My experience as a neophyte from the Philippines getting plugged
into the Southeast Asian studies circuit in the West is probably commonplace,
except for a gesture of Wolters’, which even at that time I found a bit odd.
Seated behind his desk, he reached back and pulled out of the bookcase
behind him a book titled A Short History of the Filipino People, authored by a
certain Teodoro Agoncillo. Agoncillo was at that time one of the Philippines'
most prominent historians, based in the University of the Philippines' History
Department. Born in 1912, he was just three years older than Wolters. I didn't
know much about this Filipino historian in 1967, because I had attended the
Jesuit-run Ateneo de Manila, a rival of the University of the Philippines that set
other textbooks. I was unaware of the history wars that raged in some
university campuses in Manila from the late 50s on. I couldn’t grasp the full
implications, then, of Wolters’ warning about this Agoncillo textbook: Mr Ileto,
you are not going to write history like this!