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ABSTRACT
American colonization of the Philippines restyled local civilization’s character. One notable transition prompted by American colonial rule was the adoption of new public health conventions. In spite of these practices being introduced to elevate the well-being and life expectancy of the Filipinos their implementation was met with resistance. Accordingly, this paper focuses upon the creation of the Philippines’ first crematory facility, namely the San Lazaro Crematorium (opened in 1903, in Manila). The work, thus, grants an overview of how Filipinos responded to a societal modernization project initiated by the American colonial regime. The paper discusses three matters: first, what American colonial policymakers sought, with reference to public health, to accomplish; second, how the American colonial framework directly challenged Filipino culture with regard to disease prevention and death management; and, third, why the construction of the San Lazaro Crematorium offers a unique entry point to grasp the nature of America’s initial governance of the Philippines. Such clarification has twofold value: it helps to deepen comprehension of the administration’s operation and, in association, native opposition to it; plus, given that the crematorium is presently derelict this paper can underscore its value as a dark heritage object worthy of preservation.
Disclosure statement
The author can disclose that in composing this paper there are no conflicts of interest.
Notes
1. The Treaty of Paris was signed on December 10 1898.
2. The Proclamation was issued on December 21 1898. A full copy of the declaration is available at http://www.msc.edu.ph/centennial/benevolent.html.
3. The colonial government was established in January 1899, but reformed in March 1900.
4. Manila’s population at that time was approximately 220,000 people.
5. The San Lazaro Crematorium was the only human crematory facility constructed in the Philippines by the Americans during the early years of colonisation: see “Report of the Philippine Commission” (Citation1913, p. 142). The building was designed by Edgar Bourne, Chief of the Bureau of Architecture and Construction. The budget for construction was 3618.32 Philippine Pesos (about US$1800 in 1903).
6. Cremation was practised in parts of Asia prior to the establishment of European colonial rule. For example, cremation has a long history in East Asia, namely in China, Korea, and Japan, where it was acquired popularity during the Song Dynasty (960-1290 AD), Goryeo Period (918-1392 AD), and Heian Period (794-1185 AD). Notwithstanding the introduction of European funerary practises during the 1800s and 1900s in some Asian nations modern crematoria were not built until decolonisation was underway, e.g., Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (1951) and Singapore (1962), or until after colonial rule had ended, e.g., Jakarta, Indonesia (in 1958). Moreover, in places such as Vietnam, cremation was not widely practised following the ending of colonial rule given native cultural practices associated with burial and reburial, and owing to the imprint of French/Catholic funerary traditions.
7. The national population was about 7.6 million people.
8. American surveys of Manila’s cemeteries found them to be overcrowded and insanitary, in part because of the high water tables below ground. The Tondo Cemetery, for instance, was found to have water just 12 inches below the surface level of the ground: ‘under such conditions … the process of putrefaction would not go on sufficiently rapid’. (Cemeteries, Citation1908, p. 101)
9. The hospital has its origins dating back to the 1600s but under the Board of Health (formed in 1898) it was remodelled into a facility for treating infectious disease patients. (Wilkinson, Citation1905, pp. 147-9)
10. Anderson (Citation2006) exposed that the use of new drugs did little to quell the spread of cholera. He also discovered that most cholera patients who were treated with new medicines, and afterwards died, were cremated.
11. Heiser was Director of the Board of Health from 1905-15.
12. Bureau of Public Works drawings of the building’s redesign are rumoured to no longer exist. Large quantities of documents were destroyed during World War Two but many materials have since been put into store rooms where they have been neither catalogued or stored correctly. Such items are no longer accessible to the public.
13. There is a proposal to renovate the building into a public health museum.
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Ian Morley
Ian Morley is an Associate Professor of Urban History at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research focuses principally upon the urban environmental impacts of American colonisation in the Philippine Islands, and includes the monographs Cities and Nationhood: American Imperialism and Urban Design in the Philippines, 1898-1916 (University of Hawaii Press, 2018) and American Colonisation and the City Beautiful: Filipino and Planning in the Philippines, 1916-35 (Routledge, 2019).