The Colonial Department

According to historian Linda Newson, Bicol did not bow down easily to the Spanish occupation. For their resistance, they paid a dear price. Population showed Camarines lost almost half of its population from 1591 to...

Writing in June 1889, the Manila-based correspondent for La Solidaridad listed down the calamities afflicting the archipelago: cholera, fires, earthquakes, and economic ruin. In those days, even the sky seemed to be on...

Just the thought of commuting around Manila is enough to set one’s teeth on edge. But do our current-day problems of congestion and overcrowding have their roots in decisions and policies made a century ago? There’s no...

In the long journeys from Manila to Acapulco, disease was the clingy passenger no one wanted around. But it wandered around the decks, knocked on every cabin, stalked everyone on board—until one day, you woke up, and...

The word Bukidnon means “people of the mountains”, but historian Ronald K. Edgerton also gives another name for them: the people of the middle ground. As he writes in his book of the same name, “Many Bukidnons mastered...

In the offbeat manga Ferdie! , Ferdinand Magellan and Antonio Pigafetta are caught up in a storm right before they arrive in the Philippines…and find themselves transported five hundred years into the future into a...

The island of Balangingi stands halfway between Borneo and Mindanao. Surrounding Balangingi were sharp reefs and surging cross-currents that would be lethal to any boatman… except for the Balangingi Samal, of course...

At seven o’clock on the dot, a high-pitched Japanese voice blared out from speakers and switched-on radios all across the archipelago. The program came on like clockwork, chirping in immediately after every station...

You pass by them every day: plaques of metal set onto walls and plinths, heavy with text and history. You may have wondered—how do you maintain these historical markers? A group of students in the University of the...

Yes, Edison as in Thomas Edison, the light bulb guy. At the turn of his century, the tech wizard of Menlo Park produced thousands of movies as a showcase for his company’s vitascopes. Among those movies are five films...

When you pulled up to the dock, they were there waiting for you, those holy men of God. But beyond inspecting ships that docked in the ports of Manila and Cavite for blasphemers and banned items, the Inquisition in the...

What kind of city was waiting for Dutch scholar Gerret Pieter Rouffaer when he got to Manila? After more than a decade of occupation, the Americans had given the colonial capital some thorough nips and tucks. Aside from...

“There’s a message to it: It’s our responsibility to keep Filipino food popular!” At the launch for her book What Recipes Don’t Tell: Philippine Food History in Fifty Words, author and historian Felice Prudente Sta...

Sourness, according to Doreen Fernandez, “is a favored Philippine flavor.” Just how sour is sour? “Sour enough to savor, to make the lips pucker and the eyes squint slightly, and yet not too sour—just at the point of...

Before we start Season 8, I have an important announcement about this little podcast. For more info, check out this Instagram post .