SUCESOS DE LAS ISLAS FILIPINAS

- It is one of the important works on the early history of the Spanish colonization of the
Philippines published in Mexico in 1609 by Antonio de Morga.
- Annotated by Jose Rizal with a prologue by Dr. Ferdinand Blumentritt.
- It included the proper history of the Philippines from 1565.

Antonio de Morga

- Spanish conquistador, gov’t official and historical anthropologist; author of the Sucesos De Las
Islas Filipinas (Events in the Philippine Islands).
- He wrote the first lay formal history of the Philippines conquest by Spain.
- A doctorate in canon law and civil law.
- His history is valuable in that Morga had access to survivors of the earliest days of the colony
and he, himself, participated in many of the accounts that he rendered.
- The book (Sucesos…) narrates the history of wars, intrigues, diplomacy and evangelization of the
Philippines in a somewhat disjointed way. Modern historians (including Rizal) have noted that
Morga has a definite bias and would often distort facts or even rely on invention to fit his
defense of the Spanish conquest.

Morga’s Purpose for Writing Sucesos

- Morga wrote that the purpose for writing Sucesos was so he could chronicle “the deeds
achieved by our Spaniards is the discovery, conquest and conversion of the Filipinas Islands – as
well as various fortunes that they have from time to time in the great kingdoms and among the
pagan peoples surrounding the islands.”
- Taking issue with the scopes of these claims, Rizal argued that the conversion and conquest
were not as widespread as portrayed because the missionaries were only successful in the
conquering a portion of the population of certain Islands.

CHAPTER 1: Magellan and Legazpi’s seminal expeditions

CHAPTER 2 – 7: Chronological report on gov’t administration under Governor-General

CHAPTER 8: Philippine Islands, the native there, their antiquity, custom and govt’.

What leads Jose Rizal to Sucesos De Las Islas Filipinas?

- Rizal was an earnest seeker of truth and this marked him as a historian.
- He had a burning desire to know exactly the conditions of the Philippines when the Spaniards
came ashore to the islands.
- His theory was that the country was economically self-sufficient and prosperous. Entertained
the idea that it has a lively and vigorous community.
- He believed the conquest of the Spaniards contributed in part to the decline of the Philippine’s
rich tradition and culture.
 - He then decided to undertake the annotation of Antonio de Morga’s Sucesos De Las Islas
Filipinas
- His personal friendship with Ferdinand Blumentritt provided the inspiration for doing a new
edition of Morga’s Sucesos.
- Devoting four months research and writing and almost a year to get his manuscript published in
Paris in January 1890.
- Rizal spent his entire stay in the city of London at the British Museum’s reading room.
- Having found Morga’s book, he laboriously hand copied the whole 351 pages of the Sucesos
- Rizal proceeded to annotate every chapter of the Sucesos.

RIZAL’s ANNOTATION OF MORGA’s SUCESOS

- His extensive annotations of Morga’s work number “no less than 639 items or almost two
annotations for every page”
- Rizal also annotated Morga’s typographical errors.
- He commented on every statement that could be nuanced in Filipino cultural practices. For
example; on page 248, Morga describes the culinary art of the ancient Filipinos by recording: “…
they prefer to eat salt fish which began to decompose and smell.”
Rizal footnotes: “This is another preoccupation of the Spaniards who, like any other nation in
that matter of food, loathe that to which they are not accustomed or is unknow to them… The
fish that Morga mentions does not taste better when it is beginning to rot: all on the contrary” it
is bagoong, and all those who have eaten it and tasted it know it is not or ought not to be
rotten”

3 MAIN PROPOSITIONS IN RIZAL’S NEW EDITION OF MORGA’s SUCESOS

- The people of the Philippines had a culture on their own, before the coming of the Spaniards
- Filipinos were decimated, demoralized, exploited and ruined by the Spanish colonization
- The present state of the Philippines was not necessarily superior to its past.