Filipiniana in the Netherlands
The Hague—While the Philippines and the Netherlands are a year short of celebrating the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations, their historical relations go centuries back. It is not well-known that at one point in the 16th century, our two countries shared one king—Philip II. Philip was not just King of Spain, he also ruled over an empire that included: Naples, Sicily, the “Low Countries,” and by marriage, even England and Ireland. Two Philippine presidents have visited the Netherlands officially, Diosdado Macapagal in 1963, and Fidel Ramos in 1995. Now we have a former Philippine president detained in the Netherlands.
Last Saturday, I traveled by train from Belgium to the Netherlands to deliver a lecture at our embassy in The Hague on the afternoon of my arrival. On the way to the embassy, I took the opportunity for a side trip for selfies outside the International Criminal Court (ICC), which seems to have become a new tourist destination for Filipinos. There was a small crowd of Filipinos when I arrived, including a group from Switzerland and Norway, who were being briefed on a pro-Duterte rally on Sunday starring the Vice President. The next selfie stop was outside the United Nations Detention Unit within the Scheveningen prison complex. Compared to the cramped jails in the Philippines, the so-called “Hague Hilton” provides visitors with a spartan but comfortable 10-square-meter cell with en suite bathrooms, cable TV, internet connection, and outside: communal cooking facilities, a library, and a gym.
Comparing the Filipino tourists in both locations, the demographic was striking. Outside the ICC, the crowd was mostly women. Outside Scheveningen prison, the crowd was still predominantly female, but there were husbands and children too. The grassy knoll outside the gates was like a picnic ground with people milling about. Some saw my stuffed doll of Sigmund Freud and asked if it was “General Torre.” Many of the Filipinos I talked to on the streets of The Hague last weekend were just in town for the Sunday rally. Unfortunately, I was not able to stroll around the beach of Scheveningen in search of the landscape caught on canvas by Juan Luna that is presently in the Bangko ng Sentral ng Pilipinas art collection.
In 1890, Rizal planned a visit to the Netherlands in search of 17th-century primary sources on Philippine history. He never made it. He was informed that there was much to be had in Leiden. Then as now, there is Filipiniana that needs to be dug up and researched in Leiden and these include many travel accounts like that of the Italian Giovanni Francesco Gemelli-Carreri whose multivolume narrative published in 1727 includes a section on the Philippines. A pity that I cannot read old Dutch because there are a handful of historical accounts that give a different perspective on the Spanish sources. For example, we all know that Rizal published an annotated edition of Antonio de Morga’s “Sucesos de las islas Filipinas, 1609” in Paris in 1890. Morga gave his own self-serving account of his tenure in the Philippines. Morga headed the Spanish fleet that fought and lost to the Dutch in December 1600. The Dutch version of the battle that saw the sinking of the Spanish flagship “San Diego” is by Olivier van Noort, who was the first Dutchman to circumnavigate the world. Then there is another work published in Hamburg in 1732 titled “Historische versaamelingen over de vaart der Spanjaarden na de Philippines.”
In terms of maps and mappings, there are a number of renderings of the Philippines published in the Netherlands or by Dutch cartographers from the 17th and 18th centuries, and I would be surprised if there are copies of the famous Murillo Velarde map of the Philippines waiting to be found in libraries and archives in the Netherlands. Of interest to me are collections of 19th-century photographs of the Philippines and the Filipinos collected by A. Schadenberg (incidentally a correspondent of Rizal) that consist of 60 anthropological images from Northern Luzon and 500 images collected by P.K.A. Meerkamp. In the Troppen Museum are ethnographic and artistic items like religious icons from lowland Christian Luzon and also items from Muslim Mindanao.
Even the Philippine Embassy in The Hague contains a small collection of photographs and memorabilia that commemorate Filipino jurists who served in The Hague. Former chief justice Cesar Bengzon was the first to serve on the International Court of Justice from 1967 to 1976 followed by Raul C. Pangalangan (former Inquirer columnist), who served as judge of the ICC from 2015 to 2021. All these traces of Philippine-Netherlands relations are being cultivated by our current Ambassador J. Eduardo Malaya, who is preparing many activities to celebrate the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations next year.
On a quick visit to the Rijksmuseum, I walked passed Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” and came across an image of the Christ Child from the 16th-century Mechelen workshop that is a cousin of the Santo Niño de Cebu. I took this as a good omen for my research in Amsterdam and Leiden sometime in the future.
