In my blogs about the history of hometown, I have shared stories about the old black-and-white photographs from our family's collection. Digging into the stories and researching about the faces in the photographs were always rewarding, satisfying, and most of all, fun. I do this because history and stories about our past are meant to be shared, especially with the younger and future generations. And in doing this, what I discovered in the past years of researching and writing about my discoveries has always remained true: black-and-white photographs always tell the most colorful stories.
In this post to commemorate the 2024 Philippine Independence Day, I am sharing another historical artifact: my own 1744 Murillo Velarde map.
The 1744 Murillo Velarde map is the reduction of the 1734 map of Padre Pedro Murillo Velarde, a Jesuit friar, scholar and cartographer. This means that the 1744 map is a smaller version as it does not include the 12 illustrations that accompanied the original 1734 map.
The story about the 1734 Murillo Velarde map is a fascinating part of Philippine history.
Padre Pedro Murillo Velarde was a priest and a very learned person. He was an authority on many matters during his stay in Las Filipinas, and was an author of the Jesuit history in the Philippines. So, when King Philip (Felipe) V of Spain, who reigned from 1700 to 1746, ordered Fernando Valdes Tamon, the governor-general in Las Filipinas from 1729 to 1739, to provide him a map of his property in the east, Padre Pedro Murillo Velarde was tasked to do the project.
King Philip ordered a detailed map to be made because he must have wanted to see for himself how his archipelago, located in another part of the world, looked like. During the Spanish colonial period, the Spanish decrees followed the feudal theory that it was the monarcy that owned all of the land. That is the regalian doctrine. Felipe V owned all the islands, although I am not sure whether he knew then that they all numbered more than seven thousand, high tide or low tide.
Two indios, Francisco Suarez and Nicolas de la Cruz Bagay, helped in the creation of the map. Suarez drew the fascinating illustrations (and probably the images featured in the map itself) on both sides of the map while Bagay, a Tagalog who was in the employ of the Jesuits, engraved the map on the copperplates. Nicolas Bagay also helped in the printing of Jesuit books until his death. The 'project' took them about a year to complete and the finished product, officially named "Carta hydrographica y chronographica de las Islas Filipinas", was the most comprehensive and accurate, compared to what was already done at that time. It was called the first scientific map of the Philippines, naming 900 towns, regions and places, which to me, is already impressive; although I have not yet counted all the names in my map, not that I have any plan to.
Unfortunately for us, in 1762, the British attached Manila which caught the Spanish authorities by surprise. The attack happened on September 23 and the British finally captured Manila on October 6, 1762. Historians wrote that residents in Manila were either raped, tortured and killed, and offices and homes looted. Part of the loot was the eight copper plates of the 1734 Murillo Velarde map. The British commander, Brigadier General William Draper brought these plates to England and donated them to Cambridge University, his alma mater. The University then printed a few copies of the map, one of which ended up in the hands of the Duke of Northumberland who kept it at his Ainwick (pronounced an-nik) Castle. Those copper plates were later melted by the British to make their own charts. The engraving work of Nicolas Bagay of the map of Padre Pedro and the drawings of Francis Suarez disappeared forever.
That copy of the map kept by the Duke of Northumberland came into light when the current and 12th Duke decided to sell some treasures in his valuable collection to fund the repair of the drainage system in his land. The Duke auctioned off at Sotheby's about 80 art objects, and the 1734 Murillo Velarde map was labelled by the auction house as Lot #183. And in a successful bid over the phone, entrepreneur Mr. Mel Velarde bought it for an equivalent of almost Php 13 million. After more than 200 years, Mr. Velarde brought back the map to the beautiful island that are drawn on it.
(Galit, Panacot and Lumbay shoals)
This map became part of the evidence furnished by the Philippine government when it filed in 2013 a complaint against that invader at the arbitrary tribunal that was constituted under the United Nationals Convention on the Law of the Sea. The tribunal ruled in favor of the Philippines in July 2016. I realized that even from centuries past, Padre Pedro, Nicolas and Francisco helped us in this symbolic win against today's invaders. Then, in the early 1700s, they might not have realized that their drawings and the names of the shoals Galit, Panacot and Lumbay - the ones near Zambales in Luzon, and the three groups of dots representing the Kalayaan Island Group, or the Spratlys, which they called Los Bajos de Paragua (Paragua was the old name of Palawan) in 1734 were of tremendous help in our fight for our sovereignty in the early 21st century. 'Panacot' is Scarborough Shoal, named after a trading ship, SS Scarborough, that was shipwrecked in that area in 1748. These shoals were called by the Spaniards Bajo de Masinloc because they were nearest (about 240 kilometers) to the town of Masinloc in Zambales. The invader claims that it is theirs because it is within the several lines that they drew on the South China Sea with their greedy imagination.
As I stare at the map, I wonder: how many other Spaniards and indios contributed to this map that is now known as "the mother of all Philippine maps"?
(Negros island of 1734)
According to the article of Mr. Jorge R. Mojarro, Padre Pedro gathered all existing maps, charts, and any geographical information available at that time and studied them to come up with his 1734 comprehensive version. And all those maps of the archipelago that he used as references must have been prepared by other Spaniards and indios who lived in that specific region or island. This made me ask, was the person or persons who mapped out our Negros island totally surprised when the map they finally drew of the Negros island was shaped like a foot? In the first place, did some cartographer from Europe taught them how to map out an island? I wonder how they accurately drew the curves of the coastlines or the ridges of the land. Did they travel by boat around an island until they reached the point of their origin? Did they venture into the forests and encountered wild animals and huge snakes until they came close to the foot of Mount Kanlaon or Mount Mayon? In the map, both are drawn properly, by the way. It was easy for one to overlook the effort and time, and probably lives lost as well, that were spent to create this. But rather than just staring at it, I am in awe of those hands from centuries past who created what Mr. Mel Velarde calls "the map being the one true land title of every Filipino".
But as we again celebrate our Independence Day, we ask ourselves: are we really independent? Have we gotten rid our country of colonizers and invaders who, like the attack in 1762, are catching us by surprise?
Yes, at first glance, the map may look crude and unappealing. But through their magnificent work from 290 years ago, Padre Pedro Murillo Velarde, Franciso Suarez, and Nicolas Bagay still remind us not to take for granted the freedom and liberties the Filipinos of centuries past had worked hard for.
Happy Independence Day!
Maligayang Araw ng Kalayaan!
Sources:
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