Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino by William Henry Scott
The Amazon link above is to a previous edition of the book. I’m not sure if the newer edition (2022) is only available in the Philippines, but it likely was a fairly small print run.
This is a collection of essays, most of them academic in nature and therefore challenging for non-historians and people (like me) unfamiliar with Filipino history and issues related to it. Scott’s life work was focused on trying to verify alleged sources of prehispanic Filipino history, discovering in the process that much of what alleges to be prehispanic is fraudulent, and there are practically no written records of Filipino history prior to the coming of the Spanish. There are plenty of other resources for piecing together aspects of Filipino life and culture but written records are terse and oftentimes so vague as to be completely unhelpful.
I’m sure this would be more edifying if your main focus was Filipino history and you were more familiar with the plethora of names and dates Scott lists with such ease. Still, even the casual reader can benefit slightly from just reading the concluding sections of each of the eleven essays. There is also much to be gleaned secondarily about the mechanics of history and decision making and power-brokering, and Scott’s essay on an alleged Papal bull titled Inter Caetera is particularly illuminating.
The Nelson Family Indonesia 