Customer Reviews

Historical Dictionary of the Philippines

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Before you buy this book, do an internet search on "Historical Dictionary Philippines." Then read the reviews of this book by Norman G. Owen in Journal of Asian Studies and Paul A. Rodell in the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies.

As a historical dictionary, this is a disgrace. It is so full of questionable statements and outright errors. To single out a few of the most egregious:

The description of the Philippines as peopled by "tribes" who came in three "waves" (Aetas, "Indonesians" and "Malays") reflects early twentieth-century theorizing, long abandoned by serious anthropologists and prehistorians.

For nearly thirty years now the Code of Kalantiao (pp. 60-61) has been known to be a complete forgery.

Ma-I was not the "Chinese name for Manila" (p. 185), but referred to Mindoro.

Encomiendas were not "landed estates of the Spaniards" (p. 81); they represented control over people, not land. They did not, therefore, produce "tobacco for export to Mexico" (p. 131), nor was tobacco "the chief export commodity during the galleon trade" (p. 196). Tobacco developed as an export crop only late in the eighteenth century, when the galleon trade was almost at an end.

Inquilinos were not "hired managers" of the friar estates (p. 125), but leaseholders, who sublet the land for cultivation to tenants.

The Americans captured Manila in 1898, not 1899 (p. 152), and the First Philippine Commission (p. 89; with a duplicate entry under Philippine Commission, First) was appointed not at the end of the Philippine-American Revolution [sic] in 1901, but in 1899, while the war was still going on.

It is misleading to say that "new [non-Catholic] doctrines of Christianity came to the Philippines in the 19th century" (p. 205) when none were allowed in until after 1898.

Sugar was exported duty-free to the U.S. after 1909, not 1934 (p. 135).

Ramon Magsaysay did not serve as President "for only two years" (p. 147), but three (January 1954 to March 1957).

The chronology (pp. xix-xl) misdates the start of the galleon trade (1593, not 1615), the attack of Limahong (1574, not 1622), and the alleged "introduction" of sugar cane and tobacco in 1800 by governor Jose Basco (who served 1778-87).

Most typhoons do not travel "in an easterly direction" toward the Philippines (p. 247), but come west from the Pacific.

Almost as disturbing as the factual errors is the erratic judgment as to what should be included and at what length. There is no entry for: the tobacco monopoly, tribute (tributo), Andres de Urdaneta, Juan de Salcedo, Bishop Salazar, the Jones Act, the Wood-Forbes Mission, the Hare-Hawes-Cutting bill, T.H. Pardo de Tavera and Raul Manglapus. There are no entries for the historic provinces of Morong, Tondo and Tayabas, nor the dioceses of Nueva Caceres and Nueva Segovia. There are entries for the American governors-general, but not the Spanish ones.

Some of the failures of this book may be attributed to the fact that neither of its authors is a historian (nor is anyone mentioned in the acknowledgments).

Think twice before you buy this book.