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Antonio De Morga and his Sucesos De Las Islas Filipinas
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 August 2009
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The value of Antonio de Morga's Sucesos de las Islas has long been recognised. A first-hand account of the early Spanish colonial venture into Asia, it was published in Mexico in 1609 and has since been re-edited on a number of occasions. It attracted the attention of the Hakluyt Society in 1851, although the edition prepared for the Society by H. E. J. Stanley was not published until 1868. Morga's work is based on personal experiences, or on documentation from eye-witnesses of the events described. Moreover, as he tells us himself, survivors from Legazpi's expedition were still alive while he was preparing his book in Manila, and these too he could consult. As a lawyer, it is obvious that he would hardly fail to seek such evidence. The Sucesos is the work of an honest observer, himself a major actor in the drama of his time, a versatile bureaucrat, who knew the workings of the administration from the inside.It is also the first history of the Spanish Philippines to be written by a layman, as opposed to the religious chroniclers. Morga's book was praised, quoted, and plagiarized, by contemporaries or successors. Filipinos have found it a useful account of the state of their native culture upon the coming of the conquistadors; Spaniards have regarded it as a work to admire or condemn, according to their views and the context of their times; some other Europeans, such as Stanley, found it full of lessons and examples.
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- Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1969
References
1. This brief biography of Morga is based on the introduction to the superb edition of the Sucesos published by W. E. Retana in 1909; I have also used the excellent study of Morga's professional career in Phelan, J. L.'s Kingdom of Quito (Wisconsin, 1967).Google Scholar
2. She came from Uceda and was connected with powerful Sandoval family.
3. Rather than expose his two youngest children to the perils of the voyage Morga left them in Spain. Two others died before he reached Manila.
4. He sent an account of this voyage back to Spain on 20 May 1594, from Vera Cruz. (y Lanzas, P. Torres and Nayas, F., Calálogo de los documentos relativos a las islas Filipinos, III (Barcelona, 1928), 99).Google Scholar
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7. Retana, 51*, 52*, 56*, 69*, 86*, 241; Torres-Navas, , IV, 120Google Scholar. Mania was considered an undesirable posting owing to the heat (Phelan, , Quito, 136)Google Scholar; complaints about the effect of the climate on character are typified by a later Augustinian writer who describes a fellow-friar as ‘always good-humoured, which is miraculous in this sad land’; ‘in this warm climate all talent droops and decays’; ‘this limbo … this purgatory, this bottomless well …’ (de Castro, A.M., Osario venerable, ed. Merino, M., OSA., (Madrid, 1954), 59, 81, 115, 259, 279, 404, 424)Google Scholar. A Dominican brother describes a colleague's love of penance; he ‘showed no longing to return to Spain, a rare thing indeed here’.
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17. Later, there was talk of sabotage during these preparations ‘two holes were bored in one of the ships one night, and it began to sink, and the sails were taken out and hidden in the woods. It was not discovered who did it nor was any investigation ever made.’ (Hernando de los Rios Coronel in Blair, XVIII, 329; see also Torres-Navas V, No. 7870).
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24. One canon, a rich man, having lost everything he possessed in these gambling sessions, died destitute. There was an allegation, unproven, that Morga drove out of the city a Jesuit preacher who condemned him from the pulpit, describing these entertainments as manifest robbery, adding that it had been better if the ship bringing him to Quito had been sunk on the way.
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26. Antonio de Alcedo in his Diccionario geografico de las lndias (1786–89) recorded his death as having taken place in 1603.
27. The original title of the manuscript was ‘Descubrimiento, conquista, pacification y poplacion de las Islas Philipinas’ (Retana, 172*. quoting an eighteenth-century source).
28. Green, O. H., Spain and the Western Tradition, III (Madison, 1965), 31Google Scholar; See also the ‘Prologo’ and ‘Discurse apologetico’ of the brothers Pinelo in the Epitome de la biblioteca oriental i occidental (Madrid, 1629).Google Scholar
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31. Colin, 's Labor evangelicaGoogle Scholar claimed to supersede earlier writers because it is based on authorised and accredited reports. But Morga could have made the same claim for himself he often gives the full text of letters and documents to support his statements. (Colin, F., Labor evangelica de … la Compania de Jesus en … Filipinos, ed. Pastells, P. SJ., (Barcelona, 1904), three vols.).Google Scholar
32. Quoted in de la Costa, H. SJ., The Jesuits in the Philippines (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), 349.Google Scholar
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36. Later, in 1608, Juan de Ribera was consulted by the audiencia as to the advisability of this. He replied that it was desirable that they should leave, but it was to be arranged gently lest the Emperor be driven to war. Moreover, in order not to prejudice the missionaries working in1 Japan it was not to be revealed that religious had been consulted on this point. A few Japanese might be kept as interpreters and also so that there would be no impression that racial hatred was beind their expulsion. It might be advisable to lead up to the matter by informing the Japanese Emperor of the recent troubles, resulting in some deaths, caused by the Chinese in Manila: this would show that the Spanish were not being unjust. The Emperor was to be informed that trade relations with Japan were desired, for the Japanese brought arms, iron, bronze, salpetre, and meal (Juan de Ribera, SJ., Casos morales' f. 149.r, MS in archive of San Cugat college, Barcelona).
37. Quoted in Purchas his Pilgrimes, I, Bk. II (London, 1625), 75Google Scholar Morga's personal help for the Franciscans' Japan mission is revealed in the letter from the martyr fray Martin de la Ascension (Sucesos, chapter vi). This interest, continued and among his goods when he died was a statute of ‘san Antonio, a martyr in Japan’ (Retana, 161*).
38. Merga's enemies made an attempt to blame him for the rising (Retana, 11*-15). Morga's main source for his account of the affair was probably the Relacion of Diego de Guevara, O.E.S.A.; see Lorenzo Perez, OFM., in Archive Iberoamericano, XXá. (1926), 147Google Scholar. There is a discussion of the moral scruples aroused in some Spaniards by the killing and pillaging in 1603 in Diego de Bobadilla, SJ., ‘Casos morales resueltos’, ff. 15Ov.-15r., MS in archives of San Cugat College, Barcelona.
39. Quoted in Quinn, D. B., The Roanoke Voyages, 1684–1590, II (London, Hakluyt Society, 1955), 514.Google Scholar
40. Blair, , XII, 176.Google Scholar
41. Breve relation, ed. Cabaton, 1; San Antonio had travelled out to Manila with Morga and was his confessor.
42. Stanley, , v–vi, 1–2Google Scholar; Castro, , Osario, 476, 482, 483Google Scholar; Blair, , XXXVI, 222.Google Scholar
43. Boxer, C. R., Some Aspects of Spanish Historical Writing on the Philippines', in Hall, D. G. E., ed., Historians of South East Asia (London, 1961), 201–3Google Scholar. Robertson, J. A., ‘Bibliography of Early Spanish Relations’, Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, XLIII, Pt. 1 (1915), 64–5.Google Scholar
44. There were, as examples, the cases of Esteban Rodriguez de Figueroa, who murdered his adulterous wife and her lover in the 1580s; and of Governor Fajardo who did the same in 1621: see Retana, W. E., Archivo del bibliofilo filipino, IV (Madrid, 1898), 367–446.Google Scholar
45. See Cline, Howard F., The Relaciones geograficas of the Spanish Indies, 1577–86’ in Hispanic American Historical Review, 44 (1964), 841–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
46. Phelan, J. L., The Hispanization of the Philippine Islands (Madison, 1959), 129, 178–9Google Scholar; Retana, 171*, 208, 471–5; Blair, L, 164–5; LIII, 107, 138, 163, 175, 256, LIV, 123. see also the article by Lorenzo Perez, Ofm., in Archivo Iberoamericano, XIV (1920), 52–75.Google Scholar
47. Torres-Navas, , II, 139Google Scholar, Item No. 3107; III, 83, Item No. 4154; 91, Item No. 4229; 114, Item No. 4437; and Lorenzo Perez, OFM., ‘Un Codice desconocido, relative a las islas Filipinas’, Erudition Ibero-ultarmarina, Ano IV, nums. 15–16 (1933), 502–529; Ano V, Num. 17 (1934), 76–108.Google Scholar
48. Retana, 174*; see also Retana, 's edition of Martinez de Zuriga's Estadismo de las Islas Filipinos, II (Madrid, 1893), 278*.Google Scholar
49. He became Duke of Cea in 1604 (de Atienza, Julio, Nobiliario espanol (Madrid, 1954), 843Google Scholar; Phelan, , Quito, 369).Google Scholar