Prehispanic Source Materials for the Study of Philippine History by William Henry Scott
The link above to Amazon is actually the previous edition of the book. The one I just finished is a 2022 reprint from his revised (and slightly updated) 1984 edition.
As I travel I like to learn more about the places I visit. History can give insights into current issues and attitudes. The Philippines is a complicated country, enduring 400 years of Spanish colonization and more recently a complex relationship with the United States. However very little is known about life in the Philippines before the Spanish arrived and started writing stuff down and preserving it.
Dr. William Henry Scott undertakes to try and determine whether what is claimed to be known about prehispanic Philippines actually has any academic basis. What he discovered in the midst of his doctoral dissertation on this subject some 60 years ago is that much of what has been passed off as prehispanic Filipino history is, in fact, mostly conjecture (to put it kindly) or outright fraudulent (to put it more accurately). What is left is very little written record of the Filipino people or islands or cultures aside from some sporadic mentions in Chinese records dating back to the 14th century.
This doesn’t mean nothing can be known. Written records are just one source of history, and Scott endeavors to work with all the various other types of artifacts that can shed light on ancient history – archaeology in addition to linguistics and palaeography, Each of these forms a major section in this short (~150 pages) work, with the final sections dealing with the damage done by one person in the early 20th century guilty of at worst knowingly forging and passing off as ancient authentic documents, and at the least guilty of making such claims about the documents without really doing any digging to see if they’re authentic.
The reading was, predictably, somewhat tedious, mostly because Scott deals at length with minutiae of Filipino history in each of these areas and I am quite the novice and easily overwhelmed. However he does a good job of providing summaries at the end of each section as well as a final conclusion that sums up the real meat of the book in just a few paragraphs.
If you’re a history buff you might find this interesting particularly if you have a connection to or interest in the Philippines.
The Nelson Family Indonesia 