Show highlights. Favorite episodes. Behind-the-scenes bits. Think of this as The Colonial Dept. Wrapped.

2024 has been an amazing year for the podcast. I released a book version of the podcast, I've grown to more than 2,000 subscribers, and I've heard from fans from as far away as Spain, Singapore, and France. Thanks for sharing in my love for Philippine history, and for embarking on this project with me. YOU are the ones who made this year great!

See you next year!

Even as the automobile and the tram change the face of commuting and transportation in Manila, the cocheros persist… and resist. (Listen to S6E7 before listening to this one.)

Soon after the American takeover of the Philippines, Manila witnesses the coming of its first-ever car—a three-and-a-half horsepower, single-cylinder, wire-wheel Richard-Brasier. From then on, it’s full speed ahead for the wide-scale adoption of the automobile in the capital city and beyond. Packards and Studebakers roar through newly constructed Manila streets, while Stanleys chug up the Benguet highlands to reach Baguio. But what does the coming of the automobile mean for the former kings of the colonial roads—the coachman, the carriage, and the horse?

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Additional audio from the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Back to the Future Part 2 © 1990 Universal Pictures.

References:

Spector, Robert M. (1966). “W. Cameron Forbes in the Philippines: A Study in Proconsular Power.” Journal of Southeast Asian History, 7(2), pp. 74-92

Carlova, John (February 1959). “The Stanleys and their Steamer.” American Heritage. https://www.americanheritage.com/stanleys-and-their-steamer

“Ex-St. Louisan Listed as Held by Japanese” (31 March 1942). St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 

The United States v. Otis G. Freeman. G.R. No. L-3779 (13 November 1907). 

Cole-Jett, Robin (15 September 2023). “The Good Roads Movement.” Red River Historian. https://www.redriverhistorian.com/post/the-good-roads-movement

The American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippine Islands (July 1926). “Yesterday and Today in Manila’s Motor World.” The American Chamber of Commerce Journal.

Clymer, Floyd (1971). Treasury of Early American Automobiles, 1877-1925. Bonanza Books.

LaFontaine Automotive Classic Cars (3 May 2024). “The History of the Packard Car Company.”

Zaldarriaga, Joe (18 April 2024). “On track for positive change.” The Philippine Star. 

Brigham, Albert Perry (1904). “Good Roads in the United States.” Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, 36(12), pp. 721-735.

Gamble, Adrian (2017). “Manila's Long-Lost 'Tranvias' Once the Envy of Asia.” Skyrise Cities. https://skyrisecities.com/news/2017/03/manilas-long-lost-tranvias-once-envy-asia

Pante, Michael D. (2022). “The Calesa Vote: Street Politics and Local Governance in 1930s to 1940s Manila.” Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 37(2), pp. 201-229.

Pante, Michael D. (2012). “The "Cocheros" of American-occupied Manila Representations and Persistence.” Philippine Studies: Historical & Ethnographic Viewpoints, 60(4), pp. 429-462.

Pante, Michael D. (2016). “Urban Mobility and a Healthy City Intertwined Transport and Public Health Policies in American-Colonial Manila.” Philippine Studies: Historical & Ethnographic Viewpoints, 64(1), pp. 73-101.

Mohacek, Bozi (2003). Stanley Steamers and Yorkshire Steam Wagons in 1908 Philippines, Part 2. Surrey Vintage Vehicle Society. https://www.svvs.org/philippines2.shtml

Poco, Leandro Nicholas Ranoa (2019). Enclave Sub/Urbanism: A Historical and Configurational Assessment of Metro Manila’s Centres of Exclusion and Their Surrounding Spatial Fabric [masteral dissertation]. Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.

Dacudao, Patricia Irene (2023). Abaca Frontier: The Socioeconomic and Cultural Transformation of Davao, 1898-1941. Ateneo de Manila University Press.

In a time when both God and gold define the tense relations between Japan and Manila, the galleon San Felipe gets stranded in the land of the rising sun. There, the fate of its passengers now lies in the hands of the most powerful warlord in Japan: Toyotomi Hideyoshi! 

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Image: Mural from Cuernavaca, Mexico, published in the Academy of Christian Art.

Additional audio from Shogun, © FX.

References:

Kamen, Henry (2004). Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492-1763. Harper Perennial.

Conover, Cornelius (2011). “Saintly Biography and the Cult of San Felipe de Jesús in Mexico City, 1597-1697.” The Americas, 67(4), pp. 441-466.

O’Hara, Luke (5 February 2022). “The Galleon, the Tyrant and the 26 Martyrs of Nagasaki.” National Catholic Register. 

Boscaro, Adriana (December 1973). “Toyotomi Hideyoshi and the 1587 Edicts Against Christianity.” Oriens Extremus, 20(2), pp. 219-241.

“The Edicts of Toyotomi Hideyoshi: Excerpts from ‘Limitation on the Propagation of Christianity’, 1587; Excerpts from ‘Expulsion of the Missionaries,’ 1587.” Asia for Educations, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. https://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/japan/tokugawa_edicts_christianity.pdf

With poor salaries and pidgin commands, American women take charge of their household servants as they move into the Philippines! (Listen to S6E5 before listening to this one!)

When the guardia civil forced the Intramuros house of Victor Villegas open, they found a trail of blood that led all the way to a bathroom. Inside was the bloody corpse of the señor, his head smashed in, his body stripped to his underclothes. The police’s immediate suspects? The houseboys.

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Thumbnail Image: "Panguingue (Natives Playing Cards)." Jose Taviel de Andrade, ca. 1895. In Jose Maria Carino (2004), Islas Filipinas 1663-1888, Ars Mundi.

References:

Sayno, Mariano (20 March 2016). “Subic Spanish Gate: Sentinel of History in Olongapo’s Naval Legacy.” Beauty of the Philippines. https://www.beautyofthephilippines.com/subic-spanish-gate/

Bankoff, Greg (1992). “Servant-Master Conflicts in Manila in the Late Nineteenth Century.” Philippine Studies, 40(3), pp. 281-301.

Bankoff, Greg (1993). “Inside the Courtroom: Judicial Procedures in Nineteenth Century Philippines.” Philippine Studies, 41(3), pp. 287-304. 

Coo, Stephanie (2019). Clothing the Colony: Nineteenth-Century Philippine Sartorial Culture, 1820-1896. Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Mallat, Jean (1846). The Philippines: History, Geography, Customs, Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce of the Spanish Colonies in Oceania (Pura Santillan-Castrence, Trans.) (2021). National Historical Commission of the Philippines.

“Reglamento Provisional para la Policia de la Servidumbre Domestica” (1881). https://bibliotecadigital.aecid.es/bibliodig/es/catalogo_imagenes/descargarImprimir.do?id=descarga_1014590-1728387479953&multiple=false&idGrupo=1014590

Learn more about one of the most enduring Filipino folktales. (Listen to S6E4 before listening to this one!)

In the 1600s, a friar chronicled wild stories of titans who carried spears the size of tree trunks, waded all the way to Surigao, got slain by small warriors, or even traveled to Manila. Where did this titanic fascination come from—and what do stories of giants tell us about the world of our colonizers and our ancestors?

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Thumbnail art adapted from a map depicting the giant Patagonians of South America, from Gutierrez, Diego (1554-1569). “Americae sive quartae orbis partis nova et exactissima descriptio.” Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection (Library of Congress)

References:

Madarang, Catalina Ricci S. (5 May 2021). “Inches for height, hours for distance: Filipinos use our own set of measurement systems.” Interaksyon. https://interaksyon.philstar.com/trends-spotlights/2021/05/25/192465/inches-for-height-hours-for-distance-filipinos-use-our-own-set-of-measurement-systems/

Tim Reynolds (2023). “Victor Wembanyama officially listed at 7-foot, 3.5-inches tall.” Associated Press.

St. Augustine, City of God 16.8, “Whether Certain Monstrous Races of Men Are Derived from the Stock of Adam or Noah’s Sons.”

Fernández-Armesto, Felipe (2022). Straits: Beyond the Myth of Magellan. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Reilly, Brandon Joseph (2013). “Collecting the People: Textualizing Epics in Philippine History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First.” [Doctoral dissertation] University of California, Los Angeles.

Morales, Resil (1997). “Imagining Giants.” In House of Memory. Anvil Publishing.

Mojares, Resil (2013). “Men With Tails.” In Isabelo’s Archive. Anvil Publishing.

Turban, Manon (31 December 2021). “Cartographic Monsters and the Rise of Empiricism.” XVII-XVIII [En ligne], 78.

Clark, Jordan (13 November 2017). “The Legend of the Agta, the Eastern Visayan Tree-Dweller.” The Aswang Project. https://www.aswangproject.com/agta/

Scalice, Joseph (2018). “Pamitinan and Tapusi: Using the Carpio legend to reconstruct lower-class consciousness in the late Spanish Philippines.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 49(2), p. 250-276.

One of the most fascinating dishes in the Philippines is kare-kare, which has a history as rich as its stew. (You don’t need to listen to S6E3 before listening to this one, but I’d appreciate it if you do!)