The first essential to a study of this period is a fair and comprehensive survey of Philippine conditions in the years just preceding—the “old régime,” as we may call it, though it was then breaking down in certain particulars. One book alone will serve the student’s purpose in this respect; and, whatever others are read, Jagor’s[15] is indispensable. Next to him, and in addition to the documents appearing in this series immediately preceding the present volume may be cited the 1842 Informe of the Spanish diplomat in the Orient, Sinibaldo de Mas, and the two-volume treatise of 1846 by the Frenchman, J. Mallat. In certain respects, the latter has closely followed Mas; but his is no mere translated plagiarism, like that of John Bowring (1859), who was only a temporary visitor entertained by Spanish officialdom in Manila. The work of Paul de la Gironière, not his Twenty Years in the Philippines, but his more serious work of 1855 (Aventures d’un gentilhomme breton aux îles Philippines), merits attention as containing the observations of a cultivated foreigner who had the advantage of years of residence in Manila and a neighboring province.
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.
General historical surveys of the period are lacking. Montero y Vidal’s three-volume history comes down only to 1873. And, though it is the best Philippine historical work for reference purposes, it is, after all, hardly more than a chronology of important events and compilation of official orders and projects, touching the life of the people scarcely at all. The same author’s work of 1886, El archipiélago filipino, merits attention also in this connection, though primarily it sets forth facts geographical, statistical, etc. The works of Manuel Scheidnagel deserve also citation as those of a Spanish official of long and varied experience in the Philippines, and as shedding, incidentally to the particular subjects which they treat, light upon the conditions of country and people in general.[16]
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.
In studying the social process of the Filipino people from about 1860 onward, the subject of education holds the first place.[17] It is, however, unnecessary to occupy ourselves here with the bibliography of the subject, which has been very fully covered in VOLS. XLV and XLVI of this work, the appendices to those volumes giving, in connection with other documents in this series and with the bibliographical notes, the most comprehensive treatment of the subject of education in the Philippines that is yet available in any language.
As we might expect from what has been said, the social life of the Philippines, at least from about 1875, may best be studied in the periodicals of Manila. In this connection it is only necessary to mention Retana’s El periodismo filipino, which covers the subject down to 1894. La Revista de Filipinas, edited by J. F. del Pan, 1875–77, deserves special mention among the many periodicals of short life. Among those of longer duration may be named El Diario de Manila, and also, for the closing years of Spanish rule, La Oceanía Española, La Voz Española and El Comercio.[18] One should also consult these Spanish periodicals of Manila for the political history of these years, particularly of 1896–98. It must be remarked, however, that, just as these periodicals reflected mainly the life only of the capital, and that quite exclusively from the Spanish viewpoint, so also they treated political and administrative matters not merely under the constraint of their editors’ notions as to “maintaining Spanish prestige” but also with a censorship in the background, maintained by and for the political and the ecclesiastical authorities.[19] Down to 1898 the Philippine law of censorship of 1857, modeled on that of Spain in the days of Isabel II, was in force, and it covered the publication of books and pamphlets of all sorts and of newspapers, the importation and sale of books, pictures, etc., and the regulation of theaters.[20] One will, therefore, look almost in vain in these periodicals prior to 1898 for expressions of the Filipino point of view, or, till the close of 1897, for any frank expression of liberal political views on the part of Spanish editors. The few Manila periodicals started by Filipinos before 1898, usually printed in Spanish and Tagálog, had but an ephemeral existence.[21] One must look for the expression of Filipino aims and ideas to the periodicals that have been published since 1898; indeed, even the Spanish press of Manila has treated Filipino questions with freedom only since American occupation began.