FROM THE PREFACE: This book is an attempt to narrate the epic of the Filipino people from their obscure beginnings during pre-Spanish epochs to the colonial days of the 18th century. Various authors, notably Spanish and American, had chronicled this period. Inevitably, however, it was interpreted either from the Spanish or the American point of view, depending upon the author’s nationality. By reason of this fact, our historiography all too often has been colored by racial bias, national bigotry, or personal ignorance. There is, therefore, a need for a new interpretation of our history.

In all humility and sincerity, I have undertaken this particular labor, for I believe in the inherent ability of Filipino scholars to write the history of their own people. Only a Filipino can really feel with sympathetic understanding the heartbeats of the Filipino people and interpret faithfully their impulses, attitudes, idiosyncrasies, customs, and traditions. Indeed, only a Filipino—steeped in the lore and folkways of his own people and familiar with the progressive arts and sciences of the Western world —can portray fairly the trials and tribulations, the mistakes and accomplishments, of his compatriots and express with resonant poignancy their ideals and aspirations and dreams during the changing eras of their history.