William Henry Scott (July 10, 1921 – October 4, 1993) was a historian of the
Gran Cordillera Central and
Prehispanic Philippines.
His family, of Dutch-Lutheran descent, soon returned to
Bethlehem
Bethlehem (; ar, بيت لحم ; he, בֵּית לֶחֶם '' '') is a city in the central West Bank, Palestine, about south of Jerusalem. Its population is approximately 25,000,Amara, 1999p. 18.Brynen, 2000p. 202. and it is the capital o ...
,
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
, where Scott spent his boyhood.
[Peralta, Jesus T, editor (2001) p.16] In 1936, Scott won a three-year scholarship to the Episcopalian-affiliated
Cranbrook School in
Michigan
Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...
, United States, where he excelled academically and became interested in pursuing a career as an archeologist.
In 1939, after graduating, he changed his name to William Henry Scott.
In 1942, Scott joined the
US Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage of ...
, serving throughout World War II until 1946.
Professional career
![SagadaSeminary090](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/SagadaSeminary090.jpg)
In 1946, Scott joined the Episcopal Church mission in China. He taught and studied in
Shanghai
Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...
,
Yangchow
Yangzhou, postal romanization Yangchow, is a prefecture-level city in central Jiangsu Province (Suzhong), East China. Sitting on the north bank of the Yangtze, it borders the provincial capital Nanjing to the southwest, Huai'an to the north, Yanc ...
and
Beijing
}
Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
until 1949. With the general expulsion of foreigners from China in 1949, he followed some of his teachers to
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
where he enrolled, graduating in 1951 with a BA in Chinese language and literature.
Immediately upon graduation he was recalled to active duty and served in the navy for eighteen months during the Korean War.
In 1953 he was appointed lay missionary in the
Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America
The Episcopal Church, based in the United States with additional dioceses elsewhere, is a member church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. It is a mainline Protestant denomination and is divided into nine provinces. The presiding bishop of ...
.
As the Episcopal Church became well established in the Cordillera mountain region of Northern
Luzon
Luzon (; ) is the largest and most populous island in the Philippines. Located in the northern portion of the Philippines archipelago, it is the economic and political center of the nation, being home to the country's capital city, Manila, as ...
during the US colonial period, it was here that Scott settled. He spent much of the remainder of his life in the
Kankana-ey town of Sagada.
Although some of his most influential academic works — "Prehispanic Source Materials" and "Discovery of the Igorots" — are of particular interest to anthropologists, he personally rejected the description
anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...
as applying to himself.
Known to his friends as "Scotty", he became a focus for pilgrimage by numerous foreign and Filipino academics, entertaining them in his book-lined study while he puffed away on his trademark cigar.
The Igorot people came to think of Scott as one of their own, even eventually referring to him as "Lakay" (elder).
Detention during martial law
Soon after
Ferdinand Marcos
Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos Sr. ( , , ; September 11, 1917 – September 28, 1989) was a Filipino politician, lawyer, dictator, and kleptocrat who was the 10th president of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. He ruled under martial ...
declared martial law in 1972, Scott was arrested as a subversive and placed in military detention.
[Peralta, Jesus T, editor (2001) p.17]
Because several of the boys Scott had taught and sponsored in the years he had lived in Sagada had joined the anti-Marcos opposition, Scott was accused of being a communist sympathiser. The government forces who had broken into his house and arrested him had also found copies of Mao's writings in his bookshelf, and cited this as "evidence" of his communist leanings. Colleague Stuart Schlagel recounts Scott's response:
"''For heaven’s sake, I teach Asian history, and anyone who does that must be familiar with Mao’s work! It doesn’t mean I have abandoned Christianity and democratic politics; it just means I am a historian practicing his trade.''"
Scott saw his time in Marcos' prison as a validation of his Filipino nationalist beliefs.
Schlagel recounts Scott saying that he "''considered the time in jail behind bars to be one of the best of his life, because he was able to have long in-depth conversations with all the most prominent anti-Marcos activists.''"
He shared a cell with fellow historian
Zeus Salazar, with whom he had many disagreements and arguments.
[National Quincentennial Committee. 9th Quincentennial Lecture- William Henry Scott Centenary: Advancing Philippine Pre-Colonial History https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXoRTmk_KYk&t=2448s] Another notable fellow prisoner was a young
Butch Dalisay
Jose Y. Dalisay Jr. (born January 15, 1954) is a Filipino writer. He has won numerous awards and prizes for fiction, poetry, drama, non-fiction and screenwriting, including 16 Palanca Awards.
Early life and education
Dalisay was born in Romblon ...
, who is said to have put caricature versions of both Scott and Salazar in his book "Killing Time in a Warm Place."
As an American citizen Scott could have easily left the Philippines, but he declined, and so faced deportation proceedings. Marcos' outward commitment to legal formalities resulted in Scott being put on trial for subversion. In court, "resoundingly supported and defended by friends, students, and colleagues, and by Scott's own brilliant testimony", he was exonerated with the court dismissing the charges in 1973.
Scott was given "a memorable and triumphant welcome back in Sagada" following his acquittal.
He continued to be critical of the Marcos regime.
The high level of esteem in which he was held protected him from further prosecution, although his situation remained precarious until the lifting of martial law.
One particular article written by Scott, titled "The Igorot Defense of Northern Luzon" first published in May 1970, was often tagged by the dictatorship's Military forces as "subversive," although it was actually about incidents which took place from 1576 to 1896, the Spanish colonial era. It was even cited as "subversive material" during the trial of Father
Jeremias Aquino. Of this common error by the Military, Scott remarked: "Since nobody who ever read the article could find it subversive, one doesn't know whether to laugh or cry."
He criticized US colonial rule and continuing US involvement in Philippine politics after independence, especially US support for Marcos.
In this he pursued a similar line to the Filipino nationalist historian
Renato Constantino
Renato Constantino (March 10, 1919 – September 15, 1999) was a Filipino historian known for being part of the leftist tradition of Philippine historiography. Apart from being a historian, Constantino was also engaged in foreign service, working ...
.
Writer and lecturer
![Scotty'sHouseSagada091](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Scotty%27sHouseSagada091.jpg)
Scott observed the
Igorot
The indigenous peoples of the Cordillera Mountain Range of northern Luzon, Philippines are often referred to using the exonym Igorot people, or more recently, as the Cordilleran peoples. There are nine main ethnolinguistic groups whose domains ar ...
people of the Cordillera region had preserved elements of pre-colonial culture to a greater degree, and over a wider area, than could be found elsewhere in the Philippines. He saw the resistance of Igorots to attempts by the Marcos government to develop projects in the region as a model for resistance elsewhere in the country. He did not support the view that the Igorot people are intrinsically different from other Filipinos, or the view that the Cordillera should become an ethnic preserve.
Scott was scathing of views that divide Filipinos into ethnic groups, describing
Henry Otley Beyer's wave migration theory as representing settlement by 'wave after better wave' until the last wave which was 'so advanced that it could appreciate the benefits of submitting to American rule'. Views like these resonated with the progressive nationalist opposition to Marcos.
Scott held a bachelor's degree from
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
, a Masters from
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
and a PhD from the
University of Santo Tomas
The University of Santo Tomas (also known as UST and officially as the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas, Manila) is a private, Catholic research university in Manila, Philippines. Founded on April 28, 1611, by Spanish friar Miguel ...
in 1968. Scott's dissertation was published that year by the University of Santo Tomas Press as ''Prehispanic Source Materials for the Study of Philippine History''. A revised and expanded second edition was published in 1984. He debunked the
Kalantiaw
Datu Kalantiaw (Rajah Bendahara Kalantiaw) (sometimes spelled Kalantiao) was once considered an important part of Philippine history as the one who created the first legal code in the Philippines, known as the Code of Kalantiaw in 1433. He was co ...
legend in this book. Datu Kalantiaw was the main character in a historical fabrication written in 1913 by Jose E. Marco. Through a series of failures by scholars to critically assess Marco's representation, the invented legend was adopted as actual history.
As a result of Scott's work, Kalantiaw is no longer a part of the standard history texts in the Philippines.
Scott's first well known academic work is ''The Discovery of the Igorots''. This is a history of the Cordillera mountain region over several centuries of
Spanish contact, constructed from contemporary Spanish sources. Scott argues that the difficulties the Spaniards encountered extending their rule in the face of local resistance resulted in the inhabitants of the region being classified as a 'savage' race separate to the more tractable lowland Filipinos. Scott adopted a similar approach in ''Cracks in the Parchment Curtain'' in which he tries to glean a picture of pre-colonial Philippine society from early Spanish sources. This project was criticized by the Asianist
Benedict Anderson
Benedict Richard O'Gorman Anderson (August 26, 1936 – December 13, 2015) was an Anglo-Irish political scientist and historian who lived and taught in the United States. Anderson is best known for his 1983 book '' Imagined Communities'', which e ...
who argued that it yielded a vision of Philippine society filtered through 'late medieval' Spanish understanding. Scott was aware of this limitation, but argued Spanish records provided glimpses of Filipino society and native reaction to colonial dominion, often incidental to the intention of the Spanish chronicler, which were the cracks in the Spanish parchment curtain.
One of Scott's last full scale books was ''Ilocano Responses to American Aggression''. The foreword was written by
Joma Sison, the head of the
Philippine Communist Party
The Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas-1930 (PKP-1930), also known as the Philippine Communist Party, is a communist party in the Philippines that was established on November 7, 1930. It uses the aforementioned appellation in order to distinguish i ...
. The EDSA revolution, which coincided with the publication of the book, obscured the fact that the foreword had been written while Sison was in jail.
Harold C. Conklin's ''Biographical Note and Bibliography'' lists 243 extant written works by Scott from 1945 until those posthumously published in 1994.
Death
Scott died unexpectedly on 4 October 1993, aged 72,
[Peralta, Jesus T, editor (2001) p.15] in St Luke's Hospital, Quezon City, following what was considered to have been a routine gall bladder operation. He was buried in the cemetery of Saint Mary the Virgin, Sagada, Mountain Province on 10 October 1993.
Legacy
In 1994, the
Ateneo de Manila University
, mottoeng = Light in the Lord
, type = Private, research, non-profit, coeducational basic and higher education institution
, established = December 10, 1859
, religious_affiliation = Roman Catholic (Jesuits)
, academic_aff ...
posthumously gave Scott the Tanglaw ng Lahi Award for a lifetime "spent in teaching not only in the classroom, but also the outside world by means of the broad reaches of his contacts and communication, and most of all through his hundreds of published scholarly articles and inspirationals which continue to disseminate and teach honest Philippine history to succeeding generations of Filipinos."
On December 8, 2021, the
National Historical Commission of the Philippines
The National Historical Commission of the Philippines ( fil, Pambansang Komisyong Pangkasaysayan ng Pilipinas, abbreviated NHCP) is a government agency of the Philippines. Its mission is "the promotion of Philippine history and cultural herita ...
unveiled a historical marker commemorating Scott at Saint Mary's School in Sagada.
[https://www.facebook.com/nhcp1933/posts/273217664850417 ]
See also
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Datu
''Datu'' is a title which denotes the rulers (variously described in historical accounts as chiefs, sovereign princes, and monarchs) of numerous indigenous peoples throughout the Philippine archipelago. The title is still used today, especial ...
*
Sagada
Sagada, officially the Municipality of Sagada is a 5th class municipality in the province of Mountain Province, Philippines. According to the 2020 census, it has a population of 11,510 people.
Sagada is from Bontoc, the provincial capital ...
*
Jeremias Aquino
*
Renato Constantino
Renato Constantino (March 10, 1919 – September 15, 1999) was a Filipino historian known for being part of the leftist tradition of Philippine historiography. Apart from being a historian, Constantino was also engaged in foreign service, working ...
*
Zeus Salazar
Works
;Scott's more well known works include:
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;Festschrift in honor of William Henry Scott
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;Select Collected Works
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;Works as editor
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References
Biography and bibliography
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Scott, William Henry
1921 births
1993 deaths
American Lutherans
American Protestants
Writers from Detroit
American people of Dutch descent
American expatriates in the Philippines
Yale College alumni
20th-century American historians
Naturalized citizens of the Philippines
American male non-fiction writers
Historians of the Philippines
People from Mountain Province
20th-century American Episcopalians
20th-century Lutherans
Historians from Michigan
20th-century American male writers
Marcos martial law victims
Marcos martial law prisoners jailed at Ipil Detention Center