Philippine History Trivia

PHILIPPINE HISTORY TRIVIA :
Victorino P. Mapa

History labels Ferdinand Magellan as ”The Great Circumnavigator” The title suggests that he was the first to circle the globe. He wasn.t. A Filipino did. Ten years before his epic trip Magellan was an officer in the Portuguese army based in Malacca. He went shopping and both himself a slave that he named Enrique, origin unknown, Ferdinand took him back to Portugal. Fast-forward: Magellan tries to sell the idea of going west to travel east, falls out of favor with the king of Portugal, goes to Spain and succeeds in selling the world cruise to the Spanish kings. Enrique sails with Magellan and when the expedition discovers the Philippines for the Western world Enrique is the first to splash down to embrace the natives like long-lost relatives and happily talks to them nonstop. He is home, thus becoming the first human to circumnavigate the world. Magellan did not finish his voyage. He got killed a few weeks later at the island of Mactan. By the way, neither he nor Columbus had to convince the kings that the world was round, not flat. Aristotle already did, two thousand years earlier. Washington Irving fictionalized the tale in 1828 when he wrote a a best selling book. A chapter describes Columbus trtying to convince scholars that the world was round, not flat. The world already knew it during their time.
The Spanish-American war was the shortest in American history. In the span of five months, from April 25 to August 12, 1898 she chased the Spanish out of Cuba and destroyed the Spanish fleet in Manila The loser got the better of the victor. . Spain sold the Philippines to the United States for the amount of 20 million US dollars in the Treaty of Paris when it was no longer hers to sell. At the time General Aguinaldo had already beaten the Spanish Army, Manila was surrounded by his troops and the Philippines was proclaiming a new government. It was like having a fire sale while the store was burning and having someone dumb enough to buy it. America forgot to ask the Filipinos whether it was alright to buy them. What resulted was two more years of war that American history insists on calling an “insurrection>” The United States lost more men in the Philippine-American conflict than they did in the Spanish-American war and the Vietnam war. combined. It was also the first time America tried to win the hearts and minds of a people through the point of a gun.Fortunately for the Philippines America had different ideas of colonization as practiced by the European powers. By creating the Commonwealth of the Philippines and tutoring the Filipinos to eventual self-rule America ushered the end of colonialism in Asia and elsewhere.
Our national hero Dr Jose Rizal could have died wearing the uniform of the Spanish army. From his exile in Dapitan, Mindanao he volunteered to serve as a surgeon in the Spanish army A revolt broke out in the Philippines. He was well on his way to Cuba when the friars stepped in.. They determined he should be tried and punished for his seditious acts in writing and exposing the venalities of the friars and falsely implicated him to the uprising. .Rizal was placed under arrest in Barcelona , sent back to the Philippines and was tried and executed at Bagumbayan Field. It was the red flag that inflamed the entire nation. The rest is history.
History books write stirring tales of Filipino-American troops gallant last stand at Bataan during World War II and very rightly so.it. What few people know is that Bataan’s fate was sealed long before even the clouds of war appeared. American planners had already concluded that the Philippines could not be defended in case of a war against Japan. They estimated that the Japanese could overwhelm its defenses long before the United States fleet could reach the scene. In the 1920s American strategists therefore, promulgated War Plan Orange 3 which called for the US armed forces to retreat to Bataan in case of hostilities and to hold out for as long as they can and to expect no help whatsoever. General Douglas MacArthur was Chief of Staff of the US Army in the 30s. It is certain he was well-aware of the Orange Plan.This was not disclosed to the troops even after World War II. Incidentally, only a fourth of the 80,000 defenders of Bataan were American troops. The rest were Filipinos.Casualties were the same ratio. For every American who died four Filipinos did too.