NQC Mourns the Passing John Alan Larkin

Posted on 01 August 2021
By NQC Secretariat

The
National Quincentennial Committee (NQC) joins the academics in the discipline of History in mourning the demise of Philippine historian John Alan “Mang Jack” Larkin, one of the champions of local history in the Philippines. He died on his 85th birthday on 29 July 2021 in the U.S.

His work,
The
Pampangans: Colonial Society in a Philippine Province (1972), serves as a model of scholarly-written local history in the country. It was published at the time that “any historical study of a Philippine province was next to impossible and certainly a waste of a graduate student’s time,” according to a review of the book by Michael Paul Onorato (1976). Filipino historian Leslie Bauzon recognized Larkin’s work, being a pioneer postwar Philippine history study on local history, “virtually a terra incognita in Philippine historical scholarship.”

Larkin was also among the scholars in the past century who helped developed Philippine history from the lens and voice of a Filipino.
The
NQC, for example, emphasizes the active role of our ancestors in influencing the fate, destiny, and destination of the first circumnavigation of the world 500 years ago.