A Lecture (via Zoom) by Dr. Ruth de Llobet | Monday, November 15, 6:00pm EST
This lecture explores the legal instrumentalization of the 1812 charter in the province of Laguna, in the Luzon
countryside by looking at a dispute between José Pelaéz, ex-Alcalde Mayor (provincial governor) of Laguna in
1814, and Doña Lucia Dionisio of the town of Majayjay, the wife of a native principal. Dr. de Llobet argues that the internal socio-political dynamics in the provinces were much more complex than those represented in the binary notions of “class struggles” between native elites and cailianes (commoners) or the “colonial struggle” between natives and the colonial state to understand political dynamics during the implementation of the 1812 Constitution in the Philippines.
Dr. Ruth de Llobet is a historian of Southeast Asia with specific focus on Spanish colonial Philippines during the late 18th and 19th centuries. She received her PhD. in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is currently an Assistant Clinical Professor at the Humanities Department in NYU Shanghai. She is currently working on two manuscripts regarding the history of the Philippines. The first one is “Demostración del mísero estado de las Islas Filipinas”: A “Proyectista” Economic Colonial Program on the Philippines, 1763-1765, and Orphans of Empire: Bourbon Reforms, Constitutional Impasse, and the Rise of Filipino-Creole Consciousness in an Age of Revolution. Her research interests include Southeast Asian history; the political and constitutional history of the Philippines; Asian interconnections, networks, and colonial elites; and the age of revolution in Asian and global contexts.