History is said to be written by the victors of conflicts.

It’s mostly true.

We’ve seen Korea, China, the Philippines, and other Asian countries protest the striking out of Japan’s wartime atrocities in schoolbooks in the Land of the Rising Sun; a blatant attempt at revisionist history that doesn’t sit well with many.

The world may have come a long way from World War II and we like to think that we are more civilized in this homogenously global village, but something’s can never be forgotten.

Such is the power of books because they can be perceived as the gospel truth.

There’s another book, not written incredibly by the victorious Americans who claimed Philippines in their war against Spain.
At the time that the Philippine Islands were ceded by Spain to the United States, American historians James A. Robertson and Emma H. Blair produced a massive tome on the history of the country – The Philippine Islands 1493-1898 -- that served as a propaganda tool in drumming up support for the war against the Spanish crown.

As America took over the country and filled key positions in the nation’s infrastructure, there was an overhaul in systems and methodologies. One of which was the use of English as the medium of instruction. As the American Jesuits took over the Ateneo, Fr. Thomas A. Becker S.J. translated Fr. Jose Burniol’s The History of the Philippines that emphasized Spain’s role in the country’s history.

Fr. Jose S. Arcilla S.J. who is the caretaker of the Jesuit Archives, related how Fr. Francis Byrne S.J., the first American Ateneo rector, informed his superiors at the New York-Maryland Province that the American administrators of the University of the Philippines sought to correct entries in Fr. Burniol’s book that were inaccurate and the product of misinformation. The book was reviewed but only in the presence of Fr. Byrne who disapproved the change of any of the texts that were markedly different from what would later appear in the works of Gregorio Zaide and Teodoro Agoncillo.

And almost the entire country was educated on the basis of those two historians’ work that in the opinion of Fr. Arcilla, does not tell the whole story. Fr. Burniol was a Spanish Jesuit who taught history at the Ateneo in 1908 to be exact (that was the year the University of the Philippines was founded) and fills in gaps in our history. The works of Zaide and Agoncillo took on greater importance as nationalism swept the country right before World War II and after the American’s granted the Philippines independence.

Fr. Arcilla, however underscores that when writing about history, it is always important not just to look at one book of “facts” but everything else including the culture of the times. “Lots of things have to be taken into context when writing history because it can be dangerous. There’s the sin of omission.”

To illustrate that point, historians Milagros Guerrero, Emmanuel Encarnacion, and Ramon Villegas have argued that Andres Bonifacio, the father of the Katipunan should be rightfully declared as the first President of the Philippines rather than Emilio Aguinaldo. The three state that Bonifacio was the supremo of the Katipunan even before Aguinaldo formed his own at the Tejeros Convention and even wrote down his concept of a nation in Haring Bayang Katagalugang. 

Another historian, Renato Constantino, notes that Dr. Jose Rizal, was an American sponsored “national hero” because they did not want someone who advocated armed struggle to be idolized by the Filipino people during the colonial period. Ateneo history professor Ambeth Ocampo however repudiates this by writing that it was Dr. Rizal who in fact inspired Bonifacio and the Katipunan.
“All the more we need to re-examine all these historical texts,” says Fr. Arcilla. “But it’s difficult because it will challenge a lot of what we supposedly know.”

Given these arguments about figures in our national history that are not only intriguing but also in all probability, true and correct, Fr. Burniol’s book should also be revisited.

Fr. Arcilla also laments the fact that there aren’t enough resources to take a look at many of the texts, documents, books, and memoirs of the yesteryears that will shed more light on our nations history because they were written in Spanish and Latin.
“They say that what you don’t know cannot hurt you,” says Fr. Arcilla with a shake of his head. “But in this case, it’s quite the opposite. It does hurt us.”