The history of the Filipino nation is the history of its economy. Its defining elements, its watershed events—structural chasms, political ruptures, ideological clashes, and social fissures- are but logical permutations of the contending modes, means, and relations of production that have successively held sway throughout its existence.

      “The final causes of all social changes and political revolutions,” Friedrich Engels wrote in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, “should not be sought in men’s brains, in their better insight but in changes in the modes of production and exchange.” Economics, he theorized, will ultimately provide the explanation to the course of history because it determines the social, political, and spiritual processes of life.

      From this materialist perspective, the importance of O.D. Corpuz’s An Economic History of the Philippines in the analysis of the past cannot be discounted. Corpuz’s opus is destined to be a permanent tome in the bookshelves of serious students of Philippine history, a requisite fixture in the footnotes and bibliographies of papers and studies waiting to be published.

      An Economic History of the Philippines is to be read not as a mere sidebar to the history of the country, but as an integral part of that history. It should be considered as a necessary preference and not just an optional cross-reference material by readers; not as a supplementary body of facts that could stand on its own, but as a complementary text essential in making sense of the past.

      A winner of the National Book Award, An Economic History has been hailed as a landmark publication by academicians and bibliophiles. It is an overdue documentation of a largely neglected but extremely critical aspect of the country’s past. While historians and researchers have spent precious printed pages pouring over controversial aspects of history, few have dared to see historical events as possible products of economic realities.

      Corpuz himself envisions his work as an aid for economists in data analysis and planning “economic history,” the Professor Emeritus at the UP School of Economics laments, “has been little more than an afterthought in the education of our economists.” But more than this, Corpuz decries the absence of any substantial work on the economic history of the archipelago.

      Previous to Corpuz’s work, researchers and academicians had to tussle with disparate accounts and fragmented chronicles detailing the features of the economy throughout the centuries. With An Economic History, Corpuz stresses the shameful fact that most accounts on Philippine economic history were written by foreigners: de Morga, Pigafetta, Blair and Robertson, Mallat, Comyn and Le Roy among others. Finally, a Filipino has taken it upon himself to write the economic history of his own country.

      The acquisition of information and the subsequent collation is remarkable. Corpuz embarked on an impressive research expedition that saw him scouring through a thick foliage of primary sources-official correspondents, colonial statutes and laws, government studies, censuses, and memoirs-as well as through the tested trails of traditional secondary sources. Spanning four centuries, An Economic History chronicles the changes and continuities in the Philippine economy from the pre-conquest to the “special relations” with the United States before World War II.

      Sadly, only those with the patience of trained ascetics will be able to appreciate Corpuz’s efforts, what with only dead numbers and statistics as intermission to the heavy-set facts, Corpuz’s lethargic language and the book’s bland lay-out. Sans the exploits of heroes, the allure of personalities, the thrill of wars and revolutions, and the tragedies and triumphs of human life that is usual fare of your regular history books, An Economic History is an altogether terrific bore.

      But the persevering will be amply rewarded. An Economic History is by far the most meticulous reconstruction of the country’s economic past, a painstaking investigation of the roots of the country’s underdevelopment. But unlike Jonathan Fast’s Roots of Dependency, Corpuz never hazards to advance any new argument from his body or information. On one hand, the restrain is commendable. Corpuz, by refusing to make value judgments; upholds the objectivity that his work obviously seeks to attain. He leaves it to his readers to make inferences from his presentation. On the other hand, his refusal to formulate any new reinterpretation of the facts from his research considerably limits the scope and potential of his work. In the end, An Economic History becomes just another chronicle.

      Another significant limitation of Corpuz’s opus is the time frame of the study. For Corpuz, the economic history of the Philippines ended in 1940, close to sixty years short of the present. In economics, sixty years is a very long time-especially if those sixty years cover some of the most important, pivotal, and traumatic economic events in the country’s life. Comparison and consultation with the immediate past is made impossible by this glaring inadequacy, thereby partially defeating the book’s purpose. In the second edition, perhaps.

      In spite of these letdowns, the single feat of showing the country where it has been, how it has fared so far, and how it will most likely end up serves to redeem Corpuz’s work. By chronicling four hundred years of failure, misdirected policies, poorly implemented programs, and lopsided agreements interrupted only by sporadic success, An Economic History proves that our poverty is anchored on four centuries of underdevelopment.

      Those waiting for prescriptions or recommendations will however, leaf through the last page of the book disappointed. Except for a few subtle hints that never go beyond a few sentences, Corpuz again restraints himself from explicitly dishing out solutions for the country’s economic woes. Either he himself has nothing to offer, implying that history itself has nothing to teach, or he expects his readers to draw up the solutions themselves.

      The ominous parallelisms that Corpuz cites, it seems, are enough. Just like in the early nineteenth century when Manila was finally opened to trade, we are now opening up our markets in conformance with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade without adequate preparations. The consequences back then were disastrous, what more in this age of break-neck globalization?

      Then as now, we still have no manufacturing base to fall on. Agriculture remains backward, agrarian unrest is prevalent. We have been importing rice from Vietnam since the 1870s. Capital is still scarce. Technological advance continues to be sluggish.

      While Corpuz’s history ends in 1940, it seems that nothing much has changed fifty years hence. On the crest of a folded past and on the threshold of the future, we compare and contrast only to discover that our history of underdevelopment continues.

      The history of the Filipino nation is the history of its economy. Only by changing the course of our economy can the course of the nation’s history be changed.