In Philippine historiography, two main subjects have dominated the study of Spanish Philippines—the Propaganda Movement (1880–96) and the popular, separatist movement Katipunan (1892–98). While both groups had played significant roles in bringing about the birth of the Filipino nation, in contemporary literature, distinctions are being made along class lines that seemed to predetermine their tendency to advocate reform or revolution, assimilation or separation. The dominant narrative of nineteenth-century Philippine history has been that those who belonged to the Propaganda Movement, such as the native intelligentsia (ilustrados) and other elites, only wanted to collaborate with the colonizers so they could eventually usurp their power and privileges in order to dominate the rest of the population. The only group that desired true liberation for Filipinos was the popular movement Katipunan, which instigated the 1896 Revolution to effect complete separation from Spain.

As such, the depiction of the Propaganda Movement, particularly the ilustrados (“enlightened ones”), straddles on reverence—for the selected few like Jose Rizal—and condemnation—directed towards those who did not join the armed struggle against Spain. The prevalent nationalist discourse on these nineteenth-century native intellectuals never deviates from their political work centered on the project of nation-building. While the proliferation of works on Rizal has allowed for a more in-depth analysis of the individual and his works, other prominent members of the Propaganda Movement do not get the same scholarly treatment unless they were directly connected with Rizal. Even then, they are often depicted as faithful sidekicks, and the significance of their works is relegated as secondary only to Rizal's.

Only a few works have moved away from the dominant narrative to closely examine not only the Filipino intellectuals themselves but also their ideas behind the formation of Filipino nationhood—most notably John N. Schumacher's The Propaganda Movement, 1880–1895: The Creators of a Filipino Consciousness, the Makers of Revolution (Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, [1973] 1997); Michael Cullinane's Ilustrado Politics: Filipino Elite Responses to American Rule, 1898–1908 (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2003); Vicente L. Rafael's The Promise of the Foreign: Nationalism and the Technics of Translation in the Spanish Philippines (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005); and the Journal of Asian Studies article by Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr. entitled “Tracing Origins: Ilustrado Nationalism and the Racial Science of Migration Waves” (64, no. 3, 2005). Each work has highlighted the need for further study of the young pioneers of Filipino nationalism. Furthermore, in addressing the evolution of knowledge of Filipino intellectuals and propagandists by focusing on the politics of Spanish translation and racial science in their conceptualization of their “imagined community,” both Rafael and Aguilar have opened up new possibilities for inquiry and exploration.

Rather than asserting that gaining national consciousness was an organic process, the issue of modern knowledge production has come into play as an important form of colonial engagement and an affirmation of the rise of cosmopolitanism during the nineteenth century. Since the Scientific Revolution (1550–1700) and the Enlightenment (1650–1800), those who control the flow of knowledge have wielded as much power as those who command the strongest military force. By taking into consideration the link between knowledge and power within a colonial context, one is no longer bound by the limitations of a binary opposition between colonizer and colonized.

These works by Resil Mojares and Megan Thomas give full expression to the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1862): “There is no knowledge that is not power.” Rather than being drawn into the nationalist discourses of the subjects of their analysis, Mojares and Thomas have chosen to study late nineteenth-century Filipino intellectuals and their writings in an effort to locate both articulations of indigenous knowledge and the way that Western knowledge was understood and deployed. By interrogating the process of modern knowledge production leading to the rise of Filipino nationalism, these works uncover the intellectual foundation of the anti-colonial legacy of ilustrados (Filipino intelligentsia)—a legacy that depended on the stroke of a pen more than the drawing of a sword.

In his definitive work, Brains of the Nation: Pedro Paterno, T.H. Pardo de Tavera, Isabelo de los Reyes, and the Production of Modern Knowledge, Mojares delves into the formation of the Filipino intelligentsia by examining the lives of three iconic albeit less studied figures in the late nineteenth-century reform movement. Instead of primarily focusing on the most prominent ilustrado Jose Rizal, Mojares takes the path less traveled and proceeds to map out the evolution of Filipino nationalists' thought process, taking into account the rich contributions of other intellectuals such as Paterno, Pardo de Tavera, and De los Reyes.

Mojares's choice of subjects clearly indicates the innovative trajectory of his analysis. In his unapologetic depiction of the lives and works of these Filipino intellectuals, Mojares has laid the groundwork for deconstructing not only preconceived notions of Philippine nationalism but also the concept of Filipino identity. Mojares challenges the idea of homogeneity in national imagining among the Filipino intelligentsia by showing that vested interests and personal agendas often intermingled with the intellectual elites' own articulation of the “nation” derived from their dynamic engagement in the discourses of Western knowledge.

The diverse narratives of these men's separate lives, intertwined with those of a collective struggle against Spanish colonial hegemony, reveal a rich tapestry of national imaginings that were constantly changing while, “in the process, it may be said that they created a derivative discourse that affirmed the ideas of racial, social and political hierarchies that underwrote Orientalism” (p. 504). As Mojares points out, “[n]ationalist thought is a process” (p. 503) that demands further exploration. Thus, what began as a personal journey into the lives of Filipino intellectuals has become an ongoing quest to understand the process behind “indigenous” knowledge production leading to the formation of a national identity.

In the book's final chapter, “Filipino Enlightenment,” Mojares shifts to a broader analysis of the crucial role that Filipino intellectuals played in establishing a dialogue between Europe and its Asian colonies, emphasizing the ilustrados as “the first ‘natives’ in Southeast Asia to engage Orientalist scholarship in its homegrounds” (pp. 503–4). By closely examining Rizal's depiction of the ilustrados as the “brains of the nation,” Mojares has explained the rationale behind Rizal's often misunderstood metaphor. While it is understandable to assume that Rizal was referring to the ilustrados’ intellectual (and social) superiority when he described them as the “brains of the nation,” Mojares explains that Rizal was merely stressing how the ilustrados' unique and privileged position made it possible to serve as a conduit between indigenous and Western worldviews, engaging in “a deep, asymmetrical struggle for power” through complex processes of knowledge production” (pp. 500–505). Not only is this final chapter significant for its illuminating perspective on the dynamic nature of Filipino intellectuals' efforts to engage Western scholarship, but it also serves as an appeal to future Philippine scholars to consider the importance of “the particularities of the Philippine case” (p. 500) in gaining a better understanding of native interactions with colonial powers.

Thomas's Orientalists, Propagandists, and Ilustrados: Filipino Scholarship and the End of Spanish Colonialism shares the nuanced approach of Mojares's individually focused study by examining the ilustrados' engagement with Western knowledge. Thomas presents an analysis of the development of the Filipino intellectual tradition through extensive study of the ilustrados' scholarly texts across disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, such as anthropology, ethnology, folklore, philology, and history. Thomas argues that although these bodies of knowledge “were part of European Orientalism and nineteenth-century racial sciences and, in turn, associated with European colonial pretensions … [nonetheless, they] were sometimes put to anticolonial ends” (p. 3).

Furthermore, Thomas asserts, as “the disciplines were in flux” (p. 6), so too, was the discourse on Orientalism, which was “politically malleable – subject to multiple political uses and effects … [thus, making it] indispensable to Filipino practitioners” (p. 5). For Thomas, the late nineteenth-century Philippines' stronger link to “the cosmopolitan worlds” made it possible for native intelligentsia to gain access to various scholarships that demand and nurture critical and comparative thinking, which later proved to be invaluable in challenging Spanish colonial rule (pp. 15, 21).

In her discussion of Filipino scholarship, Thomas examines the works of notable intellectuals such as Jose Rizal, Pedro Paterno, T. H. Pardo de Tavera, Isabelo de los Reyes, Mariano Ponce, Pedro Serrano-Laktaw, and “their Bohemian supporter” Ferdinand Blumentritt (p. 8) in the fields of anthropology, ethnology, folklore, philology, and history. Chapter 1 begins with the development of Orientalism as a Western framework adapted as a comparative tool to highlight the disparaging relationship between the civilized Occident and the undeveloped Orient, thus providing justification for colonialism. Using the case of British India as a point of comparison, Thomas discusses how “Indian intellectuals engaged in the discourse ‘of’ the colonizers … [regardless of] whether the discourse taken by Indian intellectuals was indeed of the ‘colonizer’” (p. 31). While these British colonial subjects could deploy India's precolonial civilization and authoritative texts to challenge Western claims to originality and modernity, the Filipino intellectuals had neither at their disposal (p. 31). What they did have was access to scientific methodologies and scholarly tools to acquire modern knowledge needed to carve themselves a space among the civilized.

Throughout the book, Thomas explores “the tension between ‘native’ authority and scholarly objectivity and an appropriation of scholarly tools for political ends” (p. 45). In succeeding chapters (chapter 2—ethnology; chapter 3—folklore; chapter 4—philology; and chapter 5—history), Thomas describes how Filipino scholars assumed intellectual authority over the backward Spanish scholarship by deploying their scientific knowledge derived mostly from German scholarship, allegedly more objective and devoid of colonial contexts (pp. 41–45).

The book's conclusion returns to the critical connection between colonial scholarship and politics, and how the native intellectuals' expert maneuverings “made it possible to think with certainty and a sense of inevitability of ‘Filipinos' as a distinct ethnic people with ancient roots, an emerging modernity, and a political future” (p. 203). Thomas's own scholarly contribution to the most-studied period in Philippine history not only merits praise for its refreshing take on these Filipino intellectuals, but also reinforces Mojares's earlier assessment that current Philippine scholarship needs to re-engage its cosmopolitan roots.

While Mojares and Thomas seemed to draw inspirations from earlier studies on native intellectuals, their attempts to shift the discussion from the end product—the rise of Filipino nationalism—to the complex processes of constant negotiation and contestation over the construction of knowledge provide a different trajectory of historical discourse that merges personal interest with collective interest, the periphery with the center, and the national with the cosmopolitan. Finally, just as the Filipino ilustrados served as a conduit between indigenous and Western knowledge, so too do Mojares's and Thomas's works, effectively positioning the Philippine case within a global context.