Asian History Commons^™

Countryside Aflame: Fire As A Hazard In The Rural Philippines, 1850–1950, Greg Bankoff, Marie Beatriz D. Gulinao, David O. Lozada Iii, Mary Donna Grace Cuenca

History Department Faculty Publications

Fire has shaped human evolution, social organisation, and technological development, yet modern fire science remains anchored in categories derived largely from Western experience: wildland fires, the wildland–urban interface, and urban conflagrations. These frameworks obscure a fourth, largely overlooked regime– village fire– rural settlements that lack the structural protections, materials, and services characteristic of urban areas. In the Philippines, where rural settlement dominated into the twentieth century, village fire was the principal way people encountered fire risk. Using evidence from the Historical Data Papers (1951), this study reconstructs a village fire regime marked by highly combustible construction, new technological sources of …

They Never Left: Drivers Of Memory Of Dictatorship And Impressions Of Ferdinand E. Marcos As President After February 1986, Jorge V. Tigno, Geoffrey M. Ducanes, Steven Rood, Vladymir Joseph A. Licudine

Economics Department Faculty Publications

Between 1972 and 1986, Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines headed an autocratic system that allowed him to rule with little to no accountability. Some 36 years after FM (as he is popularly called) and family were driven from power into exile in Hawaii, his son, Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos, Jr., was overwhelmingly elected President in the May 2022 general elections. This turnaround seemed puzzling to many, but others saw a long-term deliberate process of rehabilitation after the family returned to the Philippines. Our paper explores how Filipinos remembered FM in the years after his ouster. What drives the memory of …

Colonial Policy, Ecological Transformations, And Agricultural “Improvement”: Comparing Agricultural Yields And Expansion In The Spanish And U.S. Philippines, 1870–1925 Ce, David Max Findley, Noel Amano, Ivana Biong, Greg Bankoff, Patricia Irene Dacudao, Francis A. Gealogo, Rebecca Hamilton, Ruel Pagunsan, Patrick Roberts

History Department Faculty Publications

Burgeoning global trade and colonial policies promoted transformations in land use and agriculture throughout tropical regions in the 19th and 20th centuries, but the local and regional ecological consequences of landscape changes are still being identified and analysed. The Philippine Archipelago, which experienced successive colonial regimes across more than 7100 islands, exemplifies the multiplicity of ecological outcomes produced by these transformations. To better characterise diverse landscape change, we use colonial censuses and datasets to assess land use, production and agricultural yields in the Philippines during the late Spanish and early U.S. colonial periods (ca. 1870–1925). Our novel digital, quantitative analysis …

From Race To Culture: Southeastern Mindanao Peoples And Their Crafts, 16th To 20th Centuries, Patricia Irene Dacudao

History Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

In Conversation: Patricia Irene Dacudao On Abaca Frontier: The Socioeconomic And Cultural Transformation Of Davao, 1898–1941, Patricia Irene N. Dacudao, Philip Gooding

History Department Faculty Publications

In this interview, Patricia Irene Dacudao discusses her book Abaca Frontier: The Socioeconomic and Cultural Transformation of Davao, 1898-1941, which was published by Ateneo de Manila Press in 2023.

Ang Bayang Panitikan: Ang Pagtatanghal Ng Kabanalan Sa Pakil, Laguna, Jerry C. Respeto

Ateneo Institute of Literary Arts and Practices (AILAP)

No abstract provided.

Forgetting Stories From The Islands, Jeju And Calauit, Raymon D. Ritumban

English Faculty Publications

The traumatic experiences of people from peripheral islands are susceptible to mnemocide. Such erasure of memory is facilitated by “defensive and complicit forgetting,” which, according to Aleida Assmann, leads to “protection of perpetrators.” My paper reflects on the vulnerability of traumas from the islands to mnemocide by looking into [1] the massacre of communists and civilians on Jeju Island, South Korea in 1948 as described in Hyun-Kil Un’s short story “Dead Silence” (2017; English trans.) and [2] the eviction of residents and indigenous people from Calauit Island, Philippines for the creation of a safari in 1976 as imagined in Annette …

Hidden Labor: Child Indenture And Enslavement In The Early American Period Philippines, 1898-1912, Olivia Anne Habana

History Department Faculty Publications

This paper was presented at the 8th AAS-in-Asia Conference in Kyungpook University, Daegu, South Korea on June 24-27, 2023.

Liberating Ourselves From The Past, Ambeth R. Ocampo

Magisterial Lectures

In this lecture, Ambeth Ocampo sheds light on the Magellan and Lapu-Lapu of collective Philippine imagination, and discusses how history can be used as a tool for both inclusion and exclusion.

Speaker: Ambeth Ocampo is a public historian whose research covers the late nineteenth-century Philippines: its art, culture, and the heroes who figure in the birth of the nation. He writes a widely read Editorial Page column for the Philippine Daily Inquirer and moderates a growing Facebook Fan Page. Ocampo is a Professor and former Chairperson of the Department of History, School of Social Sciences in the Ateneo de Manila …

Gregorio Sancianco, Colonial Tribute, And Social Identities: On The Cusp Of Filipino Nationalist Consciousness, Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr

History Department Faculty Publications

Gregorio Sancianco, the author of El Progreso de Filipinas (1881), is an ephemeral figure in Philippine history. Although somewhat known for his defense of the native against charges of indolence, Sancianco advanced a penetrating critique of colonial tribute that generally has been ignored but to which this article draws attention. Sancianco argued that tribute did not only negate the principle of assimilation, but it also divided the native population and provoked social antagonisms. The tribute's abolition in 1884 rendered Sancianco's historical position as transitional, straddling the creole nationalism of the 1860s and the ilustrados' colonial nationalism of the 1880s. …

The Malay World: Connecting The Past To The Present, Olivia Anne Habana

History Department Faculty Publications

In the late 19^th century – early 20^th century, colonial regimes in Southeast Asia introduced programs for the education and formation of the native peoples that they had colonized. This was done ostensibly to “benevolently assimilate” and civilize their colonial subjects. A closer look at the educational programs of the colonial regimes will reveal that there were other motives which ranged from the practical (creation of a colonial work force) to the spiritual-cultural (transformation of cultural norms to conform with those of the colonizer). In the process, there were also some inadvertent results such as the introduction of …

Disasters As Contingent Events: Volcanic Eruptions, State Advisories, And Public Participation In The Twentieth-Century Philippines, Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr

History Department Faculty Publications

By revisiting the eruptions of Taal in 1911, Hibok-Hibok in 1951, and Pinatubo in 1991, this article interrogates Greg Bankoff’s argument that “cultures of disaster” in the Philippines produce “coping mechanisms” manifested in public apathy and the state’s failure at mitigation. It argues for historical contingency as illustrated by the relative success at disaster mitigation in Pinatubo’s case, despite extreme challenges. It highlights the warning system in which the Aeta who lived on Mount Pinatubo, along with volcanologists and other key actors, played crucial roles. The Aeta’s nonscientific perspective was not an obstacle to understanding risks and taking defensive action.

Romancing Tropicality: Ilustrado Portraits Of The Climate In The Late Nineteenth Century, Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr

History Department Faculty Publications

In contrast to the literature’s dominant focus on Western constructions of tropicality, this article explores representations of the tropics by the colonized, specifically the climatological conditions of the Philippines as portrayed in the late nineteenth century by the Europe-based native intellectuals known as ilustrados. Their anticolonial sentiment was intertwined with visceral estrangement from Spain and idealized views of the tropics, which reversed the colonizers’ racial-geographic prejudice and asserted an identity as a civilizable tropical people capable of genius. Rizal’s return visit to the homeland in 1887, however, made him agree with the Spanish premise about the climate in order to …

Church-State Relations In The 1899 Malolos Constitution: Filipinization And Visions Of National Community, Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr

History Department Faculty Publications

The most contentious issue in the Revolutionary Congress that crafted the 1899 Malolos Constitution pertained to the separation of church and state, which won by a mere one vote. Until now this episode in Philippine history has not received a satisfactory explanation, which this article seeks to offer. The debate in Malolos, as argued here, was profoundly divisive because the two sides were driven by differing visions of national community. A crucial point was the Filipinization of the Catholic Church, which the proponents of church-state unity championed and which their opponents sidestepped. Even as the debate raged, however, Aguinaldo's revolutionary …

Clues From Early Spanish Chronicles: Reconstructing Marriage And Family In The Pre-Hispanic Philippines, Olivia Anne Habana

History Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Rice And Magic: A Cultural History From The Precolonial World To The Present, Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr

History Department Faculty Publications

Beliefs in rice spirits were integral to the magical worldview of the precolonial inhabitants of the Philippine islands. Under Spanish colonialism, rice became a staple but it underwent disenchantment and symbolic marginality. By the 1870s rice production fell short relative to demand. Twentieth-century initiatives to address persistent shortages culminated in the 1960s Green Revolution, which further altered the rice plant and ushered in the age of practicality. Because rice production cannot be fully controlled, farmers still deploy culturally meaningful strategies to deal with uncertainties. The old meanings of rice for commensality have also proven resilient and reveal peculiarly Filipino ways.

Rizal In Ateneo, Ateneo In Rizal, Ambeth R. Ocampo

History Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Jose Rizal In Filipino Literature And History, Ambeth R. Ocampo

History Department Faculty Publications

Filipinos in the twenty-first century are separated from their past by the language they speak. While it is true that Jose Rizal, National Hero of the Philippines, wrote a great deal for a nation that cannot read him in the original Spanish, nevertheless his vast and excellent opus guarantees his place in Filipino letters. These include, of course, his two major novels, Noli me tangere, published in 1887, and El filibusterismo, published in 1891, and an annotated edition of Antonio de Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas that Rizal completed and published in 1890. Despite the fact that today Rizal’s …

Brains Of The Nation: Pedro Paterno, T. H. Pardo De Tavera, Isabelo De Los Reyes And The Production Of Modern Knowledge, Ambeth R. Ocampo

History Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Rizal’S Morga And Views Of Philippine History, Ambeth R. Ocampo

History Department Faculty Publications

Antonio de Morga, lieutenant governor of the Philippines in the late sixteenth century, described the food of the indios as follows: Their daily fare is composed of: lice crushed in wooden pillars and when cooked is called morisqueta (this is the staple throughout the land); cooked fish which they have in abundance; pork, venison, mountain buffaloes which they call carabaos, beef and fish which they know is best when it has started to mt and stink (Retana 1909,174). Reading this text in the British Museum 280 years later, Rizal was so incensed that he later responded in print with: This …

Rotten Beef And Stinking Fish: Rizal And The Writing Of Philippine History, Ambeth R. Ocampo

History Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.