If you look at some of the statistics of the amount of men the Filipinos lost to the Americans, you can see that the difference is by a couple of thousands. There's also little to no sources of how much "difficulty" it was to take over a people who were willing to be colonized.

There are actually a lot of sources, they're well documented in the National Library of the Philippines. It was also ascertained that the American death toll was lessened and the Filipino death toll grossly exaggerated to discourage other areas from uprising. Why else would the Americans acknowledge General Lukban as brilliant? Kindly PM me your email address so I could send you the relevant references. Otherwise we'd just be going back and forth here.

I sent a PM for the sources.

You mention General Lukban but recent studies have shown that some of the famous battles that he "partook" in were actually a facade and that he was never behind some of the battles that were well known to the Philippine side such as the Balangiga massacre.

We really need to be careful when interpreting history! Even more so if emotions play any role.

Any and every contributor has an agenda (or even several) - be it any historical source or any scientific research. Without scrutinizing all possible agendas and their possible influence on each contribution, we can't even start to evaluate them.

There are quite few historical events (of any wider importance) that have been sufficiently documented as well as studied by a larger number of independant scientists, extensively discussed at an international level, and finally resulting in a widely shared interpretation of that event. In the vast majority of historic events, especially if badly documented, of lesser interest, from periods long ago, we may never be able to ascertain what really happened. period.

A healthy dose of skepticism does help to avoid falling prey of agendas, spurious claims, as well as uncritically believing in "established facts" - not rarely defined by the winning side of history...

Regards,
Kai

Sounds like an unusual assertion - could you elaborate, please? TIA!

Regards,
Kai

Well said Kai, thanks for this. Actually I was just looking for a particular Waray sword in that era, never thought I'd stumble upon a version of history that's not included in local history books. As I delved further, I understood why.

MaharlikaTimawa, I've shared with you three studies for starters :)

To Ian, Kai, Kino, Sajen and Rick.

Would you like to know where the claim that Visayan blades are brittle, breakable as glass, poorly made? Why ShazamsLaw made a thread like this, and why I made this thread It's why I made this thread. http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=23453

Here? Because the one who is spreading bad news and reputations about Visayan and Luzon blades being poorly made, breakable as glass is actually MaharlikaTimawa who has less than 34 posts. He is the source of all this "Visayan blades are bad" narrative and he posts the same opinion to many Filipinos on social media, youtube, other forums, etc.

He's the reason why ShazamsLaw and myself was attracted to this forum, investigating this matter because we were told he was getting his information here because he's a member. And the convergence of me and ShazamsLaw aim to investigate is by no means a coincidence because Maharlika led us here.

Sorry for this, but five of you were wondering the source of this same "Visayan blades are bad" narrative, and I can no longer keep up this 2 years of silence. I apologize.

-

MaharlikaTimawa's reliance on his single source, William Henry Scott, had caused confusion among myself and many others. I only discovered that Moro Blades were made from Chinese imported steel. We should go by actual finds of the oldest traditionally made Visayan blades to confirm instead of unverified "opinion" pieces.

Regards

As long as we do not get into personality conflicts, I think it is a great idea to provide evidence and accounts of the quality of Visayas steel. Please do so - it would help me and others out for sure. :D