William Henry Scott

(historian)

William Henry Scott (July 10, 1921 –

October 4, 1993) was a historian of the
Gran Cordillera Central and Prehispanic
Philippines. He personally rejected the
description anthropologist as applying to
himself.
 William Henry Scott

William Henry Scott at Sagada (1989)

Born William Henry Scott

July 10, 1921
Detroit, Michigan,
United States

Died October 4, 1993

(aged 72)
St. Luke's Medical
Center
Quezon City, Philippines
Resting place Saint Mary The Virgin
Cemetery
Sagada, Mountain
Province
Nationality American

Other names Henry King Ahrens

Occupation Historian

Early life
William Henry Scott was born on 10 July
1921, in Detroit, Michigan, where he was
christened Henry King Ahrens.[1] His
family, of Dutch-Lutheran descent, soon
returned to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,
where Scott spent his boyhood.[2] In 1936,
Scott won a three-year scholarship to the
Episcopalian-affiliated Cranbrook School
in Michigan USA, where he excelled
academically and became interested in
pursuing a career as an archeologist.[2] In
1939, after graduating, he changed his
name to William Henry Scott.[2] In 1942,
Scott joined the US Navy, serving
throughout World War II until 1946. In
1946, Scott joined the Episcopal Church
mission in China. He taught and studied in
Shanghai, Yangchow and Beijing until
1949. With the general expulsion of
foreigners from China in 1949, he followed
some of his teachers to Yale University
where he enrolled, graduating in 1951 with
a BA in Chinese language and literature.[2]
Immediately upon graduation he was
recalled to active duty and served in the
navy for eighteen months during the
Korean War.In 1953 he was appointed lay
missionary in the Protestant Episcopal
Church in the United States of America.
Although he wanted to teach in Japan until
he could return to China, he accepted an
available post as teacher of English and
history in the Philippines, and was
assigned to St Mary's School in Sagada,
Mountain Province, Philippines. After
preparatory studies in the United States,
he reached Sagada in January 1954.[2]

Move to the Philippines

Scott's house in Sagada, viewed from the former
Training School in 2007

The Episcopal Church became well

established in the Cordillera mountain
region of Northern Luzon during the US
colonial period, and it was here that Scott
settled. He spent much of the remainder
of his life in the Kankana-ey town of
Sagada. Known to his friends as "Scotty",
he became a focus for pilgrimage by
numerous foreign and Filipino academics,
entertaining them in his book-lined study
while he puffed away on his trademark
cigar.

Detention during Martial

Law
Soon after Ferdinand Marcos declared
martial law in 1972, Scott was arrested as
a subversive and placed in military
detention.[3] Several of the boys Scott had
taught and sponsored over the years he
had lived in Sagada belonged to the anti-
Marcos opposition, and Scott was alleged
to be a communist sympathiser. As an
American citizen Scott could have easily
left the Philippines, but he declined, and so
faced deportation proceedings. Marcos'
outward commitment to legal formalities
resulted in Scott being put on trial for
subversion. In court, "resoundingly
supported and defended by friends,
students, and colleagues, and by Scott's
own brilliant testimony", he was
exonerated with the court dismissing the
charges in 1973.[3]

Scott was given "a memorable and

triumphant welcome back in Sagada"
following his acquittal.[3] He continued to
be critical of the Marcos regime.[3] The
high level of esteem in which he was held
protected him from further prosecution,
although his situation remained precarious
until the lifting of martial law. He criticized
US colonial rule and continuing US
involvement in Philippine politics after
independence, especially US support for
Marcos.[3] In this he pursued a similar line
to the Filipino nationalist historian Renato
Constantino.

Writer and lecturer

Scott observed the Igorot people of the
Cordillera region had preserved elements
of pre-colonial culture to a greater degree,
and over a wider area, than could be found
elsewhere in the Philippines. He saw the
resistance of Igorots to attempts by the
Marcos government to develop projects in
the region as a model for resistance
elsewhere in the country. He did not
support the view that the Igorot people are
intrinsically different to other Filipinos, or
the view that the Cordillera should become
an ethnic preserve.

Scott was scathing of views that divide

Filipinos into ethnic groups, describing
Henry Otley Beyer's wave migration theory
as representing settlement by 'wave after
better wave' until the last wave which was
'so advanced that it could appreciate the
benefits of submitting to American rule'.[4]
Views like these resonated with the
progressive nationalist opposition to
Marcos.

Scott held a bachelor's degree from Yale

University, a Masters from Columbia
University and a PhD from the University of
Santo Tomas. Scott's dissertation was
published by the University of Santo
Tomas Press as Prehispanic Source
Materials for the Study of Philippine History
in 1968. A revised and expanded second
edition was published in 1984.[5] He
debunked the Kalantiaw legend in this
book. Datu Kalantiaw was the main
character in a historical fabrication written
in 1913 by Jose E. Marco. Through a
series of failures by scholars to critically
assess Marco's representation, the
invented legend was adopted as actual
history. [6] As a result of Scott's work,
Kalantiaw is no longer a part of the
standard history texts in the
Philippines.[7][8]

Scott's first well known academic work is

The Discovery of the Igorots.[9] This is a
history of the Cordillera mountain region
over several centuries of Spanish contact,
constructed from contemporary Spanish
sources. Scott argues that the difficulties
the Spaniards encountered extending their
rule in the face of local resistance resulted
in the inhabitants of the region being
classified as a 'savage' race separate to
the more tractable lowland Filipinos. Scott
adopted a similar approach in Cracks in
the Parchment Curtain [10] in which he tries
to glean a picture of pre-colonial Philippine
society from early Spanish sources. This
project was criticized by the Asianist
Benedict Anderson who argued that it
yielded a vision of Philippine society
filtered through 'late medieval' Spanish
understanding.[11] Scott was aware of this
limitation, but argued Spanish records
provided glimpses of Filipino society and
native reaction to colonial dominion, often
incidental to the intention of the Spanish
chronicler, which were the cracks in the
Spanish parchment curtain.[12]

In 1994, the Ateneo de Manila University

posthumously gave Scott the Tanglaw ng
Lahi Award for a lifetime "spent in
teaching not only in the classroom, but
also the outside world by means of the
broad reaches of his contacts and
communication, and most of all through
his hundreds of published scholarly
articles and inspirationals which continue
to disseminate and teach honest
Philippine history to succeeding
generations of Filipinos."

One of Scott's last full scale books was

Ilocano Responses to American
Aggression.[13] The foreword was written
by Joma Sison, the head of the Philippine
Communist Party. The EDSA revolution,
which coincided with the publication of the
book, obscured the fact that the foreword
had been written while Sison was in jail.

Harold C Conklin's Biographical Note and

Bibliography [14] lists 243 extant written
works by Scott from 1945 until those
posthumously published in 1994.
Death
Scott died unexpectedly on 4 October
1993, aged 72,[1] in St Luke's Hospital,
Quezon City, following what was
considered to have been a routine gall
bladder operation. He was buried in the
cemetery of Saint Mary the Virgin, Sagada,
Mountain Province on 10 October 1993.[15]

See also
Datu

Works
The Episcopalian Church's only Training School in the
Philippines when Scott came to Sagada in the 1950s,
pictured 2007

Scott's more well known works include

Scott, William Henry (1974). Discovery
of the Igorots (revised edition) . Quezon
City: New Day Publishers. ISBN 971-10-
0087-3.
Scott, William Henry (1976). Hollow
Ships on a Wine-Dark Sea and Other
Essays . Quezon City: New Day
Publishers.
Scott, William Henry (1982). Cracks in
the Parchment Curtain and Other Essays
in Philippine History . Quezon City: New
Day Publishers. ISBN 978-971-10-0000-
4.
Scott, William Henry (1984). Prehispanic
Source Materials for the Study of
Philippine History . New Day Publishers.
ISBN 971-10-0226-4.
Scott, William Henry (1986). Ilocano
Responses to American Aggression,
1900-1901 . Quezon City: New Day
Publishers. ISBN 978-971-10-0336-4.
Scott, William Henry (1987). Chips .
Quezon City: New Day Publishers.
ISBN 978-971-10-0331-9.
Scott, William Henry (1988). A Sagada
Reader . Quezon City: New Day
Publishers. ISBN 978-971-10-0330-2.
Scott, William Henry (1989). Who are
You, Filipino Youth . Quezon City: New
Day Publishers. ISBN 978-971-10-0345-
6.
Scott, William Henry (1991). Slavery in
the Spanish Philippines . Manila: De La
Salle University Press. ISBN 971-11-
8102-9.
Scott, William Henry (1992). Union
Obrera Democratica: First Filipino Labor
Union . Quezon City: New Day
Publishers. ISBN 978-971-10-0488-0.
Scott, William Henry (1992). Looking for
the Prehispanic Filipino and Other Essays
in the Philippine History . Quezon City:
New Day Publishers. ISBN 971-10-0524-
7. [1] [2]
Scott, William Henry (1994). Barangay:
Sixteenth Century Philippine Culture and
Society . Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila
University Press. ISBN 971-550-135-4.
Festschrift in honor of William Henry
Scott
Peralta, Jesus T, editor (2001).
Reflections on Philippine Culture and
Society: Festschrift . Manila: Ateneo de
Manila University Press. ISBN 978-971-
550-368-6.
 Select Collected Works
Uc-Kung, Bezalie Bautista, general editor
(2006). Great Scott: the New Day William
Henry Scott Reader . Quezon City: New
Day Publishers. ISBN 971-10-1126-3.
Works as editor
Scott, William Henry, editor and
annotator (1975). German Travelers on
the Cordillera (1860-1890) . Manila: The
Filipiniana Book Guild.

References
1. Peralta, Jesus T, editor (2001) p.15
2. Peralta, Jesus T, editor (2001) p.16
3. Peralta, Jesus T, editor (2001) p.17
 4. Scott, William Henry (1987)
5. Scott, William Henry (1984)
6. Scott, William Henry (1984) pp132-
134
7. Kalantiaw, the Hoax
8. Morrow, Paul (2016-03-01). "William
Henry Scott and the new history" .
Pilipino Express News Magazine.
Retrieved 2017-09-06.
9. Scott, William Henry (1974)
10. Scott, William Henry (1982)
11. Anderson, Benedict (1991). Imagined
Communities. ISBN 0-86091-329-5.
12. Scott, William Henry, (1982) (emended
edition 1985) p1
13. Scott, William Henry (1986)
14. Peralta, Jesus T, editor (2001) p15-38
15. Peralta, Jesus T, editor (2001) p.18

Biography and bibliography

Jesus T. Peralta; William Henry Scott;
Harold C. Conklin (contributor) (2001).
"William Henry Scott: A Biographical
Note and Bibliography" . Reflections on
Philippine culture and society: festschrift
in honor of William Henry Scott . Ateneo
de Manila University Press. ISBN 978-
971-550-368-6.
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