoming difficult terrain between communities) made ruling difficult. Socially and geographically isolated communities retained some indigenous traditions while experiencing Spanish colonial culture in varying degrees. Vicente Rafael’s White Love and Other Events in Filipino History (2000) chronicles this disconnection between the rule of the colonial center and those within the territorial borders. 1 His conclusions suggest in part that although the naming and mapping of Filipinas afforded the Spanish a certain legitimacy when claiming the islands, this was in some ways a cosmetic gesture. Instead of unifying the diverse local populations under one banner during the almost 400 years of Spanish rule, various groups remained fiercely independent or indifferent to the colonizer; some appropriated and reinterpreted Spanish customs, 2 while others toiled as slaves to the empire. 3

As they spread throughout the islands, Spanish conquistadors encountered a variety of religions; during the sixteenth century, the areas now referred to as the Luzon and Visayas cluster of islands were home to several belief systems that were chronicled by the Christian friars and missionaries who came into contact with them. Famed Philippine historian William Henry Scott (1994) recounts, for instance, examples of Visayans who “worshiped nature spirits, gods of particular localities or activities, and their own ancestors”; 4 Bikolanos whose “female shamans called baliyan . . . spoke with the voice of departed spirits, and delivered prayers in song”; 5 and Tagalogs whose pantheon included “Lakapati, fittingly represented by a hermaphrodite image with both male and female parts, [who] was worshipped in the fields at planting time.” 6 Over time, however, Spain’s colonial hegemony, power, and influence used to consolidate their rule spread through the vehicle of Catholicism, supplanting or heavily influencing several of the local spiritual traditions, which were transformed to fit the new religious paradigm. In the 1560s, Spaniard Miguel López de Legazpi introduced Catholic friars to the north. Christianity redefined the worldview and relationships of some of the locals, implementing a social structure heavily based on Biblical perspectives and injunctions. By the eighteenth century, indigenous people caught practicing so-called pagan rituals were punished; local histories written on bamboo or other materials were burned, and cultural artifacts were destroyed. Church edifices dominated the landscape as the symbolic and psychological center of the permanent villages and towns that sprung up around them. Once firmly established, the Catholic Church, through various religious orders with their own agendas, clearly shared power with Spain, and the two jointly administered the colonization of the islands.

However, Spanish Catholic colonial rule was incomplete. Domination of the southern half of the archipelago proved impossible due in large part to the earlier introduction of Islam in approximately 1380. Muslim traders traveled in and around the southern islands, and over time, these merchants likely married into wealthy local families, encouraging permanent settlements while spreading Islam throughout the area. By the time of Spanish arrival in the sixteenth century, the Islamic way of life was already well-established; for example, the Kingdom of Maynila (site of present-day Manila) was ruled by Rajah Sulayman, a Muslim who fought against Spanish conquest. Scholars agree that the Spanish arrival profoundly affected the course of Philippine history. Had Magellan or other colonizers never arrived or landed much later, they may have encountered a unified Muslim country. As history would have it, however, Spain encountered serious resistance in the Filipinas south, sowing the seeds of one of the oldest and bitterest divisions in contemporary Philippine society. Spanish colonizers soon realized they were against a strong, although not entirely uniform or unified, Muslim people. The constant struggle to extend Spanish hegemony to the south spawned the Spanish-Moro Wars, a series of long-standing hostilities between Muslims and Spanish. From the late 1500s until the late 1800s, Spain attempted to gain a foothold in the area— succeeding only to the extent that some soldiers were eventually allowed by local leaders to maintain a small military presence. Spanish colonial leaders, however, never dominated or governed the local area, despite laying claim to the territory.

Gabriela Silang Monument on Ayala Avenue, Manila. Source: Ayala Triangle website at http://tinyurl.com/kf5teob . The Catholic Church, through various religious orders with their own agendas, clearly shared power with Spain, and the two jointly administered the colonization of the islands.

Revolutionary Narratives

During the late eighteenth century, revolutionaries such as Gabriela and Diego Silang fought for a free Ilocano nation in the northern Philippines. Other revolutionaries emerged, and by the end of the nineteenth century, leaders such as Andrés Bonifacio and Emilio Jacinto were pressuring Spanish leadership on several fronts. Future national hero José Rizal incurred the wrath of the colonial government with the publication of Noli Me Tángere (Touch Me Not, 1887) and El Filibusterismo (The Filibustering, 1891). Rizal, born to a relatively prosperous family of Filipino, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese descent, was well-educated in the Philippines and in parts of Europe. A true renaissance man, Rizal was an ophthalmologist, scientist, writer, artist, and multilinguist whose works were written in several languages, including Spanish and Latin. Noli Me Tángere and El Filibusterismo , first published in Germany and Belgium, respectively, brought international attention to the abuses of the Filipino people by the colonial government and Catholic Church. Throughout Rizal’s life, he continued writing and advocating reforms such as the recognition of Filipinos as free and equal citizens to the Spanish. Rizal’s popularity grew amongst Filipinos fighting against Spanish oppression, drawing the suspicion of local officials who accused him of associating with armed insurgents. In 1896, Rizal was arrested and convicted of several crimes, including inciting rebellion, and was executed by firing squad on December 30. However, rather than suppressing the revolution, Rizal’s death cast him as a martyr for the cause, and his works were more widely disseminated and read by leaders fighting for an independent Philippines.

Today, Rizal’s immortality extends to national hero status, with numerous awards, national monuments, parks, associations, movies, poems, and books dedicated to his memory. Philippine government poster from the 1950s. Source: National Archives and Records Administration at http://tinyurl.com/moosqsu .

Today, Rizal’s immortality extends to national hero status, with numerous awards, national monuments, parks, associations, movies, poems, and books dedicated to his memory. Rizal’s writings proliferate on the Internet. His works, once considered seditious propaganda by some, are now available as free downloads. 7 Admirers who take to social media characterize Rizal as their hero and post facts about his background and achievements or quotes from his texts. 8 The power of Rizal’s narratives transcend the paper documents handwritten 125 years ago. He is remembered as a Filipino writing for his people, a native son who used the tools of storytelling to expose the truth about life under colonial rule.

Colonialism: The Sequel

Scholars argue that the execution of Rizal inspired a broader fight for freedom from the Spanish government. Led by heroes such as Bonifacio, the Philippine Revolution began in 1896 and included numerous battles against Spanish forces on multiple fronts. By 1898, as Spain was fighting to quell the uprisings in the Philippines, it became embroiled in the Spanish-American War. After losing to the United States in several land and naval battles, Spain released the Philippines and other colonies to the US in exchange for US $20 million, as agreed upon in the Treaty of Paris of 1898. During the negotiation of the treaty, the American Anti-Imperialist League opposed the annexation of the Philippines. Composed of social, political, and economic luminaries of the era (for example, activist Jane Addams and former President Grover Cleveland), the league organized a series of publications criticizing the US government’s colonial policies. Mark Twain, prominent author, wrote for the The New York Herald in 1900:

I have read carefully the Treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. . . . It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land. 9

The treaty was hotly debated by the Senate. Ultimately, ratification of the treaty was approved on February 6, 1899, by a vote of fifty-seven in favor and twenty-seven against—a single vote more than the required twothirds majority. Meanwhile in the Philippines, Emilio Aguinaldo, a Filipino leader in the fight for freedom, declared an independent Philippine government—which neither the Spanish nor United States governments acknowledged. When the final version of the Treaty of Paris was enacted, the islands once again became subject to the laws and policies of another distant nation.

Americans who supported annexing the Philippines viewed the archipelago as a doorway through which the United States could gain more of a financial foothold in Asia while extending its empire overseas. Before the US could begin fully establishing control of the islands, a new war began. Some scholars have termed it “the first Việt Nam,” referencing the extended armed conflict which ended in 1975 between North Việt Nam and the US, whom many North Vietnamese also perceived as an imperialist aggressor. The Philippine-American war began on February 4, 1899, when American soldiers opened fire on Filipinos in Manila. In the first years of US occupation, the battles were fought between the new US colonizers and Filipino guerrilla armies tired of existing under any foreign rule. James Hamilton-Paterson, a British travel writer and commentator on the Philippines, estimates that the war’s death toll included over 4,000 American and 16,000 Filipino soldiers, as well as almost one million civilians who perished from hunger and disease. 10 Although the war officially ended in 1902, skirmishes continued for several years afterward.

Under the rule of the United States, a plethora of people, ideas, and changes to the infrastructure flooded the archipelago. During this era, Christian groups flourished as Protestants and other denominations began proselytizing via missionary expeditions. Organizations such as the Salvation Army and the YMCA began operations in the Philippines; the so-called “Big Three” of American voluntary associations, the Lions Club, Kiwanis, and Rotary, also quickly spread throughout the islands. The United States military sponsored the establishment of hospitals and funded improvements to roads and bridges. Prominent urban planner Daniel Burnham visited the Philippines in 1904 and designed the capital city of Manila for redevelopment. 11 US culture dominated Philippine life. Linguist Bonifacio P. Sibayan, for example, discusses the introduction of English by American colonial authorities as the medium of instruction in schools: “English thus became the only medium of instruction in the schools, the only language approved for use in the school, work, in public school buildings, and on public school playgrounds.” 12 Sibayan further explains that while English-only eventually changed to bilingual instruction, English usage had become pervasive throughout the whole of society. Throughout the business and government sector, English became the dominant language, as well as the language that bridged communication gaps between regional Filipino cultural groups who did not share an indigenous language.Today, English, along with Filipino, is recognized as a national language of the Philippines. Renato Constantino, Filipino scholar, characterized the introduction of English as a detriment to Filipino society: “With American textbooks, Filipinos started learning not only the new language but also a new way of life, alien to their traditions . . . This was the beginning of their education, and at the same time, their miseducation.” 13 Filipino linguists and other social scientists continue researching and debating the extent to which indigenous cultural values and traditions were lost with the change in language. 14 Nevertheless, English proved beneficial to at least some Filipinos. The US government sponsored some students from the elite upper class to study in American schools and, upon their return, work in the government. Other Filipinos, recruited by US companies beginning in the colonial era, migrated to California, Hawai`i, and other states, lured by the promise of lucrative work compared to wage rates picking sugarcane and pineapple in the Philippines. With at least some familiarity with the language, Filipinos were able to communicate with their foreign employers.

In 1935, the United States designated the Philippines as a commonwealth and established a Philippine government that was meant to transition to full independence. During World War II, however, Japan attacked the Philippines and held the country from 1941 to 45. Lydia N. Yu-Jose in “World War II and the Japanese in the Prewar Philippines” (1996) describes an immigrant population of approximately 20,000 Japanese people living in the islands prior to the war. 15 Some were temporary migrants, content to work in the Philippines for several years and then return to Japan with their earnings. Others were permanent settlers, many of whom would go on, for example, to establish agricultural operations, open factories, and begin logging operations. Some of these Japanese business owners, Yu-Jose explains, were utilized as advisers and installed as local leaders by the occupying army. Initially, some regarded the Japanese as liberators, freeing the Philippines from the United States and bringing the islands into the Japanese empire. However, in light of the subsequent war atrocities, harsh realities came to light. In October 1943, the Japanese established what is now referred to as the Second Philippine Republic, with José P. Laurel as president. Widely recognized as simply a puppet government, the dominating Japanese military continued occupying the area. Local factories under Japanese control produced goods for the war effort while Filipinos suffered food shortages.

Against this backdrop, Filipinos once again organized widespread resistance throughout the islands. Over 250,000 people used guerrilla warfare tactics against Japanese occupiers, who steadily lost control as the war continued. During the war, famed General Douglas MacArthur also organized American troops to fight alongside the Filipinos. From February to March 1945, Filipino soldiers and US troops fought in the Battle of Manila, which would eventually mark the end of the occupation. During this month, at least 100,000 civilians died at the hands of Japanese soldiers. Overall, scholars estimate between 500,000 and one million deaths of Filipinos during the World War II Japanese occupation.

After the end of the war, the United States and the Philippines signed the Treaty of Manila on July 4, 1946; Manuel Roxas transitioned from the President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines to first President of an independent Philippine Republic.

Guide to the Present

Yet while “independent” implied a Philippines officially free from foreign rule, many contemporary narratives of Filipino identity, citizenship, and statehood are inevitably influenced by the colonial past and, some say, the continuing undue influence of other countries. The political, social, and economic elites of the country, for example, are often members of the same families that have held power in the country for generations. Gavin Shatkin’s “Obstacles to Empowerment: Local Politics and Civil Society in Metropolitan Manila, the Philippines” 16 traces how Spanish and US colonial authorities granted extensive rights and privileges to favored landowners. Many of these families later leveraged their power into political and economic dynasties, leading to a contemporary Philippine government mired in nepotism, cronyism, and corruption. 17

After war reparations were paid in the 1950s, Japanese businesses and investors soon returned to the islands. Today, Japan is a strategic economic and political partner of the Philippine government. However, as in the aftermath of Spanish and United States colonialism, Filipinos still struggle with defining a national identity after such widespread traumas. Other challenges for the Philippine state today include settling a territorial dispute regarding areas of the South China Sea with the People’s Republic of China; allowing the return of the United States military to the islands; brokering a lasting peace with the historically Muslim-dominated south; coping with the increasing number of Filipinos working overseas, as well as the subsequent social and economic consequences of this migration; and reducing poverty. These realities, juxtaposed against the Philippine Department of Tourism slogan, “It’s more fun in the Philippines,” suggests that understanding today’s Republic of the Philippines means studying the historical roots of power and influences born from the imposition of colonial structures.

Philippines

Geography and population.

Area: 120,000 square miles; slightly larger than Arizona

Population: 107 million

Freedom House rating from “ Freedom in the World 2015” (ranking of political rights and civil liberties in 195 countries): Partly Free

Type: Republic

Chief of State and Head of Government: President Benigno Aquino (since June 30, 2010)

Elections: President elected by popular vote and serves a single six-year term

Legislative Branch: Bicameral Congress; Senate (twenty-four seats, half of the seats are elected every three years, elected by popular vote, serving six-year terms) and House of Representatives (287 seats, all seats elected by popular vote every three years, serving three-year terms)

Judicial Highest Courts: Supreme Court (chief justice and fourteen associate justices)

Judges: Appointed by president on recommendations by the Judicial and Bar Council and serve until age seventy

The Philippines’ economy is continuing to grow and is moving away from agriculture exports and toward electronics and oil.

GDP: $694.5 billion

Per Capita Income: $7,000

Unemployment Rate : 7.2 percent

Population Below Poverty Line: 26.5 percent Inflation Rate: 4.5 percent

Agricultural Products: Sugarcane, coconuts, rice, corn, bananas, pork, beef, fish

Industries: Electronics assembly, garments, footwear, petroleum refining

Religion: 82.9 percent Catholic, 5 percent Muslim, 2.8 percent Evangelical Christian, 2.3 percent Iglesia ni Kristo (English translation: Church of Christ [different from US Church of Christ]), 4.5 percent other Christian

Life Expectancy: Approximately 72 years

Literacy Rate: 95.4 percent

Major Contemporary Issues

Security: The Philippine government has been dealing with insurgent groups throughout the past couple of decades. Peace talks with the Moro insurgents have brought some stability to the islands, but the government also must deal with the New People’s Army, a Communist insurgent group inspired by Maoist principles. The Philippines and China are also in a dispute over sovereignty for the Spratly Islands.

Drugs: The Philippines are a major consumer and producer of methamphetamines, as well as a producer of marijuana. The government has attempted crackdowns on both but has been unsuccessful so far.

CIA. “The World Factbook: Philippines.” Last modified June 20, 2014. http://tinyurl.com/2y58zo .

Freedom house. “freedom in the world 2015.” accessed february 11, 2015. http://tinyurl.com/ knwvzk6 ., share this:.

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1. Vicente Rafael, White Love and Other Events in Filipino History (Manila: Ateneo de Manila Press, 2000).

2. Reinhard Wendt, “Philippine Fiesta and Colonial Culture,” Philippine Studies 46, no. 1 (1998) 3–23.

3. Rosario M. Cortes, Celestina P. Boncan, and Ricardo T. Jose, The Filipino Saga: History as Social Change (Quezon City: New Day Publisher, 2000); Vicente L. Rafael, Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society Under Early Spanish Rule (Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1998); William H. Scott, “The Spanish Occupation of the Cordillera in the 19th Century” in Philippine Social History: Global Trade and Local Transformations , ed. A.W. McCoy et al. (Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1982).

4. William Henry Scott, Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society (Manila: Ateneo de Manila Press, 1994), 77.

5. Ibid., 185.

6. Ibid., 234.

7. “Books by Rizal, José (sorted by popularity),” Project Gutenberg, accessed March 10, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/ku7fygt .

8. “José Rizal: Not Your Ordinary One Peso Guy,” accessed March 10, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/lr9gvht.

9. Excerpt from the October 15, 1900 New York Herald. See “Mark Twain— The World of 1898: The Spanish-American War,” Library of Congress, accessed September 13, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/y4zyea.

10. James Hamilton-Paterson, America’s Boy: A Century of Colonialism in the Philippines (New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 1998), 33.

11. Ian Morley, “America and the Philippines,” Education About Asia 16, no. 2 (2011) 34–38.

12. Bonifacio P. Sibayan, The Intellectualization of Filipino and Other Essays on Education and Sociolinguistics (Manila: De La Salle University Press, 1999), 543.

13. Renato Constantino, The Miseducation of the Filipino (Quezon City: Foundation for Nationalist Studies, 1982), 6; quoted in ibid., 551.

14. See Laura M. Ahearn, “Language, Thought, and Culture,” in Living Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology (Malden: Wiley-Backwell, 2012), 65–98 for a general overview of the research regarding language, local traditions, and culture change.

15. Lydia N. Yu-Jose, “World War II and the Japanese in Prewar Philippines,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 27, no. 1 (1996): 64.

16. Gavin Shatkin, “Obstacles to Empowerment: Local Politics and Civil Society in Metropolitan Manila, the Philippines,” Urban Studies 37, no. 12 (2000): 2357–2375.

17. “Transparency International: the Global Coalition Against Corruption,” accessed September 13, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/qfms53j .

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Local Histories

Tim's History of British Towns, Cities and So Much More

A Brief History of The Philippines

By Tim Lambert

The Early Philippines

The Philippines was named after King Philip II of Spain (1556-1598) and was a Spanish colony for over 300 years. Today the Philippines is an archipelago of 7,000 islands. However, it is believed that during the last ice age, they were joined to mainland Asia by a land bridge, enabling human beings to walk from there.

The first people in the Philippines were hunter-gatherers. However, between 3,000 BC and 2,000 BC, people learned to farm. They grew rice and domesticated animals. From the 10th century AD Filipinos traded with China and by the 12th Century AD Arab merchants reached the Philippines and introduced Islam.

Then in 1521, Ferdinand Magellan sailed across the Pacific. He landed in the Philippines and claimed them for Spain . Magellan baptized a chief called Humabon and hoped to make him a puppet ruler on behalf of the Spanish crown. Magellan demanded that other chiefs submit to Humabon but one chief named Lapu Lapu refused. Magellan led a force to crush him. However, the Spanish soldiers were scattered and Magellan was killed.

The Spaniards did not gain a foothold in the Philippines until 1565 when Miguel Lopez de Legazpi led an expedition, which built a fort in Cebu. Later, in 1571 the Spaniards landed in Luzon. Here they built the city of Intramuros (later called Manila), which became the capital of the Philippines. Spanish conquistadors marched inland and conquered Luzon. They created a feudal system. Spaniards owned vast estates worked by Filipinos.

Along with conquistadors went friars who converted the Filipinos to Catholicism. The friars also built schools and universities.

The Spanish colony in the Philippines brought prosperity – for the upper class anyway! Each year the Chinese exported goods such as silk, porcelain, and lacquer to the Philippines. From there they were re-exported to Mexico.

The years passed uneventfully in the Philippines until in 1762 the British captured Manila. They held it for two years but they handed it back in 1764 under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, signed in 1763.

The Philippines in the 19th Century

In 1872 there was a rebellion in Cavite but it was quickly crushed. However nationalist feelings continued to grow helped by a writer named Jose Rizal (1861-1896). He wrote two novels Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not) and El Filibusterismo (The Filibusterer) which stoked the fires of nationalism.

In 1892 Jose Rizal founded a movement called Liga Filipina, which called for reform rather than revolution. As a result, Rizal was arrested and exiled to Dapitan on Mindanao.

Meanwhile, Andres Bonifacio formed a more extreme organization called the Katipunan. In August 1896 they began a revolution. Jose Rizal was accused of supporting the revolution, although he did not and he was executed on 30 December 1896. Yet his execution merely inflamed Filipino opinion and the revolution grew.

Then in 1898 came the war between the USA and Spain. On 30 April 1898, the Americans defeated the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. Meanwhile, Filipino revolutionaries surrounded Manila. Their leader, Emilio Aguinaldo declared the Philippines independent on 12 June. However, as part of the peace treaty, Spain ceded the Philippines to the USA. The Americans planned to take over.

The war between American forces in Manila and the Filipinos began on 4 February 1899. The Filipino-American War lasted until 1902 when Aguinaldo was captured.

The Philippines in the 20th Century

American rule in the Philippines was paternalistic. They called their policy ‘Benevolent Assimilation. They wanted to ‘Americanize’ the Filipinos but they never quite succeeded. However, they did do some good. Many American teachers were sent to the Philippines in a ship called the Thomas and they did increase literacy.

In 1935 the Philippines were made a commonwealth and were semi-independent. Manuel Quezon became president. The USA promised that the Philippines would become completely independent in 1945.

However, in December 1941, Japan attacked the US fleet at Pearl Harbor. On 10 December 1941, Japanese troops invaded the Philippines. They captured Manila on 2 January 1941. By 6 May 1942, all of the Philippines were in Japanese hands.

However American troops returned to the Philippines in October 1944. They recaptured Manila in February 1945.

The Philippines became independent on 4 July 1946. Manuel Roxas was the first president of the newly independent nation.

Ferdinand Marcos (1917-1989) was elected president in 1965. He was re-elected in 1969. However, the Philippines was dogged by poverty and inequality. In the 1960s a land reform program began. However many peasants were frustrated by its slow progress and a Communist insurgency began in the countryside.

On 21 September 1972 Marcos declared martial law. He imposed a curfew, suspended Congress, and arrested opposition leaders.

The Marcos dictatorship was exceedingly corrupt and Marcos and his cronies enriched themselves.

Then, in 1980 opposition leader Benigno Aquino went into exile in the USA. When he returned on 21 August 1983 he was shot. Aquino became a martyr and Filipinos were enraged by his murder.

In February 1986 Marcos called an election. The opposition united behind Cory Aquino the widow of Benigno. Marcos claimed victory (a clear case of electoral fraud). Cory Aquino also claimed victory and ordinary people took to the streets to show their support for her. The followers of Marcos deserted him and he bowed to the inevitable and went into exile.

Things did not go smoothly for Corazon Aquino. (She survived 7 coup attempts). Furthermore, the American bases in the Philippines (Subic Bay Naval Base and Clark Air Base) were unpopular with many Filipinos who felt they should go. In 1992 Mount Pinatubo erupted and covered Clark in volcanic ash forcing the Americans to leave. They left Subic Bay in 1993.

In 1992 Fidel Ramos became president. He improved the infrastructure in the Philippines including the electricity supply. Industry was privatized and the economy began to grow more rapidly.

However, at the end of the 1990s, the Philippine economy entered a crisis. Meanwhile, in 1998 Joseph Estrada, known as Erap became president. Estrada was accused of corruption and he was impeached in November 2000. Estrada was not convicted. Nevertheless, people demonstrated against him and the military withdrew its support. Estrada was forced to leave office and Vice-president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo replaced him. She was re-elected in 2004.

The Philippines in the 21st Century

Today the Philippines is still poor but things are changing rapidly. After 2010 the Philippine economy grew at about 6% a year. It is rapidly industrializing and growing more prosperous. Meanwhile, In 2016 the Philippines launched its first satellite. It was called Diwata-1. In 2024 the population of the Philippines was 114 million.

Last Revised 2024

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The Philippines in Imperial History

Reynaldo clemeña ileto, pasyon and revolution: popular movements in the philippines, 1840-1910. manila: ateneo de manila university press, 1979; 1997.nicole cuunjieng aboitiz, asian place, filipino nation: a global intellectual history of the philippine revolution, 1887-1912. new york: columbia university press, 2020..

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• https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2021.1957502

The Forgotten Colony

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The aim of this article is to draw the attention of historians of empire to one of the most neglected components of Western imperial systems. Although the Philippines was ruled successively by Spain, the United States, and Japan for more than four centuries, it occupies only minor place in standard histories of Western imperialism and often is not mentioned at all. Yet, historians of the Philippines have produced work of high standard on themes that prompt comparison with studies of other colonies. The illustrations selected here refer, respectively, to the rise of anti-colonial movements within the colony and the links between embryonic nationalism and similar trends elsewhere in Southeast and East Asia. The originality and vitality of the literature on the Philippines deserves to be much better known outside the country. Equally, historians of the Philippines can gain from connecting their work to the wider historiography of Western imperialism.

• Imperial historiography
• anti-colonial nationalism
• insular territories
• global history
• cultural history
• the United States

This essay is as an advertisement for a subject that has been either neglected or treated in an episodic, fragmented manner by historians of imperialism and empire. Readers will have great difficulty finding references to the Philippines in standard texts on British and French imperialism. Historians of Spain and the United States have of course produced some fine work, but it is confined to a small group of specialists who occupy only a minor place in their larger national stories. In Spain, interest wanes after ‘El Desastre’ of 1898. In the United States, considerable research has been invested in the weightiest event, the Spanish-American War, but few historians there have pursued either its distant antecedents or its colonial consequences. Taken as a whole, it seems fair to say that only a small number of the large cohort of scholars who consider themselves to be imperial historians could write more than a very short essay on the subject.

The omission is scarcely a minor one. No country has a longer and more varied imperial history than the Philippines. Spain laid claim to the archipelago in 1521; independence came in 1946. In the intervening centuries, the country was ruled successively by Spain, the United States, and, briefly, Japan. The British, too, were never far from the scene. In 1883, the French Consul in Manila observed that ‘to all intents and purposes the Philippines are a British possession.’ Footnote 1 Far from being a passing interest, Britain’s informal involvement can be dated from at least the early nineteenth century and continued during the period of U.S. rule.

This is not to suggest that the long and complex story of cosmopolitan imperial connections remains unexplored. On the contrary, historians in the Philippines and a small number of specialists outside it have produced a rich historiography that includes spirited debates on the causes and consequences of colonial rule and notable studies of the character of the nationalist movement.

The literature, however, is characterised by an exceptional degree of what might be called academic involution, despite the long-standing cosmopolitan and imperial connections that have made the Philippines part of global history. While it is the case that all imperial histories tend to be confined to the imperial power itself or to one, or occasionally more, of its specific possessions, the insularity surrounding the study of the Philippines is distinctive. Moreover, the borders containing scholarship have been in place for so long that they are now taken for granted, as if they were a phenomenon of nature. One consequence has been to restrict the circulation of outstanding work that deserves to be known far more widely; another has been to limit a return trade in ideas and examples from other parts of the imperial world.

A full account of continuing localisation in an increasingly global world requires more reflection than space allows here. Two considerations, however, are likely to be part of the explanation. In the first place, the Philippines has been saturated in diverse strains of foreign domination for so long that historians have felt both able and compelled to engage with the imperial record in a way that has been largely self-contained. The all-embracing imperial past has entered the country’s soul, as well as its history. Debates that appear to be time-bound are invariably informed by a need to understand the present, and by a desire to justify or reject the world made by the imperial past. To say that the history of the Philippines is the history of successive foreign empires is an exaggeration; to say that it is hard to separate the ‘island story’ from the absorbing influence of these empires is to state a truism. In these circumstances, the need to extract the ingredients of a national history from the imperial record has given successive generations of historians focus and inspiration and justified their concentration on imperialism ‘in one country’.

Secondly, the pervasiveness of the imperial past in the Philippines is not offset by a founding myth or Great Tradition of the kind that served as a rallying point for nationalists in, for example, India, Persia, and Ottoman Turkey, or China, Korea, and Japan. As a result, nationalists (and historians) in The Philippines have faced exceptional difficulties in appealing to a common counter-culture, which is an essential ingredient in the process of decolonisation. Footnote 2 The omission does not stem from the absence of an indigenous history or of one that lacks longevity and interest. The story of the Philippines is not, as Professor Trevor Roper once claimed of Africa, one of the ‘unrewarding gyrations of barbarous tribes in picturesque but irrelevant corners of the world.’ Footnote 3 The history is rich and extensive, but it is also diverse and localised. The Philippines had numerous states of different sizes and structures but no single, unifying polity that covered a large part of the archipelago.

Two exceptional studies will illustrate the main features of the literature noted here. One is an acknowledged classic in the field that demonstrates the way historians have engaged with the imperial record for the purpose of escaping it. The other is a recent publication that connects with the same themes but does so in a way that opens a wider perspective on the past.

Pasyon and Revolution

Reynaldo Ileto’s book is one of the most celebrated and influential contributions to the history of the Philippines. Yet, it is rarely cited by historians of other empires, including those who are specialists on comparable insular colonies. Footnote 4 It was first published in 1979 but has remained in print since then and has been widely discussed by successive generations of historians. Its achievement is the more remarkable because it is a revised doctoral dissertation and not a work marinated in the additional reading and reflection that time allows.

The events that shook the Philippines in the late 1890s are the most dramatic and among the most important in the country’s long colonial history. The Revolution that broke out in 1896 led first to the establishment of a Revolutionary Government and then, inevitably, to war with Spain. The upheaval in the Philippines became caught up in the Spanish-American War, which began in April 1898 and ended with Treaty of Paris in December of that year, when Spain was obliged to transfer the Philippines to the United States. This was not the end of the matter. Emilio Aguinaldo, who had become the leader of the Revolution in 1897, refused to recognise the Treaty and in January 1899 proclaimed the First Philippine Republic. There followed an unequal war between the two republics that ended in 1901, though militant resistance to the U. S. occupation continued until 1913 and reappeared in new forms after World War I. U. S. rule lasted from 1901 to 1946, apart from 1942-45, when Japan occupied the country. Independence in 1946 opened a new era but also raised old questions about how much effective sovereignty had been attained, who had inherited the spoils of victory, and whether the end of colonial rule had completed the Revolution of 1896 or merely opened another chapter in a story that had still to reach its conclusion.

Unsurprisingly, the events of the 1890s have had a profound effect on the direction of historical studies of the Philippines. Specialists on the nineteenth century have analysed the personalities and programmes of Revolution’s controversial leaders in forensic detail, traced its antecedents, and dug into its subterranean causes. Specialists on the twentieth century have identified the winners and losers in the colonial settlement that followed, examined manifestations of what is often referred to as the ‘Unfinished Revolution’, and explored how the legacy of the colonial past continues to shape the present. The large question joining the two centuries is how to explain the character of nineteenth-century nationalism, its relationship to the Revolution, and the course it took under U.S. rule. The result has been an animated and sometimes assertive debate that has dominated much of the historiography of the Philippines for more than a century. Footnote 5

It was within this context that Reynaldo Ileto set himself the task of finding a new way of understanding the rise of Filipino nationalism in the nineteenth century. In the early 1970s, when he was preparing his doctoral dissertation, the existing historiography was strongly influenced by official records and by American commentators and their Filipino associates who assumed that the key figures in the nationalist movement were members of the educated ( ilustrado ) middle class. The bias was especially apparent in representations of the leaders who came to prominence in the 1890s. Their role was revised or polished to ensure that it was congenial to the colonial rulers and their justificatory programmes of political and economic development. José Rizal, the first of the nationalist heroes and a presumed moderate, who was executed by the Spanish authorities, was promoted; Andrés Bonifacio, the known revolutionary, was relegated by their successor, the United States. This approach was not merely an antique artefact of the colonial era; Ileto argued that it was also advocated and extended by U.S. scholars during the Cold War. Ileto determined to escape from this orthodoxy by prospecting for a new ‘history from below’ that would recover the voices of the unheard by drawing on sources that lay beyond official records.

Ileto’s imaginative idea was to re-examine the pasyon as a source of the voice of the people. The pasyon is a Tagalog poetic epic, or saga, about the passion of Christ. Although the elements of the pasyon were brought together formally in 1814, it was present in various forms before that date and continued to absorb local infusions after it. It also became generalised to cover Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection, and extended to incorporate the Creation, the Fall of Man, and the Last Judgment. The Tagalog, who inhabit the northern island of Luzon, had been subjected to vigorous efforts to convert them to Catholicism since the sixteenth century. By the mid-nineteenth century, the mission had made considerable headway not only there but also in the islands of Visayas, Cebu, Panay, and Negros. The message had also been localised. A combination of selective adoption and infusions of folk beliefs indigenised Christianity; rendering the story of Christ into vernacular languages, principally Tagalog but other languages as well, not only made the pasyon widely available but also enabled it to resonate with the lives of local people. The administrative controls the communities of friars exercised over local villages produced a theocracy that played an unwitting part in the process by encouraging the circulation of the pasyon while censoring many other written sources. Consequently, the pasyon was widely chanted, performed, and read, and came to exercise a profound influence over the peasant mentality.

Ileto’s next step was to argue that the pasyon could be read as an allegory that represented the lives and prospects of the peasantry, who constituted the great majority of the population. The argument was based on an analysis of key terms, which could be interpreted to have secular as well as spiritual meaning. Christ’s humble early life, subsequent persecution by higher authority, and subversive activity in seeking to initiate a new order, could be interpreted as statements of the predicament of ordinary Filipinos and their hopes of deliverance through independence. Ileto followed his exegesis of the pasyon by tracing its subsequent influence on the nationalist movement, particularly the Katipunan, the secret association founded by Andrés Bonifacio and others in 1892. The Katipunan facilitated the spread of liberal ideas into Tagalog, where they passed into familiar religious texts, including the pasyon , and reappeared in political forms, including notions of revolution. The process helped to make a popular revolt possible by giving the unheard rural majority a voice and carrying the nationalist cause beyond the confines of the educated urban middle class. The version of the pasyon expressed through political action was neither that of a world made in the image of the United States nor a regression into millenarianism, but one of a social order of equality, community, and prosperity that had been partly lost and partly unrealised.

On this analysis, the pasyon was a potent outlet for Filipinos who felt oppressed by the colonial state, and a validation of actions taken to resist its agents. Ileto was careful to state that the pasyon was a medium that could be used to express resentment and dissent but was not itself a direct cause of revolutionary action. Its function was to prepare the peasantry to respond to material causes, notably ‘economic pressure and the appearance of charismatic leaders.’ Footnote 6

Ileto’s thesis parted the waters. It showed that Catholicism did not just promote passive obedience, as had previously been claimed, but could be a subversive force. In joining the neglected majority to the Katipunan, the founding institution of the Revolution, Ileto laid out a route that bypassed the dominant interpretation, which claimed that the movement was promoted and steered by an elite of urban ilustrados based mainly in Manila. Ileto argued that the term ‘ilustrado’ had wider meaning than the one adopted by the colonial government, the Filipino elite associated with it, and many subsequent scholars, especially those trained in the American world view. Footnote 7 He suggested that the term could be applied to elements of provincial urban and rural elites who favoured reform and even revolution but were neither complicit with the colonial administration nor ultra-conservative landowners. Seen from this standpoint, the Revolution was a progressive movement of the dispossessed and the unheard majority. When the revolutionary leaders fell out and Bonifacio was executed by his successor, Emilio Aguinaldo, in 1897, the cause was parked in a layby until fuelled by new radical movements in the 1920s and 1930s. The revolution was not only unfinished; it had scarcely begun. In its place came the American-inspired interpretations that Ileto reacted against as a young Ph.D. student.

Notable writers had already found a place for the ‘masses’ in the story of the Revolution. Teodoro Agoncillo had interpreted Katipunan from this perspective and linked the Revolution to both the previous history of resistance to Spanish rule and the radical forms that culminated in the Huk rebellion of the late 1940s. Footnote 8 In 1975, Renato Constantino produced a people’s history of the Philippines that also emphasised the role of non-elite Filipinos. Footnote 9 For all their merits, however, these contributions shared important weaknesses. In bringing material forces in, they put religion out; they claimed to speak for the unheard majority but neither study was based on the voices of those they considered to be the moving force of history. Both accounts incubated methodological problems. Agoncillo was over-influenced by a teleology in which past events were judged according to their ability to explain the present; Constantino applied a formulaic analysis that treated the history of the Philippines as an exercise in accumulating class consciousness. From Ileto’s perspective, both writers underestimated the initiative that gave the ‘poor and ignorant’ agency in creating the movement that led to the Revolution of 1896.

Ileto, too, was unable to escape the call of the present. Indeed, in an exceptionally candid personal memoir he has detailed the influences that surrounded him during his student days. Footnote 10 These included the rise of opposition to President Marcos, manifested in widespread rural and urban discontent, and a formative time in the United States as a graduate student at Cornell. He was also adjusting to generational change within his family. His father was a child of the American Empire, a West Point graduate who saw action during World War II and rose to become commanding general of the Philippine Army. The son was a budding scholar whose outlook was greatly influenced by two other wars: the devastation inflicted on Vietnam and the disparity that emerged during the Cold War between proclaimed principles and political realities. Both Iletos regarded themselves as Filipino nationalists. One spent much of his career in the service of the United States. The other reacted through his scholarship to the informal, as well as the formal, influence of the U.S.A. For the father, the war with the United States had been absorbed by history; for the son, it was America’s first Vietnam. In the Philippines, the imperial presence lives on long after the demise of colonial rule.

Given Ileto’s criticism of the exercise of U. S. power, his scholarship could have taken the road already travelled by many authors of anti-colonial, nationalist histories who praise famous men. Yet, while rejecting the notion of ‘benevolent assimilation’ used to justify colonial rule, Ileto wrote an account of the Revolution that was critical of ilustrado as well as American attitudes towards the uneducated majority. It was distinctive in its approach and use of source material, refreshing in its treatment of religion, and astute in avoiding the normative imperatives that often accompany studies of anti-colonial nationalism. These qualities were recognised by contemporaries and have helped to generate further work on a range of studies, from peasant movements to the reception of Christianity. Footnote 11 Moreover, the debate has gained rather than lost momentum with the passage of time. Even today, forty years on, his book is still stimulating commentary and criticism.

Unsurprisingly, Ileto’s study has aroused dissent as well as approval. Ileto was writing primarily as a cultural historian. His interpretation depended on his understanding of the perceptions of those who read and performed the pasyon . The method he adopted was formed before Orientalism and postmodernism became familiar terms that influenced a whole generation of scholars. Footnote 12 Nevertheless, his approach raised important questions about how texts are understood and translated, and the grounds on which one reading can be said to have more validity than another. It is unnecessary to enter the tangled depths of this debate, which has now lost the fervour it once had, to see that the inferences required to move from religious text to political action are open to alternative readings. One critic, for example, has claimed that Ileto mistranslated key Tagalog concepts, such as loób (‘inner self’ or ‘conscience’). Footnote 13 If a different translation is preferred, the inferences Ileto draws are open to question.

An extension of this criticism holds that Ileto emphasised the read or spoken text rather than its public performance. The distinction matters because performances were grand events typically sponsored by members of the elite and were not the preserve of the masses. In spanning conventional social divisions, the pasyon served to reinforce social hierarchy rather than undermine it. A further complication arises over the degree of influence the pasyon enjoyed. Ileto’s research focussed on specific Tagalog provinces, though he generalised the argument in revising it for his book. It has been suggested, however, that the pasyon was just one among several public religious statements, which included the novenas , and was not as widely known as Ileto claimed. Footnote 14

Uncertainty over the character of the constituency inspired by the pasyon raises the universally difficult issue of defining social classes. ‘Masses’, as Raymond Williams famously put it, are never ourselves but ‘other people’ who exist only in our view of them. Footnote 15 Such subjective perceptions need anchoring in a conception of the social order, or they become amorphous and lose their utility. Ileto’s critique of standard categories and commitment to write a history ‘from below’ certainly charted a route forward, but also left alternative categories open to further definition.

In adapting the ilustrado term, ‘poor and ignorant’ (‘ pobres y ignorantes ’), to refer to the masses, Ileto rescued the urban and rural majority from what E. P. Thompson called the ‘condescension of posterity’ but also amalgamated considerable diversity. Footnote 16 He followed Agoncillo in assigning a similar origin to Bonifacio, though he also qualified the thesis that saw him as the plebian leader of the ‘masses’. Other historians, however, have placed Bonifacio in that least favoured of social categories, the lower middle class. From this standpoint, he may have spoken for the urban and rural workers, but he did not do so as a member of the ‘poor and ignorant’ himself. It has further been contended that the nationalist movement Bonifacio led was largely middle class and also had links with the provincial landed elite. This line of argument suggests that the Revolution was less a matter of ‘haves’ versus ‘have nots’ than a movement that expressed wider forces of embryonic nationalism. Ileto’s great contribution was to shift the focus from urban elites; the challenge his analysis posed was how to devise categories that would be faithful representations of the wider society.

Pasyon and Revolution carried the story from the 1840s to 1910 and raised more questions about twentieth-century developments than could be answered within the confines of a single book. Subsequently, Ileto added to his assessment of the Revolution of 1896 and extended aspects of his interpretation into the twentieth century in a series of invigorating and often provocative essays, the most recent being Knowledge and Revolution . Footnote 17 The emphasis on socio-cultural themes remains, and the analysis of pasyon is carried into the 1930s and linked to the political protest movements of the time. Footnote 18 The analysis, however, has been refined to include new empirical evidence and to take account of Orientalist and poststructuralist approaches that became influential after Pasyon and Revolution was published.

Two themes stand out, though others deserve discussion if space allowed. First, Ileto has taken his understanding of social categories beyond the preliminary division between urban elites and rural masses that served the purpose of his Ph.D. dissertation. His thinking was assisted by the challenging work of U.S. historians who identified leading political figures as ‘caciques’ and ‘bosses’ and regarded them as authoritarians who hampered the U.S. civilising mission. Footnote 19 Ileto’s research showed that this characterisation stereotyped reality: elites came in different shapes and sizes and represented a variety of interests. This assessment led to a reappraisal of both Bonifacio and Aguinaldo. Bonifacio failed as a leader principally because he was unable to connect effectively with the rural majority. Aguinaldo succeeded because his position as a provincial leader enabled him to mobilise support for what became a national movement. Ileto’s findings revised the definitions of elites and ilustrados . Aguinaldo qualified as an ilustrado by being an influential rural landowner but was not ‘enlightened’ because he could neither read nor write Spanish, showed no interest in education, and was conventionally religious. The term ‘ ilustrado ’ still poses problems of definition and the ‘masses’ have yet to shed some of their nebulous quality. Footnote 20 Nevertheless, Ileto’s analysis has carried the subject far ahead of its initial starting point.

The second and related theme continued the historiographical revision Ileto had begun in his Ph.D. dissertation. He had already reacted to the favourable treatment U.S. commentators had given Rizal, who was classified as a moderate. Subsequently, Ileto applied a similar criticism to the work of notable contemporary American scholars, such as Glenn May and Alfred McCoy, whose clinical view of the nationalist movement underlined the role of political factions and minimised the influence of idealism. Footnote 21 Their interpretations emphasised the continuities U.S. rulers in the Philippines inherited. Enduring institutional rigidities and anti-modern attitudes frustrated the efforts made by colonial officials to promote progressive development policies. It followed that colonial subjects rather than American rulers were responsible for the limited progress made in advancing the civilising mission. Ileto contests this view, which he links to the defensive ideology circulating during the Cold War. The context could be greatly enlarged to include assumptions about ‘traditional’ societies that were applied to colonial societies throughout the world when modernisation theory was the primary influence of the day.

Ileto’s reinterpretation of relations during the Japanese occupation provides a striking illustration of his position. The de-Americanisation programme promoted by the Japanese, he argues, had the unrecognised consequence of encouraging Filipinos (including veterans of the war against the United States) to speak about their experiences and express their opinions of U.S. rule. The result was the emergence of an alternative view of the past that looked beneath the disguise imposed by U.S. rulers and commentators. Footnote 22 Unsurprisingly, Ileto’s interpretation has touched sensitivities that often rise to the surface when the past jostles the present. Footnote 23 Irrespective of the merits of the argument, it is clear that Ileto remains as innovative in retirement as he was as a student.

Towards a Wider World

Each generation of historians responds to, and speaks for, its own circumstances. Over 40 years ago, Ileto opened a fresh line of enquiry, a history ‘from below’, that reflected the need to bring the ‘masses’ into history and give them a voice. Footnote 24 CuUnjieng Aboitiz’s study, which is also a revised Ph.D., is the product of a world that has become integrated through the process of globalisation, and the voices she records are those of an increasingly cosmopolitan community. In opening a window on a wider horizon than historians of the Philippines usually encompass, she offers an approach that helps to fit the nation into the global. Footnote 25

Although CuUnjieng Aboitiz is familiar with the extensive literature covering relations between the Philippines, Spain, and the United States, and recognises its continuing research potential, she has chosen to step outside existing guidelines. She examines instead the set of connections joining the Philippines to Southeast and East Asia. This terrain appears to recommend itself because the longevity of ties among these regions is well attested in studies of migration, trade, religion, and political exchanges. Large segments of the story, however, are available only as fragmented components. CuUnjieng Aboitiz has taken one of these, the period of high imperialism between 1887 and 1912, and given it shape and substance. Like Ileto, her focus is on cultural and intellectual history; unlike him, however, her concern is with the educated, cosmopolitan ilustrado rather than with the ‘under-people’.

Paradoxically, the Philippines has been both connected to Asia and separated from it. Established ties have been overlaid by a historical cartography that has joined the archipelago to the West and its intermediaries in Latin America. The long history of colonial rule helped this image not only to set the compass for Western scholars but also to become a self-image accepted in the Philippines. CuUnjieng Aboitiz has a different purpose: her book sets out to recover long-neglected links with Asia and to demonstrate that they, too, played a vital part in stimulating anti-colonial thought and action in the Philippines during the era of high imperialism.

Asian Place opens with a critique of the way regions have been defined. Designations such as the ‘Near East’, ‘Middle East’, and ‘Asia’ and its various sub-divisions (‘South’, ‘Southeast’, ‘Far’, and ‘East’) were approximations imposed to suit Western purposes. Subsequently, colonial officials and Western scholars filled in the borders with details that purported to identify common regional characteristics. The resulting geographical categories brought artificial order to fluid realities and rested on an invented authenticity. If accepted notions of place and region need re-evaluating, so, too, do ideas of nations and nationality. As noted earlier, the need to resolve the uncertainties attending these concepts is especially acute in the case of the Philippines because it lacked an indigenous polity that could serve as the prime reference point.

These considerations provide the analytical basis for the key argument of the book, which explores how Filipino nationalists grounded their claims for self-government in a fusion of local ideas of community (of which the pasyon was one) and different Asian understandings of unity. Their aim was not to circumvent Western influences, which drew on the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and nineteenth-century liberal principles and were ingredients in the mix, but to compose an alternative based on the concept of ‘Filipino Asianism’. Both the Katipunan and the First Philippine Republic mobilised these sources to formulate an ideology of unity that was independent of models introduced by the West. The wider Asian region became more visible and increasingly accessible in the second half of the nineteenth century. Exchanges of people and ideas across South and East Asia gained momentum following the opening of the Suez Canal, the expansion of steamship services, and the growth of international trade. The dialectic of imperialism was already at work: innovations that propelled Western imperialism also provided the means of resisting their consequences.

The search for non-Western sources that would inspire a viable sense of common consciousness prompted leading figures in the anti-colonial movement in the Philippines to seek inspiration from China, Malaya, Vietnam, and Japan. Relations with China reinforced the idea of racial unity and of association with a great and influential culture, but were qualified by the hostility shown to the numerous Chinese immigrants in the Philippines. Rizal and Katipunan drew from Malaya the idea that the Philippines had once been joined to Asia through its roots with Malay-Islamic culture, which could be traced as far back as the eighth century. The anti-colonial struggle in Vietnam served as a channel for the exchange of ideas, including the fundamental distinction, derived from Ho Chi Minh, between reform and revolution.

The most important connection, however, was with Japan, which was the first country in Asia to launch a ‘big push’ for development and formulate an ideology of Pan-Asianism that linked the notion of a common ethnicity to opposition to Western imperialism. Japan’s successful war with China in 1894–95 demonstrated its power and encouraged the predisposition of leaders in the Philippines to see the other ‘island nation’ as a partner. Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905 was a cataclysmic event that raised its prestige and confirmed its leadership of what one newspaper called the ‘partners in misery’ in East Asia. Although Japan had escaped formal subjugation, it had been humiliated by the unequal treaty that was imposed shortly after Commodore Perry’s assertive appearance in 1853. Development had made major military victories possible; revision of the unequal treaty followed. Katipunan needed no further persuasion: Japan became the exemplar, ally, and place of refuge for Filipino nationalists escaping Spanish justice. However, the belief that Japan would also supply material support showed how hope could surpass experience. Good intentions were no match for political realities: at this early stage of its development, Japan had to be careful not to antagonise the great powers, which were already taking slices of East Asia for themselves. Footnote 26

The inflow of ideas and influences was an eclectic mix that became a rolling programme of instructions on how to construct a nation. Racial unity appealed for purposes of defence against an intrusive Western world and as a means of finding place and potential for Asian civilisation in the hierarchical order constructed by Social Darwinists. As Katipunan began to build on the past, even a semi-invented past, it also looked forward to creating a future that accorded with modernist principles of economic and political development. The main tension in its analysis and prescriptions lay between pan-Asian aspirations and local realities. The discussion was strongly infused with Social Darwinism, which became a powerful influence on thinking in East Asia as well as in Europe. It was one matter, however, to claim that racial hierarchies were not fixed for eternity and that human agency could shift the ranking towards equality, but another to identify the appropriate means of attaining unity and progress. As CuUnjieng Aboitiz shows, race proved to be an inadequate basis for mobilising opposition to imperialism and still more to providing the basis of national unity.

Ultimately, spacious ideas had to be slimmed to fit a more tangible location, though this, too, needed to be defined and made operational. The shift from the grand to the pragmatic became apparent under Aguinaldo’s leadership. Footnote 27 In 1898, the first Republic was obliged to minimise the element of pan-Asian racial unity to achieve international recognition and national viability. It was then that Aguinaldo began to speak of the ‘Filipino nation’. The idea of racial solidarity was domesticated, though it retained a place as a supplementary affiliation. When Japan, the leader of Asian modernity, annexed Korea in 1910, the combination of Spencer’s Social Darwinism and Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ impressed its neighbours but also raised qualms about the future.

Connections with East Asia were pioneered and sustained by ilustrados because they were literate, familiar with the possibilities, and had the financial means of travelling to other countries. Even so, there was a problem of communication because English was still in the early stages of becoming the lingua franca of the region. Footnote 28 The absence of a common language presented an even greater problem of communication within the Philippines itself. José Rizal, one of the heroes of the Revolution, was keenly aware of the importance of using a language other than Spanish in constructing a sense of national consciousness. Tagalog, the principal candidate, commended itself because it was the language of much of Luzon, the home of the anti-colonial movement, and its orthography had been undertaken by missionaries. Katipunan, following Rizal, hoped to locate the Revolution in a distant Tagalog culture. This step, though necessary on practical grounds, posed problems. Tagalog could not be used as a proxy for the Philippines without the acquiescence of the whole country, which some regions saw as accepting the dominance of Christian Luzon. In ascribing place to one country and reducing the emphasis on creating a wider pan-Asian community, nationalists found that their solution to one problem created another.

The defeat of the First Republic and the transfer of power to the United States halted the experiment in nation-building. The ideas, however, lived on in what CuUnjieng Aboitiz calls ‘The Afterlife of The Philippine Revolution’. Frustrated nationalists found new focus and fresh stimulus in opposing U.S. rule, which helped to solidify a sense of local unity. The ideals of the Revolution entered the Sakdalista revolt, a mass movement that looked back to the Katipunan and forward to the ‘green uprisings’ that were to become common throughout the colonial world during and after the 1930s. Ideas and experiences continued to be exchanged across East Asia among a wide range of ‘partners in misery’ who were subjected to colonial rule during the first half of the twentieth century. This was a two-way trade: as the Philippines borrowed from other parts of Asia, so the example and fate of the Philippine Revolution reverberated across Asia, especially in Malaya and Indonesia, providing both inspiration and guidance for other anti-colonial movements. Japan’s notion of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere sustained the idea of Pan-Asian unity; the country’s record as an occupying power and its defeat in 1945 destroyed it. The trend towards nationalism in one country was confirmed in 1946, when the Philippines gained independence.

The concluding pages of Asian Place reflect on the ‘global moment’ at the turn of the twentieth century, which has been analysed too often through a ‘Western-oriented bilateral framework.’ CuUnjieng Aboitiz has found a piece of the jigsaw puzzle that can be fitted into a map that extends far beyond East Asia. Other pieces, such as the complex linking the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea to Southeast and East Asia, bear out the proposition that globalisation had multiple centres of origin and diffusion. The chronological dimension can also be further generalised. The ‘global moment’ was the peak of a phase of globalisation propelled by empires and their instruments, port cities, that had the paradoxical consequence of culminating in the creation of nation states across the world. As new polities were being established or consolidated after World War II, the character of globalisation began to alter, and the volume and velocity of cross-border exchanges reached unprecedented levels. The result was a visible and weighty challenge to state sovereignty, whether newly-minted or prized for its antiquity. The increasing penetration of global influences in turn provoked a reaction that reached high levels of resistance during the first two decades of the twenty-first century, as President Donald Trump’s assertive ‘America First’ programme testified. The dilemma the ilustrados wrestled with, how to define a place for a people, remains a work in progress, and the formula for implementing Kant’s vision of a pacific, cosmopolitan world order continues to recede as we approach it.

Asian Place opens a fresh perspective on the history of nationalism in the Philippines. The research is necessarily detailed, but the text is enlivened by telling quotations from original sources. Portraits of Mariano Ponce’s stay in Japan and Emilio Aguinaldo’s refuge in Hong Kong, to cite two examples, provide illuminating cameos of the relationship of two different nationalist leaders with other parts of East Asia. The wider intellectual context, which encompasses Burke’s idea of place and Spencer’s formulation of what is known now as Social Darwinism, is neatly and accurately sketched. The text retains some of the density of a Ph.D. dissertation and has not fully resolved the familiar difficulty of matching themes and chronology. These minor imperfections, however, are more than offset by the bold and wide-ranging central thesis, which shows convincingly how Pan-Asian ideas of race became anchored in a specific location. Asian Place will be read by specialists on the Philippines and East Asia and ought also to be read by historians of anti-colonial nationalist movements elsewhere. The discussion that will ensue will also generate dissent, which is exactly what books that are both illuminating and plausible should do.

Missing Links

Both studies considered here view the rise and trajectory of the nationalist movement primarily from the standpoint of intellectual-cultural history, with some political extensions. The line of enquiry that began with Ileto has since been elaborated to incorporate Levi-Strauss’s structuralism, Orientalism, and postmodernism. Cultural approaches are prominent in the debate on colonialism more generally. Christianity has appeared as a supportive orthodoxy, in syncretic adaptations to colonialism, and in secessionist movements that sought spiritual independence within the colonial system. Converts could serve either as conservative collaborators or as proxy voices for the ‘masses’. Racism was a tool of suppression that also became a powerful motive for ending it.

Cultural history has undoubtedly made an important contribution but, like all specialisms, it has its limits. Ideas and their expression occur in a material context, which helps to explain why and how they are translated into action and the degree of influence they exercise. Without a wider setting, ideas and beliefs can easily become free-floating and timeless. Unless they are anchored in society, terms such as ‘class’ readily flow over and through borders that are too porous to contain them.

The performance of the economy and changes in its structure are considerations that, though not exclusive, form an essential part of the material context. The second half of the nineteenth century was a time of profound and wrenching economic change throughout the colonial world. Footnote 29 Expanding demand in Europe boosted the development of export crops; technological innovations discounted space; cheap manufactures became more widely available. These developments altered land use and tenure, shifted the distribution of wealth, and affected political fortunes in the recipient countries. In the late nineteenth century, structural changes intersected with fluctuations that affected prices and volumes in what was becoming an increasingly integrated global economy.

Even a brief check-list of the consequences of these developments provides evidence of their relevance for understanding the key events that led to the Revolution in the Philippines. Footnote 30 The telegraph, steamship, submarine cable, telephone, and railway arrived during the last quarter of the century. Exports, notably abaca and sugar, expanded in volume but also suffered from falling prices during the same period. Footnote 31 Competition for suitable land, especially from Chinese and Malay immigrants, led to conflicts with existing land-holders. The collapse in the price of silver weakened the exchange rate with gold-based currencies, raised the price of imports from those countries, and deterred Spanish investors. The potential benefits of a weaker currency in increasing the competitiveness of exports were nullified by falling demand in the industrial centres and competition from other colonial producers. The Spanish government’s acute need for revenue led to increased taxation and improved tax-gathering. To add to these difficulties, the 1880s introduced what has been called the ‘decade of death’, which saw the four horsemen of the apocalypse make their home in the Philippines. Floods, typhoons, and locusts joined malaria, smallpox, cholera, and rinderpest, among other diseases. Footnote 32 Declining self-sufficiency led to a shortage of rice, the staple food, and a rise in the volume and price of imports. Malnutrition and disease formed a deadly partnership. Poverty and misery extended their already long stay. The average height of adult males did not regain even the low levels achieved in the 1870s until the 1940s. Footnote 33

Although association is not cause, the probability of a causal connection is suggested by the swelling demand for radical land reform, an increase in rural banditry and urban crime, and the gathering power of what has been termed the ‘judicial state’, which used its strength to preserve existing inequalities, extract taxes, and uphold injustices, such as forced labour. Footnote 34 The Spanish government was several steps behind the action: the nationalists who expressed these discontents were branded subversives ( filibusteros ). The U.S. administration that took over from Spain called them ‘insurgents’, a term that was to see service in many subsequent wars, including the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Historians of the Philippines are familiar with these features of the economic landscape in the late nineteenth century. Research into economic history, however, has been out of favour for several decades. Pioneering studies of export crops, incomes, and welfare need updating. Many gaps need to be filled. Detailed work is rarely set in the matrix of the international economy. Comparable examples in other colonies lie to hand but are often bypassed. Fortunately, there is now an opportunity to revitalise these and other subjects because economic history has returned from exile. A new generation of scholars has entered the field; novel approaches have revived and extended its methods and content. Although this development has yet to catch the attention of historians of the Philippines, the omission suggests that there are promising prospects for researchers who are at the outset of their careers and are prepared to take their cue from developments that are under way elsewhere. Footnote 35

This suggestion applies beyond the study of economic history. The treatment of nationalist leaders in the Philippines resembles a sequence that has occurred in other colonies. Typically, the first generation of national historians rehabilitated leaders who had been categorised as ‘subversives’ and ‘insurgents’ by colonial rulers; the second, writing with the experience of life after independence, often took a more critical view of them; the third, writing with the perspective time provides, was able to see merits in both interpretations. Elsewhere, too, competing interpretations of independence movements have tended to merge descriptive accounts of their composition and purpose with normative judgments of what they ought to have done, and have validated or condemned the outcome accordingly.

Ilustrado equivalents and ‘masses’ are equally well-known through long-standing and once fiery debates about the presence or absence of social classes under colonial rule. Successive generations of scholars have searched for the ‘making of the working class’ in Africa and Asia; a whole theory of imperialism has been compressed into stages of ‘collaboration’ that relied on the support of the educated ‘middling people’ and ‘traditional’ rulers. Footnote 36 If the outcome of the Revolution in the Philippines was a partnership between conservative ilustrados and foreign rulers, it was an alliance that was common throughout the colonial world. Similarly, if the Revolution remained ‘unfinished’ after the end of empire, it is hard to find a former colony that has completed it, not least because of disagreement about what the result should look like. It is enough to mention the name ‘Frantz Fanon’ to be reminded of an extensive literature on this subject. Footnote 37

It is not unusual to find that Katipunan had a strong middle class element, as well as a popular following. The American Revolution was secessionist movement led by the equivalent of ‘ ilustrados ’, who were also prominent in the revolts against Spanish rule in Latin America early in the nineteenth century. The same was true of the nationalist organisations in India and Africa, of reformists such as the Young Turks in the Ottoman Empire, and the leaders of the Self-Strengthening Movement in China. Popular and populist protests were everywhere in evidence, but it was not until the inter-war period that they reappeared in mass movements on a scale that was to form the basis of permanent political parties. Even so, the leadership came mainly from an ‘ ilustrado ’ elite. Gandhi set the trend in the 1920s. The ‘Youth Movements’ that arose during the 1930s were led by a new generation of educated nationalists who joined and sometimes co-ordinated the widespread rural and urban challenges to colonial rule in Africa and South Asia that had been given impetus by the consequences of the world slump. Footnote 38 This was the moment when the ‘green uprising’ in politics obliged elite leaders to enlarge the arena of opposition to incorporate the uneducated in the countryside and the unwashed in the towns. Footnote 39 Although the Sakdalistas were specific to the Philippines and are invariably treated within that context, they were also part of a global phenomenon.

Specialists on the Philippines might object that they cannot be expected to be familiar with the literature on Africa and Asia. Even if this defence is allowed, it is reasonable to suppose that comparisons with other parts of the Spanish and American empire would be made routinely. Yet, detailed references to Puerto Rico and Cuba, the two other important insular territories in the orbit of Spain and the United States, are uncommon. To cite the most obvious example, an outsider might assume that historians of the Philippines would have paid close attention to events in Cuba, which was also deeply involved in the Spanish-American War, created a nationalist movement in close association with the imperial experience, glimpsed independence before having it compromised, and engaged in much soul-searching thereafter to identify a ‘true’ national tradition. Few such studies have been made. The converse is equally true. Historians of Cuba and Puerto Rice could gain insight and ideas from research undertaken on the Philippines. Since, as Marc Bloch pointed out long ago, comparisons help to identify singularities as well as similarities, the need for more lateral thinking needs no further recommendation.

In every work regard the writer’s end,

Since none can compass more than they intend;

And if the means be just, the conduct true,

Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due. Footnote 40

Disclosure Statement

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Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

1 Quoted in Owen, Prosperity Without Progress , 69.

2 Theories of Nationalism ; idem, Nationalism.

3 Trevor-Roper, The Rise of Christian Europe , 9.

4 Specialists on South Asia are an exception to this generalisation.

5 Ileto takes up these issues in his most recent book, Knowledge and Pacification.

6 Ileto, Pasyon, 24.

7 In taking this position, Ileto set himself against some formidable figures, including Benedict Anderson, Glenn May, and John Sidel. May’s revisionist study, Inventing a Hero , which challenged Ileto’s portrait, was a particular source of controversy, as was Ileto’s charge that viewpoints formed in the USA were infused with Orientalism. Ileto, “Orientalism,” 1–32; Lande, “Political Clientelism,” 119–28; Sidel, “Response to Ileto,” 29–38; Reynaldo Ileto, “On Sidel's Response,” 151–74 . Quibuyen, A Nation Aborted , challenged the view of Rizal favoured by many U.S. commentators who have approved of him as a moderate reformer who distanced himself from radical options.

8 Agoncillo, The Revolt of the Masses. See Renaldo Ileto’s fascinating account of censorship and eventual publication in “Reflections,” 496–520; Nicolas Zafra, then Head of the Department of History in the University of the Philippines, combined a dismissive commentary on Agoncillo’s book with a defence of the colonial record in “ The Revolt of the Masses ,” 493–514.

9 Constantino, The Philippines . See the characteristically insightful assessment by Schumacher, “Re-reading Philippine History,” 465–80.

10 Ileto, Knowledge and Pacification , Ch. 6. See also Rafael, “Becoming Rey Ileto,” 115–32.

11 Three of many possible examples are: McCoy, “Baylan,” 141–94; Rafael, Contracting Colonialism; Guerrero, Luzon at War.

12 Rafael, Contracting Colonialism .

13 Scalice, “Reynaldo Ileto’s Pasyon,” 29–58

14 Schumacher, “Recent Perspectives,” 445–92.

15 Williams, Culture and Society , 289

16 Ariate, ‘Knowledge and Pacification”. This paragraph also draws on Fast and Richardson, Roots of Dependency.

17 Knowledge and Pacification . See also Filipinos and Their Revolution ; and ‘Religion and Anti-Colonial Movements’.

18 Ileto, “Religion and Anti-Colonial Movements”.

19 See also Anderson, “Cacique Democracy in the Philippines”; and Ileto, “The Centennial of Cacique Democracy”.

20 Hau, “ Patria é Interesses ,” 3–54.

21 Ileto, Knowledge and Pacification , ch 11.

22 Ileto, Knowledge and Pacification , ch. 3.

23 Ariate, “Knowledge and Pacification”.

24 Ileto was more original than he thought. Although the move to recover the history of the urban and rural under-classes was well under way in the 1960s and 1970s, Ileto wrote and revised his Ph.D. dissertation without being aware of the work of Edward Thompson (or, later, Ranajit Guha, whose subalterns occupied a space as large as that ‘the masses’). See Ileto’s comments in “Historiography in The Philippines”.

25 Credit should also be given to Mattiessen, Japanese Pan-Asianism , who examines a bilateral relationship over a slightly different period.

26 Treaties with Britain in 1902 and with France in 1907 confirmed Japan’s independence and marked its emergence as a major power.

27 CuUnjieng Aboitiz is in accord with Ileto in underlining the importance Ileto now gives to Aguinaldo’s role in creating a national movement.

28 On this subject see Harper, “Empire, Diaspora”, in Hopkins, ed. Globalisation in World History , 141–66.

29 For a sketch of these developments as they affected the imperial world, see Hopkins, American Empire , ch.6.

30 A fuller but still schematic account is in Hopkins, American Empire, 404–12.

31 An enterprising historian is needed to produce an adequate time series covering the terms of trade for this period.

32 See the pioneering essay by Smith, “Crisis Mortality,” 51–76; and de Bevoise, Agents of the Apocalypse.

33 Bassino, Dovis, and Komlos, “Biological Well-Being,” 33–60.

34 Bankoff, Crime, Society and the State . See too Guerrero, Luzon at War .

35 See for example, Hopkins, “The New Economic History of Africa,” 155–177; Austin and Broadberry, “Introduction,” 893–906; Fourie, “The Data Revolution,” 193–212.

36 Robinson, “Non-European Foundations,” ch. 5.

37 Les Damnés de la Terre .

38 This was also the case with Benigno Ramos, the founder of the Sakdalistas.

39 Hopkins, American Empire , 479, 537, 554, 582, 628, 642.

40 Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Criticism” (1711).

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Why is it Important to Study History?

We all live in the present and we plan for the future – but how do we understand where we’re going and what progress looks like? To know exactly where you’re going, you first need to understand where you have come from. For that, you need an appreciation of history.

History is one of the most respected and most valuable academic subjects your child will learn. This guide takes a deep dive into the importance of learning history at school, plus a few tips for studying it effectively.

Benefits of Studying History

Entire societies, and the individuals within them, benefit from gaining a deeper understanding of history. Here are six benefits your child will enjoy if they study history in school.

1. Develop an Understanding of the World  

Through history, we can learn how past societies, systems, ideologies, governments, cultures, and technologies were built, how they operated, and how they have changed. The rich history of the world helps us to paint a detailed picture of where we stand today.

Developing your knowledge of history means developing your knowledge of all these different aspects of life. Children can learn about the pillars upon which different civilizations were built, including cultures and people different from their own.

All this knowledge makes them more rounded people who are better prepared to learn in all their academic subjects.

2. Become a More Rounded Person

History is full of stories. Some are inspiring and uplifting; others are chaotic and immoral. Tap into the vivid realm of history, and there are many vital lessons your child needs to learn. They will study times of suffering and times of joy, and the lessons they learn here can then be applied to their own life experience.     

History also encourages a deeper understanding of difference. There are lessons, both good and bad, to be learned from the way our ancestors have interacted with other people who have different ways of living. In a modern world where inclusivity is embraced no matter your background, an understanding of how past societies have integrated is key to humanity improving in the future.

3. Understand Identity 

Nations are made up of a collection of stories and legends. These stories shape the way we think about our country and our standing within it. History is where we learn about how great institutions are formed, and how they’ve contributed to where we are today.

For many of us, looking back at incredible fellow countrymen is a way of establishing our own identity. Finding who we are and what mark we can make on the world is a huge part of childhood. Allowing children to learn about the identity of their country is one way of facilitating that.

4. Become Inspired 

Those historical stories can also serve to inspire individuals to greatness. History remembers brilliant people and their heroic acts that have changed the shape of nations. You get a huge amount of motivation from learning about the inspirational events that make up where we are today.

It only takes one great story from the pages of history to light up children’s imagination and spur them on to do great things.

5. Learn from Mistakes 

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana’s quote is one of academia’s most cited and paraphrased lines, and one that explains perfectly why everyone should study history. The past is filled with warning signs. We must be able to reflect on the events that built up to them, learn from mistakes made, and resist and question if we see similar patterns emerging.

If your child studies history, they will be able to identify when society is going down perilous routes and contribute towards getting it back on track.

6. Develop Transferrable Skills  

History is a respected academic pursuit that challenges our intellect. Students must analyse information that may not have one clear interpretation before offering a balanced conclusion. Critical thought is at the heart of every challenging intellectual pursuit.

The ability to question and evaluate information is one that applies to workplaces in many industries, and Nord Anglia Education strive to provide the necessary transferrable skills to all our students. History is one of the best subjects for stimulating and developing this ability.

How to Study History

History is not about memorising a list of facts or dates. It requires interpretation and analysis of information around subjects which often have no right or wrong answers. Still, there are plenty of effective methods for studying history, like these three:

1. Connect Events Together    

History is shaped by a list of chronological events. When studying seismic shifts in a culture or country, it’s important that you know what key events contributed to this and why they were so important. It can lead to a daunting list of times, dates, and people to learn.

One popular method for doing this involves making connections to develop the full picture. With your child, note down the different events, facts, and people that played a role in a significant historical event. Then create a mind map that connects each part of the picture, using colours and symbols to establish a pattern containing a large amount of easily digestible information.

2. Display Key Information

With so much to learn, it’s important that you’re able to focus on the most valuable information and retain it for exams. While history usually focuses on the larger picture rather than just a succession of dates or facts, it can also be worthwhile adopting memory techniques to ensure that your child can reach for specific information if they need it.

Flashcards are an excellent way to do this. Write a brief fact or statement on one side of a card. Stick them around your child’s room, allowing them to ingest that piece of information every single day. Before long, they’ll be able to recite the information on each card.

3. Soak up Books and Films 

History is packed with incredible, real-life stories – many of which are told for a new generation in the form of novels and films. When your child has finished studying their textbooks, films and books offer a lighter, but still useful, way to learn about history.

Just be sure to choose the right titles. Many books and films take liberties with their chosen subject. Speak to your child’s history teacher for a reading and viewing list that’s tied into their curriculum.

Studying history will provide your child with a more rounded academic skillset and an improved ability to think critically – something they can take into the rest of their education.

 Nord Anglia Education delivers an outstanding history curriculum and highly values other subjects like the performing arts.

To find out more about NAIS Manila and our outstanding academic programmes,  you can speak online with our Admissions Team through our Virtual Discovery Meeting .

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How NAIS Manila Embraces Cultural Diversity and Inclusion to Foster Global Citizens

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Why Social Responsibility is Vital for Student Development

At Nord Anglia International School (NAIS) Manila, education extends far beyond textbooks and classrooms. It blends empathy, compassion, and a commitment to community care, shaping students into socially responsible individuals who understand the impact of their actions.

From Passion to Performance: NAIS Manila’s Role in Nurturing Young Artists

In a captivating showcase of talent and holiday cheer, NAISM students took centre stage at the recent Christmas Tree lighting ceremony at the Parqal Mall. The “Carols at the Parq” event echoed with melodies and performances that not only spread festive joy but also highlighted the profound impact of performing arts on student growth and development.

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Print 

Agoncillo, T. (1962). Philippine history. Inang Wika Pub. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma995179914605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS668 .A34 

Arcilla, J. (1973). An introduction to Philippine history (2d ed., enl.). Ateneo de Manila University Press. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma998405584605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS668 .A82 1973

Women’s role in Philippine history : selected essays. (1996). https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9917408334605682  

Location:  Hamilton Asia HQ1757 .C66 1996

Zaide, G. (1951). Great events in Philippine history : patriotic calendar . M. Colcol. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma995179894605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS667 .Z3

Looney, D. (1977). A beginner’s guide to Philippine history books . Friends of the Filipino People. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma995180024605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS668 .L66

De la Costa, H. (1965). Readings in Philippine history : selected historical texts presented with a commentary . Bookmark. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma998348874605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS668 .C6

Abeto, I. (1989). Philippine history reassessed : a collection of undiscovered historical facts from prehistoric time to 1872 . Integrated Pub. House. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9915965084605682  

Location: Hamilton  Asia DS668 .A24 1989

Scott, W., & Scott, W. (1984). Prehispanic source materials for the study of Philippine history (Rev. ed.). New Day Publishers. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9914729264605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS673.8 .S36 1984

Scott, W. (1982). Cracks in the parchment curtain and other essays in Philippine history . New Day Publishers. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9913659044605682  

Location: Hamilton  Asia DS668 .S366

Scott, W. (1992). Looking for the prehispanic Filipino and other essays in Philippine history . New Day Publishers. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9916747444605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS673.8 .S355 1992 

Scott, W. (1968). A critical study of the prehispanic source materials for the study of Philippine history. University of Santo Tomas Press. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma999685544605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS668.A2 S36

Gagelonia, P. (1970). Concise Philippine history. Far Eastern University Consumers Cooperative Incorporation. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9910091030505681  

Print available through LCC 

Zafra, N. (1967). Philippine history through selected sources. Alemar-Phoenix Pub. House. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma999685634605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS668 .Z273

Valencia, E. (2002). Trade & Philippine history & other exercises. Giraffe Books. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9921935834605682  

Location: Hamilton  Asia HC453 .V35 2002 v.2

Bernal, R. (1967). Prologue to Philippine history. Solidaridad Pub. House. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma995180204605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS669 .B47

De la Costa, H., & Jesswani, P. (1989). A Look at Philippine history. St. Paul Press. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma995873454605682  

Location:  Hamilton Asia DS668 .L658 1989

Sánchez-Arcilla Bernal, J. (1990). Recent Philippine history, 1898-1960 . Office of Research and Publications, Ateneo de Manila University. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9916211104605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS685 .S265 1990

Zaide, G. (1938). Philippine history and government. S. E. Macaraig co. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma991508434605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS676 .Z3 

Prominent caviteños in Philippine history. (1941). Atty. Eleuterio P. Fojas. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma996232564605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS688.C38 P96 1941

Alejandro, R., Vallejo, R., & Santiago, A. (2000). Selyo : Philippine history in postage stamps. Published and exclusively distributed by National Book Store, Inc. and Anvil Pub. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9920966844605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia HE7265 .A43 2000 

Bernad, M. (1983). Tradition & discontinuity : essays on Philippine history & culture. National Book Store. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9913857054605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS668 .B456 1983 

Wickberg, E., Wei, A., & Wu, W. (2001). The Chinese mestizo in Philippine history. Kaisa Para sa Kaunlaran. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9921693624605682  

Location: Hamilton  Asia DS666.C5 W53 2001 

Quirino, C. (1995). Who’s who in Philippine history. Tahanan Books.  https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9910320113705681  

Print available through Kauai Community College 

Dery, Luis Camara. When the World Loved the Filipinos and Other Essays on Philippine History. España, Manila: UST Pub. House, 2005. Print.  / https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9926868854605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS669 .D47 2005 

Anderson, Gerald H. Studies in Philippine Church History. Ithaca [N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1969. Print. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9912038704605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia BR1260 .A5 

Zaide, Gregorio F. The Pageant of Philippine History : Political, Economic, and Socio-Cultural. Manila, Philippines: Philippine Education Co., 1979. Print. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma998680134605682  

Location: Hamilton  Asia DS668 .Z288 

Trillana, Pablo S. The Loves of Rizal and Other Essays on Philippine History, Art, and Public Policy. Quezon City, Philippines: New Day Publishers, 2000. Print. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9921091674605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS675.8.R5 T74 2000

Bohol, E. (1948). Outline on Philippine history for the fourth year high school. Bohol Junior Colleg. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma995179974605682  

Location: Hamilton  Asia DS668 .B8 1948 

Soliven, P. (1999). Half a millennium of Philippine history : snippets of what we were-- snatches of what we ought to be. Phil. Star Daily, Inc. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9920391134605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS655 .S65 1999 

Bulletin of Philippine folklore & local history. (1981). Cebuano Studies Center of the University of San Carlos. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9919428124605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia (Library Use Only) DS651 .B84 

McCoy, A., & De Jesus, E. (1982). Philippine social history : global trade and local transformations. Ateneo de Manila University Press. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9911802664605682  

Location: Hamilton  Asia HN713 .P52 1982 

Fernandez, D. (1996). Palabas : essays on Philippine theater history. Ateneo de Manila University Press. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9918558194605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia PN2911 .F36 1996 

Kalaw, T. (1969). The Philippine revolution. Jorge B. Vargas Filipiniana Foundation. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma995181134605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS676 .K3 1969 

Taylor, J. (1971). The Philippine Insurrection against the United States; a compilation of documents with notes and introduction. Eugenio Lopez Foundation. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9918622934605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS676 .T38 1971 

Zaide, G. (1957). Philippine political and cultural history (Rev. ed.). Philippine Education Co. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma992202714605682  

Location: Hamilton DS668 .Z32 1957 

Agoncillo, T. (1974). Introduction to Filipino history. Radiant Star Pub. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma999968264605682  

Gagelonia, P. (1977). Filipino nation : history and government. National Book Store. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma998661564605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS668 .G26 

Hornedo, F. (2001). Ideas and ideals: essays in Filipino cognitive history. University of Santo Tomas Pub. House. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9921663694605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS664 .H65 2001 

Marcos, F. (1976). Tadhana: The history of the Filipino people. [Publisher not identified]. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9911735624605682  

Location: Hamilton  Asia DS668 .M37 

Root, M. (1997). Filipino Americans : transformation and identity. Sage Publications. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9919145254605682  

Location: Hamilton Main E184.F4 F385 1997 

Dery, L. (2006). Pestilence in the Philippines : a social history of the Filipino people, 1571-1800 . New Day Publishers. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9928888094605682 

Location: Hamilton  Asia DS663 .D47 2006  

Philippine History (Continuation)

Batacan, D. (1972). The Supreme Court in Philippine history; from Arellano to Concepcion. Central Lawbook Pub. Co.; [distributed by Central Book Supply, Manila. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma998953074605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia KQH .P6 B37

Ileto, R. (2018). Knowledge and pacification : on the U.S. conquest and the writing of Philippine history . Ateneo de Manila University Press. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9949874814605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS682 .A184 2017 

Zaide, G. (1939). Philippine history and civilization. Philippine associated publishers. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma995181154605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS676 .Z25

Diaz, C. (2009). The other Philippine history textbook. Anvil. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9932768274605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS668 .D52 2009

Jose, R. (2006). Recent studies in Philippine history. College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of the Philippines. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9932306234605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia (Library Use Only) H1 .P537 v.57

Benitez, C. (1928). Philippine history in stories. Ginn and company. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma991508274605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS668 .B4

Engel, F. (1979). Philippine history : a brief digest (2nd ed.). [Publisher not identified]. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9911330244605682  

Location:  Hamilton Asia DS668 .E53 1979

Zaide, G. (1937). Early Philippine history and culture. G.F. Zaide. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma999277334605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS668 .Z23

Zafra, N. (1956). Readings in Philippine history (New ed.). University of the Philippines. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma995180094605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS668 .Z28 1956

Zaide, G., & Zaide, S. (1990). Documentary sources of Philippine history. National Book Store. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9916188534605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS668 .D6 1990

Miravite, R. (1967). Books on Philippine history . [publisher not identified]. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma996857894605682  

Location: Hamilton  Asia Z3298.A4 M53

IBON Teacher’s manual on Philippine history. (2nd ed.). (1981). IBON Data Bank Phils. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma999892824605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS669 .I244 1981

Torres, J. (2000). Pananaw : viewing points on Philippine history and culture. UST Pub. House. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9921387604605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS663 .T67 2000 

Ocampo, A., Peralta, J., & Rodriguez, F. (2012). The diorama experience of Philippine history. Ayala Museum. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9941650394605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS668 .O23 2004 

Rasul, J. (n.d.). Philippine history : from thousand years before Magellan. [Publisher not identified]. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9931273854605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS655 .R37 2008 

Gagelonia, P. (1970). The Filipino historian (controversial issues in Philippine history). FEUCCI. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma995180234605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS669 .G33 

Abinales, P. (2010). The “Local” in Philippine National History: Some Puzzles, Problems and Options. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9910993006405681  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS674 .S76 2013 

De Viana, Augusto V. Stories Rarely Told : the Hidden Stories and Essays on Philippine History . Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 2013. Print. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9946341294605682  

Owen, Nrman G. Trends and Directions of Research on Philippine History, an Informal Essay. Place of publication not identified: Publisher not identified, 1975. Print. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma995180254605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS669 .O94 

Joaquin, N. (1977). A question of heroes : essays in criticism on ten key figures of Philippine history. Ayala Museum. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma998474024605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS653.7 .J63 

Scott, W. (1968). A critical study of the prehispanic source materials for the study of Philippine history. Thesis--University of Santo Tomas. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma99512344605682  

Location: Hamilton  Asia (Library Use Only) MICROFICHE 187  

Barrientos, V. (1998). A finding guide to the picture collection of the Filipiniana Division. Part IV, Heroes in Philippine history. Special Collections Section, Filipiniana Division, The National Library. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9920366764605682  

Location: Hamilton  Asia Reference (Library Use Only) Z3299 .N38 1998 

Alip, E. (1958). Philippine history: political, social, economic; based on the course of study of the Bureau of Public Schools. (7th rev. ed). Alip & Sons. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma995179924605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS668 .A4 1958 

Mastura, M. (1979). The rulers of Magindanao in modern history, 1515-1903 : continuity and change in a traditional realm in the southern Philippines. Publisher not identified]. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma999183994605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS666.M23 M37 1979a 

Lumbera, B., & Lumbera, C. (1997). Philippine literature : a history & anthology (Rev. ed.). Anvil. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9926072204605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia PL5530 .P44 1997

Outline of Philippine history and government, based on the course of study and includes all changes before and after World War II. (Rev. ed.). (1950). Philippine Book Co. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma991508294605682  

Location: Hamilton DS670 .O88 1949 

Voices, a Filipino American oral history. (1984). Filipino Oral History Project. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9911221724605682  

Location: Hamilton Main F870.F4 V65 1984 

Gorospe, O. (1933). Making Filipino history in Hawaii. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma997879204605682  

Location: Hamilton Hawaiian (Library Use Only) DU620 .M5 v.45 p.241-253 

Rafael, V. (2000). White love and other events in Filipino history. Ateneo de Manila University Press. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9922646264605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS685 .R24 2000b

Filipino-American history. (2008). Language, Literature & History Section, Hawaiʻi State Library, Hawaii State Public Library System. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9931245804605682  

Location: Hamilton Hawaiian (Library Use Only) IN CATALOGING 3124580 

Bautista, V. (2002). The Filipino Americans: (1763-present) : their history, culture, and traditions (2nd ed.). Bookhaus Pub. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9923164014605682  

Location: Hamilton Main E184.F4 B38 2002

Okamura, J. (1991). Filipino organizations: a history. Operation Manong. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma995894474605682  

Location: Hamilton Hawaiian (Library Use Only) DU624.7.F4 O42 1991 

Agoncillo, T., & Guerrero, M. (1973). History of the Filipino people ([4th ed.]). R.P. Garcia. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9919225084605682  

Location: Hamilton Main DS668 .A32 1973

Tubangui, H. (1982). The Filipino nation : a concise history of the Philippines. Grolier International. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9913647534605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS668 .F5 1982

Batacan, D. (1966). The laughter of my people: a history of the Filipino people written a smile. Printed by MDB Pfint. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma995180194605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS669 .B38

Craig, A., Mabini, A., & Rizal, J. (1973). The Filipinos’ fight for freedom; true history of the Filipino people during their 400 years’ struggle. AMS Press. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9912137304605682  

Location: Hamilton Asia DS668 .C69 1973

Measham, F. (2016). The secret history of Filipino women. Lifted Brow, The, 29, 49–52. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/1rbop20/informit901765406961917  

Location: ILL through unspecified college 

San Juan, E. (1989). MAKING FILIPINO HISTORY IN A “DAMAGED CULTURE.” Philippine Sociological Review, 37(1/2), 1–11. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/1rbop20/jstor_archive_1241853640  

Location: Hamilton Asia (Library Use Only) DS651 .P462 // Also through JSTOR

Online - Ebook 

Nagano, Y. (2006). Transcultural Battlefield: Recent Japanese Translations of Philippine History. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/68t5m5h0 https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/1rbop20/cdl_soai_escholarship_org_ark_13030_qt68t5m5h0  

Link: Through escholarship UCLA https://escholarship.org/uc/item/68t5m5h0  

Project Muse: https://muse-jhu-edu.eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/journal/531  

Journal title: Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints 

Aquino, B. (2006). From Plantation Camp to Global Village:100 Years of Filipino History in Hawaii. Honolulu, Hawaii: Center for Philippine Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa. https://uhawaii-manoa.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UHAWAII_MANOA/11uc19p/alma9910995904405681  

Link: Through UH Scholarspace http://hdl.handle.net/10125/15379  

Databases - Scholarly Works/Articles 

Database: Historical Abstracts 

Serizawa, T. (2019). Translating Philippine history in America’s shadow: Japanese reflections on the past and present during the Vietnam War. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 50(2), 222–245. https://doi-org.eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/10.1017/S0022463419000274  

Database: Business Source Complete 

Reyes, P. L. (2018). Claiming History: Memoirs of the Struggle against Ferdinand Marcos’s Martial Law Regime in the Philippines. SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 33(2), 457–498. https://doi-org.eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/10.1355/sj33-2q  

Database: Points of View Reference Center 

Republic of the Philippines. (2003). In Background Notes on Countries of the World 2003 (pp. 1–15). http://eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=pwh&AN=11208051&site=ehost-live   

Database: MasterFILE Complete 

Trent Smith, S. (2018). A Call to Arms. World War II, 33(3), 64–71. http://eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f6h&AN=131241187&site=ehost-live  

Suter, K. (2007). The Philippines: What Went Wrong with One Asian Economy. Contemporary Review, 289(1684), 53–59. http://eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=pwh&AN=24884353&site=ehost-live

FRANCIA, L. H. (2014). José Rizal: A Man for All Generations. Antioch Review, 72(1), 44–60. https://doi-org.eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/10.7723/antiochreview.72.1.0044  

Luyt, B. (2019). The early years of Philippine Studies , 1953 to 1966. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 50(2), 202–221. https://doi-org.eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/10.1017/S0022463419000237  

Database: ABI/INFORM 

Mercene, R. (2016, Mar 27). A shining moment in philippine history. Business Mirror Retrieved from http://eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/docview/1776085049?accountid=27140  

A guide to the philippines' history, economy and politics: Daily chart. (2016, May 06). The Economist (Online), Retrieved from http://eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/docview/1787331077?accountid=27140  

Carroll, J. (1961). Contemporary Philippine Historians and Philippine History. Journal of Southeast Asian History, 2(3), 23-35. Retrieved October 22, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20067346  

Zafra, N. (1958). On The Writing Of Philippine History. Philippine Studies, 6(4), 454-460. Retrieved October 22, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/42720410  

Larkin, J. (1982). Philippine History Reconsidered: A Socioeconomic Perspective. The American Historical Review, 87(3), 595-628. doi:10.2307/1864158 

Mulder, N. (1994). The Image of Philippine History and Society. Philippine Studies, 42(4), 475-508. Retrieved October 22, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/42633467  

OWEN, N. (1974). The Principalia in Philippine History: Kabikolan, 1790-1898. Philippine Studies, 22(3/4), 297-324. Retrieved October 22, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/42634875  

Baumgartner, J. (1977). Notes on Piracy and Slaving in Philippine History. Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society, 5(4), 270-272. Retrieved October 22, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/29791568  

Cristina E. Torres. (1997). Health Issues and the Quality of Life in Philippine History. Quality of Life Research, 6(5), 461-462. Retrieved October 22, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4035251  

Farrell, J. (1954). An Abandoned Approach to Philippine History: John R. M. Taylor and the Philippine Insurrection Records. The Catholic Historical Review, 39(4), 385-407. Retrieved October 22, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25015651  

GEALOGO, F. (2013). Reflections of A Filipino Social Historian. Philippine Sociological Review, 61(1), 55-68. Retrieved October 23, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/43486355

MAOHONG, B. (2012). On Studies of the History of the Philippines in China. Philippine Studies: Historical & Ethnographic Viewpoints, 60(1), 102-116. Retrieved October 23, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/42634704  

Nexis Uni 

(October 3, 2020 Saturday). Studies on Philippine history. The Philippine Star. https://advance-lexis-com.eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:6109-GWY1-JCH9-G1MH-00000-00&context=1516831 . 

ABI/INFORM 

Filipino history, culture studied in international seminar. (2019, May 16). Business Mirror Retrieved from http://eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/docview/2226338201?accountid=27140  

Association For Asian Studies

Totanes, V. R. (2010). History of the Filipino people and martial law: a forgotten chapter in the history of a history book, 1960-2010. Philippine Studies, 58(3), 313–348. http://eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bas&AN=BAS788208&site=ehost-live  

Okamura, J. Y. (1996). Filipino American history, identity and community in Hawai’i: in commemoration of the 90th anniversary of Filipino migration to Hawai’i. Honolulu. http://eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bas&AN=BAS515519&site=ehost-live  

Association for Asian Studies 

Rafael, V. L. (1995). Discrepant histories: translocal essays on Filipino cultures. Philadelphia, Pa. http://eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bas&AN=BAS559630&site=ehost-live  

Association for Asian Studies

Pinzon, J. C. (2015). Remembering Philippine history: satire in popular songs. South East Asia Research, 23(3), 423–442. http://eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bas&AN=BAS872861&site=ehost-live  

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Essay on Philippine Culture

Students are often asked to write an essay on Philippine Culture in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Philippine Culture

Introduction.

Philippine culture is rich and diverse. It is a mix of various influences from its history. This makes it unique and interesting. The culture includes traditions, languages, festivals, and art forms.

Traditions and Customs

The Philippines is known for its customs. These are rules that guide how people behave. Some customs include respect for elders and hospitality. Filipinos are known for being friendly and welcoming.

Languages and Dialects

The Philippines has many languages. Filipino and English are the main ones. There are also over 170 dialects. This shows the country’s diversity.

Festivals and Celebrations

Festivals are a big part of Philippine culture. They are colorful and fun. Each festival has a story behind it. This makes them special and meaningful.

Arts and Crafts

Philippine culture is a blend of many influences. It is unique and diverse. It is a culture that values respect, hospitality, and creativity. It is a culture to be proud of.

250 Words Essay on Philippine Culture

Introduction to philippine culture.

The Philippines is a beautiful island country in Southeast Asia. It is known for its rich culture that is a mix of many influences. These influences come from its history, people, and its location in the world.

Historical Influence

The Philippines was a Spanish colony for over 300 years. This Spanish rule has left a big mark on the country’s culture. Many Filipinos have Spanish names, and the country’s main religion is Roman Catholicism. This shows the strong Spanish influence.

People and Traditions

The people of the Philippines, called Filipinos, are known for their friendliness. They love to celebrate and have many festivals throughout the year. These festivals are filled with music, dance, and colorful costumes. They also have a tradition called “Bayanihan”. This is where everyone in a community helps each other. It shows the strong sense of community in Filipino culture.

Food in the Philippines

Filipino food is a big part of their culture. It is a blend of many different styles, like Spanish, Chinese, and native Filipino. Rice is a staple food, eaten at almost every meal. Adobo, a dish made from meat, vinegar, and soy sauce, is a popular Filipino dish.

Philippine Art

In conclusion, the culture of the Philippines is a rich mix of history, people, and traditions. It is a culture that values community, celebration, and art.

500 Words Essay on Philippine Culture

Philippine culture is a beautiful mix of different influences from its history. It is unique and rich because of the combination of Eastern and Western cultures. This essay will explain the culture of the Philippines in a simple way.

Family Values

Family is very important in the Philippines. Filipinos have strong family ties and they often live with their extended family. This includes grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins. They believe that the family is the basic unit of society. They also show respect to their elders by doing the “mano po”, where they take an elder’s hand and touch it to their forehead.

Festivals, or “fiestas”, play a big role in the culture of the Philippines. There are lots of fiestas all year round. They have these to honor their local saints, to give thanks for a good harvest, or to celebrate history. During a fiesta, there is often music, dancing, and lots of food. The “Sinulog” and “Ati-Atihan” are two of the most popular festivals.

Arts and crafts are also a part of the culture of the Philippines. Filipinos are known for their weaving, pottery, and jewelry-making. They use local materials like bamboo, rattan, and shells. They also have unique dances, songs, and stories that they pass down from generation to generation.

Philippine culture is a wonderful mix of different influences. It is rich in traditions, languages, foods, and arts. Even with all the changes over the years, Filipinos have kept their unique culture alive. They are proud of their history and traditions, and they continue to share them with the world.

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Philippine History

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