Reviewing the past

When I first taught a survey course on Philippine history in the Ateneo in 1998, a senior professor asked why I began my course with Philippine prehistory instead of the 16th century.

Didn’t recorded history begin with the “discovery” of the Philippines by Magellan in 1521, or the taking of the islands for the Spanish crown by Miguel Lopez de Legazpi in 1565? When I argued that one had to know what the islands and people were like before the Spanish contact, I was gently reminded that the Philippines in prehistoric times was not just a world inhabited by dinosaurs and cave men, it was also the period before recorded or written history. I was advised to be clear about the scope of my course, focusing on the “historic” and leaving “prehistory” to the Sociology-Anthropology introduction courses.

But it helped that a handful of early Chinese accounts were available in English to push history back several centuries before Pigafetta’s account of the Magellan expedition. Today, students know about the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, a calendar-dated document from the 9th century that marks the beginning of our recorded history. That is, until something older comes along. Our recorded history begins with a receipt — with the payment of a salary-related debt in gold. I don’t think it’s too much to wish that our recorded history will begin someday with the discovery of a long-lost genealogy, a history, or even an epic in verse.

Students raised on K-to-12 Araling Panlipunan are taught a chronological rather than thematic Philippine history. Generally, the narrative is broken up into four phases: prehistoric Philippines, the Spanish colonial period from 1565 to 1898, the American period from 1898 to 1946 (with a brief interlude known as the Japanese Occupation between 1942 and 1945), then the post-independence period from 1946 to the present. The last phase is subdivided into the terms of a series of presidents: Quezon, Osmeña, Roxas, Quirino, Magsaysay, Garcia, Macapagal, Marcos, C. Aquino, Ramos, Estrada, Macapagal-Arroyo, B. Aquino, and Duterte. Emilio Aguinaldo is not part of the postwar chronology of presidents, but he is discussed together with the stillborn First Philippine Republic, while Jose P. Laurel remains downgraded as a “puppet president” during the Japanese Occupation.

Depending on the teacher, the above chronology can be supplemented by counterfactuals. There was a brief British occupation of Manila between 1762 and 1764; what if they had stayed on? What if Andres Bonifacio had been elected president at Tejeros instead of Emilio Aguinaldo? What if the Portuguese had insisted on their rights to the Philippines and drove the Spanish away? Remember that in the so-called “Age of Exploration” from the 15th to the 17th centuries, Spain and Portugal were competitors in expanding trade and knowledge of the world. To keep the peace, Pope Alexander VI in 1493 issued the papal bull “Inter caetera,” cutting the known world in half, like an orange, and giving one side of the non-Christian world to Spain and the other half to Portugal.

Because the Pope was Spanish, the parties negotiated the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, giving Spain most of the Americas except Brazil, while Portugal claimed the lands and beyond they found in the East. Then Magellan complicated matters when he sailed toward the Spice Islands (Moluccas), which was claimed by both countries. So the demarcation line was renegotiated, leading to the Treaty of Saragossa in 1529 that gave Spain most of the Pacific Ocean. In addition, Portugal paid Spain 350,000 ducats for the Moluccas, because it was the source of spices much desired in Europe. Spain stayed in the Philippines, even if the country lay on the Portuguese side of the demarcation line. It was not a good investment because it had no spices, but later paid off as the Philippine colony became the nexus of the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade.

I have been reviewing the timelines of Philippine history in preparation for the 500th anniversary of the Magellan expedition next year. The commemoration (not celebration) opens up old wounds and may create new ones necessary to give us a fresh start in reviewing ways to look at the past. I hope the occasion will update the way history is taught and understood, and result in a past that is relevant and useful for Filipinos of the 21st century and beyond.

Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu