The Pacific Theater of the Seven Years’ War in a Latin Poem by an Indigenous Priest, Bartolomé Saguinsín (1766)

Abstract

The Latin epigrams of the Tagalog parish priest Bartolomé Saguinsín (c.1696–1772) commemorate the loss of Manila to the British East India Company in the Seven Years’ War, and the subsequent recuperation of the city by Spain. They plot events into a predictably providentialist structure, lionizing the Spanish commander, praising the Hispanized natives who helped recover the city, criticizing the inhabitants of less Hispanized areas who stood idly by, and casting aspersions on the Sangleys who supposedly collaborated with the invaders. Stuart M. McManus provides background on the author and his involvement with the war, and discusses the poem as an instance of participation by a Tagalog native in the Catholic Republic of Letters.