I'm a fan of James Burke's approach to writing history. He traces connections among events, people, places and objects in the past. The connections are not always causal, they could be associations or you could say coincidences.
This is the first time that I would try using this connectionist historical perspective in writing a historical essay. I am going to look at the weak connections that link the Philippine Revolution of 1896-1898 with the technological discoveries of that century. This link is rarely discussed in traditional Philippine history books that focused on politics.
The revolution was led by the Kataastaasang Kagalanggalangang Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan (Katipunan) in 1896. The Katipunan is a secret society whose organization is patterned after the freemasons. Its primary objective was to establish an independent Philippine state which they referred to as Haring Bayang Katagalugan. That is, independent from the Spanish Empire that colonized the country beginning 1565. The Katipunan was established in 1892 and was led by Andres Bonifacio until 1897. Bonifacio (1863-1897) at the age of 29 helped organize the society from a handful of individual to thousands by the start of fighting. They were able to keep this organization secret for four years in a repressive regime which had a network constantly watching every move of the common Indios. That's what the Spaniards called the natives of the land--Indios. At the age of 34 Bonifacio led the people to arms against the colonizers but suffered a series of military setbacks. Bonifacio like most of his Indio generation never had any military training, never revolted before, and never handled a Mauser in his life. What he did have, was a lot of books about a revolution. In particular one that took place 100 years ago in France. He read the history of the French Revolution.
During the French Revolution (1789-1799) the French tried to do away with the monarchy and replace it with a republic. They did this by cutting off their king and queen's heads with a brand new invention; a humane execution machine called the guillotine. The unfortunate king and queen were Louis the 16th and Marie Antoinette. The republic was then led by a committee of citizens, dominated by Citizen Robespierre. No sooner were they in power that they had more people guillotined. Not only the royalists, anybody accused of being enemies of the revolution including ordinary people and even among the leaders of the revolution. Merely speaking against Robespierre was considered treason and would likely make him/her a candidate for beheading. Of course not everyone was happy with the revolution specially a former member of the royal French navy named Marc Isambard Brunel, a royalist. He even publicly predicted the death of Robespierre, which of course came to pass. But Marc Brunel had to run for his life, and he ran off to the United States of America. He left his sweetheart, a British maiden named Sophia Kingdom who was in turn threatened to be guillotined.
Marc Brunel happened to be a brilliant engineer. Thanks partly to French education and drawings. Technical drawing was now an accepted way of planning or simulating a design of architectural and engineering works in France and was part of technically minded people's education. While in the US he chanced upon a contract to mass produce pulley blocks for the British who needed it to run their ships; to fight the French led by Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonaparte replaced Citizen Robespierre who lost his head to the guillotine.
So Brunel went to the Great Britain where he found Sophia alive. They got married and had three children. The third child was a boy named Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Isambard Brunel grew up to be an even greater engineer than his father. He is well known for building things made of iron. He engineered the Great Western Railway in Britain. He designed a system of iron tracks and iron bridges, and tunnels to link the tracks. Of course he designed locomotives powered by steam to run on those tracks. At the end of those iron tracks he designed iron steamships. Bigger than anyone had seen these ocean going vessels saw its highest technical achievement in the S.S. Great Britain which combined the propeller, steam engines and iron ships. Before the steamship, ships were made of wood, and steam engines used paddle wheels on the side. The railway reduced travel time on land; and the steamships reduced travel time on water. Now the British could travel across the Atlantic comfortably drinking tea. But there is something Filipinos will find curious about how the British drink their tea. They put sugar in it. Britain did not produce tea or sugar. For sugar they sent their ships to their colonies in the West Indies that plant sugarcane. Sugarcane is difficult to grow and these colonies used slaves from Africa to grow them. But the British had a belated attack of conscience and decided to set all slaves free in 1833. It may be that the slaves no longer want to plant sugarcane, or that their former masters did not want to pay them salaries, or they have already exhausted the soil. The supply of sugar was threatened in Britain, so much so, that they had to find some other source of sugar, which is planted with free labor. That is, not slaves just treated like slaves.
They looked for it in the East Indies...the Philippines. So off their ships went to what to them is the Far East. This is not the first time; in 1762-1764 the British sent their ships from India to Manila and actually conquered it. But they gave it back to the Spaniards for some French colonies in India. The French and the Spaniards were allied against Britain if you want to know. That war was known as the Seven Years' War in Europe, the French and Indian War in the US, and the British Occupation of Manila in the Philippines. The British sent John Farren as consul to Manila in 1827 to encourage the development of the sugar industry in the country. Most likely they also brought the steam powered sugar mill that used the refining method invented by the British chemist Edward Charles Howard in 1813. Before the 1800s, sugar was being produced only in small quantities because the main crop of the islands was rice. Rice land in Southern Luzon and the Visayas were transformed to sugar land. And a new way to get rich was available for the foreigners and inhabitants of the islands. Before the development of the export crop economy only the Spaniards and the Chinese were able to get rich through the Galleon Trade (1565-1815). Now even Indios can benefit from what trickles down from the crop economy. As for Farren, he died in the Philippines and his body is buried in Manila Memorial Park at Paranaque.
The British did not only buy stuff from the Philippines they also sold stuff, particularly textile...cotton. Of course they did not plant cotton in Britain, they got it from the same place they got tea--India. This is probably the reason why they traded it for the Philippines in 1763. They brought their steam powered cotton gins (machine to separate cotton fiber from the seeds), spinning mules and power looms which they developed producing woolen textile from sheep in their home country. India became one of the biggest producers of cotton until today. But the British did not retail the cotton textile, they dropped it off to the Chinese, and it was known as Chinese cotton in the Philippines. So when you see pictures of common people in Philippines in the 1800s they're usually wearing katsa (cotton textile). The cotton gin was actually invented in another former colony of Great Britain, the United States of America. There it spurred the growth of cotton plantations in the Southern US states. Like sugarcane, cotton is difficult to grow and they used Black slaves. In the northern US immigrants from Europe were manning the looms. The US is one of the biggest producers of cotton along with India. But slavery was not accepted there and it divided the US. One woman from the northern US named Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) wrote a book against it entitled Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Eventually slavery became an issue during the time of Abraham Lincoln and it resulted in the American Civil War (1861-1865).
Stowe's book was read by an Indio in Europe. The Indio was inspired by it and he wrote Noli Me Tangere. While Jose Rizal was writing that novel in the winter of 1886 in Berlin, Germany he was broke. He can't pay his rent, and had to eat one meal a day. His poverty is partly because the prices of sugar went down. Huh? You see Rizal relied on an allowance he gets from his family in Calamba, Laguna in the Philippines. His family rented farm land from the Dominican Friars and planted among other things--sugarcane. You could say Rizal was able to study abroad, because the British likes their tea with sugar.
The British not only bought sugar from the Philippines but they also bought rope made from Abaca. They needed a lot of rope for ship rigging. Steamships then still had sails. That's because coal which was used as fuel for the steam engines was costly. The best place to plant abaca is in Bicol. Of course when they converted rice land to abaca plantation, or removed rice farmers to farm abaca, they needed to import rice. Every town that planted export crops like sugar cane and abaca had to import rice. That encouraged people to expand rice production in Central Luzon. So they needed to move tons of abaca to Manila's ports, and tons of rice to Bicol from Central Luzon. There were no highways then, and no diesel powered automobiles to move them. So the Spaniards decided to build a railroad from Central Luzon to Bicol going through Manila. But it seems the Spaniards did not have the technology to do that. They bid it out in 1887, and guess who won? The British of course. Remember Brunel and the Great Western Railway above. They had the technology. The Manila Railway Company, Ltd. (limited), which was incorporated in London, built the railway. Only part of it exists under the Philippine National Railways. Of course their trains ran on steam.
The Manila Railway Company built a station in Tutuban, Tondo and had to have another British firm demolish one of houses of the latter firm's employee. The British firm was Fleming and Company. The employee is Andres Bonifacio. Remember him? Bonifacio's work appears to be related to the railway. He even got his brothers Procopio and Ciriaco a job there. Ciriaco was a train conductor. They were born in Tutuban, Tondo.
In July 3, 1892, Sunday, Andres attended a meeting in Tondo, Manila. It was attended by a very famous Indio who travelled by steamship to and from other countries. The man whose family planted sugarcane in Laguna--Jose Rizal. The meeting was about the founding of La Liga Filipina. On July 6, Wednesday Rizal was arrested. July 7, 1892 everyone including Andres found out about his arrests in a newspaper. That night, a group of men including Andres founded the Katipunan. On July 14, 1892 Rizal boarded the steamboat Cebu and sent to Dapitan, Zamboanga. Four years later, on August 30, 1896 Andres will be leading an attack on a Spanish powder magazine in San Juan del Monte. Bonifacio will eventually find himself in Cavite on December 30, 1896 while Jose Rizal was being executed in Bagumbayan (Luneta). For the next decades, at the turn of the century the land will be at war. The 1800s was a world of steam, iron, and sugar...mixed with blood.
References
Agoncillo, T.A., & Guerrero, M.C. (1977). History of the Filipino People. Quezon City: R.P. Garcia.
Andres Bonifacio: His great life. Retrieved July 11, 2010, from http://www.funtrivia.com/trivia-quiz/World/Andres-Bonifacio-His-Great-Life-137730.html.
Brief history of PNR. Retrieved July 11, 2010, from http://www.pnr.gov.ph/history.htm.
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Mahoney, D.W. (n.d.). The British (Protestant) cemetery at San Pedro, Makati, Manila, Philippines. Retrieved July 11, 2010, from http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkjo/view/44/4401613.pdf.
Marc Isambard Brunel. (2010, June 2). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 23:46, July 10, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marc_Isambard_Brunel&oldid=365644069.
National Historical Commission of the Philippines. Procopio C. Bonifacio (1873-1897). Retrieved July 11, 2010, from http://www.nhi.gov.ph/index.php?id=200&option=com_content&task=view.
Overview of Philippine-British bilateral relations. Retrieved July 11, 2010, from http://www.philembassy-uk.org/rpRelations_RPUK.html.
Slavery in the British and French Caribbean. (2010, June 18). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 22:06, July 15, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Slavery_in_the_British_and_French_Caribbean&oldid=368838144.
SS Great Britain. (2010, July 10). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 23:50, July 10, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=SS_Great_Britain&oldid=372667917.
Zaide, G.F., & Zaide, S.M. (1984). Jose Rizal: Life, works and writings of a genius, writer, scientist, and national hero. Metro Manila: National Book Store.
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