Historiography of the Philippines

Last updated

The historiography of the Philippines includes historical and archival research and writing on the history of the Philippine archipelago including the islands of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. [1] [2]

Contents

Before the arrival of Spanish colonial powers the Philippines did not actually exist. Southeast Asia is classified as part of the Indosphere [3] [4] and the Sinosphere. [5] [6] The archipelago has direct contact with China during Song dynasty (960-1279) [7] and has been a part of the Srivijaya and Majapahit empires. [8]

Overview

Historiography of the Philippines refers to the studies, sources, critical methods and interpretations used by scholars to study the history of the Philippines. The Philippine archipelago has been part of many empires before the Spanish empire has arrived in the 16th century.

The pre-colonial Philippines uses the Abugida writing system that has been widely used in writing and seals on documents though it was for communication and no recorded writings of early literature or history [9] Ancient Filipinos usually write documents on bamboo, bark, and leaves which did not survive unlike inscriptions on clays, metals, and ivories did like the Laguna Copperplate Inscription and Butuan Ivory Seal. The discovery of the Butuan Ivory Seal also proves the use of paper documents in ancient Philippines.

The arrival of the Spanish colonizers, pre-colonial Filipino manuscripts and documents were gathered and burned to eliminate pagan beliefs. This has been the burden of historians in the accumulation of data and the development of theories that gave historians many aspects of Philippine history that were left unexplained.<ref=SebastianUndated / /> The interplay of pre-colonial events, the use of secondary sources written by historians to evaluate the primary sources, do not provide a critical examination of the methodology of the early Philippine historical study. [10]

Organizations

Scholarly organizations and societies have been formed which usually hold conferences, publish journals and promote historical knowledge and studies.

Government agency

The National Historical Commission of the Philippines is a government agency of the Philippines whose mission is "the promotion of Philippine history and cultural heritage through research, dissemination, conservation, sites management and heraldry works and aims to inculcate awareness and appreciation of the noble deeds and ideals of our heroes and other illustrious Filipinos, to instill pride in the Filipino people and to rekindle the Filipino spirit through the lessons of history.

Professional association

The Philippine Historical Association is the largest professional association of historians in the Philippines founded in 1955 by a group of prominent Filipino historians which includes Encarnacion Alzona, Gabriel Fabella, Gregorio Zaide, Nicolas Zafra, Celedonio Resurreccion, Teodoro Agoncillo and Esteban de Ocampo.

Non-governmental organization

The Philippine Association for the Study of Culture, History and Religion is a Non-governmental organization founded in 2013. This group initiates, facilitates, and organizes conferences and other academic events. They disseminate information on scholarship and research opportunities and publication of journals, books, and newsletters in the national and international communities to increase awareness about Philippine culture, history, and religion.

Pre colonial period

Laguna Copperplate Inscription Laguna Copperplate Inscription.gif
Laguna Copperplate Inscription
Butuan Ivory Seal Butuan Ivory Seal.jpg
Butuan Ivory Seal
Monreal stone Monreal stone.jpg
Monreal stone
Pre-colonial Filipino noble couple Naturales 5.png
Pre-colonial Filipino noble couple

Indian culture has long reached the archipelago during the period of Pallava dynasty and the Gupta Empire that led to the Indianized kingdoms established in the Philippines. [11] [12] A clear evidence is the use of pre-colonial Philippines use of honorific titles. No other significant historical documents from this period except for Laguna Copperplate Inscription, a legal document inscribed on a copper plate dated 900 CE which is the earliest known calendar dated document found in the Philippines. [13] [14]

Ma-i, an ancient sovereign state located in what is now the Philippines is notable in the history of the Philippines for being the first place in the archipelago ever to be mentioned in any foreign account which was first documented in 971 AD, in the Song dynasty documents known as the History of Song. [15] [16] [17] Its existence was also mentioned in the 10th-century records of the Sultanate of Brunei. [18]

Until the year 1000 CE, maritime societies exists in the archipelago but there was no significant political state unifying the entire Philippines. [19] The region included only numerous small administrative divisions (ranging in size from villages to city-states) under the sovereignty of competing thalassocracies ruled by datus, rajahs, sultans or lakans. [20]

Colonial period

The first recorded document that mentions the archipelago was Antonio Pigafetta's chronicle Report of the first trip around the world on his narrative record of the journey of a Spanish expedition in search of the Spice Islands published sometimes between 1524-1525. [21]

Another notable document was Antonio de Morga's Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas published in 1609 based on the author's personal experience and documentations from eye-witnesses of the survivors of Miguel López de Legazpi's expedition.

Documents published are chronicles by the early Spanish explorers and navigators and religious records of Spanish friars of their Catholic mission during the Spanish colonial period. [22]

Early chroniclers

Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas.jpg
Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas
Boxer Codex Illustrations of tattooed Cebuanos Boxer Codex Illustrations of Cebuanos.png
Boxer Codex Illustrations of tattooed Cebuanos

Colonial Era Historians

Post colonial period

The historiography of the post-colonial period focused on the Philippine revolutions and the Philippine–American War as historians saw the colonial era as a prelude. The critical role played by the Filipinos in shaping the Philippine national history in this period is well highlighted and analyzed based on the accounts on the revolution and the Philippine–American War as it describes the social, economic, political, and cultural conditions of the Philippines. [23]

Historian Reynaldo C. Ileto in his seminal work on Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840-1910, the historiography of the Philippine Revolution was explored in a new meaning. Historian Vicente L. Rafael introduced poststructuralist theories in the analysis of the colonial society on his Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule. [24]

Writers and Historians from the Nationalist History tradition

Historians from the Critical Historiography tradition

Writers from the Folkloristics tradition

Historians and Writers from the Postmodern, Local/Ethnic History, and Religious History traditions

Related Research Articles

Baybayin is a Philippine script. The script is an abugida belonging to the family of the Brahmic scripts. Geographically, it was widely used in Luzon and other parts of the Philippines prior to and during the 16th and 17th centuries before being replaced by the Latin alphabet during the period of Spanish colonization. It was used in the Tagalog language and, to a lesser extent, Kapampangan-speaking areas; its use spread to the Ilocanos in the early 17th century. In the 19th and 20th centuries, baybayin survived and evolved into multiple forms—the Tagbanwa script of Palawan, and the Hanuno'o and Buhid scripts of Mindoro—and was used to create the constructed modern Kulitan script of the Kapampangan and the Ibalnan script of the Palawan people. Under the Unicode Standard and ISO 15924, the script is encoded as the Tagalog block.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lapulapu</span> Datu of Mactan in the Visayas

Lapulapu or Lapu-Lapu, whose name was first recorded as Çilapulapu, was a datu (chief) of Mactan in the Visayas in the Philippines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laguna Copperplate Inscription</span> 10th-century inscription found in the Philippines

The Laguna Copperplate Inscription is an official acquittance certificate inscribed onto a copper plate in the Shaka year 822. It is the earliest known calendar-dated document found within the Philippine Islands.

Rajah Humabon, later baptized as Don Carlos, was a King of Cebu in the 16th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tondo (historical polity)</span> City-state in what is now Manila, Philippines, from c. 900 to 1589

In early Philippine history, the Tagalog settlement at Tondo sometimes referred to as the Kingdom of Tondo, was a major trade hub located on the northern part of the Pasig River delta, on Luzon island. Together with Maynila, the polity (bayan) that was also situated on the southern part of the Pasig River delta, had established a shared monopoly on the trade of Chinese goods throughout the rest of the Philippine archipelago, making it an established force in trade throughout Southeast Asia and East Asia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Names of the Philippines</span> Overview of the history and use of the various names of the Philippines

There have been several names of the Philippines in different cultures and at different times, usually in reference to specific island groups within the current archipelago. Even the name Philippines itself was originally intended to apply only to Leyte, Samar, and nearby islands. It was bestowed by the Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos or one of his captains Bernardo de la Torre in 1543 in honor of the crown prince Philip, later Philip II. Mindanao, which they reached first and assumed to be the greater land, they named after the reigning emperor Charles V, who was also Spain's king Carlos I. Over the course of Spanish colonization, the name was eventually extended to cover the entire chain. It has survived with minor changes. The Philippine Revolution called its state the Philippine Republic. The US military and civilian occupations called their territory the Philippine Islands. During the Third Philippine Republic, the state's official name was formally changed to the Philippines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cultural achievements of pre-colonial Philippines</span>

The cultural achievements of pre-colonial Philippines include those covered by the prehistory and the early history (900–1521) of the Philippine archipelago's inhabitants, the pre-colonial forebears of today's Filipino people. Among the cultural achievements of the native people's belief systems, and culture in general, that are notable in many ethnic societies, range from agriculture, societal and environmental concepts, spiritual beliefs, up to advances in technology, science, and the arts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Namayan</span>

Namayan, also called Sapa, Maysapan, and sometimes Lamayan, was an independent indigenous polity on the banks of the Pasig River in the Philippines. It is believed to have achieved its peak in 1175, and to have gone into decline sometime in the 13th century, although it continued to be inhabited until the arrival of European colonizers in the 1570s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luzones</span> Ethnic group of the Philippines

Luzones was a demonym used by Portuguese sailors in Malaysia during the early 1500s, referring to the Kapampangan and Tagalog people who lived in Manila Bay, which was then called Lusong. The term was also used for Tagalog settlers in Southern Tagalog region.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maynila (historical polity)</span> Major historical polity in Luzon

In Philippine history, the Tagalog bayan of Maynila was one of the most cosmopolitan of the early historic settlements on the Philippine archipelago. Fortified with a wooden palisade which was appropriate for the predominant battle tactics of its time, it lay on the southern part of the Pasig River delta, where the district of Intramuros in Manila currently stands, and across the river from the separately-led Tondo polity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the Philippines (900–1565)</span>

The known recorded history of the Philippines between 900 and 1565 begins with the creation of the Laguna Copperplate Inscription in 900 and ends with the beginning of Spanish colonization in 1565. The inscription records its date of creation in the year 822 of the Hindu Saka calendar, corresponding to 900 AD in the Gregorian calendar. Therefore, the recovery of this document marks the end of the prehistory of the Philippines at 900 AD. During this historical time period, the Philippine archipelago was home to numerous kingdoms and sultanates and was a part of the theorized Indosphere and Sinosphere.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Precolonial barangay</span> Village government system in the pre-colonial Philippines

In early Philippine history, barangay is the term historically used by scholars to describe the complex sociopolitical units which were the dominant organizational pattern among the various peoples of the Philippine archipelago in the period immediately before the arrival of European colonizers. Academics refer to these settlements using the technical term "polity", but they are usually simply called "barangays."

Religion in pre-colonial Philippines included indigenous religious beliefs and mythologies, some of which are still practiced today, particularly by the various indigenous peoples of the Philippines. In many Filipino cultures, these beliefs were later influenced by Hinduism and Buddhism. With the arrival of Islam in the 14th century, the older religions gradually became less dominant, and after the arrival of Ferdinand Magellan in 1521 Christianity, specifically Catholicism, became the dominant religion. However, many of the indigenous religious traditions have survived in the form of Folk Catholicism and Folk Islam.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Luzon</span>

The history of Luzon covers events that happened in the largest island of the Philippine Archipelago, Luzon. Luzon wrested the record of having the oldest man ever discovered in the Philippines with discovery of the Callao Man in 2007, which predated the Tabon Man by around 20,000 years. The written history of Luzon began in around 900 AD with the discovery of the Laguna Copperplate Inscription in 1989. After that, Luzon began to appear in the annals of the Chinese and Japanese. One example would be the Ming Shilu, wherein Luzon appeared in 22 records. Luzon was split among Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms, Muslim principalities, and ethnoreligious tribes, who had trading connections with Borneo, Malaya, Java, Indochina, India, Okinawa, Japan and China before the Spanish established their rule. As a result of the Spanish–American War, Luzon became American territory. In the Second World War, Luzon saw one of the fiercest battles during the Japanese occupation. Luzon, apart from being the largest island, had been the economic and political center of the Philippines ever since the country entered the Western Calendar, being home to the country's capital city, Manila, and the country's largest metropolis, Metro Manila.

Malay is spoken by a minority of Filipinos, particularly in the Palawan, Sulu Archipelago and parts of Mindanao, mostly in the form of trade and creole languages, such as Sabah Malay.

The Indian influences in early Philippine polities, particularly the influence of the Srivijaya and Majapahit thalassocracies on cultural development, is a significant area of research for scholars of Philippine, Indonesian, and Southeast Asian history, and is believed to be the source of Hindu and Buddhist elements in early Philippine culture, religion, and language. Because the Indonesian thalassocracies of Srivijaya and Majapahit acquired many of these Hindu and Buddhist elements through Indianization, the introduction of such elements to early Philippine cultures has sometimes been referred to as indianization. In more recent scholarship, it is termed localization, as in, e.g., localization of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs. Some scholars also place the Philippine archipelago within the outermost reaches of the Indosphere, along with Northern Vietnam, where the Hindu and Buddhist elements were not directly introduced by Indian travellers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paramount rulers in early Philippine history</span> Aspect of Philippine history

The term Paramount Ruler, or sometimes Paramount Datu, is a term used by historians to describe the highest ranking political authorities in the largest lowland polities or inter-polity alliance groups in early Philippine history, most notably those in Maynila, Tondo, Pangasinan, Cebu, Bohol, Butuan, Cotabato, and Sulu.

The historiography of early Philippine settlements is the academic discipline concerned with the studies, sources, critical methods and interpretations used by scholars to understand the history of settlements in early Philippine history. By modern definitions, this does not involve a story of "events in the past directly," but rather "the changing interpretations of those events in the works of individual historians."

900 in the Philippines details events of note that happened in the Philippines in the year 900.

References

  1. Foronda, Marcelino A. (1972). Some Notes on Philippine Historiography. United Publishing Company. Retrieved 1 October 2019.
  2. Sebastian, Raul Roland R. "Philippine Historiography: Issues and Trends" (PDF). Polytechnic University of the Philippines. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 1, 2019.
  3. Sagar, Krishna Chandra (2002). An Era of Peace. Northern Book Centre. pp. 39–51. ISBN   9788172111212 . Retrieved 2 October 2019.
  4. Cœdès, George (1968). The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. Australian National University Press. ISBN   9780824800710 . Retrieved 2 October 2019.
  5. Lynn, Pan (1994). Sons of the Yellow Emperor: A History of the Chinese Diaspora. Kodansha International. p. 418. ISBN   9781568360324 . Retrieved 2 October 2019.
  6. Fogel, Joshua A. (2009). Articulating the Sinosphere: Sino-Japanese Relations in Space and Time. Harvard University Press. ISBN   9780674053823 . Retrieved 2 October 2019.
  7. Wickberg, Edgar (2000). The Chinese in Philippine Life, 1850-1898 . Ateneo University Press. ISBN   9789715503525 . Retrieved 2 October 2019.
  8. Francisco, Juan R. (1964). Indian Influences in the Philippines: With Special Reference to Language and Literature. University of the Philippines. p. 310. Retrieved 2 October 2019.
  9. Rodríguez, Rebeca Ferndández (9 July 2013). "Early writing and printing in the Philippines". History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences. Retrieved 2 October 2019.
  10. Scott, William Henry (1994). Barangay: Sixteenth-century Philippine Culture and Society. Ateneo University Press. ISBN   9789715501354 . Retrieved 2 October 2019.
  11. Philippine Journal of Linguistics – 23 – p. 67
  12. The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History by Richard Bulliet, Pamela Crossley, Daniel Headrick, Steven Hirsch, Lyman Johnson p.186
  13. Postma, Antoon (April–June 1992). "The Laguna Copper-Plate Inscription: Text and Commentary". Philippine Studies. Ateneo de Manila University. 40 (2): 182–203. JSTOR   42633308.
  14. Tiongson, Jaime F. (August 8, 2010). "Laguna Copperplate Inscription: A New Interpretation Using Early Tagalog Dictionaries". Bayang Pinagpala. Retrieved on 2011-11-18. Archived September 29, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  15. Valdes, Cynthia O.; Long, Kerry Nguyen; Barbosa, Artemio C. (1992). A Thousand Years of Stoneware Jars in the Philippines. Jar Collectors (Philippines) with the support of Eugenio Lopez Foundation Incorporated and. p. 71. ISBN   9789719132905 . Retrieved 2 October 2019.
  16. Go 2005.
  17. Scott 1989.
  18. Scott 1989, p. 79.
  19. de San Agustin, G.; Díaz, C.; Bardón, T.L. (1975). Conquistas de las islas Filipinas: la temporal, por las armas del señor don Phelipe Segundo el Prudente; y la espiritval, por los religiosos del orden de nuestro padre San Augustin: fvndacion, y progressos de sv provincia del santissimo nombre de Jesus ... (in Spanish). L.N. de Gaviria. pp. 374–376.
  20. http://ovcrd.upd.edu.ph/asp/article/view/5493/4927 Victor Estella, The Death of Gold in Early Visayan Societies: Ethnohistoric Accounts and Archaeological Evidences.
  21. PIGAFETTA, ANTONIO (1524). Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al mondo  via Wikisource.
  22. Blair, E. H. "The Philippine Islands, 1493–1803: explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the beginning of the nineteenth century, Volume III, 1569–1576". www.gutenberg.org. Retrieved 2 October 2019.
  23. Gealogo, Francis A. (2003). "Katagalugan Historiography: Historical Sources, Current Trends, and Future Prospects". The Journal of History. 49 (1–4): 1. Retrieved 2 October 2019.
  24. Yoneno-Reyes, Michiyo; Nagano, Yoshiko (7 June 2007). "Philippine Historiography and Colonial Discourse: Eight Selected Essays on Postcolonial Studies in the Philippines (An Introduction to the Japanese Translation) by Yoshiko Nagano (translated into English by Michiyo Yoneno-Reyes)" . Retrieved 2 October 2019.

Works cited