ANNOTATION OF ANTONIO

MORGA’S SUCESOS DE LAS

ISLAS FILIPINAS
The Book - SUCESOS
DE LAS ISLAS
FILIPINAS
• An account of
Spanish
observations
about the
Filipinos and
the Philippines.
 Background information/Important information about
Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas

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

2. This is one of the first books ever to tackle Philippine history.
3. Book that describes the events inside and outside of the country from
1493 to 1603, including the history of the Philippines.
4. Consist of 8 Chapters.
5. Discuss the political, social and economical aspects of a colonizer and
the colonized country.
6. The content of the book is based on documentary research,
observation and personal experience of Morga.
7. Rizal is a secondary source of the book due to his Annotations.
ANTONIO de MORGA
• Spanish lawyer and a
government official during the
17th Century
• Historical Anthropologist.
• Author of Sucesos De Las Islas
Filipinas
• Wrote the first lay formal history of
the Philippines conquest by
Spain.
• He is a doctorate in Canon and
Civil Law.
What is Las Islas
Filipinas?

• Las Islas Filipinas means

“The Philippine Island” in
English and 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 the inside.
The work consists of 8 chapters
1. Of the first discoveries of the Eastern islands.
2. Of the government of Dr. Francisco de Sande.
3. Of the government of don Gonzalo Ronquillo de Peiialosa.
4. Of the government of Dr. Santiago de Vera.
5. Of the government of Gomes Perez Dasrnariiias.
6. Of the government of don Francisco Tello.
7. Of the government of don Pedro de Acuiia.
8. An account of the Philippine Islands.
Purpose of sucesos De las islas filipinas
• Morga (1609) wrote that the
purpose for writing Sucesos was
so he could chronicle "the deeds
achieved by our Spaniards, 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. "
WHAT
WHY
HOW
What lead Jose Rizal to Morga’s work?
• Rizal was an earnest seeker of truth and this marked him as
historian.
• He had a burning desire to know exactly the condition 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 had a
lively and vigorous community.
• He believed the conquest of the Spaniards contributed in
part to the decline of the Philippine’s rich traditions and
culture.
What lead Jose Rizal to Morga’s work?
• He
then decided to undertake the annotation of Antonio de
Morga’s Sucesos De Las Islas Filipinas.
• Hispersonal 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.
Why Jose Rizal chose Morga’s work?
• Rizalfelt Morga to be more "objective" than the religious
writers whose accounts included many miracle stories.
• Morga, compared to religious chroniclers, was more
sympathetic to the indios; and finally, Morga was not only an
eyewitness but a major actor in the events he narrates.
Why Jose Rizal chose Morga’s work?
• Rizal's
second consideration for the choice of Morga was
that it was the only civil, as opposed to religious or
ecclesiastical, history of the Philippines written during the
colonial period.
• The third consideration for the choice of Morga was Rizal’s
opinion that this secular account was more objective, more
trustworthy, than those written by the religious missionaries
which were liberally sprinkled with tales of miracles and
apparitions.
Why Jose Rizal chose Morga’s work?
• The fourth consideration in Rizal's choice of the Morga was
that it appeared more sympathetic, at least in parts, to the
indios, in contrast to the friar accounts, many of which were
biased or downright racist in tone and interpretation.
• The fifth and last consideration was that Morga was an
eyewitness, and therefore a primary source, on the
Philippines and its people at the point of first contact with
Spain.
How did Jose Rizal know about Morga’s work?
• Rizal
found the book while he was in London at the British
Museum’s reading room.
• He hand copied the whole 351 pages of the book.
• And annotated every chapter of it.
• It was the first historical work on the Philippines by a Filipino.
• It
is the first history written from the point of view of the
colonized not the colonizer.
Rizal’s Annotation
Rizal’s Objectives
1. To awaken the consciousness of the
Filipinos regarding their glorious ways
of the past.
2. To correct what has been distorted
about the Philippines due to Spanish
conquest.
3. To prove that Filipinos are civilized
even before the coming of the
Spaniards.
Rizal’s Annotation
• Thepeople of the Philippines had a culture on their own,
before the coming of the Spaniards.
• The people of the pre-Hispanic Philippines is advanced, has
high literacy rate, self sufficient and has smooth foreign
relations.
• Filipinos
were destroyed, demoralized, exploited and ruined
by the Spanish colonization.
• Thepresent state of the Philippines was not necessarily
superior to its past.
Rizal’s Annotation
• Inhis annotation, he included the colonial history of the
Philippines, being in prolonged periods of suffering that many
people have been subjected to.
• “The Philippines was depopulated, impoverished and
retorted, astounded by metaphor, with no confidence in their
past, still without faith in her present and without faltering
hope in the future”.
Ferdinand Bluementritt’s
prologue to sucesos de las
islas Filipinas
• He wrote it in Spanish even though
German is his native language.
• Encouraged Rizal to write about the
Philippines’ pre-colonial History.
• He praised Rizal’s works as “Scholarly
and well-thought out”.
• Noted that the book is so rare that
very few libraries has it and guarded
it like a treasure.
Bluementritt criticized Rizal’s explanation on two
accounts
• He
noticed that Rizal had committed the mistakes of
many modern historians who judged events in the past.
• He said that Rizal shouldn’t condemn Catholicism even
though they didn’t do any effort to suppress calls for
reform. He should just keep the critique about religious
orders in the Philippines
The “SUCESOS” as annotated by Rizal, appeared for
the first time in the Philippines sixty eight years later
when a publisher in Manila, published the new work in
1958, to contribute his bit to the national effort to
honor Rizal. The present work is the sixth volume of the
Series of Writings of Jose Rizal which the Jose Rizal
National Centennial Commission has no published in
commemoration of his birth.
 Rizal’s Annotations vs. De Morga’s Sucesos ...
Rizal’s Annotations Morga’s Sucesos

1. Philippines was NOT DESERTED 1. Philippines was DESERTED and

and was actually HABITABLE. INHABITABLE.

2. Spaniards, like any other 2. Beef and fish they know it

nation, treat food to which best when it has started to
they are not accustomed or rot and stink.
is unknown to them with
disgust. This fish that Morga
mentions is bagoong (salted
& fermented fish).
 Important Points
1. Sucesos De Las Islas Filipinas is the first book to tackle the
Philippine history.
2. The book discusses the political, social and economical
aspects of a colonizer and the colonized country.
3. The book that describes the events inside and outside of
the country from 1493 to 1603, including the history of the
Philippines.
4. The pre-colonial Philippines already possessed a working
judicial and legislative system
5. Spanish missionaries put an end to the baybayin written
system of the Philippines to translate their goals.
6. Our ancestors possessed a complex society and culture filled
with arts and literature.
Importance of Rizal’s Annotations to the present generation

1. To awaken in the Filipinos the consciousness of our past.

2. To devote ourselves to studying the future.
3. To first lay bare the past, in order to better judge the present and to
survey the road trodden during three centuries.
4. To prove Filipinos had a culture of their own, prior to colonization, that
the Filipinos were NOT inferior to the white man.
5. To shatter the myth of the so-called “Indolence of the Filipinos”.
6. To reduce those Filipinos who denied their native tongue into rotten fish.
7. To seriously study Tagalog and produce a comprehensive Tagalog
dictionary.
8. To embrace the generic term “Indio”, or in today’s case, Filipino, with
all its negative connotations, and turn it into one of dignity and
nobility.
References:
1. https://filipiknow.net/life-in-pre-colonial-phil ippines/
2. https://www.coursehero.com/file/p3ol5 23/o-RIZALS-ANNOTATION-OF-MOR GAS-
SUCESOS-DE-LAS-ISLAS-FILI PINAS-Three-purposes-for/
3. https://www.slideshare.net/abbieelaine kuhonta/sucesos-39902918
4. https://prezi.com/qawe8nczviaq/rizals- annotation-of-sucesos-de-las-islas-filip inas/