A Big Welcome-Under Certain Conditions

摘要

A quick trivia question for this month's philippine centennial: Who was the foreign businessman who co-signed the Filipinos' declaration of independence on June 12,1898? Most histories seem to ignore this strange bedfellow-one L.M. Johnson, a retired U.S. Army officer. In hopes of giving the declaration the appearance of American support, Emilio Aguinaldo, the insurgent leader then on the point of defeating Spanish forces, invited Johnson to add his signature to the 97 Filipino names. Johnson, who had been running a hotel in Shanghai before coming to Manila to introduce the newfangled cinematograph, befriended Aguinaldo but then disappeared almost immediately from even most footnotes. Yet his story is a useful reminder that foreigners have long sought their share of Philippine history and business-and have sometimes vanished just as quickly as they've arrived.