Turn About
A Proposal for Future Research in Philippine History, 1565-1898©
Bruce Cruikshank, 18 April 2016
Almost half a century ago, Jack Larkin observed that the “singular concern with Manila and its environs and the highest echelons of society tends to distort the history of the Philippines as a whole.”[1] Starting from the publication of his book on Pampanga to the present, scholars have responded with a significant group of regional and provincial histories.[2] My own work on Samar was strongly influenced by Larkin’s and John Smail’s emphasis on local and regional studies.[3] Al McCoy in his introduction to Philippine Social History. Global Trade and Local Transformations spoke of how social history has revealed an “intensely dynamic society, or series of societies, that has changed constantly throughout its four centuries of recorded history in response to economic, demographic and technological stimuli” (4). He then adds reference to “the local transformation that accompanied integration into the world economy.”
Even before the late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century transformations of the Philippine colony’s economy and export patterns into that world economy, the Philippines and its products were tied to both China and Mexico, with significant interaction with Jolo and Sulu as well. In my recent work, I have tried to show that silver coin from the galleon trade was probably not scarce in the provinces, at least not until the Mexican independence movement cut off the Manila galleon connection in 1815.[4] Coincidentally, by then active commercial connections and productions for the world economy were well under way in the Philippines. I have also tried to show
a) an active pattern of trade from the highlands to Manila,[5]
b) active corruption and schemes by Spanish provincial governors to tap into tribute and
forced requisitions for illicit trade and profit.[6] I have also suggested that
c) provincial Filipinos “had their own political, economic, and social networks.”[7]
I propose that we can work with these and other concepts and arguments to construct a more accurate sense of Philippine history before 1899.
Traditionally, studies of the Philippine past under Spanish imperial rule have often taken one of two paths, depending on whether the focus was on the Spanish governmental system
Manila (Governor-General, Audiencia)
Provincial Capital
Pueblo
Or, alternatively, on the Spanish ecclesiastical administrative structures (Regular and Diocesan):
Manila (Mother house of the Jesuits or Regulars)
Administrative supervisor of region, if any
Pueblo/Parish
Visita
Manila (Archbishop Governor-General, Audiencia)
Bishop’s Palace
Pueblo/Parish and visita
Even with the new emphasis and social historical approaches from Larkin onwards, much of the work to date has been defined by the provinces set up by the Spanish imperial government. Thus I worked with the province (and island) of Samar, with hardly any examination of possible linkages to Leyte or to Sorsogon and Bicol. There have been exceptions of course—Norman Owen’s work on Bicol comes to mind[8]—but, by and large, the focus has been on Filipinos within individual provinces.
I suggest we change our sense of Philippine history from 1565 to 1899 by starting with a new mental picture. Images do influence our thinking, and if we change our picture of how the Philippines was structured, with an emphasis on following the money (both legitimate and illicit), our histories will change as well. Let us put the pueblo and its hinterland foremost in our understanding, with Manila secondary but significant as a market or site of a government depository for provincial goods; and as a source until 1815 of Mexican silver. Our mental picture then becomes
Highlanders
Boondocks, Ranchería, Sitio, Visita
Pueblo
Provincial Capital and Regional Markets
Manila markets and storehouses
This is perhaps all very fine, but how in the world are we going to write the history of every pueblo in the Philippines? Such a proposal seems absurd on the face of it. Even the Philippine National Archives (PNA) and the multitude of legajos and manuscripts there do not have sufficient information on every pueblo from inception to the Philippine Revolutions and the purchase by the United States of the colony from the Spanish. Even if such a project were feasible, would we not find ourselves facing such a multitude of disparate studies that (as McCoy warned us (11)) “no generalizations will emerge for meaningful inter-regional or perhaps national generalizations about the process of social change in the colonial Philippines”? Even if we followed the money trail, using trade and peculation as our core themes, how could we possibly avoid multitudinous, possibly antiquarian, studies?
Obviously, we need some criteria for grouping pueblos, a way that associates them that is not necessarily based on Spanish administrative divisions such as a province. We could start with the observation that pueblos often differed from each other in significant ways, such as in location, in products, and in population size. Guiuan was very different from Capul, just as Basey and Borongan were quite distinct, to cite four Samar examples. One way to begin would be for a researcher to look at available sources for linkages among pueblos in some sort of trade pattern. I did this using Huerta’s book[9] for Franciscan pueblos in the essay “Using Galan as a Springboard to Sketch Philippine Regional Economic Networks.” With preliminary screening out of the way, we could add in the criteria of
Location, especially relative to lake, river, or ocean
Altitude, with consequent crop possibilities and exposure to mosquito-borne
diseases
Products collected or produced, through cultivation, fishing or forest winnowing
Then one could go to the PNA and look for the pueblos in the relevant provinces (often the pueblos she or he is studying will be in distinct provinces, e.g., Catbalogan in Samar and Tacloban in Leyte). From there, and with parish records, one could tease out the data for the themes to be documented. The list of possible themes and topics is long. One hopes that
· material referencing Philippine women will be found and incorporated in these studies, since half the population continues to be under-represented in the literature.
· Certainly too trade connections from the hills need to be studied along with
· social and economic divisions among the pueblo populations.
· Labor and loan arrangements are important as well.
· Population size, growth, decrease, and mobility are significant themes as are
· epidemics and natural disasters.
· Where relevant, Moro raids might be a topic.
· Technological innovations,
· introduction of new crops and seed varieties, and
· socialization of children through family, community, and schooling needs documentation.
· Add in residence patterns,
· geography of settlement,
· outside merchants and an important essay would take shape. With luck one might find a
· scandal or conflict that might have resulted in a fuller set of manuscripts on Filipinos in one or more pueblos.
· Look also for wills and marriage ties between principal families in various pueblos.
These tasks are more likely to be successful by those resident in the Philippines and thus with regular access to the PNA and its incomparable resources. For all of us, though, changing our picture of the Philippine past to emphasize Filipino trade, corruption, dispersion, mobility, and social interaction centered on the pueblos could be quite valuable and might be a useful format to shape future research and writing.
[1] John A. Larkin, “The Place of Local History in Philippine Historiography,” Journal of Southeast Asian History, 8:2 (September 1967), 306-17; here, 307. I am not speaking of other types of history, such as intellectual, immigrant, military, and so forth, where this essay and my proposal would not apply.
[2] A quick guide to dissertations and other work can be found in “Twenty-two Years of Work in Philippine Historiography: Accomplishment and Promise, 1955-76.” Philippine Studies: History, Sociology, Mass Media, and Bibliography: Present Knowledge and Research Trends (Occasional paper, no. 6, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University, 1978) 1-97. Also, see Alfred W. McCoy and Ed. C. de Jesus, eds., Philippine Social History. Global Trade and Local Transformations. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1982. 479pp.
[3] John A. Larkin, The Pampangans: Colonial Society in a Philippine Province. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972. 340pp. John R. W. Smail, “On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia,” Journal of Southeast Asian History, 2:2 (July 1961), 72-102. Bruce Cruikshank, Samar: 1768-1898. Manila: Historical Conservation Society (Pub. no. 41), 1985. 321pp.
[4] Bruce Cruikshank, “Silver in the Philippines. A Critique of the Classic View of Philippine Economic History in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Philippine Quarterly of Culture & Society, 36 (2008), 124-51.
[5] “Tiangues in the Philippines before 1898.” This and the other essays mentioned below are posted on Academia.edu as well as at https://sites.google.com/site/dbcresearchinstitute/ .
[6] “Gaming the System. The Tribute System in the Spanish Philippines, 1565-1884.”
[7] “The Ideal and the Real in Filipino Lowland Life. Franciscan Descriptions of the Ways Filipinos Actually Lived in the Eighteenth Century,” 68.
[8] Norman G. Kabikolan in the Nineteenth Century: Socio-Economic Change in the Provincial Philippines. Ph.D. dissertation, History, University of Michigan. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1976. Two volumes (629pp.). Much of this work was substantially revised and became Prosperity without Progress. Manila Hemp and Material Life in the Colonial Philippines. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. 311 pp.
[9] Félix de Huerta, O.F.M., Estado geográfico, topográfico, estadístico, histórico-religioso de la santa y apostólica Provincia de San Gregorio Magno, de religiosos Menores Descalzos de la Regular y más estrecha Observancia de N. S. P. S. Francisco en las islas Filipinas; comprende el número de religiosos, conventos, pueblos, situación de estos, años de su fundación, tributos, almas, producciones, industrias, casos especiales de su administración spiritual, en el archipiélago Filipino, desde su fundación en el año de 1577 hasta el de 1865. Second edition. Binondo: M. Sánchez, 1865. 713pp.