Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/399

Foreman : The Philippine Islands 389 said, even at this late date, of Foreman's version of Philippine history under the Spanish regime. No real revision of the chapters taken from the previous edition has been made. Practically all the errors of com- mission and grave sins of omission still stand. Moreover, the author has given us merely a disconnected array of data with no logical corre- lation. He has had access to none of the contemporary sources for early Spanish-Philippine history, and, strangely for a " Philippine authority ", has disregarded entirely the material for the history of the Spanish regime made available since 1898, notably the Blair and Robertson series. Perhaps the best exhibition of his utter lack of preparation is his fourth ■ chapter. For one thing, a writer who passes sweeping judgments on Spain should know more about Spain's colonial organization and its his- tory than does Mr. Foreman. He gives a disjointed and incomplete account of the quarrels between the Spanish civil and ecclesiastical au- thorities, but neither here nor in his later fragmentary discussion of the religious orders does he touch the really vital questions underlying such conflicts, above all, the episcopal visitation of friar-parishes and the secularization of the parishes. These are matters fundamental to any comprehensive grasp of Philippine history in either the earlier or the <:losing period of Spanish rule. There is, for example, not even a men- tion of Archbishop Santa Justa y Rufina and his attempt to secularize the parishes about 1775; the few friar-sources from which Foreman drew chose to ignore or distort this important episode. Foreman's churlish treatment of Anda, one of the great figures of Spanish history in the Philippines, doubtless has this same origin; moreover, his anti-Spanish bias comes out most strongly in his sadly garbled version of the British occupation of Manila and Anda's resistance. Other sections especially imperfect and incomplete are those about the Filipino revolts from the seventeenth century onward, the Chinese in the Philippines, Spain's relations with the Moros, education under the old regime, and "ethno- logy" — save the mark; there is no more arrant nonsense in the book than the ascribing of a Japanese origin to Igorots and Tagalogs. The chapters (xiii.-xv.) on trade and commerce, revenue and fiscal matters, Spanish administration, etc., contain much useful information not readily available elsewhere in the English language; but they also contain much misinformation, and worst of all are the vital omissions. The Philip- pine budget of 1888 and other data as to the central and local govern- ments were published in the 1890 edition, and no later information is here given, though changes of many sorts were made before 1898. Like all other writers who have discussed recent Philippine budgets, Foreman does not show that the figures published are only for the central govern- ment, and net, while the actual ta.x-burden was always from thirty-five to fifty per cent, greater. As to the somewhat revised story of 1896-1898, its account of the " Treaty of Biak-na-bato ", which has been most often quoted in support •of erroneous statements in the United States, has received some addi-