ANNOTATION OF ANTONIO

MORGA’S SUCESOS DE LAS

FILIPINAS
 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
AT THE END OF THE LESSON, THE STUDENTS SHOULD BE ABLE TO:

1. Analyze Rizal’s ideas on how to rewrite the Philippine

History.

2. Explain the underlying purpose of Morga’s Sucesos de las

Islas Filipinas.

3. Compare and contrast Rizal and Morga’s different views

about Filipinos and Philippine culture.
ANNOTATION OF ANTONIO
MORGA’S SUCESOS DE LAS
FILIPINAS
 WHO IS DR. ANTONIO DE MORGA’S?
• Antonio de Morga Sánchez Garay was a Spanish soldier,
lawyer and a high-ranking colonial official for 43 years, in the
Philippines, New Spain and Peru, where he was president of
the Real Audiencia for 20 years.
• He was also a Historian.
• Born: November 29,1559, Seville, Spain.
• Died: July 21,1636, Metropolitan District of Quito,Ecuador.
Dr.Antonio de Morga and his Sucesos
With Morga’s position in the colonial government, he had
access to many important documents that allowed him to write about
the natives’ and their conquerors’political, social and economic phases
of life from the year 1493 to 1603.
Rizal was greatly impressed by Morga’s work that he,
himself, decided to annotate it and publish a new edition.
He meticulously added footnotes on everychapter of the Sucesos
that could be a misrepresentation of Filipino cultural practices.
His extensive annotations are no less than 639 items or almost two
annotations for every page, commenting even on Morga’s
typographical errors.
• Rizal began his work in London and completed it in
Paris in 1890.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION/IMPORTANT INFORMATION
ABOUT SUCESOS DE LAS ISLAS FILIPINAS

• Antonio De Morga- Author of Sucesos de las islas Filipinas.

• This one of the first books ever to tackle Philippine history.
• Book that describes the events inside and outside of the country from 1493 to 1603,
including the history of the Philippines.
• Consist of 8 Chapters.
• Discuss the political, social and economical aspects of a colonizer and the colonized
country.
• The content of the book is based on documentary research, observation and personal
experience of Morga.
• Rizal is a secondary source of the book due to his Annotations.
WHAT IS LAS ISLAS FILIPINAS?
• The Philippines was named in honor of King Philip II of Spain.
WHAT IS SUCESOS?
EVENTS, HAPPENINGS OCCURRENCE

• The Sucesos is the work of an honest

observer, a versatile bureaucrat, who
knew the workings of the administration
from inside
 RIZAL’S IDEAS ON
HOW TO REWRITE
PHILIPPINE HISTORY
WHAT WAS RIZAL’S POINT IN REWRITING
PHILIPPINE HISTORY?

He had been rethinking the idea of the Filipino not as a people

who were equal to their Spanish colonizers but a people with a
unique civilization that was destroyed by colonization. Rizal
found the answer to his idea in Morga’s book and it was this
work that he decided to reprint with his annotations.
RIZAL’S FIRST CONSIDERATION FOR THE
CHOICE OF MORGA:
Retana’s Morga was invaluable because it is coming from the
primary material, Morga himself and other contemporaries,
coming from the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Which
amplifies and enrich the main text . However ,it is not accessible
to those who cannot read Spanish.
• Stanley’s English edition of Morga was more popular and
satisfactory.
RIZAL SECOND CONSIDERATION FOR THE
CHOICE OF MORGA:
Morga was only civil, as opposed to religious or ecclesiatical, history of the Philippines written
during the colonial period.
Chronicles by Spanish colonial officials (or non-religious) were rare, thus,Morga was the only secular
general history of the Philippines in Print(Retana 1906)
(main complaint) Religious historians dealt more with the church history than the history of the place
and its people.
The Histories of the Philippines written during the colonial period were just a chapter in the larger
history of spain.
• it was a history of spain in the Philippines.
• only during Rizals edition, the real history of the Philippines was written by and from the viewpoint
of an Indio.
RIZALS THIRD CONSIDERATION FOR THE
CHOICE OF MORGA:
•Morga account was more objective more trustworthy than those written by
the religious missionaries sprinklered with tales of miracles and apparition.

“All the histories written by the religious before and after Morga, up to
our days, abound with stories of devils, miracles, apparition, etc. These from
the bulk of the voluminous histories of the Philippines (Rizal 1890,311 n.1).
RIZAL THIRD CONSIDERATION FOR THE
CHOICE OF MORGA:
• Rizal annotations fall into two categories:

1. It was straight-forward historical annotations, where Rizal

amplifies or corrects the original:
2. It was an annotations which, through historically based,
reflect his anticlerical blas.
RIZAL’S FOURTH CONSIDERATION FOR THE
CHOICE OF MORGA:
• Morga was more sympathetic, at least in parts, to the indios, in contrast
to the friars accounts.

In his letter to Blumentritt on September 17, 1888, Rizal expressed his

preference for morga:
“The Morga is an excellent book; it can be said that Morga is modern
explore. He has nothing of the superficiality and exaggeration so typical of
present –day Spaniards. He writes very simply, but in reading him there is
much between the lines because he was governor general in the philippines
and after, head of the Inquisition (Epistolario 1938, 5:308)
RIZAL’S FIFTH CONSIDERATION FOR THE
CHOICE OF MORGA:
• Morga was an eyewitness, and therefore a primary source, on
the philippines and its people at the point of first contact with
Spain.
• Rizal spoke highly of Morga’s integrity as colonial official in
manila.
RIZAL’S VIEW

This fish that Morga mentions, that cannot be good until it begins to rot, is bagoong [salted
and fermented fish or shrimp paste used as a sauce in Filipino cuisine] and those who have
eaten it and tasted it know that it neither is nor should be rotten (Rizal 1890, 264).

Christianity was a weapon for facilitating the political and economic subjugation of the
native.

Rizal noticed all Morga’s mistakes Morga misspelled many native names of places, flora
and fauna, and other social classes which Rizal corrected.

Rizal emphasized that native women, unlike their European counterparts, never lost their
noble titles. It was the groom who gave dowry to the parents because they going to lost their
precious daughter.
• Rizal clarified that Morga must have meant sinamay. Which was woven from abaca
thread that comes from the banana trunks not from the leaves.
 MORGA’S VIEW
• Their daily fare is composed of lice crushed in wooden pillars and when cooked is called
morisqueta (this is the staple throughout the land); cooked fish which they have in a bu nm pork,
venieon, mountain buffaloes which they call carabaos, beef and fish which they know is best when it
has started to mt and stink (Retana 1909,174).
• 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. Nevertheless 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.
• In Morga’s time, the Philippines exported silk to japan whence now comes the best quality of that
merchandise.
• Morga’s remark that the Filipinos like fish better when it is commencing to turn bad is another of
those prejudices which Spaniards like all other nations have.
• Morga said that cotton was grown extensively in practically all the islands which the natives sold
as thread and woven fabrics to Chinese and other foreign merchants.