Philippine E-Journals

Early “Asianism” in the Philippines

Resil B. Mojares

Discipline: Humanities

 

Abstract:

This paper revisits the origins of “Asianism” in the Philippines from the conception of a “Malay” identity by the nineteenth century Filipino intellectuals to Mariano Ponce’s romantic ideals of “pan-Orientalism.” The paper recognizes the deep-seated link between politics and Asianism. The first iterations of Asianism in the Philippines—the Propaganda Movement’s and the Revolution’s conception and association of the Filipinos as part of the “Malay race”—were political tools to foster greater status and independence for the Filipinos against the country’s colonizers, i.e., the West. However, it was the “first Filipino Asianist” Mariano Ponce and his colleague Jose Alejandrino who would use their experience of travelling across Asia to present an Asianism without the conflicted binaries of East versus West. Their observations of early twentieth century Japanese “Asianism” are still relevant today, as this paper suggests, as the model through which “a more plural, multicentric approach to Asianism, one that attends to the imperatives of our own time,” can be achieved.