Annotation to morga

• José Rizal heard from his uncle, José Alberto, about an ancient history of the Philippines written by a Spaniard named Antonio de Morga
• Rizal found one of the few remaining copies of Morga's work at the British Museum and had it republished with annotations
• José Rizal: 'In Noli Me Tangere ("The Social Cancer") I started to sketch the present state of our native land. But the effect which my effort produced made me realize that, before attempting to unroll before your eyes the other pictures which were to follow, it was necessary first to post you on the past. So only can you fairly judge the present and estimate how much progress has been made during the three centuries (of Spanish rule).'
• Governor Morga was the first to write and publish a Philippine history
• Father Chirino's work, printed in Rome in 1604, is rather a chronicle of the Missions than a history of the Philippines
• By the Christian religion, Dr. Morga appears to mean the Roman Catholic which by fire and sword he would preserve in its purity in the Philippines


  In other lands, notably in Flanders, these means were ineffective to keep the church unchanged, or to maintain its supremacy, or even to hold its subjects
• Great kingdoms were indeed discovered and conquered in the remote and unknown parts of the world by Spanish ships but to the Spaniards who sailed in them we may add Portuguese, Italians, French, Greeks, and even Africans and Polynesians
• The expeditions captained by Columbus and Magellan, one a Genoese Italian and the other a Portuguese, as well as those that came after them, although Spanish fleets, still were manned by many nationalities and in them were negroes, Moluccans, and even men from the Philippines and the Marianes Islands
• These centuries ago it was the custom to write as intolerantly as Morga does, but nowadays it would be called a bit presumptuous
• No one has a monopoly of the true God nor is there any nation or religion that can claim, or at any rate prove, that to it has ben given the exclusive right to the Creator of all things or sole knowledge of His real being
• The conversions by the Spaniards were not as general as their historians claim
• The missionaries only succeeded in converting a part of the people of the Philippines
• There are Mohammedans, the Moros, in the southern islands, and Negritos, Igorots and other heathens yet occupy the greater part territorially of the archipelago
• The islands which the Spaniards early held but soon lost are non-Christian -- Formosa, Borneo, and the Moluccas
• If there are Christians in the Carolines, that is due to Protestants, whom neither the Roman Catholics of Morga's day nor many Catholics in our own day consider Christians
• It is not the fact that the Filipinos were unprotected before the coming of the Spaniards
• Morga himself says, further on in telling of the pirate raids from the islands had arms and defended themselves
• After the natives were disarmed the pirates pillaged them with impunity, coming at times when they were unprotected by the government, which was the reason for many of the insurrections
• The civilization of the Pre-Spanish Filipinos in regard to the duties of life for that age was well advanced, as the Morga history shows in its eighth chapter
• The islands came under Spanish sovereignty and control through compacts, treaties of friendship and alliances for reciprocity
• By virtue of the last arrangement, according to some historians, Magellan lost his life on Mactan and the soldiers of Legaspi fought under the banner of King Tupas of Cebu
• The term "conquest" is admissible but for a part of the islands and then only in its broadest sense
• Cebu, Panay, Luzon, Mindoro, and some others cannot be said to have been conquered
• The discovery, conquest and conversion cost Spanish blood but still m ore Filipino blood
• It will be seen later on in Morga that with the Spaniards and on behalf of Spain there were always more Filipinos fighting than Spaniards
• Morga shows that the ancient Filipinos had army and navy with artillery and other implements of warfare
• Their prized krises and kampilans for their magnificent temper are worthy of admiration and some of them are richly damascened
• Their coats of mail and helmets, of which there are specimens in various European museums, attest their great advancement in this industry
• Morga's expression that the Spaniards "brought war to the gates of the Filipinos" is in marked contrast with the word used by subsequent historians whenever recording Spain's possessing herself of a province, that she pacified it
• Megellan's transferring from the service of his own king (i.e. the Portuguese) to employment under the King of Spain, according to historic documents, was because the Portuguese King had refused to grant him the raise in salary which he asked
• Magellan was mistaken when he represented to the King of Spain that the Molucca Islands were within the limits assigned by the Pope to the Spaniards
• Through this error and the inaccuracy of the nautical instruments of that time, the Philippines did not fall into the hands of the Portuguese
• Cebu, which Morga calls "The City of the Most Holy Name of Jesus," was at first called "The village of San Miguel"
• The image of the Holy Child of Cebu, which many religious writers believed was brought to Cebu by the angels, was in fact given by the worthy Italian chronicler of Magellan's expedition, the Chevalier Pigafetta, to the Cebuan queen
• The expedition of Villalobos, intermediate between Magallan's and Legaspi's gave the name "Philipina" to one of the southern islands, Tendaya, now perhaps Leyte, and this name later was extended to the whole archipelago
• Of the native Manila rulers at the coming of the Spaniards, Raja Soliman was called "Rahang mura", or young king, in distinction from the old king, "Rahang matanda"
• Historians have confused these personages
• The native fort at the mouth of the Pasig river, which Morga speaks of as equipped with brass lantkas and artillery of larger caliber, had its ramparts reinforced with thick hardwood posts such as the Tagalogs used for their houses and called "harigues", or "haligui"
• Morga has evidently confused the pacific coming of Legaspi with the attack of Goiti and Salcedo, as to date
• According to other historians it was in 1570 that Manila was burned, and with it a great plant for manufacturing artillery