 Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Stacey Garcia. I'm the cultural officer of the Philippine Embassy in London, and we would like to welcome you to one of our events marking the launch of Central Rizal London. So welcome to the talk, annotating colonial histories, Jose Rizal and their thinking of the Filipino identity in 19th century England. We have with us very notable Philippine historian whom I will formally introduce in a little bit, but for now to welcome us formally to this event, please help me welcome the ambassador of the Philippines to the court of St. James, his Excellency, Antonio Manuela de Mayo. Ladies and gentlemen, good evening. Even at the height of what can safely be called the Philippine Enlightenment in the 19th century, Filipinos in those days knew very little about themselves except from the books and writings about the Philippine Archipelago, which were solely written by Europeans. One book which was published in 1609, particularly caught the attention of nine-year-old Jose Rizal, and became his reason many years later for crossing the Atlantic on board the SS city of Rome on a journey to Great Britain. Rizal was deeply disturbed by what he read in Antonio de Morgas sucesos de los islas, de las islas Filipinas, that he took great pains in copying the book word for word and adding annotations in order to correct entries that he believed misrepresented the Philippines and Philippine culture. Among these included Morgas' belief that Filipinos ate rotten food, when in fact what he was referring to was what many Filipinos know today as Bagoong or shrimp paste. Filipinos, Rizal was quick to point out, developed innovative ways to preserve food and to enhance its flavor in a tropical climate. Unfortunately, this methods were alien to the West. This exercise made Rizal realize many things about our history and culture and his passion to correct these mis impressions was so evident that his work on sucesos is considered one of his greatest works. Even today, many decades after Rizal, the United Kingdom and Ireland still know very little about the Philippines, despite the increasing number of Filipinos who continue to contribute greatly to British and Irish societies. More interestingly, there are also many Filipinos, especially those who were born or raised here, who know very little about their grandparents' birthplace and the culture that shaped their ancestors. Tonight, the Embassy, the National Commission on Culture and the Arts and the Philippine Studies Center of SOAS, the University of London, is proud to mark the launch of Central Rizal London. We hope that this cultural center will help Filipinos and British people alike to deepen their understanding of Philippine culture. And we think there is no better way to launch Central Rizal than by a conversation with one of the Philippines acclaimed historians and researchers, Dr. Jose Victor Torres. His talk, Annotating Colonial Histories, Jose Rizal and the Rethinking of Filipino Identity in the 19th century England, will walk us through how the concept of a truly national Filipino identity blossomed in one of the greatest Filipino minds. It is our hope that you will leave this hall asking more questions and eager to know more about the Philippines. Like Rizal, it is the challenge of every Filipino to share an accurate story of our history, our people, and our identity to the world. From all of us at the Embassy, welcome to you all. Thank you and enjoy the rest of the evening. Thank you, Your Excellency. So it has been a dream of the Philippine Embassy in London and the Filipino community in the United Kingdom and Ireland for Central Rizal London to finally be launched. The main goal of Central Rizal London is to become not just a repository of cultural materials about the Philippines, but to be an active center that reconnects the Filipino community to Filipino culture and to help spread the ideals, the thoughts, the wisdom of great Filipinos to inspire not only Filipinos, but also British and Irish citizens. So without further ado, please let me introduce, please allow me to introduce our guest speaker for tonight. I met Vic very recently. Dr. Jose Victor Torres is not just your typical historian. He has a very unique background, merging journalism and history, his specialization in history, which made it possible for him to write several works that make history appealing to the average everyday person, to the average everyday Filipino. And he has been one of the Philippine historians who has truly stoked the interest of the Filipino youth on items, on things about Philippine history and Philippine culture. He is an award-winning playwright. He is an awardee of the prestigious Palanca Awards. And currently he is a full professor at Dalasal University, Manila. Ladies and gentlemen, guests, please help me welcome our guest lecturer for tonight, Dr. Jose Victor Torres. Good evening. If you don't mind, I'll lecture sitting down. I've been enjoying the sights of London too much, and I can't walk wearing leather shoes. It's been painful. It's been an ordeal to walk. Just a few things. It's my first time in London. And I really enjoy the city. It's actually also my first time to travel abroad. And I'd like to thank the Embassy and the National Culture for the Culture and the Arts, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts for inviting me to lecture on a topic that actually has not been talked about too much because of the concentration of the works of Jose Rizal on the Noli and the Fili, not the Noli metangere and the El Fili Busterismo. But what has been disregarded or forgotten by a lot of people, especially the students and researchers on Jose Rizal, is that the morga, the sucesos de las islas Filipinas, is considered Rizal's second major work earlier than the El Fili Busterismo. And he wrote it here in the city of London using a source that was a very rare book that was not found in the Philippines, was actually found in the British, used to be found in the British Museum Library, now in the British Library, of which I had the exciting moment of handling it this morning at the British Library. So thank you Stacey for facilitating that short gift. The title of my lecture is an annotating colonial histories. Jose Rizal and the rethinking of the Filipino identity in 19th century England, rethinking because by the time Rizal already made the study of the morga, we already had some idea of what the Filipino identity was. What Rizal introduced here was a unique idea of trying to interpret the Filipino identity. I'll start my paper. 130 years ago today, on May 25, 1888, a young Filipino who became a reluctant celebrity in his homeland arrived in the city of London. It had been four months since Jose Rizal left the Philippines upon the advice of family and friends following the decision by the Catholic Church and the Spanish colonial government to ban his novel, The Nollimetangere. He had traveled through Hong Kong, he had traveled to Japan, he had traveled through the United States until finally arriving in England. He would spend 10 months in London, his first time in a city that saw the birth of the modern era of industry and politics. But unlike his two other travels in Asia and Europe, Rizal did not visit London to observe and record its culture and daily life. He arrived to begin an endeavor that would be a first for him. He would attempt to write a history of his country. It resulted in the discovery of a book on the Philippines written by Spanish official Antonio de Morga, the sucesos de las islas Filipinas, and the rethinking and the affirmation of the Filipino identity through the study of his country. In this lecture, I will be discussing Rizal, not just a historian but as a reformist who saw history as a weapon against colonialism by establishing the recognition of a national identity. I will also discuss the context of Rizal's London, where he spent 10 months in a city during a period what would be known in world history as Pax Britannica, where philosophies born out of the Age of Enlightenment centuries before form the basis of ideas for the Filipino reform movement in Spain. I will also include here how Rizal's historiography was part of a growing scholarship of a Europe of Empires, one of which was the England of Queen Victoria. Rizal's London. What was surprising about Rizal was that he barely talked about London during his stay here. If you look at the collection of his letters, he seldom talked about the city. His letters to friends and families about his visits to Japan and the United States were replete with observations and comments about the culture of these countries. He barely described London. Except for a letter he wrote to his parents and siblings on June 12, 1888, two weeks after his arrival in London, where he mentioned the address where they could correspond with him. That was in 37 Chalcot Crescent Primrose Hill, north-west London, England, as well as a brief description of the city when he arrived. You can see here the text of the description. The following day, the 25th, we left by the Midland Railway for London, and the road is very beautiful. The land is cultivated, neat and pretty houses, factories. In the afternoon, we reached London, and we stopped at the Grand Hotel Midland. From there, I went to look for my letters, house, et cetera. At first, I lodged at the house in Beresford Road, but afterwards, I didn't like it, and after a week came here to live with a private family. That house belonged to the Beckett family, and his two rooms were rented out to him for 45 pesos. What is notable in the result statement is where he says in the same letter, in England, everything is expensive than in other parts of Europe. Rizal arrived on a Friday. That's when the weekend came. He found Sunday in London boring, as every place was closed. Here is what he wrote. There are neither shops nor theaters, and if music is played, it is only religious music. Highly one can see a poor coach going through the streets. On Sunday afternoons, he had tea with the family of Dr. Reinhold Rost, director of the Indian office library in London, and what is called an orientalist, as scholars who studied Asian history and culture were called. Rizal mentioned that Rost had an impressive Filipino collection which he allowed Rizal to use. So what was London when Rizal arrived in 1888? Here I must mention when I'm using Encounter in doing some internet research, you type London in 1888 on any search engine, and guess what the majority of entries with that will come out. You want to know what it is? It's Jack the Ripper. All the entries, every time I would type London in 1888, Jack the Ripper would always come out. You could hardly see a description of the city. And I said, it's going to be quite ridiculous because it's quite a limited topic. So in order to avoid further talking about one of the famous mass murderers in history, with some people, actually some people with nothing to do would link Hosea Rizal to Jack the Ripper. Some would say, Jack the Ripper was Hosea Rizal, Jack the Ripper was a relative of Hosea Rizal, it started to sound very quite ridiculous. So I had to research doing the old-fashioned way, looking through a library. And in doing old-fashioned research, I discovered another historical trivia. This time, related to a historical figure who arrived in London in September 1888, four months after Rizal to study law. Unlike Rizal, he had to arrive in a European metropolis. But like Rizal, this Indian became a nationalist and fought the British colonial empire to free his native land. His name was Mohandas Gandhi. Even in Rizal's time, London at the turn of the 20th century was considered as the greatest city on earth, one in which the sun never sets. It was that era we call today the Victorian Age, the reign of Queen Victoria. The period when England was the empire of the west. London was described by Gandhi biographer Ramashandra Guha with three words that begin with the letter I. Sorry. It was a great imperial city. When Rizal arrived, the country has just celebrated the golden jubilee of Queen Victoria's reign. London was the heart of an empire that planted its flags on all four corners of the world with colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. So you have imperial. It was also an industrial city. London was already a bustling urban center where gridlocking traffic consisted of the hoarseless carriages and traditional horse drawn carriages that mingled in the streets. It had a modernizing transportation system that brought thousands of passengers to all points of the country. Manufacturing, which was the result of the industrial revolution, created a bustling port area where ships and steamers carried the fruits of the empire. Food, drink, spices, herbs, teas, and coffees, animal hides, furs, feathers, ivory, gold, silver, and other metals, precious stones, timber, cotton, curries, jute, hemp, of just the art. In fact, merely everything that the planet produced. All of these were unloaded and stored in warehouses along ways to be moved to shops and stores in the city. It was also a city of business where lawyers, bankers, insurance agents, stock brokers, importers, and exporters of everything under the sun, bought, sold, and traded goods, bonds, and stocks of investments not only in Europe, but also in the colony. London had a financial center that was one of the richest in the world during that time. And lastly, London in 1888 was an international city. The empire switched all over the globe, attracted various natives from its colonies, as well as people from other countries. Of the estimated 6 million inhabitants living in Greater London, tens of thousands of Germans, Italians, Czechs, Indians, Malaysians, Chinese, Japanese, Africans, West Indians from the Caribbean, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, and South Africans were counted as part of the city's population. A historian noted that in London's crowded street one might hear all the accents of the empire. There were Filipinos in London as mentioned by Marialo Ponce to Jose Rizal in one of his letters. Most prominent among them was the exiled lawyer Antonio Maria Rejidor whom Rizal had a falling out later. There is one aspect that I wish to include in those three eyes. London was also an intellectual city. However, this feature was not unique to London. Like many of the European colonial powers during that time the colonization of the countries as well as contact with others because of world trade contributed to the widespread need for knowledge. Library collections were enlarged and placed in various museums and institutions. Among this was the British Library in the British Museum. As an aside the Library of the British Museum already had quite a number of Filipino books. Many of them were taken from the libraries of the convention schools and government offices of Manila during the British occupation of the Philippines from 1762 to 1764. The growth of imperial territory also meant the impetus to learn more about these faraway places. Travel accounts scientific exploration reports guidebooks for traveling to these countries all were published. The opening of the Philippines to world trade at the start of the 19th century not only brought in traders and merchants but also explorers and scientists. It wasn't long before these foreigners German, French, British gathered every bit of knowledge that they can from the islands by compiling libraries and collecting artifacts until some of them began to specialize in things about the Philippines becoming non-orientalists or as Rizal would call them Filipinologists. Interesting also was the fact that these men like Rizal's friend, Austrian scholar Ferdinand Blumentritt became knowledgeable about the Philippines without even setting foot in the islands. It was in this London that Rizal arrived in and began to conduct a study on the Philippines pre-colonial past and eventually discovered the work that set him on the road of a historical study that changed his reformist ideas. The Filipino reform movement or what became known in Philippine history as the propaganda movement was initiated by a group of young Filipino students in Spain and exiled liberals from the Spanish colony exposed to the liberal atmosphere that was changing Spanish politics. These young men realized the problems of the colonial government in the Philippines and wanted reform. Their demand boiled down to two things assimilation as a province of Spain with representation in the Spanish Cortez and reforms in the governance of the Philippines that included the recognition of basic rights like the freedom of rights. But fulfilling these demands were not simple. The reformist encountered not only political but social barriers. The inferiority of natives of the colonies was a commonly accepted fact by the colonial powers. The Philippines was no different. The Spaniards believed that when they arrived in the Philippines they encountered an uncivilized people whom they proceeded to civilize and questionize. The Spaniards argued why should Filipinos be assimilated when they are, to use a modern terms, facsimile Spaniards. This further inflamed the growing patriotism of the reformist and led to the idea that to counter the Spanish argument the Filipino must know themself. Their identity more specifically it must be asked who were the Filipinos when the Spanish arrived. It meant looking at their pre-colonial past. It meant looking at the original Filipino. It was for this purpose that Rizal began exploring the British Museum and its library. Armed with a letter of request to use its holdings and a letter of introduction by Ross he obtained permission to work in the library. And for the next several days Rizal produced the volumes of early Spanish accounts written by the friar missionaries of the times. He had one objective to study and possibly write a history of the Philippines that would show that the early Filipinos were already civilized contrary to what the Spaniards said. Rizal's purpose wasn't new. Historical studies were already being made by his fellow reformist like Isabelo de los Reyes and Pedro Paterno. De los Reyes was already publishing articles on Philippine pre-colonial history that he cleaned from contemporary folklore and sources available to him in the Philippines. These articles were later compiled into several books like El Foclore Filipino published in 1889 and Historia de Ilocos published in 1890. These works, however, lack adequate scholarship but was popular because of their propaganda value. Paterno, on the other hand, had the contacts and the resources to access materials in Spain's libraries and archives. Unfortunately, his books left much to be desired with regards to scholarship. Not only did he exaggerate his information, he embellished them with a lively imagination. Most of his works were dismissed by Rizal and the other reformists as pure fantasies rather than serious scholarship. Paterno's works, unfortunately, have been used by some historians until today. It was only like five years ago that I discovered that a popular hero in Pampanga in one of the provinces in the Philippines was in fact an invention of Paterno. That man never existed. Unfortunately, it became a part of the history of Pampanga but unfortunately, they were a bit open-minded to accept that the person mentioned that they kept mentioning their history is in fact a fantasy. Modern scholars recognize the works of Paterno and los Reyes as the early efforts to show the Filipino identity. But these were not exactly Rizal what had in mind. Both Isabelo de los Reyes and Paterno merely proved that the early Filipinos had a culture of their own, debunking the traditional belief of the Spaniards. In fact, Paterno believed that the pre-colonial Filipino had the same culture as the Spaniards had before colonization. So if Spain had a king, the Philippines had a king, Spain had a prince and princesses, the Filipinos also had prince and princesses. In fact, even Paterno gave himself a title. He called himself Magino O which is equal to a pre-colonial Filipino upper class. Much to the amusement and ridicule of his colleagues. For Rizal, the concept of a national identity was to look for the original Filipino. One of the things that was different from Delos Reyes and Paterno was that Rizal wanted to prove that the pre-colonial Filipino, the culture of the pre-colonial Filipino was unique. That it was original that in fact it was something that the Filipinos had that was destroyed by colonization. And in the British Museum he believed that he may found the book that he can use to test and prove his idea. Rizal initially wanted Blumentry to write the history of the Philippines as the former considered the Austrian scholar an expert on Philippine culture. Yeah, that's true. Blumentry was an expert, but he was an expert only in Mindanao. However, Rizal admired him quite very well that he actually looked up to Blumentry. In fact, Blumentry was his inspiration to write the history of the Morga. But Blumentry turned down the offer so Rizal decided to do it to do it himself. It was to be a formidable task. For we must remember that Rizal never had any educational training on historical research, except for his readings on a wide of topics, on reading materials that he could lay his hands on or which interested him. It was his pain to study medicine, not philosophy, not history. So the task could be really formidable. He was starting everything from scratch and he started his work by reading whatever sources he could lay his hands on in the library of the British Museum and from the private Philippine collections of friends and acquaintances. It was during his research in the British Museum that he came upon early 17th century work written by a Spanish official the Sucesos de las Isas Filipinas or Events in the Philippine Islands written by Antonio de Morga who arrived in 1593 and served in the colony as lieutenant governor before resigning five years later. Here is the book of the Morga. Today the book, the front cover of the book is damaged. It got torn off and it was star fault. It arrived to us with a kind of damage already but it's still very much the same copy including the inscription, the one that you see on top. I couldn't read the inscription on the top of the book because it apparently has been erased with a pen but it's probably from the library of someone in the Philippines during that time. He resigned five years later to serve as a member of the audience after which he was transferred to Mexico in 1603. He died in 1636 in Ecuador after he was charged, investigated and found guilty on corruption charges. It was said that Morga published this book as a defense against the debacle of the Spanish fleet which he commanded against the Dutch invaders in 1600. Sucesos consists of eight chapters which chronicled the political events of the early governor's general during the first decades of the Spanish colonization. But it was chapter eight entitled An Account of the Philippine Islands that would be valuable to Rizal. Morga's last chapter consists of his descriptions and observations of the inhabitants of the Philippines. When Morga arrived in 1593 it was barely two decades after the founding of Manila and the start of the colonization of the Philippines in 1521. This meant that when Morga arrived and during the period he wrote the Sucesos he still saw and witnessed the pre-Hispanic Filipinos and their way of life. Thus the book was exactly what Rizal needed for his planned historical work for it would keep him it could help him reconstruct the life of the early Filipinos as he wrote to Blumentritt. Here's part of the letter that he wrote. Morga is an excellent book it could be said that Morga is a learned modern explorer he has nothing of the superficiality and exaggeration so peculiar to the Spaniards of today. He writes very simply but in reading him one must know how to read between the lines because he had been Governor General of the Philippines and later Justice of the Inquisition. Rizal then set out to fulfill his planned project instead of writing a history he would annotate Morga's Sucesos with data that he was gathering from his readings but first in order to annotate the book he had to copy it first by hand photocopying and of course Skyling wasn't invented still during that time so he had to copy the entire work by hand and that actually proved to be also a fault that happened to him because when the book was eventually published in 18 in 1889 there were errors in the text because it was basically based on Rizal copied. The errors were later discovered by Wenceslau Ratana when Ratana would publish his own annotated version of the Sucesos it would take him over a month from August to September 1888 to painstakingly copy the entire book after which he proceeded to annotate it this is one of the interesting aspects of Rizal's history using the works of other colonial writers to correct or justify the work of another this is not in you today with the various ideas of historical interpretation but during Rizal's time it was innovation in historical studies annotating the morgue took him the better part of a year and by 1889 it was ready to be printed in May of that year he asked Blumentry if he can write the prologue and to write it with complete freedom and to express his comments and ideas about the new work Blumentry agreed Rizal's project on the morgue almost ended with a sour note the publication of the book was supposed to be financed by his friends Antonio Maria Rehidor however for unknown reasons Rehidor backed out at the last minute this led to a falling out between the two friends seeing that he has to publish the book himself Rizal went around London to look for a printer but though there were many printing shops in the city the price they charged to publish the book was too expensive for Rizal he decided to have the book printed where it was cheaper in Paris in September 1889 the copies of the reprinted Antonio de Morga Succesos de las Islas Filipinas with the annotation annotations by Jose Rizal rolled off the presses of the Liberia de Garnier Germanos well what was surprising is that in September 1889 the first issues started coming out in October and the exact date was October 1889 the British Museum got its copy it was a gift from Jose Rizal you can still see the book there today unfortunately we could never see the dedication that was written by Jose Rizal but because the front page the frontispiece got damaged and you can only see the signature of Rizal in the date October 5 1889 but apparently he gave the book during the first months that he was already selling it the book was a resounding success even though he criticized the book in the prologue for being too anti-Catholic and that Rizal's comments relied on hindsight Blumentary told his friend that the annotations were scholarly in May 1890 Rizal told Blumentary that his book is very much sought in red but misfortune soon hit the morgue like the nollie the morgue initially was circulated in the Philippines and like the nollie it soon caught the attention of the authorities it seems that anything now written by Jose Rizal was considered taboo to the Spanish colonial government in the Philippines and it was soon banned his friend Manuel Arias Rodriguez wrote to Rizal in February 1890 less than several months after the publication of the book saying that there was already some difficulty in getting the cargo of books passed through customs in Manila for it seems that there was already a censorship ban on it his only option he told Rizal might be to send the books from Manila back to Hong Kong and have them shipped to the Philippines again in packages instead of one big bulk although Rizal did not mention how many copies he had printed for its first run he wrote to Blumentary more than a year later that he already sold the last bound copy that was with him the publication of the successos began Rizal's venture in historical studies that led him to discover and redefine the original Filipino in fact some Rizal scholars and some historians considered the history or the historical annotations as a history written with the Filipino point of view in fact in results later writings after the publication of the morga he started to use history as a means to fight the colonialism in his country and the racist attitudes of Spanish writers for example Rizal confidently quoted historical sources in arguing against Vicente Barantes' articles on the Tagalog theater that came out in 1889 that same year he published two articles in Trubner's Record a journal of Asian studies published by Dr. Ross the first was a list of Tagalog proverbs specimens of Tagalog folklore the second was a narration of two eastern fables one of which was the story that he would introduce to raiders which was the famous the monkey and the tortoise Rizal also published two historical commentaries on Mai the Philippine description by pre-colonial Chinese traders and the land of Tawalisi of course there's a doubt of what inverse Tawalisi now mentioned by the Arab traveler Ibn Battuta two of his most popular writings were a series of articles that appeared in the reformist newspaper the La Solidaridad these were Filipinos then through the Tiananios the Philippines a century within in 1889 and Sobre la Indolencia de los Filipinos on the Indolence of the Filipinos in 1890 I'm sure that a lot of you have read these essays you would see here a lot of quotations by Rizal using historical sources actually he also used some of it in the letter of the women of Malolos but at that time he was still in the middle of studying the sources so what came out in the letter of the women of Malolos was a bit limited with regards to its history the successes today admittedly Rizal's historiography will not pass the scrutiny of modern historians today like any other historical work it can become obsolete as new information comes out in the course of historical research an example of this study was made by Ambedo Campo in his work on the one mentioned by Ambassador Lagdemeo much of the data that was mentioned by Rizal in the morga already corrected or new information had already come out but in his time the influence of using history for determining a national identity had remained unsurpassed how did it influence the creation of a national identity one should only look at the history of the Philippine Revolution where a neophyte being recruited to Polyfascist Cartipunan is asked what is the origin of the Philippines before the Castiles came what were the conditions of the Filipinos before the Spanish came and to make a comparison the second question would be what is the origin of them what are his conditions today this was history a history introduced by Rizal that formed those questions but what was probably the greatest contribution by Rizal to Philippine historiography was the recreation of our country's precolonial past although there were previous works by his fellow reformist on discovering that past it was Rizal who applied the much needed scholarship to this history he also used his annotations to debunk many of the statements by the Spanish religious chroniclers that were tinged with bias against his countrymen and with this work he succeeded to show to his readers what the early Filipinos were a people with a unique and civilized culture that was destroyed by Spanish colonization lastly Rizal's annotation to the Succesos completed the second stage of his plan about the conditions of his country and its history remember his words in the opening paragraph of the essay in order to know the destiny of a nation it is necessary to open the book of its past as he mentioned in his introduction to the morga in the Noli I began the sketch of the present state of our motherland in the morga he presented the switch past before the Spanish colonizers came and in his coming novel the El Filibusterismo he would show his countrymen the direction that the future of the motherland should take it brought about the realization of our identity and the creation of the Filipino nation thank you very much