the mutiny occurred in Cavite in 1872. Instead of treating it as
its comparative insignificance demanded, and as prudent statecraft
would have counseled, they employed it as an excuse for vengeful
violence, as a means for resuming full control of Philippine policy,
and continued for twenty-five years thereafter to point to it as their
most useful "horrible example," as an evidence of what must follow
the inauguration, even in the slightest degree, of a liberal policy
in the government of the islands. Rightly or wrongly, the people of
that and the succeeding generation in the Tagálog provinces, and to a
less degree in the others, were schooled in racial resentment through
the belief that the native priests had been done to death, upon a
pretext of manufactured evidence, by the malevolence of the friars. The
proscription of the more conspicuous of the then small Liberal element
among the Filipinos had consequences of no less importance. Those
who were sent into exile for alleged complicity in the Cavite mutiny
were certain conspicuous half-castes and a few Spaniards of Philippine
birth or of long residence in the islands. The native element proper
was for the moment scarcely affected, even in Manila and its environs;
and no one has ever demonstrated that the few more advanced men of
Spanish blood who were moved by the revolution in Spain to take a stand
for Liberal measures in the Philippines were engaged in anything but
legitimate political discussion, or indeed that they talked of going
so far in this direction in the Philippines as had already been done
in the Peninsula. These proscriptions powerfully stimulated the idea
of a "Filipino cause." Some of the exiles escaped to Hongkong, and
there founded a Filipino colony. Others settled eventually in Europe;
the more progressive and ambitious Filipinos began sending their
sons to Madrid and Paris for education in contact with the thought
of modern Europe; and in these capitals, and later in Japan, little
Filipino colonies became centers of discussion of political reforms,
and through letters, publications in the Liberal periodicals of Spain,
and finally through their own books and periodicals of propaganda,
greatly influenced the growth of a public opinion in the backward
society of the Philippines. Spanish Masonry gradually extended the
circle of its initiations and of its secret operations (necessarily
secret to an extraordinary degree) in the islands. At first only
Spaniards had been admitted to a few lodges, then mestizos were
admitted, and finally natives of some degree of education without
regard to race. In the eighties and nineties, there seems to be
no doubt, a sort of independent Grand Lodge in Spain (asserted by
some to be of spurious Masonry), [60] managed by zealous Liberal
propagandists with whom certain of the Filipino propagandists in
Barcelona had associated themselves, directed the active organization
of lodges in as many Filipino towns as contained favorable material,
for the purpose of fostering in the islands a demand for political
reforms, of distributing the literature of the propaganda, and of
collecting funds to support the campaign in Spain for the extension of
greater social, political, and religious freedom to the Filipinos. The
Spaniards associated with this movement were for the most part men
of no standing and quixotic visionaries. Some of the Filipinos who
figured in the propaganda abroad were quite as unpractical, being
inexperienced and excitable youths, full of jealousy of each other,
while some few of them, moreover, misused the funds raised for them
by their fellows at home. The whole program for "assimilation" of the
Philippines to Spain as a province of the Peninsula, giving a distant
archipelago in the Orient with its widely different population, social
status, and economic conditions and needs, a government just like that
of European Spain was manifestly absurd and inimical to the interests
of the Filipinos themselves, not to add that its realization was an
utter impossibility. But these things should not have been allowed
to hide the justice of the demand for such reforms and privileges
as were practical and compatible with the needs and conditions of
the archipelago and its people: for a spokesman or spokesmen of the
Philippines in the Cortes at Madrid; for reforms in judiciary and
fundamental laws, not blindly copied from those promulgated in Spain
but adapted to the Philippines, or if necessary especially drafted for
them; for administrative reforms, above all as to the civil service
and looking toward an increasing recognition of the native element in
government, and toward a decentralization that should be gradually
extended as far as deeply rooted habits and long-standing customs
would permit; and, finally, for greater individual and social freedom,
both in a political and a religious sense. This last was really the
crux of the whole situation, so far as the continuance of Spanish
sovereignty should not come to depend purely on force. In the old
days it had rested on religious teachings, on the friars in fact,
with the sense of race-prestige in the background to support Spanish
authority. It was futile for the friars to cry out for a return
to the old conditions, and to denounce as dangerous any reforms
in the direction of freedom of thought or of speech; the pages of
history could not be turned back. The idea of future independence
from Spain was, to be sure, in the minds of some at least of the
Filipino propagandists. But their present campaign was for greater
political liberty, and the measures they advocated, and even the
methods they employed almost to the last, would have been legitimate
in any free country--were, in fact, legitimate even then in the
Peninsula itself, where they could advocate publicly what they
must whisper among their fellows at home. The very fact that such
organizations as these spurious Masonic lodges were under the ban,
and that even to be suspected of belonging thereto was to invite the
danger of deportation from home as a "conspirator," is sufficient
proof of the essential righteousness of the propagandists' cause. And
the campaign that began with a few Spanish-Filipinos in Manila and
gradually extended to the more independent men of education in the
provinces eventually, under half-educated leaders of the small middle
class, reached in a perverted form the masses themselves, especially in
central Luzon, and found expression at last in violence and an outburst
of race-hatred. The Katipunan was not Masonic, as the friars asserted,
only copying some of the Masonic formulæ; but it was a natural and
logical outgrowth of the smothering of what had been a legitimate
movement for the expression of Filipino reform sentiment.
The title to these notes has indicated the year 1860 as marking in a
general way the opening of the modern era in the Philippines, without
reference to any one particular event. It is proposed to give here,
briefly, such further notes as will afford a working bibliography on
this period, while calling attention to some subjects and certain
points that are commonly disregarded in the bibliographies and
published works dealing with the last years of Spanish rule in the
Philippines. No pretense to completeness is made. The aim is to call
attention, under their proper heads, to the more distinctly useful
(or, in some cases, the more unreliable, and hence to be avoided)
titles already listed in the Philippine bibliography that is to be most
readily obtained, and which is also the most complete and satisfactory
work of this sort, viz., that published at Washington in 1903; [61]
and also to supplement these titles with others there unnoticed and
with other data not easily found. In the main, only such works are
cited as the writer has himself consulted, though in some cases the
notes or recommendations of others have been followed.
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 [62] 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. [63]
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. [64] 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. [65] 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. [66] 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. [67]
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. [68] 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.
For population statistics, all practical purposes are served by the
tables and comparisons of the American census of 1903. [69] Here one
may find also the best data for reconstructing before his eyes the
social and economic status of the Philippines and its inhabitants
at the close of Spanish rule. The Spanish civil census of 1896 was
unfortunately never published, nor completed in some provinces. The
civil census of 1887, though published in very condensed form,
merits attention. [70] Certain of the more notable statistical
works of private individuals will require notice in connection with
agriculture, industry, and commerce; here the student may be referred
to the Bibliography under the names of Agustín de la Cavada, J. F. del
Pan, and José Jimeno Agius. [71]
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Using, as throughout these notes, the Bibliography as a starting
point, the student is referred to the first part of that work, viz.,
the List of the Library of Congress, under the headings Agriculture,
Commerce, Finance, and Political and Social Economy; and to Pardo
de Tavera's Biblioteca under the alphabetical lists of Aranceles,
Balanzas, Boletín, Estatutos, Exposición, Guía, Instrucción, Memoria,
and Reglamentos. Some of the works therein cited are obviously
indispensable, and occasional biographical and bibliographical notes
are also afforded, especially by Pardo de Tavera under the names of
authors cited, which will help in forming an opinion on the value of
their works. [72] It is in point here to designate among these works
those most useful as references in a general way upon Philippine
economic matters, to add some not listed in the Bibliography, and
to give some special references under the particular headings of
Agriculture, Commerce, and Industry.
General.--Jagor's book, already noted as the best introduction to
the study of this period, is again mentioned here as affording data
on the tobacco monopoly (which lasted until 1884, before its affairs
were wound up), the attitude of the Spaniards toward the entry of
foreign traders, and the part these foreigners played in developing the
culture of abaká and sugar. Cavada's Historia geográfica, geológica
y estadística de Filipinas (Manila, 1876) has a good arsenal of data
drawn chiefly from the civil statistical inquiries of 1870, though,
like almost all such works in Spanish, it is without a topical index
and is put together in a disorderly manner most exasperating to the
searcher for facts or figures on a specific point of inquiry. Of the
works of José Jimeno y Agius, his Memoria sobre el desestanco del
tabaco (Binondo, 1871) and Población y comercio de las islas Filipinas
(Madrid, 1884) should be especially mentioned. Gregorio Sancianco y
Goson's El progreso de Filipinas (Madrid, 1881), especially valuable on
administrative matters just prior to the revision of the fiscal régime
in connection with the abolition of the government tobacco monopoly,
has also many data on land, commerce, and industry. Scattered through
the eight volumes of the fortnightly La Política de España en Filipinas
(Madrid, 1891-98) are useful items on Philippine currency and exchange,
trade, etc., with occasional studies of these questions and those of
Chinese and European immigration, in most cases hasty, unreliable
pieces of work, often even fantastic for their utter disregard of
the fundamentals of political economy. Foreman's book has already
been characterized; nevertheless, checked up with Sawyer's, it is of
use in this connection. Of the consular and other official reports,
those of the British Foreign Office [73] are the most valuable as a
series, though the comprehensive reports of the French Consul, M. de
Bérard, covering the years 1888-92, merit first place as individual
treatises. [74]
The testimony and memoranda presented before the American Peace
Commission in Paris in 1898, together with some magazine articles
on the Philippines, form appendices to Senate Document no. 62, 55th
Congress, 3rd session; only the memorandum of General F. V. Greene
(pp. 404-440) and Max L. Tornow's Sketch of the Economic Conditions
of the Philippines require any consideration in this connection. [75]
The reports on civil affairs (1899-1901) of the United States military
government in the Philippines and the reports of the Philippine
Commission have much retrospective value in connection with the
previous economic and fiscal régime, and merit a general perusal in
that light; some of their more especially pertinent revelations will
be hereinafter cited. The Report on Certain Economic Questions in the
English and Dutch Colonies in the Orient (Washington, 1902) by Jeremiah
W. Jenks, special commissioner of the United States government, is
of course of comparative value primarily, but contains some general
remarks on Philippine conditions as regards currency, labor, land, and
taxation. In many respects the best economic study ever made of the
Philippines is Victor S. Clark's Labor Conditions in the Philippines
(Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor no. 58, Washington, May, 1905); though
discussing the labor question, and that under American occupation,
it has been written with a view constantly to past conditions in the
Philippines, social and political as well as economic. [76]
Agriculture, Land, etc.--Beyond the general references given,
no special work can be recommended on the subject of Philippine
agriculture. The reports and bulletins of the present Philippine Bureau
of Agriculture (1902 to date) shed much light incidentally on past
conditions and methods of cultivation. Numerous official provisions
and some private treatises on the Spanish land laws are cited by
Pardo de Tavera; but these remained for the most part dead letters,
and for all practical purposes a little compilation in English [77]
by the present Philippine Forestry Bureau suffices. In a report on
the establishment of land banks in the Philippines, José Cabezas de
Herrera provided a historical review and abstract of landed property
in those islands. [78] In connection with his arguments in behalf of
a tax on landed property as just and as also necessary in order to
support a really efficient government in the Philippines, Sancianco
y Goson gives considerable information on conditions of land tenure
and cultivation down to 1881. [79]
Chinese.--Discussion of the Chinese in the Philippines is related more
particularly to questions of industry and retail trade. Nevertheless,
the Spanish government maintained almost to the end the theory--it was
hardly more than an empty theory--that the Chinese immigration was
being so regulated as to constitute a stimulus to agriculture. The
subject also falls into place here because, from about 1886, when
a campaign for the exclusion of the Chinese was started by Spanish
merchants and newspaper men, a program for fostering the immigration
of Spaniards into the Philippines, and especially into the undeveloped
areas of Mindanao and Palawan, was quite regularly coupled with the
arguments for Chinese exclusion. This program was usually presented
without regard for the climatic and economic considerations involved;
that it was a "patriotic" scheme was sufficient for some of these
writers, who never stopped to ask themselves if their plans were
practical. [80] Among the pamphlets on the Chinese in the Philippines
cited by Pardo de Tavera, those of Del Pan and Jordana y Morera
deserve attention. A good survey of the subject, though not accurate
in its statistics, is G. García Ageo's Memorandum on the Chinese in
the Philippines in Report of the Philippine Commission, 1900, ii,
pp. 432-445. [81]
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.