Publications

This is about all we know of Melchora Aquino. I do not mean to trivialize her life; my point is, rather, the opposite. These bare facts raise questions yet unanswered, such as: What drove Melchora, at the age of 84, to participate in the revolution? How id she develop her political consciousness? Did she study? What explains her resoluteness?

I ask these questions because Melchora presents an intriguing case of an unusual woman, for we know of no others in their eighties who also risked their lives for the cause of freedom.How can a woman so rare occupy such a miniscule space in our historic past?

The early 20th century saw a significant shift in the lives of Filipino women. The transition from Spanish to American colonial rule altered women's social and political roles, providing them with better opportunities. Suffragist and historian Encarnacion Alzona (1934) attributed this to the American regime's educational policy, which resulted in women's "complete emancipation, political and civil." Certainly, American colonial policy provided women with a voice in the public sphere, as well as opportunities to lead, particularly in education and civic work (Roces, 2001). But while there were significant changes in women's rights during this period, patriarchal values persisted, posing a challenge to women, particularly in their fight for suffrage.

The struggle for women’s suffrage was one of the most crucial battles that women faced in the early 20th century. Women gradually made their way into politics, despite opposition from various conservative groups. They began by expanding their roles as mothers through community service. They established socio-civic groups, which made a significant impact on their struggle for political engagement.

This paper attempts to highlight the contribution of women’s organizations in the quest for women’s suffrage which will be granted to Filipino women by 1937. Transitioning from the Spanish colonial tradition that confined women at home and church, the 20th century created a more liberal atmosphere that allowed them to extend their important roles in the public and political spheres. Initiated by influential women with family and social connections, this study examines the political involvement of women, which began with their socio-civic activities and culminated with the granting of women suffrage in 1937.

While women have largely remained marginalized in Philippine history, an increasing number of works in recent decades have underscored their roles in the “public sphere”, participating in broad historical processes such as the Philippine Revolution, the women’s suffrage movement in the 1930s, and the Second World War, to name a few. Despite the generally accepted views that women were made for motherhood by virtue of their biology, their role as a mother in the more “private sphere” such as the home, has eluded examination and remain unexplored.

In this paper, I interrogate the concept of motherhood as it is presented and constructed in early twentieth century Philippine magazines such as the Revista Filipina and The Philippine Magazine. Through the representations of motherhood found in these magazines, I analyze societal expectations and norms imposed on women and explore how the Filipino woman in the early twentieth century stood at the brink of emerging contestations between traditional perspectives of domesticity and liberal views of modernity. 

This chapter explores the illegal immigration of Chinese in southern Philippines from 1850 to 1898. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the Spanish colonial government in the Philippines implemented policies aimed at controlling illegal Chinese immigration in the southern part of the colony. Although most Philippine Chinese would disembark at the port of the colonial capital of Manila, authorities were aware of the unregulated movement of the Chinese in Mindanao and Sulu that posed a threat to the colony’s political, military and economic stability. Chinese immigrants from Singapore, Labuan, Sandakan and other islands in the region provided commodity goods, arms and ammunition to local inhabitants and leaders such as the Sulu Sultan. Set against colonial conditions, this chapter examines the way that transnational networks in maritime Southeast Asia played a role in this illicit movement of people. Utilising Philippine and Spanish archives, it describes and analyses actors, institutions and processes operating in the Philippines and elsewhere that made this scheme possible, and from the state’s view, challenging to manage. This chapter contributes to an understanding of the creative ways of Chinese immigrants’ evasion of state regulations to engage freely in local and transnational activities.

In this consulta, the jurist Juan de Paz OP responds to a combination of queries from Luzon’s southernmost coast dated 1663, that is, within the first century of colonial rule in the Philippine archipelago. In one query, a missionary consults Paz about one provincial governor’s request that the priest commit fraud in his count of his parish’s tributary population. In a second query, a missionary accidentally mixed-up the ritual oils he applied and wonders whether he should redo a sacrament. Although seemingly disparate, in both cases Paz and his priestly correspondents candidly reflect on the fragility of their representations of less-than-self-evident truths to colonial audiences, adopting a tone in contrast with the adamance of their opinions better-known in the historiography. In this essay, the opacity with which early missionaries managed their articulations in oil and ink in the face of their less-than-credulous indigenous parishioners helps the reader problematize both our present engagement with colonial archives for information about the past as well as our own scholarly abstractions about the past-as-lived by our subjects into a history-as-valued by present audiences.

The death of a person and its consequences provide an opening to the social and cultural life of the society where that person belonged. In Spanish-era Philippines questions about the dead’s will and the legacies they leave behind give a glimpse about their networks, relationships, and beliefs in colonial society. This chapter is based on three documents that deal with Juan de Paz’s responses to consultations about distant relatives’ entitlement to inheritance, a dead woman’s slave, and the payment of debt to a dead creditor’s compulsory heirs. Though diverse, these consultations all revolve around the legacy of the dead and the ties they had made in their lifetime. The questions examine how the death of different persons impacts those ties. This chapter will discuss the context of these documents in seventeenth-century Philippines for a better understanding of the questions raised in the consultations. In particular, the essay will give a background on slavery in the Philippines, women’s property, and the Catholic custom of offering masses for the dead.

This paper explores the challenges faced by Spanish consuls in Singapore and Hong Kong as they navigated diplomatic and jurisdictional complexities within British colonial rule in the nineteenth century. Tasked with representing Spanish interests beyond the Philippines, consuls encountered difficulties in asserting authority over Spanish subjects due to extraterritorial limitations and conflicting legal frameworks. Through three case studies from 1864 to 1876, this study examines disputes over Spanish jurisdiction, diplomatic complaints, and efforts to reclaim deserters, highlighting the legal and geopolitical tensions involved. By analyzing archival records and diplomatic correspondences, the paper sheds light on the broader dynamics of colonial governance and Spain’s strategic maneuvers in Southeast Asia. Ultimately, it underscores the intricate interplay between consular authority, imperial expansion, and jurisdictional contestation in a rapidly shifting colonial landscape.

This study examines the role of Spanish consulates in Singapore and Hong Kong during the 19th century, highlighting their function as agents of interaction within a context of growing interconnection in Southeast Asia. Through the analysis of archival documents from the Archivo Histórico Nacional in Madrid, the research seeks to answer several key questions: When, how, and why were Spanish consulates established in Singapore and Hong Kong? How were these consulates connected to the Philippines, Spain’s closest colony in the region? Who were the consuls, vice-consuls, and agents appointed to these British-controlled territories? What were their main activities, concerns, and the issues addressed in their reports and correspondence? Additionally, the study examines the relationship between these consulates and the authorities in Manila and Madrid, revealing tensions between the perspectives of consuls on the ground and the decisions made by the central administration.

This paper seeks to examine notions of indigenous land ownership through notarial records of land sales and claims in the Philippines in the 16th and 17th centuries. These records include the procedure by which natives proved the ownership of lands they were selling and their reasons for the sale. Before land could be sold or alienated, a probe on ownership was done to ensure that the rightful owners were making the sale or the land being claimed was not owned by anybody. In the absence of land titles, witnesses, other natives from the same town or neighboring areas, were invited to provide their testimony about the owner of the land and how it was used. Ideas of land use and ownership that the natives practiced presumably before the advent of colonialism can be drawn from these records. The paper will give tentative conclusions about land ownership by native Tagalogs in the early colonial era in the process of transitioning into a colonial society.

By focusing on food, the present study explores the connection between a Pacific sailor’s body, intercontinental exchanges, and the Spanish empire’s mechanisms of control in the seventeenth century. The first part discusses how food as tribute, gift, or commodity facilitated trade and exchanges among the Philippines, New Spain, and Spain. Further, it tackles the transformation of the sailors’ bodies as they traveled from one location to another, as the food became abundant, rotten, or scarce. The last part examines how food functioned as the Spanish empire’s instrument of inclusion or exclusion of its royal workers. For the sources, it used two seventeenth-century travel accounts specifically focused on the Manila- Acapulco journey: one by the famous Italian traveler Gemelli Carreri and the other by a Manila creole named Diego Lopez, who served as a page at the young age of fourteen. It also consulted archival documents from Archivo General de la Nación de México (AGNM), especially the bundle titled Archivo Histórico de Hacienda (AHH), which contained information regarding efectos y víveres (stocks and provisions) loaded to the ships. Lastly, it utilized inquisitorial records of foreign sailors accused of heresy.