The Manila Times - History

History

The city was in the midst of an uneasy peace and on the brink of another war when the paper named after it—The Manila Times—first hit the streets on October 11, 1898. Just a little over three weeks earlier, the President of the First Philippine Republic, Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo, had been forced to move out of his headquarters in Bacoor, Cavite, on orders of the commander of the American occupation forces (who had won the battle of Manila Bay on August 13 of that year). So to Malolos, Bulacan, trooped Aguinaldo and his followers to open the Revolutionary Congress on September 15.

A fortnight later, all roads again led to Malolos, now the capital of the Republic, where Congress had ratified the proclamation of independence made in Kawit, Cavite, on June 12 of that year. Congress declared September 29 "a public holiday in perpetuity".

In his book Manila, My Manila, National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin writes that during those times, while the Filipinos had their attention focused on what was going on in Malolos, the Americans had their eyes glued to what was going on in Paris. The Constitution of the Philippines was finished and approved on November 29, 1898—"but much good it did us in convincing the peace conference in Paris that we were already a sovereign nation."

October 11, 1898, was still less than four months away from the first shot in San Juan that would signal the start of open hostilities between the Filipino revolutionaries and the American occupation forces. But the air of mistrust between the "liberated" brown-skinned Orientals and their new colonial masters was very thick, particularly in Manila and its surrounding provinces. Against this backdrop The Manila Times was born.

Luis Serrano, in his History of The Manila Times, writes that on October 11, 1898, shortly after news was received in Manila that the Paris Conference had started and would finally approve the treaty that would transfer the Philippines from Spanish to American sovereignty, Thomas Gowan, an Englishman who had lived in the islands for some time, published The Manila Times to meet the demand for an American paper in Manila. The demand, of course, came mainly from the men of the United States Army who had occupied Manila.

Gowan hired a small printing press, Chofre y Compania, to put out the paper. The press was located on Calle Alix, now Legarda Street in Sampaloc. The paper, however, had a downtown office on the Escolta.