New Books In Southeast Asian Studies

In Orientalists, Propagandists and Ilustrados: Filipino Scholarship and the End of Spanish Colonialism (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), Megan Thomas offers a thoroughly researched and closely attentive account of how anthropological sciences contributed to the making of the Philippines. While attending to the political concerns that drive Edward Said’s critique of orientalism, Thomas corrects his thesis by pointing to how orientalist forms of knowledge and modes of inquiry could be put to the service of nascent nationalist projects. Filipino polymaths used expertise obtained in ethnology, philology, orthography, folklore and history to advance claims that situated them as the equals of, and sometimes superiors to, their archipelago’s Hispanic rulers. Drawing on Spanish, German, French, English and Tagalog language sources, Orientalists, Propagandists and Ilustrados is a study of the colonial encounter in the best traditions of Southeast Asian scholarship. Not only does it offer a nuanced telling of the