| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Filomeno V. Aguilar, Jr. Clash of Spirits: The History of Power and Sugar Planter Hegemony on a Visayan Island. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 1998. Pp. xiii, 313. Cloth $49.00, paper $28.95.

This book is truly a fabulous tale in all the senses of the word. Here the Filipino past is transformed into an exotic landscape peopled by indigenous spirits, one where chance determines a person's fate, and life is one long colossal gamble whose outcome is largely the result of dare and the agency of one's dungan or spirit companion. The world that Filomeno V. Aguilar, Jr., conjures up, however, is one of conflict and opposition between the local and the foreign, the indigenous and the Spanish, two irreconcilable forces at play within the political, social, and belief structures of colonial society. There is apparently no room for syncretism, amalgamation, or appropriation of cultures here but, instead, "two colliding worlds," two realities, two constructions, two powers at war with one another (p. 46). . . .

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