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ENGLISH by Oona Thommes Paredes Oona Paredes is completing her Ph.D. in Anthropology at Arizona State University page 1
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RESEARCH
REPORT
When my archival research project was still in preparation, I had turned to older, more experienced colleagues (Philippinists and Americanists) for advice, and they were quite generous with their time in discussing my project and in offering encouragement. However, I was unable to gather much information in terms of the practicalities involved. This was due in part to every project being unique in scope and requirements, and the fact that many of these colleagues had not been to these particular archives in recent years. Archival research is also such an individual and rather introspective enterprise that, in a sense, nothing but the “doing” can truly prepare you for it. Nonetheless, the dearth of practical advice made the prospect of archival research seem unnecessarily daunting, and the prospect of walking into Spanish archives downright intimidating. In fact, when I first arrived in Spain, I was still so nervous – even after completing the application for my research permit – that I postponed picking it up for a full week. This
would not be relevant except that in every archive I worked in, the staff
commented that I was the first researcher on the Philippines they had
seen in a long time. In the case of the two religious archives, they told
me it had been many years since anyone had expressed an interest in their
collections. Reflecting
on my own experience, I would wager that this
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apparent lack of interest is not, in fact, due to a lack of interest, or even a lack of funds, but due to the sheer intimidation that new researchers must feel when they ponder dealing with Spanish archives. I have written this article with that situation in mind, in the hopes that by providing some practical nuts-and-bolts knowledge that everyone can use at the outset, others will have a more realistic idea of what to expect, and more new researchers will be willing to make that journey. While this article is geared specifically to those interested in the history of the Philippines, the information presented here will be relevant to any researcher who may need to delve into the Spanish archives, which cover a rather wide geographical range. In the course of my own research on Mindanao, for example, I encountered documents referring not only to the usual suspects (places we know the Spaniards had been, such as the Americas, and also Guam, Maluku and the rest of what is now Indonesia), but also to Thailand, Vietnam, Burma, China, Japan, India, other Pacific islands, and even “Thibet.” The Spanish archives are therefore relevant not only to studies of Spain’s former possessions and nautical haunts, but also to broader Southeast Asian and Asian studies.
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My particular project involved dissertation research that focused on religious conversion, missionary activity, and armed conflict in northeast Mindanao in the 16th and 17th centuries. It specifically required me to collect data from materials archived in the United States and Spain. The peculiarities of these individual collections will be explored further below; for now let us begin with the archival researcher’s most essential tools.
Paleography Training I
will never forget my first encounter with Spanish script from the 16th
century – a photocopy of diplomatic correspondence from Puebla, Mexico
being studied by a fellow graduate student at my university. It was a
series of squiggles, as beautiful as it was utterly incomprehensible;
it could have been an abstract work of modern art. After squinting at
one section for a full minute, I was dumbstruck by the realization that
I could not decipher a single letter. This, when the archival project
I proposed for my dissertation research had already been approved by my
committee and, for logistical reasons, it was too late to retool my project
entirely from scratch.
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The ethnohistorian John Chance taught me that the only way to deal with the issue of paleography, or the scholarly interpretation of earlier forms of writing and the documents that utilize such writing, was to start trying to read them. No class or tutoring would be able to mitigate this particular process, he told me, “You just have to start staring at the script and eventually it will begin to make sense.” This wisdom was confirmed by other researchers I met in Spain. One profesora from Mexico had taken several classes in Spanish paleography which, essentially, consisted of staring at texts until they began to make sense, albeit in a classroom environment where you could discuss particular issues with others and someone could check your transcription. However, the availability and cost of such classes can be highly problematic, and many researchers make do without such preparation. While 19th century writing is relatively modern and therefore accessible without preparation, those of other centuries will require practice. In any case, for someone who, like me, works with a wider time frame – 16th to 19th centuries – self-study is the most practical route. The following two books were my introduction to Spanish paleography, and they remain my most valuable references. I highly recommend them to anyone preparing for archival research on Spanish colonial texts. Within the United States, at least, they are easily available from various university libraries through Inter-Library Loan.
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I was fortunate in my particular research project to begin at the Vatican Film Library, where I read through a microfilm copy of the Pastells collection (more on this later). Pastells transcribed documents from various Spanish archives at the turn of the 20th century, first by hand and later with a typewriter. The ability to “see” the letters in the squiggles comes only with the passage of |
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