Volume 52 — THE PHILIPPINES, 1860–1898—SOME COMMENT AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

BY JAMES A. LEROY

The “modern era” in the Philippine Islands—which indeed, in certain respects, did not really begin until after the establishment of American rule—coincides roughly with the last half of the nineteenth century. It is impossible to assign arbitrarily any date as precisely that of its commencement. One will be inclined to lay stress upon this or that circumstance, and to choose this or that date, as he places importance mostly upon matters connected with economic development, or with social progress, or with political reforms. The truth is that there was advancement in all these lines, as also there were hindrances to progress in each of them, and that only by surveying it in each of these phases of its development can we come to understand in how considerable a degree Philippine society was remade during this period.

The opening of the Suez Canal and the entry of Spaniards into the archipelago in greater numbers marks an epoch even more in a social way than as respects trade and commerce. And the new social era then inaugurated was closely allied thenceforward with the discussion of political reforms, with the essay of some such reforms on the part of government, and finally with an organized Filipino propaganda for greater social and political freedom. When the Spanish revolution of 1868 occurred the Philippines were still far remote from the mother-country, with its disturbing agitations, wherein violence and utopianism were destined to prepare the way for the reaction; the new governor-general sent out by the reformers who expelled Isabel II came to Manila by the Cape of Good Hope, the old voyage which took four months or more to bring even the news of what was going on in Spain. The Constitution of 1868 had been proclaimed in the Philippines but a few months back when, early in 1870, the first steamer arrived direct from Barcelona via Suez. Thenceforward, the capital of this remote Spanish outpost in the Orient was but one month distant from Barcelona for mail and passengers; soon after ocean cables to the ports of China (eventually extended to Manila) put the Philippines in daily touch, as it were, with important occurrences in Spain. The old régime of slumbering exclusion, already breaking down under the influence of trade, was ended.

Even if we give full faith to the complaints of the friars’ defenders on this score—and their representations of the last half of the nineteenth century are very one-sided—even if we admire and accept as truthful the picture they draw of a sort of Eden in the Philippines back of 1860, and particularly in the two preceding centuries, wherein the humble Filipino lived practically free of taxation, exempt from abuses from above, guileless of serious crime, and watched over by a paternal superior who directed his steps to the eternal bliss of the other world: still, accepting the friars’ case at its face value, it is plain that they asked for and expected the impossible when they fought to perpetuate medieval conditions in a country opened to trade and commerce and to modern thought and contact with the world at large. We may doubt that ignorance was bliss even in the “good old days;” but it was certain that those days must come to an end when the Philippines were awakened by steamships, telegraph lines, newspapers, and books (even though under clerical and political censorship). Clear-sighted prophecy was that of Feodor Jagor, the German scientist who traveled through the Philippines just before 1860, and who, though he found much to praise in the old paternal régime, said:

As was indicated at the beginning of these notes, to make a thorough study of this period, we should consider it under three heads, viz., economic development, social development, and political development. Not only has there been no comprehensive review of the period as a whole, but there exists no review of it under any one of these heads, nor even any group of writings which can be offered to the inquirer as covering the field of inquiry in any one of these respects. For one thing, we must draw mainly upon Spanish sources of information, official and private, and rare indeed is the Spanish writer who does not either proceed regardless of the economic point of view, or else give entirely secondary consideration to the vital matter concerned in the economic and social progress of a people independently of political forms and governmental influences. The result is that Spanish writers, with them the Filipinos, and to a great extent the writers of Philippine treatises in other languages (drawing hastily upon Spanish sources), have over-emphasized the political history of this Philippine period. Of course, in Spain and the Spanish countries long-standing habit makes it the tendency to look to government for everything, and to think of all amelioration of evils and all incitements to progress as coming from above; while social and economic conditions in the Philippines are such as to emphasize this tendency, the aristocracy of wealth and education standing apart from the masses and being, to the latter, identified in the main with the government, with the “powers above.” Nevertheless, it is to be insisted that social and economic progress in the Philippines during the last half-century should be considered separately and studied more particularly than they have been thus far.

It need hardly be said, for another thing, that it is not possible to make an absolute separation of this subject under the headings thus indicated. Such a thing cannot be done with any people in any period of history. In this particular case, one need only mention the Religious Question, with its phases as a contest between friars and native clergy, as a demand for modern freedom of thought and speech, and as an agrarian question, to show at once that matters social, economic, and political are here interwoven. So also the Spanish administration cannot be considered wholly apart from its bearing upon economic and social as well as purely political matters. No rigid classification is possible, but the student who approaches the history of this period—which, apart from its own interest, has had ever since 1898 the most vital bearing upon a public question of great importance in the United States today—will avoid confusion by giving consideration to these separate points of view.

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

One would welcome an attempt by some one of the more ambitious Filipino writers and students whose attention has been occupied almost exclusively with political controversy to write the social history of his people during this last period of Spanish rule. The materials for such a study, so far as they now exist in print, are very fragmentary, and the work could hardly be well done by any but a resident of the islands during that period. But few references need be given here, and the inquirer must derive most of his information on this line from the numerous books and pamphlets whose object is primarily political questions and from the economic and fiscal tables and studies which shed light upon the general status of the people.

The foreigners who traveled in the Philippines during this period, and who have written thereon, were occupied in most cases with scientific pursuits, and have confined themselves mainly to these objects in what they have published. The Luçon et Palaouan (Paris, 1887) of Alfred Marche touches upon the customs and conditions of the people in its record of six years’ scientific research for the government of France. Edmond Plauchut’s contributions to the Revue des deux mondes for 1869 and 1877, in lighter vein and perhaps not always accurate, are, like Gironière’s writings of earlier date, interesting as presenting the observations of a resident foreigner. Among the works in English, revised or written since 1898 to meet the demand in the United States for information about the Philippines, Dean C. Worcester’s The Philippine Islands and their People (New York, 1898), brings us nearest to the life of the people, particularly in the rural districts and regions most remote from modern changing influences. The treatises of the British engineers and experts in tropical agriculture, Frederick H. Sawyer and John Foreman, are written by men who were, naturally, best prepared to discuss the agricultural conditions and the material resources in general of the Philippines. Outside of these matters, except when reciting personal experiences and observations, both are compilers whose reading in Philippine bibliography has been very fragmentary. Foreman in particular has undertaken to cover the entire field of Philippine history and politics, and has, to state the plain truth, made a very bad botch of it. He has been so often quoted in the United States as authority for erroneous statements that it is time to make this fact clear. It is commonly impossible to draw the line in what he has written between fact and gossip, conjecture, or partial truth. His latest edition (1906) contains most of the old glaring errors or even worse omissions, with a full measure of new ones in his recital of the history of events since 1896. Some data contained in Foreman’s book are not readily available to an American student outside of the large libraries; but a caution is to be uttered against relying upon him, even for his recital of fiscal details or for his statistical tables. Sawyer is very much more accurate and reliable, just as he is less pretentious in the program of his work.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Industries.—The general references already cited must be relied upon, and it is a rather wearisome task to uncover the data for a study of Philippine industries from statistical tables, treatises and pamphlets which have given the subject a cursory or fragmentary treatment. The British and French consular reports may, however, be especially remarked. Also, the reports of the Chief of the Bureau of Internal Revenue in the reports of the Philippine Commission since 1904, when a new scheme of internal taxation was adopted, contain much information on industrial conditions, past and present.

POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT—SPANISH ADMINISTRATION

Our object here being primarily the political progress of the Filipino people, we are concerned incidentally, as it were, with the subject of Spanish administration considered by itself alone. A good study of that subject, be it said, is lacking, and it may be recommended as an opportunity worth improving.

POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT—FILIPINO PROPAGANDA AND REVOLUTION

Religious Question.—It need scarcely be repeated that the “friar controversy” enters not only into this, but every phase of our discussion, and in one form or another, is touched upon in almost all our sources of information about the Philippines. For one thing, however, we are not here concerned with a historical judgment upon the work of the friars in the Philippines, though it is proper to note that there has of late been evident a reaction in their favor from the tendency common in the United States immediately after 1898 to judge them wholly by recent events, and their work is now more fairly viewed in its three-century perspective. We are, moreover, excused from entering upon a comprehensive survey of literature about the friars and their work in general by the fact that the subject has been constantly to the fore throughout this series. What is needed here is only the citation, supplementary to the Bibliography and to the great accumulation of bibliographical references in other volumes of this series, of certain titles easily overlooked (some because of recent publication) and of such special passages in all these works as elucidate particular matters of importance.

As with all the political literature of the Philippines, 1860–1898, the reader is to be warned against the exaggerations of both sides. Always and everywhere, religious privileges and prejudices have aroused discussion both violent and intolerant; and in this case we find, on one side, a defense of religious and ecclesiastical privileges of a medieval character and in a tone and temper inherited from those times. Nor, even setting the purely ecclesiastical and religious questions aside, need we expect to find in this literature any review or discussion written in a calm and scientific spirit. Spanish political literature is almost entirely polemic, and Spanish polemics is sui generis. So, as with the friars and their defenders, we find here the principles of modern political science, which appeal properly to cool reason and the tolerance of liberalism, put forward by Spaniards and Filipinos in a language and with a spirit that hark back to times which we have come to think of as far remote from ours.

The Filipino clergy and their Cause.—Contests between secular and regular ecclesiastics, and over the subjection of friar-curates to ordinary jurisdiction had filled many pages of Philippine history in every century. But, when revived under somewhat new forms from about 1863 on, as remarked in the introduction to these notes, they speedily assumed a new and rather distinct phase. The introduction has noted the connection of the Jesuits’ return with the encroachment upon the Filipino secular priests and with the counter demand for the belated subjection of the friar-parishes to the ordinary ecclesiastical legislation and jurisdiction of the Church; under the encouragement of the 1868 revolution in Spain, these demands grew apace from 1868 to 1872, and became interlaced with strictly political demands, until finally we may regard the cause of the Filipino clergy as a part of the campaign for Filipino nationalism. The reaction of 1872 and immediately subsequent years checked it, and it has found full expression only since Spanish sovereignty was overthrown; but it is best considered in its broadest scope, as a part of the Filipino movement toward nationality, though it may have been but dimly or not at all felt as such by some of its most active protagonists.

Even in Noli me tangere, first published under his own eye at Berlin in 1887, when Rizal, at the age of twenty-six, was just fairly setting out in life, there are many evidences that the author, if he meant primarily to set before the world the backwardness of the existing social and political régime in the Philippines, its stifling of thought, and its many tyrannies, had also in mind to set before his people, in some of his instantaneous photographs of Philippine life, their own defects. In El filibusterismo (Ghent, 1891), the more mature reformer preached yet more plainly the necessity of social and political progress beginning from below, and not simply inspired from above. That his people took the lessons meant for themselves (and take them still today) less to heart than they responded to the satire and invective directed against the form of rule imposed upon them, was the fault not of Rizal but of human nature, prone to apply the preacher’s words only to the other fellow.

Ricardo Monet y Carretero, Comandancia general de Panay y Negros. Alteraciones de órden público … desde Octubre de 1896 á Marzo de 1897 (Iloilo, 1897). Mostly official proclamations, etc., by the author as commander in the western district of Bisayas, regarding disturbances there and symptoms of a tendency to revolt.

Enrique Abella y Casariego, Filipinas (Madrid, 1898). More temperate than most other Spanish writings. Treats of the development of the insurrection, and of the course of events under Blanco, Polavieja, and Primo de Rivera.

Federico de Monteverde y Sedano, Campaña de Filipinas, La división Lachambre. 1897 (Madrid, 1898.) Excellent account of the campaign of Polavieja by his aide; somewhat grandiloquent, considering the comparative insignificance of the military operations themselves.

Les Philippines et l’insurrection de 1896–1897 (Paris, 1899); a thirty-nine-page reprint from Revue militaire de l’étranger.

L. Aycart—La campaña de Filipinas. Recuerdos é impresiones de un médico militar (Madrid, 1900). Contains some charts and some interesting data on the military campaign as such.

Major John S. Mallory—The Philippine Insurrection, 1896–1898 (appendix viii to report of Major-General G. W. Davis, commanding the division of the Philippines, in Report of War Department, 1903, vol. 3, pp. 399–425). A non-critical compilation, mostly from Sastrón and Monteverde y Sedano. It is, however, by far the best review of the 1896–97 insurrection as such that is available in English, and is a fairly satisfactory account for one who cannot consult the Spanish sources. Far better than Foreman’s account.

M. Arroyo Vea-Murguía—Defensa del sitio de Naic (Filipinas). Antes y despues. (Madrid, 1904.) Of little value.

The Question of Independence.—We have, on one hand, the assertions of rabid Spanish writers that separation from Spain was throughout the real aim of the Filipino leaders, who merely covered it under a plea for reforms (the friars say, under a false assertion that the Filipinos were opposed to them). We have, in direct opposition, the assertions of Spanish Liberals and of some Filipinos that the movement was inspired by genuine loyalty to Spain, and was only a protest and appeal for reforms even in its last phase as an outbreak in arms, 1896–98. This view was accepted by the Schurman Commission in 1899. Again, during the years from 1898 to date, when demands for independence were made upon the United States, the more radical Filipino leaders, first in insurrection, now in political agitation, have asserted that complete political independence was definitely the aim in 1896–97, and was the ideal in mind for some years before. Thus they would corroborate the assertions of the more rabid Spaniards who claimed that Rizal and all his co-workers, both in the aristocratic ranks above and in the Katipunan below, were hypocritical in their protestations of loyalty to Spain. Where does the truth lie?

“At the end of three hundred years of slavery …, our people have done nothing but lament and ask a little consideration and a little clemency; but they have answered our lamentations with exile and imprisonment. For seven years in succession La Solidaridad voluntarily lent itself and exhausted its powers to obtain, not all that they ought to concede, but only just what of right is owing to us. And what has been the fruit of our effort unto fatigue and of our loyal faith? Deception, ridicule, death, and bitterness.

“Today, tired of lifting our hands in continual lamentation, we are at last ourselves; little by little our voice has lost its tone of melancholy gained in continual complaint; now … we raise our heads, so long accustomed to being bowed, and imbibe strength from the firm hope we possess by reason of the grandeur of our aim …. We can tell them bluntly that the phrase ‘Spain the Mother’ is nothing but just a bit of adulation, that it is not to be compared with the piece of cloth or rag by which it is enchained, which trails on the ground; that there is no such mother and no such child; that there is only a race that robs, a people that fattens on what is not its own, and a people that is weary of going, not merely ungorged, but unfed; that we have to put reliance in nothing but our own powers and in our defense of our own selves.”

Rizal put in the mouth of the old Filipino priest in El Filibusterismo (1891) the view of the thoughtful Filipino patriot, considering the social defects of his people: “We owe the ill that afflicts us to ourselves; let us not put the blame on anyone else. If Spain saw that we were less complaisant in the face of tyranny, and readier to strive and suffer for our rights, Spain would be the first to give us liberty …. But so long as the Filipino people has not sufficient vigor to proclaim, with erect front and bared breast, its right to the social life and to make that right good by sacrifice, with its own blood; so long as we see that our countrymen, though hearing in their private life the voice of shame and the clamors of conscience, yet in public life hold their peace or join the chorus about him who commits abuses and ridicules the victim of the abuse; so long as we see them shut themselves up to their own egotism and praise with forced smile the most iniquitous acts, while their eyes are begging a part of the booty of such acts, why should liberty be given to them? With Spain or without Spain, they would be always the same, and perhaps, perhaps, they would be worse. Of what use would be independence if the slaves of today would be the tyrants of tomorrow? And they would be so without doubt, for he loves tyranny who submits to it.”