Philippine travelogues, 1909-1912

Most history books are focused on major events and dates of the events that affect the most important history-changing events that happen in a country. While this is to be expected, I am usually more attracted to what would be considered as travelogues.

As a collector of Filipiniana books, I have always found the most interesting authors to read are those that describe life in the Philippines during a specific period in our history.

The book “Colonial Manila 1909-1912: Three Dutch Travel Accounts,” translated by Otto Van Den Muizenberg (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2016) is interesting because this period of Philippine history covers the first decade of American rule in the Philippines.

Three Dutch intellectuals visited Manila separately during this period. As a background, the Dutch were very curious about American rule because at that time, the neighboring archipelago was under Dutch rule. This was then known as the Dutch East Indies, today known as Indonesia. They visited partly to see and compare how the Dutch colonial rule compared with the American colonial rule.

Like most travelogues, they were searching for what is most Filipino. However, it was immediately noticeable that their impressions were limited to the area now known as Metro Manila due to the difficulty of traveling outside this metropolitan area.

Due to a language barrier, another noticeable limitation in their narrative is that their interaction with the local population was mostly limited to Americans and the upper class society.

The first of the three writers was Aletta Jacobs whose article was “In the Philippines.” She was a suffragette who came to Manila principally to introduce her crusade for the right of women to vote. As a practicing doctor for 25 years in Amsterdam, she became famous for offering free treatment to the poor and also for struggling to improve working conditions of women in factories and shops.

During her five-week visit to the Philippines, she tried to promote female voting rights and observe the position of women in the mainly Asian countries she visited. Among the most interesting part of her travelogue was her stay at the newly opened Manila Hotel. She also visited four public markets. Among the products that she saw, she described one: “Whereas we would discard eggs with a chick in them, here they were sought and carried a much higher price. An egg that had been under the hen for 18 days was priceless. It was a delicacy… the contents inside are sucked out raw as if they were the greatest delicacy.”

Although she did not name the product, I can surmise that she was referring to the delicacy balut.

One of the judgments she made in this visit: “… notwithstanding everything good that the Americans brought here, the people don’t love them. Only the educated Filipinos are aware of all the good things as achieved here by the United States, while the numerous undeveloped masses regard them only as intruders.”

The second traveler who wrote about his travel in Manila was Gerret Pieter Rouffaer, who had lived in the Dutch colony now known as Indonesia for four years. In 1911, he visited Manila for four months. From the initial pages of his account, it is clear that he had a very bad impression of Philippine life. For example, he wrote: “Java and the Philippines are incomparable. Java is at least ten times better than the Philippines… Hotels and rest houses are scarce in the interior of the Philippines.”

In all his comparisons between Java and the Philippines, the Philippines suffers. Interestingly, he mentions the population of the city of Manila as 220,000 as given by the US Census of 1903. The composition of the population was 185,000 Filipinos, 22,000 Chinese, 5,200 Americans, 2,900 Spaniards and just over 2,000 other foreigners among whom were 453 British and 443, other Europeans.

One interesting event that he witnessed was the eruption of Taal Volcano on Jan. 30, 1911.

The third Dutch traveler was Dr. Hendrik Pieter Muller, who was a scholar in the field of ethnology. Again, the focus of his article was comparing the Philippines with the Dutch East Indies. During his stay, his primary residence was the Army & Navy Club. According to him, in 1909, there were still incidents of conflict between American soldiers and Filipino fighters in the provinces. His description of Manila at that time is worth reading: “Crossing the Pasig from Intramuros, for instance, one reaches streets with traffic as busy as the city of London. There is a shopping street called Escolta, which would be fit for Europe.”

In his narrative, he writes a lot about the life of Europeans in Manila. He also describes the elevated position of Filipinas in comparison to the women in the rest of Asia.

One noticeable point in his account is that he always refers to the Dutch practice of colonialism as superior to American colonizers. This is of course from his point of view because he said that giving the natives too much leeway would only create trouble.

These travelogues are written from the European or western point of view. Their value is in the description of the daily life and physical description of the ordinary Filipinos.