Sy, Nicholas Michael C. (2025). “Optics, Illusions, and Historical Philippine Populations.” in Gharala, N.L.A., Camacho, M.S.T., Mesquida, J.O. (eds) Everyday Life in the Philippines, 1657–1699. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Abstract

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.