Gregorio Sancianco

Gregorio Sancianco y Goson (born March 7, 1852, Malabon, - died November 17, 1897, Santo Domingo, Nueva Ecija, Philippines) was a lawyer and early advocate of economic reforms in the Philippines, which was then under Spanish rule. He was among the first generation of the Propaganda Movement, the lobby for political and economic reforms spearheaded by educated Filipinos (ilustrados) based in Spain in the second half of the 19th century. Sancianco has been called the first Filipino economist.

Sancianco was born in Tonsuya, a district of Malabon Tambobong (now Malabon), to Chinese mestizo (half-native, half-Chinese) parents. He studied law at the University of Santo Tomas (UST) and was a founding member of the reformist student organization, Juventud Escolar Liberal. Two other founding members were Paciano Mercado (Jose Rizal’s elder brother) and Felipe Buencamino. Juventud was part of the broader reform movement in the Philippines and worked under the direction of the Comite de Reformadores, which was led by clergy including Jose Burgos, Mariano Gomez, and Jacinto Zamora, and members of the Manila elite such as the lawyers Joaquin Pardo de Tavera and Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista.

After the Terror in the wake of the 1872 Cavite Mutiny, which ultimately led to the unjust execution of the priests Gomez, Burgos, and Zamora, Sancianco left for Spain, where he matriculated at the Universidad Central de Madrid. Sancianco completed his doctorate in civil and canonical law and was the first native of the Philippines ever to earn a doctorate. His dissertation, entitled Restitución in integrum: por qué causas tiene lugar. Juicio crítico de este remedio, was accepted in 1877.

In 1881 while still in Spain, Sancianco published El progreso de Filipinas (The progress of the Philippines). This work, the first treatise on economic issues by a Filipino, analysed economic conditions in the country. In the process Sancianco debunked certain racist views, notably those revolving around the alleged “indolence” of the natives. The work’s main purpose however was to propose specific reforms in taxation and revenue-mobilisation for the Philippines as a means of financing physical and social infrastructure. Writing almost a decade later, Jose Rizal explicitly used Sancianco’s Progreso as the starting point for his own work on the related theme of the “Indolence of the Filipinos” (1890).

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