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Nature, colonial science and nation-building in twentieth-century Philippines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2021

Ruel V. Pagunsan
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Abstract

This article examines colonial nature-making in twentieth century Philippines. It particularly looks into natural history investigations of the American-instituted Bureau of Science and the ways in which it created a discursive authority for understanding the Philippine natural environment. These biological investigations, the article argues, did not only structure the imperial construction of the colony's nature, but also provided a blueprint for imagining notions of national integration and identity. The article interrogates the link between colonial scientific projects and nation-building initiatives, emphasising the scripting of the archipelago's nature and the creation of a national science through biological spaces.

Type
Review Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , December 2020 , pp. 561 - 578
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Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore, 2021

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Footnotes

This article is a revised version of a paper presented at ‘Southeast Asian Natures: Environmentalism and the Anthropocene in Southeast Asia’, University of California Riverside, 13 Mar. 2018. My gratitude to the workshop organisers, particularly David Biggs, Christina Schwenkel and Hendrik Maier, and to co-participants for their insights, references and help. I also wish to thank the JSEAS editors and reviewers for comments and suggestions. The archival and library research for this article was conducted during my PhD research; I wish to thank the Department of History, National University of Singapore, for its support. Finally, I am grateful to the University of the Philippines for assistance and making it possible for me to attend the workshop.

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30 Alvin Cox, Eleventh annual report of the Bureau of Science to the Honorable the Secretary of Interior for the year ending August 1, 1912 (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1913), p. 10.

31 Philippine Commission, ‘Act No. 2590: An Act for the Protection of Game and Fish’, 4 Feb. 1916.

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35 Berny Seby, ‘Exhibiting the empire in print: The press, the publishing world and the promotion of “Greater Britain”’, in Exhibiting the empire: Cultures of display and the British Empire, ed. John McAleer and John Mackenzie (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), p. 186.

36 Official Handbook: Description of the Philippine Islands, compiled by the Bureau of Insular Affairs, War Department, Washington D.C. (Manila: Public Printing Office, 1903).

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38 See Thongchai Winichakul, Siam mapped: A history of a geo-body of a nation (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1994).

39 Despite the relatively abundant Spanish contributions, American naturalists found them incomplete and taxonomically inaccurate. Manuel Blanco's Flora de Filipinas, the most important contribution to Philippine botany in the 19th century, was deemed ‘absolutely inadequate’, ‘obsolete in arrangement’, and featured only ‘less than one-eighth of the species now known to occur in the archipelago’. Alvin Cox, Fourteenth annual report of the Director of the Bureau of Science the Philippine Islands to the Honorable the Secretary of the Interior for the year ending December 31, 1915 (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1917), p. 56; Frederick Coville, Memorandum for Charles D. Walcott, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 10 Nov. 1915, RU 192, Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA), Washington, DC.

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48 Ibid. The breakdown was as follows: $3,800–payment for botanist; $1,400–payment for clerk; $800–payment for illustrations; and $1,500–for freight, travel and miscellaneous expenses.

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53 The Spanish colonial government established the Manila Botanical Garden in September 1858. It only gained recognition in the 1870s–‘80s during the administrations of Domingo Vidal, and later his brother, Sebastian Vidal. Both introduced various ‘exotic’ floral species and significantly increased its native plant collections. For a brief history of the Garden, see Merrill, Elmer, Botanical work in the Philippines (Manila: Bureau of Public Printing, 1903), pp. 30–33Google Scholar.

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