Asian Place, Filipino Nation: A Global Intellectual History of the Philippine Revolution, 1887–1912 by Nicole Cuunjieng Aboitiz

Abstract

Reviewed by: Asian Place, Filipino Nation: A Global Intellectual History of the Philippine Revolution, 1887–1912 by Nicole Cuunjieng Aboitiz Sven Matthiessen NICOLE CUUNJIENG ABOITIZ Asian Place, Filipino Nation: A Global Intellectual History of the Philippine Revolution, 1887–1912 New York: Columbia University Press, 2020. 272 pages. Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz contextualizes the Filipinos' struggle for independence in the Philippine Revolution, initially against the Spanish and subsequently the American colonial rulers, in relation to the independence movements throughout Southeast Asia. In doing so, her book, Asian Place, Filipino Nation: A Global Intellectual History of the Philippine Revolution, 1887–1912, connects this decisive moment in Philippine history with the history of the entire region and thus closes a gap in the historical perspective of the Philippines and Southeast Asia. The author is research fellow at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, as well as executive director of the Toynbee Prize Foundation. Her main research interest lies in the intellectual and transnational history of Southeast Asia, having earned a PhD in Southeast Asian and international history at Yale University. Overall, Aboitiz succeeds in embedding Filipino nationalism in a superordinate Pan-Asian context, thereby refuting to a certain extent the thesis, which is widespread in research, that Filipino nationalism should be viewed largely in isolation from Asia. Aboitiz argues that Philippine Pan-Asianism has to be distinguished from that in Japan due to the colonial perspective of the former. Furthermore, she offers a new perspective on [End Page 505] the Philippine Revolution, taking into account the Pan-Asianist motifs that played a role in its instigation. The book is divided into five chapters. The first chapter deals with the genesis of the conceptualization of Southeast Asia as a region. Chapter 2 then provides a history of the origins of the concepts of Asia and the Malay race, as well as the influence of early Pan-Asianism on the development of a Filipino nation. The third chapter focuses on the Philippine Revolution and its interaction with other Asian independence movements such as the Vietnamese Dông Du movement. In chapter 4, Mariano Ponce is introduced as a representative of the Philippine Revolution, who, in addition to the goal of independence for his country, also pursued Pan-Asianist ideals. Finally, the last chapter examines the consequences and aftermath of the Philippine Revolution for the Philippines and Asia as a whole. Pio Duran and Benigno Ramos are presented as staunch Pan-Asianists who saw Japan as the hegemonic power for the liberation of Asia. Despite Aboitiz's overall convincing argumentation, I have two points of criticism. A central argument in her book is "that one must distinguish the Pan-Asianism flowing from within the uncolonized world, centered on Japan, from that flowing from the still-colonized world, such as the Philippines under Spanish rule and the Vietnamese in French Indochina" (98). In this respect, the Filipino Pan-Asianists have to be viewed differently from their Japanese counterparts due to their colonial perspective, since their priority was the achievement of independence. This assertion seems doubtful to me insofar as the Japanese Pan-Asianists also developed their ideology from the perspective of the oppressed, or at least those treated unfairly. Japan was not a colony when Pan-Asianism developed there. However, the unequal treaties imposed on Japan first by the US and then also by Russia, France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands at the end of the feudal period in the middle of the nineteenth century and the unequal treatment the Japanese received in relation to the other victorious Western powers after the First World War were still, I would argue, in the collective memory of the Japanese. In this respect, I would not make this clear distinction between the Pan-Asianism that developed in the Philippines and in Japan. In both cases there was an interaction between Pan-Asianism and nationalism in the period from the Philippine Revolution to the Second World War. Likewise, there were nationalists in both Japan and the Philippines who used Pan-Asianism as a vehicle for their nationalism. Aboitiz further explains that "during this [End Page 506] colonial era in Southeast Asia essentially no activist political thinker was untouched by priorities of self-determination...