Publications

"In her book, Incomplete Conquest, Stephanie Mawson provides an examination that posits an alternative view of Spanish colonization. Mawson does this by assessing the limitations that hindered the complete colonization of the Philippines. She proposes different obstacles which limited internal control of the Captaincy-General of the Philippines and hindered its further expansion. She argues that while colonial institutions (i.e. military and church) portrayed an idea of full control and power in the archipelago, they simply did not possess such strength due to the limitations that the colonial state encountered in the seventeenth century. To support this argument, the author utilizes archival materials from Spain, Mexico, Rome, the United States, and the Philippines where she additionally conducted nontraditional research in Northern Luzon together with Filipino scholars and locals."

"Environmental history in the Philippines is a relatively new field, gaining traction only in the late 1990s, despite its roots as a subdiscipline in the United States since the 1950s. Pioneering studies by Filipinos have addressed topics such as American imperialism and ancestral lands (Reyes-Boquiren 1999), forestry (Orillos-Juan 1999; De Leon-Bolinao 2005), and pestilence (Dery 2006; Dela Cruz 2006; Orillos-Juan 2006). Research typically focuses on specific events and locations, exemplified by Raymund Abejo’s (2005) article “Mga Kalamidad at ang Rebelyong Dios-Dios sa Samar Noong Dantaon” (Calamities and the Dios-Dios Rebellion in Nineteenth-Century Samar). James Francis Warren’s latest book, Typhoons: Climate, Society, and History in the Philippines, expands this field of study by examining the profound effects of typhoons in various Philippine provinces over five centuries..."

"Stephanie Mawson, in the conclusion of her brilliant work, writes: “By reading colonial history through the prism of limitations—shifting the interrogation from how to if and where—it asks for a more specific delineation of what the colonization process actually involved and how successful it really was” (p. 183). This is precisely what the author achieves throughout the chapters of Incomplete Conquests. The work examines the Spanish empire in the Philippines through the lens of limitations. Mawson argues that these limitations stem from a combination of factors, including persisting indigenous values, and geographic and economic circumstances that undermined Spanish control. Mawson emphasizes that the limits of the Spanish Empire were not solely due to overextension but were also shaped by the actions of indigenous peoples, Europeans, and Chinese settlers in the Philippines. Mawson critiques recent works that, despite problematizing colonialism and foregrounding indigenous agency, still present the colonial state as the driver of change (p. 8). She argues that this focus “grants the colonial state a semblance of power, coverage, and scope that it simply did not have” (p. 9)..."

"Grace Barretto-Tesoro is a well-known archaeologist from the University of the Philippines Diliman. She has published numerous works on archaeology in the Philippines, particularly on burials from the precolonial to the Spanish colonial periods. The Ruins of Pinagbayanan is not her first publication on this Batangas town. In 2017, she published an article on Pinagbayanan entitled “Power and Resilience: Flooding and Occupation in a Late-Nineteenth-Century Philippine Town.” The book under review is more comprehensive and its focus is not only the town itself but the process of doing archaeology. This process is discussed using the archaeological project Barretto-Tesoro’s team carried out from 2009 to 2012 at Pinabayanan in San Juan, Batangas.

The aim of the book is to present archaeology in a way that is understandable to people outside the field, beyond the community of specialists. The author does this through a photo essay, as the title indicates. As expected, there are numerous photos and write-ups that simplify the content of the technical reports that archaeological projects like this one normally produce. The book not only shows the excavations and artifacts found on the site; it also shows “how spaces were constructed and perceived—the space of Pinagbayanan in the context of the town of San Juan, the spaces occupied by the ruins, the spaces within the ruins, and the same spaces in the ruins as seen by the town residents and archaeologists” (5). Pinagbayanan is presented as a shared space that exhibits multiple functions. The ruins are “historical spaces, archaeological sites, and part of a modern-day settlement” (5)..."

The Philippines’ experience with rail transport may be characterized as one that is riddled with underappreciation towards the latter. Nevertheless, Arturo G. Corpuz has proven in his book, The Colonial Iron Horse: Railroads and Regional Development in the Philippines, 1875–1935 (1999), that a diligent look at repositories both in the Philippines and abroad allows the reconstruction of the still-nascent subject of the history of rail transportation in the Philippines. Corpuz shows in The Colonial Iron Horse that beyond simply moving people and freight, Luzon’s once extensive railways were also a significant factor in the development of its towns in the period straddling the latter part of the Spanish colonial period to the beginning of the Commonwealth period. Despite Corpuz not being a trained historian, The Colonial Iron Horse has remained an unparalleled work in Philippine railway history. Beyond documenting Luzon’s formerly extensive railway system and discussing its role in shaping the historical trajectories of different places, Corpuz’ work is also a useful guide book in our presently transport crisis-laden cities illustrating that transportation infrastructure should always take into account local realities for it to be efficient, economical, and beneficial.

The existing historiography on the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines is replete with studies on the resistance movements, both the organized forces and the guerrilla units who fought the Japanese. Written by Filipino and foreign scholars alike, these studies have underscored the heroism of countless military men and
guerrillas who came from all walks of life. What has been often overlooked and has yet to receive the same scholarly attention is the underside of the war: Filipino collaboration. While political collaborators-figures in the government such as Jose P. Laurel and Jorge Vargas-have been well documented (see Steinberg 1967; Agoncillo 1984; De Viana 2016; Satoshi 2012), paramilitary collaborators, or those who not only took the Japanese's side but also took up arms against pro-American Filipinos and Filipino guerrillas, remain obscure. It is imperative that these narratives be also brought to light to uncover the disturbing truths and realities of the war. Without an adequate understanding of these paramilitary groups and informers, our purview of the Japanese occupation period remains myopic.

Our collective wonder of plants is as old as human history. For centuries, and to this day, we continue to marvel at their beauty and bounty. The study, identification, naming, collection, cultivation, use, and trade of plants have inspired the progress of civilization: from the fertile valleys of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates and the agri- cultural revolution, Plato's heavenly plane tree (Platanus orientalis) and the essence of humanity, Guy de La Brosses Jardin du Roi and its botanical cures, the quest for spices and the course of world history, Gregor Mendel and modern genetics, Louise Glück's "Wild Iris" and the universal quality of her poetry (1993), to Daniel Chamov- itz's lives of plants (2012)-these are only some of the varied examples that highlight
the entwined histories of plants and humankind across time and space.

My reading of this book was interrupted by two conferences, a typhoon disaster, and hours of household chores. Needless to say are the moments when I had to stop after reading a few lines of Barbaza's phenomenological explication on the metaphysics of literary traditions and nation-building. These instances of pagsabat against my own hearing-speaking with the book, I recently learned, may not only be confined within the semantic field of the Tagalog sabat, that is, indicative precisely of speech, because in Bikol, where the pasture of meanings is larger, sabat is "to meet someone, to welcome, to encounter, to run or bump into someone unexpectedly, to row against
the current, to go against the grain, to stand up to or face up to someone" (Mintz & Britanico 1985,
458).

The Sovereign Trickster: Death and Laughter in the Age of Duterte offers an investigation of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s regime of fear which weaponizes death to control life and masks violence through his obscene and vulgar articulations. It is an interrogation of the machinations of the sovereign, a political strongman, in relation to the governed. The book also examines how Duterte’s surge to power was contingent on the Philippines’ history of electoral violence and its people’s neocolonial condition by using Michel Foucault’s “biopolitics” and Achille Mbembe’s “necropolitics” as analytic lenses.