THE HISTORIAN’S TASK IN THE

PHILIPPINES
John Schumacher
UNDERSTAND THE PAST… JUDGE
THE PRESENT… DEDICATE
(THEMSELVES) TO STUDYING THE
FUTURE.
• Before 1872 – There was NO Filipino history.
• 19th Century - Resources were lacking but
Spanish chronicles could be mined.
• Present century –There is access to archival
documentation and resources (archaeology,
linguistics & anthropology)
- Much can be known about Filipino
society from pre-Hispanic and Spanish periods.
• Cracks in the Parliament
- William Henry Scott
- a curtain parchment conceals from
modern view the activities and thought of
Filipinos and reveals the activities of the
Spaniards, only.

“cracks” - would allow the perceptive

investigator (historian) to glimpse Filipino
activities
TASK 1.
• Historian should read between the lines
of Spanish documents to learn more
about Filipino life and society.
• Much has been written about the
Revolutionary and American colonial periods,
but not much about before the Revolution.

Problem:
“It is not what has been done, but
what has not been done”.
Cases/Examples:
Differences in the response of hacienderos
(elites) to the American rule.
- Negros and Iloilo hacienderos– quickly
embraced American rule (elite betrayal of the
Revolution)
- Panay and Tagalog hacienderos (more
resistant ; war continued until 1901).
TASK 2
• A real history of the revolution, including the
war against the Americans should be written –
a history of the Revolution and a regional
basis on the century before the Revolution.
- to show the different degrees and kinds of
nationalist response in different regions
- to explore the variations in different
socioeconomic classes and the reasons for
these differences
• Documents are not self-interpreting, thus
needs a human interpreter – the historian.
- historian’s viewpoint
- historian’s biases and prejudices
Critical historical method – requires the
historian to base himself on documentation and
draw the evidence for his assertions or
interpretations from the facts found in the
documents.
• Facts – require historians to demonstrate in
detail how he bridges the gap between the
documentation and the conclusions he draws
from it.
• Documents – memoirs, letters, literary works,
prayers, folk art
Task 3
• The historian should have the ability to
put the proper questions to documents
and determine the exact meaning of such
manifestations of popular thinking and
values
Nationalist history – writing history based on the
historian’s love of country.

• PEDRO PATERNO – “everything good in the

19th century Filipino society and Christianity
was the fruit of some mythical inborn qualities
of the race and had existed before the coming
of the Spaniards”.
• JOSE MARCO – distorted genuine documents
by creating forgeries on pre-Hispanic
Philippines.

- Povedano and Pavon manuscripts

- Code of Kalantiaw
- La Loba Negra (forged signatures of Burgos)
Implication:

• Reconstructing a Filipino Past (case of

Paterno and Marco) - glorious but it is based
on false pretenses thus does nothing to build
a sense of national identity and does not offer
guidance for the present or the future.
• People’s history
- must see the Filipino as the primary
agents in their history (not as objects repressed
or oppressed by colonial policies)
- will refuse to treat the Filipino people
as an abstraction manipulated by deterministic
forces.
- will understand all aspects of the
experience of all the Filipino people, as they
themselves understood it
TASK 4. “The historian as a nationalist.”

• The historian should write or present

history depicting the whole of reality
(the Filipino past that really was) to
reform and reshape that society toward
a better future.