ANNOTATION OF SUCESOS DE LAS ISLAS FILIPINAS

ANTONIO DE MORGA
SANCHEZ GARAY
▪ Antonio de Morga, born in Seville in the year 1559
▪ Graduated “Canon Law” at University of Salamanca 1574-1578
▪ A professor at Osuna but immediately went back to Salamanca to study
Civil Law
▪ Went to the Philippines as Lieutenant Governor <1593>
▪ Published the Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas and imprinted it in Mexico
in the year 1609
JOSE RIZAL AND SUCESOS

▪ May 25, 1888, Rizal went to London:

▪ to enhance his English literate skills
▪ to do his historical research on Pre-Colonial of the Philippine History
▪ London is a safe place to fight against the Spaniards
▪ August 18, 1888:
▪ Rizal copied <by hand> the 1st edition of the Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas by Antonio de Morga

▪ September 1888:
▪ Rizal went to Paris and stayed for a week to read and learn more about the History

▪ March 19, 1889:

▪ Rizal brought the manuscript to Paris, where the price of it is cheaper
FERDINAND BLUMENTRITT
▪ Told Rizal to write a book about the Philippine History
▪ Blumentritt wanted to know about the beginning of the history
of the Philippines
▪ Just like Rizal, he wanted to inform that Philippines had a
civilization before the Spaniards invades the country
WHY DID RIZAL CHOOSE
MORGA’S BOOK?
▪Morga is one of the Spaniards’ official officer
▪Morga is a keen observer
▪Morga have an experience in the Spanish
Colonization in the Philippines
2 TYPES OF HISTORY THAT
RIZAL HIGHLIGHTED IN
SUCESOS:
▪History of the Place
▪History of the people that lived in a
place
ANNOTATION OF RIZAL

▪The annotation of Rizal about the Sucesos de las

Islas Filipinas explains the details of the book, his
disagreement of Morga’s observations and the
confirmation of the history of some of the writings.
SUCESOS DE LAS ISLAS
FILIPINAS
▪ 1st history book that wrote by a Filipino <revised>
▪ Wrote by the person that have been invaded by the Spaniards
▪ The Book that Rizal annotated was banned in the late 19th century
▪ This book was jeopardized
▪ Because Rizal’s manuscript is a secondary source, most readers prefer
Morga’s book.
▪ Few Filipinos nowadays give their time reading the annotation of Rizal
WHY DID RIZAL DIDN’T CHOOSE TO
ANNOTATE THE BOOK ON HIS OWN
LANGUAGE?

▪ “To foretell the destiny of a nation, it is

necessary to open the books that tell of her past.”
● To awaken in the Filipinos the consciousness of our past
● To devote ourselves to studying the future
● To first lay bare the past, in order to better judge the
present and to survey the road trodden during three centuries
● To prove Filipinos had a culture of their own, prior to
colonization, that the Filipinos were NOT inferior to the
white man
● To shatter the myth of the so-called “Indolence of the Filipinos”
● To reduce those Filipinos who denied their native tongue into
rotten fish
● To seriously study Tagalog and produce a comprehensive Tagalog
dictionary
● To embrace the generic term “Indio”, or in today’s case, Filipino,
with all its negative connotations, and turn it into one of dignity and
nobility