The Colonial Department

The threads that connect the Indian subcontinent to the Philippine archipelago stretch back centuries. Some have been lost to time, survived only by goldwork and the testimonies of Spanish missions. Some survive as actual threads—as textiles that captured the fancy of Philippine residents. Some are remembered as painful history; an invasion engineered by empires, followed by a brutal and fruitless...

As La Union historian Adriel Obar Meimban writes, La Union fits neatly into its geography: bound by rivers on the north and south, by the Cordillera mountain range on the east, and then, on its west side, the pounding surf that has made San Juan one of the country’s most popular tourist spots. But even in its earliest days, the borders of La Union were drawn and redrawn in bureaucratic squabbles....

In 2018, I first encountered The Sulu Zone and Iranun & Balangingi —two important books by James Francis Warren that opened my eyes to the rich, roiling history of the seafaring cultures of the Sulu Sea. His groundbreaking work laid out a way of looking at the past that was neither stoic nor static—a historiography that truly widened horizons. At the launch of his newest book, Valentina Mendoz...

More than a century ago, the Philippine flag was unfurled for the first time on the biggest sports stage in the world. It was—and is—a matter of great pride to our nation. But it was also an event that was bizarrely marked with mystery and controversy. From disappearing athletes to extra flags, let’s head to Paris in 1924, as we join two sports legends in their journey to the Olympics! The thumbna...

According to historian Linda Newson, Bicol did not bow down easily to the Spanish occupation. For their resistance, they paid a dear price. Population showed Camarines lost almost half of its population from 1591 to 1649. With no major plagues or Moro raids recorded, Newson could only conclude that it must have been because of brutal conflict with the Spaniards. Either the Bicolanos were killed, o...

Writing in June 1889, the Manila-based correspondent for La Solidaridad listed down the calamities afflicting the archipelago: cholera, fires, earthquakes, and economic ruin. In those days, even the sky seemed to be on fire. Our reporter told his ilustrado readers in faraway Europe that standing in the shade in Manila would give you no comfort, because the temperature was 39 degrees. 39 degrees! ...

Just the thought of commuting around Manila is enough to set one’s teeth on edge. But do our current-day problems of congestion and overcrowding have their roots in decisions and policies made a century ago? There’s no one better to answer this question than our podcast guest today. For more than ten years, Michael Pante, Ph. D., an associate professor at the Ateneo de Manila University, has been...

In the long journeys from Manila to Acapulco, disease was the clingy passenger no one wanted around. But it wandered around the decks, knocked on every cabin, stalked everyone on board—until one day, you woke up, and disease was just everywhere. How could it not be? There was food rotting inside the barrels, slick and moldy woodwork, crew and passengers and officers packed into tight spaces, pests...

The word Bukidnon means “people of the mountains”, but historian Ronald K. Edgerton also gives another name for them: the people of the middle ground. As he writes in his book of the same name, “Many Bukidnons mastered the art of borrowing from the new without losing touch with the old. [...] And over time they developed a capacity to envision themselves [...] as negotiators between worlds, skille...

In the offbeat manga Ferdie! , Ferdinand Magellan and Antonio Pigafetta are caught up in a storm right before they arrive in the Philippines…and find themselves transported five hundred years into the future into a place that’s beyond anything they could have imagined. So what is an explorer and colonizer to do in 2020s Philippines? Why, become a content creator, of course! In this Interview episo...

The island of Balangingi stands halfway between Borneo and Mindanao. Surrounding Balangingi were sharp reefs and surging cross-currents that would be lethal to any boatman… except for the Balangingi Samal, of course. Surrounding the main landmass were little islets that would wink in and out with the tides. On the coast were thick snarls of mangrove; in the parched interior were swaying groves of...

At seven o’clock on the dot, a high-pitched Japanese voice blared out from speakers and switched-on radios all across the archipelago. The program came on like clockwork, chirping in immediately after every station signed on for the day—a cheery signal of a brand-new day under Imperial rule.  In wartime Philippines, Rajio Taisō was everywhere—schools, private companies, government offices, militar...

You pass by them every day: plaques of metal set onto walls and plinths, heavy with text and history. You may have wondered—how do you maintain these historical markers? A group of students in the University of the Philippines Diliman wondered the same thing. So, for their required NSTP initiative, they formed Project Panandito, a student-led project that, during the sweltering summer months of 20...

Yes, Edison as in Thomas Edison, the light bulb guy. At the turn of his century, the tech wizard of Menlo Park produced thousands of movies as a showcase for his company’s vitascopes. Among those movies are five films about the Philippine-American War, produced in a flurry all throughout June of 1899.  It turns out that the boom of cinema dovetailed neatly with America’s growing imperial ambitions...

When you pulled up to the dock, they were there waiting for you, those holy men of God. But beyond inspecting ships that docked in the ports of Manila and Cavite for blasphemers and banned items, the Inquisition in the Philippines also investigated Protestants. Jews. Masons. Muslims. Non-Catholic Christian sects, like Armenian Christians or Jansenists. Its investigators monitored cases of heresy,...

What kind of city was waiting for Dutch scholar Gerret Pieter Rouffaer when he got to Manila? After more than a decade of occupation, the Americans had given the colonial capital some thorough nips and tucks. Aside from the glimmering roads and shady plazas, the Americans also laid down more tramways. Trams were already up and running during the latter part of the Spanish occupation, but in 1905,...

“There’s a message to it: It’s our responsibility to keep Filipino food popular!” At the launch for her book What Recipes Don’t Tell: Philippine Food History in Fifty Words, author and historian Felice Prudente Sta. Maria talked to a rapt audience at the Philippine Book Festival about a long career of writing about food. What new things can food tell us about our own history? How did we adapt tech...

Sourness, according to Doreen Fernandez, “is a favored Philippine flavor.” Just how sour is sour? “Sour enough to savor, to make the lips pucker and the eyes squint slightly, and yet not too sour—just at the point of perfection.” In the spectrum of sensation, sourness can be both sharp and sudden, an acetic shudder down the spine. Asim, the Tagalogs call it. From the earliest written records about...

Before we start Season 8, I have an important announcement about this little podcast. For more info, check out this Instagram post .

“What does it take for a culture that has caused a lot of pain and suffering to have any chance at redemption… or any sense of justice?” Tom Sykes’ riotous new book—a collision of a neon-powered 1980s Manila and a disaster-stricken barangay in the 1570s—attempts to answer the question… with many seedy side quests in between. How did he attempt to write his wild, genre-bending vision of the Philipp...

What a folk game can tell us about how a datu waged war. An interview with Micah Perez of the UP Diliman Department of History. The Colonial Dept. Interview is a bonus show where I talk to researchers and authors shining a light on our past. Know a historian or author I should talk to? Email me at thecolonialdept@gmail.com. Thumbnail image: Usernameko/Wikimedia Commons

Ever since its founding in the 1860s, the Manila Observatory had stood watch against the typhoons and hurricanes that threatened to strike the Philippines. But decades later, they were unprepared for a different kind of approaching storm: the Second World War! Cover photo from the Illustrated London News. Additional audio from British Pathe. Follow us on IG: @thecolonialdept Follow us on TikTok: @...

In the late 1500s, sultans, kings, and outlaws alike all wanted a little slice of Manila. And over two turbulent decades, everyone from faraway Spain to neighboring Brunei asserted their claims over the rajahs and datus that lived there. This is the turbulent origin story of the city that we know today. Follow us on IG: @thecolonialdept Follow us on TikTok: @thecolonialdept Email us: thecolonialde...

The nineteenth century—steamships, family names, world trade, foreign firms, liberal ideas. Great tides of change are roiling Manila. In the middle of the chaos, a new art trend captures the imagination of local elites. How are these letras y figuras holding a mirror to Philippine society? Cover Photo from the Ayala Corporation Collection. Follow us on IG: @thecolonialdept Follow us on TikTok: @th...

It was the Great War, the War to End All the Wars… and Philippine abaca merchants were raking in sky-high profits. The world’s most powerful navies relied on this plant—which is native to the Philippines—to keep their warships in battle-ready shape. But what the First World War giveth, the First World War also taketh away. Follow us on IG: @thecolonialdept Follow us on TikTok: @thecolonialdept Ema...