Successos de las Islas Filipinas

• The book was published by Mutya Publishing Inc.
• The Life and Works of Rizal is a book written by Clemente, JE.
• Rizal studied the Philippines before the arrival of the Spaniards and had a perspective of the pre-colonial Philippines based on the accounts of Antonio de Morga in Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas.
• Antonio de Morga was a Spanish historian and lawyer and a notable official for 43 years in the Philippines, New Spain, and Peru.
• Antonio de Morga stayed in the Philippines, then a colony of Spain, from 1594 to 1604.
• As Deputy Governor in the Philippines, Antonio de Morga re-established the audencia and took over the function of the judge.
• Antonio de Morga published the book Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas in 1609, considered one of the most significant works on the early history of the Spanish colonization of the Philippines.
• Rizal deemed it necessary to quote the testimony of an illustrious Spaniards who had personal knowledge of the Philippines in its last days.
• Morga shows that the ancient Filipinos had an army and navy with artillery and other implements of warfare.
• According to some historians, Magellan lost his life on Mactan and the soldiers of Legaspi fought under the banner of King Tupas of Cebu.
• Morga's history is brief and concise, and our author has treated the matter in a similar manner.
• Governor Antonio de Morga was the first to write and publish a Philippine history.
• There are Mahometans, the Moros, in the southern islands, and negritos, Igorots and other heathens still occupy the greater part of the archipelago.
• The civilization of the Pre-Spanish Filipinos regarding the duties of life for that age was well advanced, as the Morga history shows in its eighth chapter.
• Doctor Morga appears to mean the Roman Catholic which by fire and sword he would preserve in its purity in the Philippines.
• The islands came under Spanish sovereignty and control through compacts, treaties of friendship, and alliances for reciprocity.
• The effect of Rizal's work led him to realize that before attempting to unroll the other pictures, it was necessary to post the Filipinos on the past.
• The islands which the Spaniards early held but soon lost, Formosa, Borneo, and the Moluccas, are non-Christian.
• Jose Rizal had the following as his Preface to his work: "To the Filipinos: In Noli Me Tangere (“The Social Cancer”) I started to sketch the present state of our native land.
• The conversions by the Spaniards were not as general as their historians claim, as only a part of the people of the Philippines were converted.
• Father Chirino's work, printed in Rome in 1604, is a chronicle of the Missions rather than a history of the Philippines, but it contains a great deal of valuable material on usages and customs.
• The history of Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas covers the year from 1493 to 1603 and discusses the political, social, and economic phases of life of both the natives and their colonizers.
• Jose Rizal, patriotic as he was, had an ardent longing to know the true condition of the Philippines when the Spanish conquerors came ashore to the islands.
• To back his theory up, Jose Rizal had to look for a reliable account of the Philippines before and at the onset of Spanish colonization.
• Jose Rizal believed that the Spanish colonization resulted in the deterioration of the Philippines' rich culture and tradition.
• The first English translation of Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas was published in 1868 in London.
• Antonio de Morga’s work is based on documentary research, the author’s keen observation, and his involvement and knowledge.
• Jose Rizal annotated every chapter of the Sucesos, commenting even on Morga’s typographical errors.
• Jose Rizal provided enlightenment on every statement, which he believed misrepresenting the locals’ cultural practices.
• The history of Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas was published in two volumes, both in 1609, by Casa de Geronymo Balli, in Mexico City.
• Between 1889 to 1890, Dr. Jose Rizal spent several months in London as he tried to improve his mastery of the English language.
• Rizal was granted a reader’s pass to the British Museum where he stumbled upon Antonio de Morga Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (1609).
• Rizal laboriously copied the entire 351-page work while making annotations.
• In matters of food, each is nauseated with what he is unaccustomed to or doesn't know is edible.
• The prized krises and kampilans of the Filipinos are worthy of admiration and are richly damascened.
• The coats of mail and helmets of the Filipinos, which are specimens in various European museums, attest to their great advancement in this industry.
• Rizal finished 639 annotations on every nuanced Filipino culture practice that Morga wrote about, and even on Morga’s typographical errors.
• Rizal’s choice of Morga’s work as his primary source for studying Philippine pre-colonial history instead of Antonio Pigafetta was due to the objectivity and civil nature of the former in contrast to the religious nature of the latter.
• Rizal had proved and shown that the Philippines was an advanced civilization before the Spanish conquest.
• The significance of Rizal’s noble purpose in working on Morga’s book is prophetically encapsulated in some of his statements in his Preface: “If the book (Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas) succeeds to awaken your consciousness of our past, already effaced from your memory, and to rectify what has been falsified and slandered, then I have not worked in vain, and with this a basis, however small it may be, we shall be able to study the future.”