Imagination in History: Teodoro Agoncillo

-Imagination is as important and necessary in the writing of history as it is in the writing of fiction, drama, or poetry.

-George Bernard Shaw: “Imagination in history is something to be deplored since history deals primarily and supremely with facts.”

-History is not a matter of compiling and reciting facts, or marshaling them in a time- sequence, and of allowing them to speak for themselves.

-It should provide not only the bones, but also the flesh and blood of those moments which once were here but are now only memories.

-History requires a disciplined imagination.

-History thus conceived is a creative endeavor.

-Imagination is conditioned by the facts. The two are inseparable.

-Interpretation is an aspect of historical imagination.

-Imagination not based on facts is wild.

-There is no such thing as complete history. History as actuality is partially recaptured by the historian through a careful and judicious use of data. It is a recreation of the past.

-Historians study facts thoroughly and intensely in order to go into or to participate in the events or in the lives of men he intends to write about.

-Without this imaginative understanding, it would be impossible for any historian to communicate with his subjects and, ultimately, to re-live the past.

-It should have basis in the logical imperative. The imagination is anchored upon reasoning that issues from the nature of the subject under study.

1. No two historians confronted with the same set of facts, would arrive at exactly the same interpretation

2. Interpretations vary in proportion to their ability to write effectively and clearly.

Thus, each generation writes its own history and contributes its own interpretations.

-R.G. Collingwood coined the term interpolation it is the insertion of statements between those made by a historian’s authorities or sources.

-Any interpolation that is not necessitated by the evidence is not historical imagination but a literary one such as that employed by fictionists, poets, dramatists, and historical novelists.

-The difficulty of employing historical imagination lies not so much in the absence of documentary evidence as in the lack of restraint on the part of the historian.

-Prior knowledge of that particular time and of the subsequent times is needed.

-The use of this aspect of historical imagination is important not only in literature , but also in history. For history is not a mere compilation of cut-and-dried facts and puled one on top of another, but a recreation of what the historian believes to be significant.

-History, to be worthy of its name, must be written with imagination, with verve and color as primary sources would allow.

-The advance of the scientific spirit after Darwin led to the positivistic doctrine of the scientific method in history.

-The obsession of the academic historians was the mechanics of history, and thus, obsessed they forget or deliberately submerged the equally important element of art in history.

-Danger of overemphasizing the value of accuracy is that it tends to: stifle the creative spirit of the student whose minds are drowned by facts without being allowed to weave them into an artistic whole.

-The only scientific part of history is that which deals with spade work and the sifting of facts, the rest belongs to the humanities.

-Soul is necessary to it as to a poem or work of art, and the individuality of the writer should be reflected in it.

Nascent Philippine Nationalism

1872 -1896 Political Ideas of :1. Sanciano y Goson of Manila 2. López Jaena of Iloilo 3. Marcelo Del Pilar of Bulacan 4. Rizal of Laguna

-The consequence of the Cavite Mutiny of 1872 and the demonstration against the friars of 1888 was the proscription or deportation of prominent Filipinos.

-They tried to call attention to the shortcomings and buses of the administration of the Philippines and to get the government to adopt what they considered to be the necessary reforms.

1. Gregorio Sanciano y Goson was one the earliest propagandists.

-He compiled a series of studies on the revenue laws of the Philippines into a book the, El progreso de Filipinas, Madrid 1881.

-He pointed out that the official practice exempted Spaniards and Spanish mestizos in the Philippines from the tribute and forced labor imposed on Filipinos and Chinese residents.

-Natives were subject to tribute, while the landowners who derived a substantial income from their farms paid no property tax whatever.

-Filipinos were characterized as indios or indolent. Yet it was a result of being deprived of the natural incentives and normal rewards of labor.

-The colonial system failed to provide economic enterprise with the most elementary facilities of transport and communication.

-Gregorio wrote about the effect of the tobacco monopoly.

-Later, the tobacco monopoly was abolished and it was substituted by the cédula personal as a source of revenue. They extended this cédula to all.

-They reduced the duration of forced labor from 40 days to 15 days a year and also made Spaniards liable to it equally with Filipinos.

2. Graciano López Jaena was a native of Iloilo and came to Spain originally to study medicine.

-He devoted almost all his attention and energies to the propaganda for reforms.

-First editor of the La Solidaridad.

-Says that the Spanish government was far more interested in repression than in stimulation.

-The government allowed the disastrous monetary situation which allowed foreign merchants to drain good money out of the country and replace it with Mexican dollars.

-He pointed out that popular education and the use of common language was neglected.

-Upper ranks of the colonial civil service were taken by Spanish officials.

-Only at the lowest level of local government was any initiative or scope given to natives.

-He motioned that the remedy to this situation was to allow the Filipinos the capacity to think and act for themselves, let the freedoms championed by liberalism be extended to them: freedom of speck and the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of trade.

-Essential that the Filipinos be permitted to trade with each other and travel from any part of the islands to any other part.

-Notes the right of the Filipinos to possess and develop the natural resources of their land is a right conceded by Nature.

-López is taking a stand on what he conceives to be the natural rights of Filipinos as Filipinos.

3. Marcelo H. Del Pilar studied law in the University of Santo Tomas.

-Believed that the principal obstacle to the Philippine progress was the Spanish regular clergy, who used their position of dominance.

-The clergy used their influence to prevent the introduction of liberal reforms.

-He could see no way but to expel the friars from the colony altogether.

-He believed that Filipinos should seek to better their condition by peaceful rather than violent means.

-The reforms he wanted were substantially those proposed by Sanciano and Lopez.

-The disappointing results of the propaganda campaign were turning his thoughts more and more toward revolution.

4. Jose Rizal was the principal protagonist of the movement.

-His father and elder brother were well-to-do inquilinos of the Dominican estate of Calamba.

-Began his medical studies at the University of Santo Tomas

-His most widely read contributions to the propaganda were Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo

-He believed in the fundamental change in the relationship between the colony and the mother country.

-The Filipinos were forced to abandon their own for an alien culture.

-They had lost confidence in their past, faith in their present, and hope in their future.

-The Filipinos remained passive and apathetic.

-Filipinos were not national because they were not yet conscious of nationality.

-During Rizal’s time, the Filipinos had become conscious of themselves as a nation.

-Psychological trigger: the Spaniards and added insult to injury.

-They began to treat Filipinos with contempt as essentially inferior beings. That natives lacked not only capacity for virtue but even the talent for vice.

-They wounded the Filipino amor propio his self-esteem and personal dignity.

-Conscious now of their common misery, Filipinos began to agitate for reforms on a national scale.

-Spanish were opposed to any change in the colonial administration.

-How did Spain propose to stop progress in the Philippines?

1. Keep the Filipinos ignorant -Imparted ignorance rather than knowledge

2. Keeping them poor -It produced what it was designed to prevent-Riches make men cautious and conservative, while poverty breeds, radical ideas, a desire to change the existing order of things. -Where there is wealth and abundance there is less unrest and fewer grievances.

3. Not allowing them to increase in numbers-Filipinos were actually increasing in number.

4. By dividing them against themselves. -The very attempt to create regional division strengthened national unity, for it meant sending native troops from one island to another, and this intermingling of Filipinos.

-Every increase of pressure built up a greater counter-pressure.

-It reached a point where change was inevitable.

-The choice was no longer whether change would occur but merely what kind of change it was to be.

-The Philippines would be compelled to seek by force of arms its complete independence.

-This was one direction impending change could take: separation from Spain.

-It would sever a historic bond between Spain and the Philippines, which had been forged by 3 centuries of coexistence.

-The only way to keep Filipinos loyal to Spain was to grant them equal citizenship with Spaniards.

-Rizal proposed that it to be set up as an ultimate goal to be achieved by a series of reforms.

-Filipinos, he said, do not have the Spaniards alone to blame for their state of subjection.

“There would be no masters if there were no slaves.”

-Filipinos must be willing to accept its responsibilities.

-Freedom means undergoing a slow and painful process of self-discipline.

-They should devote some time and effort to cultivating in themselves the virtues that enable a people to govern themselves.

-One of these virtues was economia: the prudent husbanding of limited resources.

-transigencia: the spirit of give and take, the willingness to compromise.

-Democracy is government by discussion: the people or their representatives meet to debate several different courses of action and decide on one. It is a series of mutual concessions and compromises.

-Spanish people destroyed the indigenous culture and substituted an alien culture in its stead.

-On the other hand, Spanish colonial rule developed the Filipino nationalism by supplying the movement for reforms and the subsequent separatist movement with their frame of reference and their principles.

-The ideas of human equality, civic freedom and the rule of law, ideas Hellenic and Christian became an integral part of Philippine Culture.

-Shortly after his return to the Philippines in 1892, Rizal was arrested and banished to Dapitan.

-Between his arrival and arrest, Rizal founded the La Liga Filipina

1. To unite the whole archipelago into one compact, vigorous and homogenous body

2. Mutual protection in every want and necessity

3. Defense against all violence and injustice

4. Encouragement of instruction, agriculture, and commerce

5. Study and application of reforms.

-Andres Bonifacio was active in recruiting members. Bonifacio was giving out that the Liga’s object was revolution.

-The Liga dissolved and before Rizal’s departure, Bonifacio organized a new society, the Katipunan.

-Dr. Pio Valenzuela was dispatched to Dapitan to ask Rizal to head the revolution.

-Rizal refused because he believed that the revolution was premature.

-He volunteered as a surgeon for Cuba.

-The Katipunan was discovered.

-Teodoro Patino betrayed it to Father Mariano Gil, an Augustinian priest in Tondo. (August 19 1896)

-Rizal was executed on December 30 1896.

Rizal In the Context of Nineteenth-Century Philippines

-Essay’s purpose to single out some major economic, political, cultural, and religious developments that influenced Rizal’s growth as a nationalist.

Economic Development

-Growth of the export economy brought increasing prosperity to the Filipino middle classes, as well as the British and American merchants who organized it.

-Brought in machinery and consumer goods to the Philippines.

-Agricultural products: Rice, sugar, abaca from Central Luzon, Batangas, Bikol, Negros, and Panay.

-Kasama or share tenants

-Rizal’s Chinese ancestor was Domingo Lam-co

-He saw that Rizal’s father had rented over 390 hectares of land

-It was not the kasama who would challenge for friar ownership, but the prosperous inquilinos.

-Their motive would be as much political as economic- to weaken the friars’ influence in Philippine political life.

Political Developments

-In Spain, liberals and conservatives succeeded each other at irregular intervals.

-Both parties used the Philippines as a handy dumping ground to reward party hangers-on with jobs.

-Each new government brought another whole new mob of job-seekers to the Philippines, ready to line their pockets with Filipino money before being replaced.

-Filipinos were deprived of those few positions.

-With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 the easy passage between Spain and the Philippines made these officials birds of prey, staying long enough to feather their nests.

-Corruption of the government was its inability to provide for basic needs of public works, schools, etc.

-The guardia civil became an oppressive force in the provinces.

-The antiquated system of taxation in effect penalized modernization, and the taxes never found its way to the public.

-Expensive protective tarrifs forced Filipinos to buy expensive Spanish textile.

-Filipinos increasingly no longer found any compelling motive for maintaining the Spanish colonial regime.

Cultural Development

-There was a rapid spread of education during 1860.

-The propagation of the liberal and progressive ideas written about from Europe by Rizal or Del Pilar.

-Only 5% of the Filipinos could communicate in Spanish.

-The return of the Jesuits was a major influence to educational development.

-They were expelled in 1768 and returned 1859.

-They returned to the Philippines with and ideas and methods new to the educational system.

-Took over the Ayuntamiento in 1859 and renamed in Ateneo Municipal.

-Under the new educational institution the Escuela Normal de Maestros to provide Spanish-speaking teachers.

-It represented a hope of progress in the minds of many Filipinos.

-Jesuit sources frequently complained about the opposition that the graduates of the Normal School met from many parish priests.

-Franciscan Fr. Miguel Lucio y Bustmante proclaimed the danger of studying and learning Spanish.

-Filipino nationalists were much less appreciative of the other educational institutions run by the Dominicans.

-Nationalist leaders Fr. Jose Burgos and Fr. Mariano Sevilla came from the university of Santo Tomas without ever having studied abroad.

-Marcelo H. Del Pilar, Emilio Jacinto, and Apolinario Mabini obtained their education in San Jose, San Juan de Letran, and Santo Tomas.

-Spanish official Juan de la Matta had proposed the closing of these institutions as being “nurseries…of subversive ideas.”

-Seeing the liberties enjoyed in the Peninsula, they became more conscious of the servitude which their people suffered.

-Fr. Jose Burgos emphasized the need for Filipinos to look to their heritage.

-Rizal joined a historical consciousness formed by German histiography.

-In his edition of Antonio de Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas he outlines the process by which he had to come to seek a foundation for his nationalism in the historical past.

Religious Developments

-Education produced an ilustrado class. This ilustrado were increasingly antifriar at times even anticlerical or anti-Catholic.

-Spanish colonial government leaned more heavily on what had always been a mainstay of Spanish rule- the devotion of Filipinos to their Catholic faith.

-Rafael Izquierdo and Juan Alaminos expressed that the Filipino faith “verged on fanaticism, and they make the Indio believe that only in loving the Spaniards can he save his soul in the next life.

-Rizal had a land dispute with the Dominican hacienda of Calamba.

-Paciano Rizal wrote to Jose at the height of the Calamba hacienda dispute. He warns that bishop Nozaleda was planning to end the antifriar campaign of La Solidaridad. (?)

-The propagandists were heirs of the conflict between the Filipino secular priests and Spanish friars that led to the martyrdom of Burgos, Gomez, and Zamora in 1872.

-It was in that conflict that the seeds of nationalism came to full flower among the Propagandists.

-Burgos’ influence: An intramural ecclesiastical controversy into a clear assertion of Filipino equality with the Spaniard into a demand for justice.

-It was archbishop Basilio Sancho de Sta. Justa that mass produced the Filipino clergy which compromised their quality.

-But once the number of friars began to increase again after 1825 a series of moves to deprive the Filipinos of the parishes once more succeeded each other for the next 50 years.

-It was under Pedro Pelaez that they were attempting to disprove the age-old accusation against them by showing that they were equal in ability to the friars.

-Pelaez died in the earthquake of 1863.

-A year later, Jose Burgos defended the memory of Pelaez and calling for justice to the Filipino clergy.

-With Burgos we see the first articulation of national feeling, of a sense of national identity.

-We find numerous close connections between the activist Filipino clergy led by Burgos and the next generation of Filipinos who led the Propaganda of the 1880s and 1890s.

-Paciano was living in the house of Burgos in 1872.

-Toribio H. Del Pilar and Fr. Mariano Sevilla were exiled to Guam. Marcelo lived with them as a student.

-The Propagandists were also heirs to the liberal reformists of the 1860s.

-They were the modernizers who desired to bring to the Philippines economic progress, a modern legal system, and the “modern liberties” – freedom of the press, of association, of speech, and of worship.

-Most of the men who appear prominently among the liberal reformists were criollos Spaniards born in the Philippines.

-Wished to see the liberties that had been introduced to the Philippines to be extended to Spanish Philippines. Men like Joaquin Pardo de Tavera, Antonio Regidor, Burgos.

-Generally antifriar, these reformists saw in the friars obstacles to progressive reforms and modern liberties.

-It was with enthusias that they welcomed the new governer, Carlos Ma. De la Torre with enthusiasm.

-He was appointed by the anti-clerical liberals who had made the Revolution of 1868 in Spain. He introduced some liberal reforms.

-Both the clergy and the reformists were deceived. He was suspicious of both groups and had put them under secret police surveillance.

-He was succeeded by Gen. Rafael Izquierdo who ended even the appearances of liberty of expression allowed by De la Torre.

-The local mutiny over local grievances happened in Cavite.

-Their execution manifested Izquierdo’s conviction that the friars were a necessary political instrument for maintaining the loyalty of the Filipinos to Spain.

-Fr. Pedro Dandan and Fr. Mariano Sevilla reappear in the public eye. Fr. Dandan would die fighting in the mountains in 1897. Fr. Sevilla would work to rally Filipinos to resist the Americans.

-Since the Propaganda Movement was also heir to the liberal reformist tradition, the degree to which the Propagandists were truly nationalists.

-Governor Taft, Gen. Franklin Bell, and Gen. Smith singled out the Filipino priest as the most dangerous enemy and the soul of the Filipino resistance.

1. Reformist – All thinking Filipinos with any interest in the country can be called reformists.

2. Liberal – Almost all were anticlerical and most are reformist.

3. Anticlerical

4. Modernizing –Desire of all liberals and nationalists. -It was mostly an economic goal and interest in progressive economic measures.

5. Strictly Nationalist –Almost all nationalists were liberals. Almost all were in favor of modernization.

-Harshest condemnation of Spanish misgovernment came from the friars. It was only when the cause of the reform began to take on anti-friar and nationalistic overtones that they opposed it.

-Religious orders feared liberalism because church property were oftentimes confiscated in Europe in the name of new freedom.

-When Spanish regime fell under the onslaught of the Revolution, conservative modernizers had no regrets.

-T.H. Pardo de Tavera was among the first to accept a position in the American government. (Secretaty of Foreign Affairs)

-Jose Ma. Basa was among the first to petition the American consul in Hong Kong for an American protectorate over the Philippines.

-The kalayaan they looked for might not be the same concept as the independencia conceived by Rizal, Bonifacio, and Mabini. But the freedom they longed for was far nearer to the nationalists’ idea of independence. (?)

The Historian’s Task in the Philippines

-In 1949, Catholic bishops opposed the use of government funds to publish Rafael Palma’s biography of Rizal because of the book’s anti-Catholicism.

-Rizal’s consciousness of the need to know his people’s past that made him interrupt his work on El Filibusterismo. It was written to point toward a solution exposed in Noli Me Tangere.

-Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas was written to unveil that history tht had been hidden from the eyes of Filipinos by neglect or distortion.

-Having acquired an understanding of their past, Rizal hoped that Filipinos would be able to judge the present.

-He would show his countrymen that, from a Filipino point of view, Spanish rule had failed to fulfill its promises of progresss for Filipinos.

-The knowledge of their past nurtured a consciousness of being a people with a common origin and a common experience constituting the national identity around which the future nation could arise.

-He was able to share his people a sense of national identity, which “impels nations to do great deeds.”

-Bonifacio, Jacinto, and other Filipinos of the revolutionary generation found much of their literary and nationalist inspiration in Rizal’s writings.

-Achievement by history: understanding of our past, cultivation of our national identity, and inspiration for the future.

-William Henry Scott entitled one of his works the Cracks in the Parchment Curtain.

-He says, that a documentary curtain of parchment, at first sight, a documentary conceals from modern view the acticities and thought of Filipinos and reveals only the activities of Spaniards.

-But many cracks in that parchment allow the perceptive investigator to glimpse Filipinos acting in their own world.

-Research on Philippine history is disproportionate.

-Revolution took place in all of the Philippines, such a history will show the different degrees and kinds of nationalist response in different regions.

Method in History

-Documents are not self-interpreting, and therefore, need a human interpreter—the historian.

-He brings with him his biases and prejudices.

-The method in its simplest terms requires the historian to base himself on documentation and to draw the evidence for his assertions or interpretations from the facts found in documents.

-Historian should demonstrate in detail how he bridges the gap between the documentation and the conclusions he draws from it. These include literary works, books of prayers, even folk art.

-A historian’s nationalist commitment, if not too narrowly conceived, ought to make him put new questions to the past.

-This historian’s questions may shed new light on his people’s problems of the past.

-Pedro Paterno (supposed pre-hispanic past) and Jose Marco’s false documents on history (Code of Kalantiyaw).

-The code of Kalantiyaw found its way into history textbooks and was exposed in 1968 by William Henry Scott in his Prehispanic Sources for the History of the Philippines.

-Marco also wrote a series of supposed works of Fr. Jose Burgos. Among these was a pseudonovel La Loba Negra. an alleged account of Burgos’ trial and other dozen pseudoworks.

-Such attempts to make history “nationalist” as those of Paterno and Marco, and their perpetuators, are clearly futile.

-Reconstructing a Filipino past, however glorious in appearance, on false pretenses can do nothing to build a sense of national identity.

-A truly Filipino history, it is said, cannot but be a history of the Filipino masses and their struggles.

-Allows only a one-dimensional consideration of such real and complex issues as Spanish obscurantism and American imperialism.

-The historian needs a preliminary hypothesis from which to investigate the past.

-The hypothesis must have sufficient breadth of vision to encompass all the facts.

-A true people’s history, therefore, must see the Filipino people as the primary agents in their history—not just as objects repressed by theocracy or oppressed by exploitative colonial policies.

-Religious values have not simply led to docility and submission but also to resistance to injustice and to the struggle for a better society.

-It will take seriously people’s movements that articulate their goals in religious terms and not merely in Marxist accents.

-It will be able to recognize and criticize when needed, the role religion—both official and folk varieties of Christianity and Islam.

-A truly nationalistic history will try to understand all aspects of the experience of all the Filipino people.

-It will acknowledge what is valuable as well as what is harmful in the Filipino past.

-It should aim to undergird the formation of a society that provides justice and participation not only to the elites of power, but to every Filipino.

-Present the Filipino past in all its variety.

-By depicting the whole of reality, history will make it possible to reform and reshape that society toward a better future. The historian as nationalist can do no less.

The Philippines in Maritime Asia to the Fourteenth Century

-Philippines did not exist in the tenth century. It only received it’s name during the colonization of Spain.

-Social features: Family ties, body tattooing, and slave raiding.

-It contained elements of social organization, material life, and interisland contacts.

Localities and Leadership

-Belong to the Austronesian family of languages.

-Linguistic affinity stems from Southern China, ancestors of most Southeast Asians.

-Practice of cognatic kinship in which families trace descent through both the male and female lines. Both sons and daughters may have inheritance rights.

-People who were not biologically related can make new claims on each other through fictive kinship which creates ritual brothers, godmothers, and godfathers.

-Religion was animistic seeing and worshipping divinity in the surrounding environment.

-Ancestor worship was a spiritual expression of kinship ties that were relied upon and imposed duties in daily.

-Low population density, yielded a patchwork of human settlements, often along rivers and initially isolated from each other.

-Mindset: People felt strongly attached to their own locality and didn’t feel it to be less important than other larger or more powerful settlements.

-Historian Oliver Wolters describes it as “Every center was a center in its own right as far as its inhabitants were concerned, and it was surrounded by its own groups of neighbors.”

-The person capable of mobilizing people to achieve these goals was described as chief or big man. A person who exhibited unusual achievement in warfare and trade.

-Datu the power conveyed by ancestors could be claimed by anyone with talent.

-Women were central to community life as well. They were likely to become prominent in ritual specialists with power to access and influence the spirits existing in nature.

-Gender regimes were vitally important to the state’s relationship with and control of society.

-Busy harbors enriched and empowered the coastal datu. He demanded tribute from visiting merchants and enforced his authority through armed force.

-Allowed datus to style themselves as royalty, maintaining a court and richly rewarding followers.

-There were networks of personal loyalties, marriage alliances held together by personal achievement and diplomatic skill.

-Warfare was a frequent part of this jockeying for position but it usually took the form of raids to seize people, who were in short supply, not the conquest of land that was plentiful.

-Community was defined and space was organized by personal relationships, not territorial boundaries.

Localization and the Growth of Regional Networks

-Asian trade routes multiplied that effect by bringing knowledge of new belief systems and ways of governing.

-Southeast Asia could be characterized as a crossroads, a place where local and foreign ideas, goods, and people interact to produce cultural and social change.

-Some people felt the crossroads characterization implied a lack of identity, suggesting that Southeast Asians were easily shaped by foreign influence.

-All societies change through contact with outsiders: Southeast Asia’s geography simply exposed it to much more contact than most other places.

-Perhaps as a result, fluidity continued to characterize local polities, and outsiders relatively easily became insiders through marriage, commerce, or possession of useful expertise.

-Foreign ideas and practices adopted by Southeast Asians were precisely those that enhanced their existing values and institutions.

-The first transformative localization in Southeast Asian statecraft occurred when indian merchants and Brahmans (priests) frequented Asian ports.

-Hindu religious beliefs and political practices that enabled local rulers to enhance bother their spiritual power and political authority.

-We adopted Hindu modes of worship by association with a particular god and participation in his divinity.

-Titles adopted from Sanskrit enabled the most powerful datus to distinguish themselves and their kin groups as royalty no nobility—classes with an enhanced capacity to transfer political power to their descendants.

-The divine ruler made his stature clear to the populace by building religious monuments and temples proclaiming his devotion to deities.

-The localization of Indian beliefs and practices did not replace the old culture, but added new meaning and utilities to it.

-Stakes became higher in the endless datu competition as Hindu, and later Buddhist, religio-political practices made possible large-scale polities.

-Java and Cambodia were home to land-based kingdoms ruled by divine kings supported by large populations engaged in wet-rice agriculture.

-Divine kinship enabled the growth of wider networks of personal loyalities called mandalas. Example: Angkor in Cambodia and Srivijaya in Indonesia

-Small trading centers allowed the formation of an elite class, and they rose and fell in power as they competed with one another.

-All polities were dependent on networks of personal loyalty and characterized by a local mindset, with each center under its own ruler—a pattern that best represents the Philippine experience.

-Spaniards highly centralized, autocratic kingship vs. typical datu with local following = Spanish rule nearly succeeded in obscuring the cultural and political links of the Philippine archipelago with the rest of maritime Asia.

-Philippines was indeed part of the maritime Asian trading network.

-It was a sparsely populated archipelago of local communities that spoke different languages but shared many of the cultural traits, values, and rpactices outlined above.

-“Goverened by kings in the manner of the Malays.”

Early Communities in the Philippine Archipelago

-An early settlement in the Philippines was referred to as barangay settled together in a community ranging from 30 to 100 households.

-Permanently settled upriver farmers practiced swidden cultivation, in which parts of the forest were cut down and cultivated and then allowed to lie fallow to regenerate.

-Power and spirituality in the archipelago were interwoven in an animistic world permeated with religious belief.

-Visayans had a pantheon of divinities, which they referred to with Malay-Sanskrit word diwata.

-Tagalogs called these anito and had a principle deity among them, Bathala, derived from the Sanskrit “noble lord.”

-Offerings were made routinely and individually to diwata or anito.

-The datu would sponsor a feast, an event that demonstrated the obligations and exercise of power in early Philippine societies.

-Feasting fulfills both society’s duty to its divinities and the datu’s obligation to share his wealth with the community.

-The spirit ritualist baylan in Visayan and catalonan in Tagalog was typically an elderly woman of high status or a male transvestite.

Social Startification: A Web of Interdependence

-Datus were part of a hereditaty class that married endogamously.

-Datuship included military, judicial, religious, entrepreneurial roles.

-Success and power always depended on an individual’s charisma and valor.

-Antonio Pigafetta, a chronicler noted that, “Kings know more languages than other people.”

Staff:

Atubang sa datu the chief’s minister or privy counselor.

The steward was called paragahin – one who collected tribute and crops.

Bilanggo – the sheriff

Patawag – town crier

Ropok – charmed which causes the one who receives it to obey

Panlus – a spear which causes leg pains to the victim who steps on it.

Bosong – causes intestinal swelling

Hokhok – to kill with a breath or touch of hand

Kaykay- to pierce through somebody by pointing at him

-Datus were self-made men: “There is no superior who gives him authority or title, beyond his own efforts and power.”

-Datus added a tattoo with each military victory.

-Maharlika – likely to do military service

-Lower status Timawa who did labor in the datu’s fields

-Timawa could not bequeath wealth to their children because everything formally belonged to the datu.

-A man of timawa birth might rise to datuship if he had the right qualities and opportunities.

-Tao the mass of society, who owed tribute to the datu and service in general to the upper classes.

-Slaves / esclavo

-The judicial system consisted solely of the datu. Most crimes were also inflicted on the family.

-People could also be purchased—there was a large regional trade in human labor

-There was a system of interdependence marked by mutual obligations up and down the social ladder.

Trade, Tribute, and Warfare in A Regional Context

-At the beginning of the tilling season, no strangers were allowed in a village while ceremonies were conducted for a productive harvest.

-Upon pain of death, strangers were warned away during the funeral of a datu.

-Slaves born within a household were considered part of the family and were rarely sold.

-A slave is also to be sacrificed during the burial of a datu.

-Datus who controlled harbors, collected trade duties, and imported goods grew in material wealth and status.

-Increased commerce attracted more people to the settlement and stimulated cottage industries to supply and equip the traders.

-Alliances were made, often through marriage, for friendship and help against mutual enemies.

-A datu was liable to fall to an externally sponsored rival if unsuccessful in war.

Connections within and beyond the Archipelago

-We could see the communities of the archipelago participating according to their economic and geographical opportunities and priorities as did all local centers in the region.

-Philippine contact with China began during the Tang dynasty.

-Chinese currency and porcelains from this period have been found from Ilocos in the North to the Sulu archipelago in the South.

-Butuan a gold mining and trading center in northeastern Mindanao that sent its first tribute mission to China in 1001.

-When Chinese trading vessels began sailing directly to S.E. Asian producers, it eliminated the need for an entrepot.

-This boosted the importance of smaller trading centers like Butuan and gave the chinese merchants dominance in regional shipping.

-We specialized in metallurgy and shipbuilding.

-In the 11th and 12th century, Malays from Brunei settled in Tondo.

-Islam was also beginning to spread through the trading and ruling networks.

An Early Legal Document

-In 1986, an inscribed copperplate measuring 8x12 inches was found in Laguna province near Manila.

-It is written in old Malay.

-It dates to 900 C.E. and is the oldest Filipino document.

-Is a document that records Namwran’s debt to the chief Dewata. Because of Namwran’s death he was represented by his wife Lady Angkatan.

-Document demonstrates political hierarchy and networks.

-Small barangays were often linked through networks of datus, while retaining a high sense of locality and resolute independence.

-We see a state formation in kinship practices, religious beliefs, and systems of socio-economic status and dependency.

-Increasing trade from the 12th century which resulted to growing populations, social stratification, political innovation and the concentration of political power.

The Noli Me Tangere as Catalyst of Revolution

-Purpose of Noli: To provide a catalyst for a revolution, to start the process that would lead to the emancipation of the Philippines.

-Rizal had already concluded to the futility of the goals sought by many of his fellow-Filipinos, who hoped to obtain from Spain reforms.

-By the time he brought the novel into its final form, he had already opted for ultimate separation from Spain.

-There remained no choice except a revolution, and the Noli was the first step toward that goal.

-Amado Guerrero: “Rizal failed to state categorically the need for revolutionary armed struggle to effect separation from Spain.”

-William Taft and W. Cermeron Forbes: “Rizal never advocated independence nor did he advocate armed resistance to the government.”

-They present only certain aspects of Rizal.

-Rizal as early as 1886, had already determined that there was no future for the Philippines in union with Spain.

1. The failure to distinguish between what Rizal were able to say publicly and what they felt privately.

2. The failure to read Noli’s and his other writings within the context of his personal correspondence at the time he was publishing.

3. The failure to see the Noli not simply as an independent work but as part of a well-thought-out long-range plan.

Noli as Charter of Nationalism

-In 1884 his speech at the Madrid banquet, Rizal still expresses hope for reforms from Spain.

-In Noli, he does seek for reforms, demands even, but from Filipinos rather than from Spaniards.

-It calls on the Filipino to regain his self-confidence, to appreciate his own worth, to return to the heritage of his ancestors, to assert himself as the equal of the Spaniards.

-The Filipinos should be aware of what was wrong with Philippine society, not only Spanish abuses, but Fiipino failures as well. But his purpose went beyond that.

-In a letter to Blumentritt, Rizal registers a glimmer of hope that the separation of the Philippines from Spain might come about by a peaceful and gradual development.

-Pablo Feced and Vicente Barrantes criticized the Noli Me Tangere.

-Noli does not have as its goal the glorification of the race any more than it does the mere condemnation of Spanish oppression.

-A sound nationalism had to be based on an accurate and unsparing analysis and understanding of the contemporary situation.

Noli and Fili: Action with Vision

-Noli was not meant to stand alone. Rizal had in mind a sequel.

-Sketch of the present state of our country.

-I must first make known the past, so that it may be possible to judge better the present and to measure the path which has been traversed during three centuries.

-He would publish instead a scholarly analysis of the Philippines at the Spanish contact, using Morga’s book as a base.

-Noli had shown the Filipinos their present condition under Spain.

-Morga would show them their roots as a nation.

-Rizal would chart the Filipino course for the future in El Filibusterismo.

-He shows two possible courses remaining

1. The solution of Padre Florentino

2. The solution of Simoun

-Rizal cannot five detailed instructions. Rather, he gives the vision and makes his act of faith in the Filipino and in the God of history.

-Ibarra the idealist, working for reforms under Spanish auspices and representing the mind of Rizal.

-Elias, the man of action, represents Bonifacio.

-Leon Ma. Guerrero points out that “Ibarra fails in his reform program and opts for violence, it is Elias who tried to dissuade him, urging that he will lead his countrymen into a bloodbath, and that it will be the defenseless and innocent who will most suffer.

-He had decided on separation from Spain when he published the Noli.

-He originally intended to propose the solution in his second novel, but then realized that he could only do so after having laid further groundwork.

1. Awaken national consciousness

2. Undergird solid historical foundation

3. Remained the course of action to be explored

-The Filipino people, he says, must endure and work. It is not a passive endurance, but an active resistance.

“But it is true that we must win it by deserving it, exalting reason and the dignity of the individual, loving what is just, what is good, what is great, event to the point of dying for it.”

-The point is not to shed other people’s blood, but to be ready enough to shed one’s own for the people that one will have the courage to resist any attack on human dignity, on the freedom that belongs to every man and woman.

Reformist of Revolutionary?

False dilemmas:

1. To be reformist meant to engage in futile tinkering with the political and economic structures of society through parliamentary means, political bargaining and intrigue.

2. To be revolutionary was to take up arms against the government, the establishment, those in power.

-As expressed in the mouth of Padre Florentino: Revolution is not primarily an armed struggle to shed other people’s blood, but a willingness to risk shedding one’s own blood for the sake of the people.

-There was conflict between Marcelo H. Del Pilar and Rizal in 1891. “The fact is that my man has been formed in libraries, and in libraries no account is taken of the atmosphere in which one must work.”

-But it was not enough to have his ideals proposed to his countrymen in writing; it was necessary to put them into action there in the Philippines.”

-He returns to the Philippines in 1892 to activate the La Liga Filipina.

-The call of the Liga was for national unity, dedication to economic, educational, and other reforms—not begging them from the Spaniards, but the Filipinos undertaking them themselves; on the other, the Filipinos must defend one another against all violence and injustice.

Conclusion:

-Rizal retained the ideals of long-range preparation.

-Spanish Judge comments that Rizal “limits himself to condemning the present rebellious movement as premature and because he considers its success impossible at this time.”

-For Rizal, it was a question of opportunity, not of principles or objectives.

-He maintained to the end that the revolutionary goal was to create a nation of Filipinos conscious of their human and national dignity and ready to sacrifice themselves to defend it.

Veneration Without Understanding

-Rizal repudiated the revolution.

-The Philippine revolution has always been overshadowed by the omnipresent figure and the towering reputation of Rizal.

-Rizal repudiated the one act which really synthesized out nationalist aspirations, and yet we consider him a nationalist leader.

An American-Sponsored Hero

-It was Gov. W.H. Taft who in 1901 suggested to the Philippine Comission that the Filipinos be given a national hero.

-Americans chose him over other contestants because “Aguinaldo was too militant, Bonifacio too radical, Mabini unregenerate.”

1. Act 137 – Organize the political district and named it the province of Rizal “in honor of the most illustrious Filipino.”

2. Act 243 – Authorized a public subscription for the erection of a monument in honor of Rizal in the Luneta.

3. Act 345 – Set aside the anniversary of his death as a day of observance.

-In the book The Philippine Islands Governer Cameron Forbes wrote that “The American administration has lent every assistance to this recognition.”

-Rizal never advocated independence, nor did he advocate armed resistance to the government.

-They favored a hero who would not run against the grain of American colonial policy.

-Complemented the Sedition Law which prohibited the advocacy of independence and the law prohibiting the display of the Filipino flag.

-To have encouraged a movement to revere Bonifacio or Mabini would ot have been consistent with American colonial policy.

-Rizal relegated other heroes to the background.

-Rizal belonged to the right social class- the class that they were cultivating and building for leadership.

-There was a need for a superhero to bolster the national ego.

-Orthodox historians have presented history as a succession of exploits of eminent personalities, leading many of us to regard history as the product of gifted individuals.

The Role of Heroes

-With or without these specific individuals the social relations engendered by Spanish colonialism and the subsequent economic development of the country would have produced the nationalist movement.

-Rizal’s execution only added more drama to the events of the period.

-Mass action is not the utterances of a leader; rather these leaders have been impelled to action by the historical forces unleashed by social development.

-The creative energies of the people who are the true makers of their own history.

-But he is not a hero in the sense that he could’ve stopped and altered the course of events.

-The revolution broke out despite his refusal to lead it and continued despite his condemnation of it.

-History is made by men.

Innovation and Change

-Rizal lived in a period of great economic changes. National awakening caused by the English occupation of the country, the end of the galleon trade, and the Latin-American revolutions.

-In addition, non-Spanish houses monopolized the import-export trade. These non-Spanish interests increased cosmopolitan penetration.

-European and American financing were vital agents in the emerging export economy.

-Abaca and sugar production increased. From 3,000 piculs a year to 2,000,000 in 4 decades.

-Improved communication + road systems + railroad lines +street cars + postal services during the same period.

-This has set the stage for cultural and social change. The cultivation of cosmopolitan attitudes and heightened opposition to clerical control.

The Ideological Framework

-Economic prosperity spawned discontent when the native beneficiaries saw a new world of affluence opening for themselves and their class.

-They attained a new consciousness, a new goal—that of equality with the peninsulares.

-Manifestation of the desire to realized the potentialities offered by the period of expansion and progress.

-Anti-clericalism became the ideological style of the period.

-Rizal expressed its demands in terms of human liberty and human dignity and thus encompassed the wider aspirations of the people.

-He could’ve not have transcended his class limitations, for his cultural upbringing was such that affection for Spain and Spanish civilization precluded the idea of breaking the chains of colonialism.

-He had to become a Spaniard first before becoming a Filipino.

Concept of Filipino Nationhood

-The development of the concept of national consciousness stopped short of real decolonization

-Social conditions demand that the true Filipino be one who is consciously striving for the decolonization and independence.

-Filipino originally referred to the creoles or the Spaniards born in the Philippines.

-The natives were called indios.

-In the end of the 19th century, hispanized and urbanized indios along with Spanish mestizos and sangley mestizos began to call themselves Filipinos.

-The original Circulo Hispano-Filipino was dominated by creoles and peninsulares.

-The community came out with an organ called España en Filipinas which sought to take the place of Revista Circulo Filipino, which was founded by Juan Atayde (a creole).

-The only non-Spaniard was Baldomero Roxas.

-Lopez-Jaena criticized their writing, which he believed showed more sympathy for the peninsulares. He was referring to the Azcarrga brothers, by which Claro M. Recto street got its name.

-Thus the formal beginning of the La Solidaridad. Its leaders were indios with Lopez-Jaena as its first editor and later Marcelo Del Pilar.

-The reformists could not shake off their Spanish orientation. They wanted accommodation within the ruling system.

The Limited Filipinos

-Rizal was not really of the people based on education and property.

-The recognition of the masses as the real nation and their transformation into real Filipinos.

-Filipino must undergo a process of decolonization before he can become a true Filipino.

-As an ilustrado, Rizal was speaking in behalf of all the indios though he was separated by culture and by property from the masses.

-His ilustrado orientation manifests itself in novels.

-All the protagnoists belonged to the principalia.

-Rizal’s class position, upbringing, and his foreign education were profound influences which constituted a limitation on his understanding of his countrymen.

-He condemned the Revolution because as an ilustrado he instinctively underestimated the power and the talents of the people.

-He believed in freedom not so much as national right but as something to be deserved.

-He did not equate liberty with independence. Rizal did not consider political independence as a prerequisite to freedom.

He wrote on Dec. 12, 1896:

“A people can be free without being independent, and a people can be independent without being free.”

Also in El Fili:

“We must secure it by making ourselves worthy of it, by exalting the intelligence and the dignity of the individual, by loving justice, right, and greatness, even to the extent of dying for them.”

-Rizal’s preoccupation with education served to further the impression that the majority of the Filipinos were unlettered and therefore, needed tutelage, before they could be ready for independence.

-“Make itself worthy of these liberties.”

-People should learn and educate themselves in the process of struggling for freedom and liberty.

-Colonialism if the only agency still trying to sell the idea that freedom is a diploma to be granted by a superior people to an inferior one after years of apprenticeship.

The Precursors of Mendicancy

-Propagandists, in working for certain reforms, chose Spain as the arena of their struggle instead of working among their own people, educating them and learning from them, helping them to realize their own condition.

-The elite had a sub-conscious disrespect for the ability of the people to articulate their own demands and to move on their own.

-They felt that education gave them the right to speak for the people.

-They are not accustomed to the people moving on their own.

-The ilustrados were the Hispanized sector of our population, hence they tried to prove that they were as Spanish as the peninsulares.

-They are no different from the modern-day mendicants who try to prove that they are Amercanized.

Ilustrados and Indios

-Bonifacio, not as Hispanized as the ilustrados, saw in people’s actions the only road to liberation.

-The Katipunan was a people’s movement based on confidence in the people’s capacity to act in its own behalf.

-It was Bonifacio and the Katipunan that embodied the unity of revolutionary consciousness and revolutionary practice.

-The indio as Filipino rose in arms while the ilustrado was still waiting for Spain to dispense justice and reforms.

-The revolutionary masses proclaimed their separatist goal through the Katipuan.

-Rizal should occupy his proper place in our pantheon of great Filipinos.

Blind Adoration

-We must always be conscious of the historical conditions and circumstances that made an individual a hero.

-We must view Rizal as an evolving personality within an evolving historical period.

Limitations of Rizal

-Unless we have an ulterior motive, there is really no need to extend Rizal’s meaning so that he may have contemporary value.

-The nature of the Rizal cult is such that he is being transformed into an authority to sanction the status quo by a confluence of blind adoration and widespread ignorance of his most telling ideas.

The Negation of Rizal

-We cannot rely on Rizal alone. We must discard the belief that we are incapable of producing the heroes of our epoch.

-The true hero is one with the masses, he does not exist above them.

-When the goals of the people are finally achieved, Rizal, the first Filipino, will be negated by the true Filipino by whom he will be remembered as a great catalyzer in the metamorphosis of the decolonized indio.