William Henry Scott's book, Looking for the Hispanic Filipino and Other Essays in Philippine History, is practically a collection of essays that deals with various topics regarding the prehistory of the Philippines. The book is composed of eleven (11) essays each being either a study previously published in various journals or chapters of edited books. Each essay deals with specific themes but all have one common denominator: correcting errors and misconceptions that have been written in history books and being taught to every Filipino who has ever gone to school.
Scott utilized the documentations found in the Spanish archives and the very same resources that previous historians used and he was able to provide new perspectives on the issue of Philippine prehistory. Scott was likewise able to provide evidences that disproves various misconceptions about our pre-colonial past as well as provide new interpretations to specific "truths" that have long been accepted in the discussion of Philippine history.
There is only one premise for the book: there is always the need to re-read the historical documents that historians have previously utilized to tell the story of the Filipino people and to pore over translated documents to arrive at new conclusions and interpretations. Historians often take for granted sources that have been utilized by other scholars, thinking that there is "nothing new to see in there" (as what Ambeth Ocampo was told when he tried to re-read Rizal's novels from the National Library. This philosophy and practice creates inaccuracies because sources that have been interpreted are not re-interpreted and validated using cross-references from other sources that may have potential links to the source in question. However, based from what Scott and Ocampo both discovered, there is always a "new story" in these old story books.
