This is a fascinating study for those interested in the South China Sea disputes:
https://researchgate.net/publication/338440694_Re-inscribing_propositions_historic_cartography_and_Philippine_claims_to_the_Spratly_Islands…
Dylan Beatty, a professor in the Geography department at University of Hawaii, researched ancient maps to analyze the territorial evolution of the Philippines and in particular to understand whether official territorial claims by the Filipino government over the Scarborough Shoal and the Spratly Islands were backed by these maps.
He demonstrates that the maps overwhelmingly do not support Filipino territorial claims, even those maps used by officials of the Philippines' Supreme Court as purportedly backing the claims.
Beatty looked at over 50 of maps taken from a June 2014 lecture by Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio T. Carpio at the Institute for Maritime and Ocean Affairs. The lecture was aimed at "debunk[ing] China’s cartographic claims to the disputed area" but Beatty concludes that ironically "multiple historic maps in [Carpio's] exhibition appear to undermine modern Philippine claims in the South China Sea".
For instance Carpio's exhibition states that a 1908 map by Hodgson "shows 'Scarborough' shoal", which is accurate but "the map, however, includes a ‘Paris Treaty Line’ that graphically excises the shoal from Philippine territory" ![🤷]( "Person shrugging")
Or, another example, the exhibition cites a 1852 map entitled "Islas Filipinas" as evidence for Philippine claims to the shoal but closer inspection of the map reveals "no colour-coding [of] the shoal as part of any province of the Philippines".
Last example: a map from 1855 entitled "Carta di una parte dell Asia dell Oceania" which has "astonishing attention to detail". In that map "Spanish claims to the Philippines are shaded yellow; territories claimed by the Dutch shaded blue; red areas are British claims; and Portuguese claims are green, cartographically colour-coding the empires. ‘Scarborough Shoal’ is clearly depicted, but not shaded yellow. Furthermore, no features in the modern-day Spratly Islands are shaded yellow. In other words, this map seems to undermine modern Philippine claims."
In his paper Beatty therefore suggests that Filipino claims over the Scarborough Shoal and the Spratly Islands are in fact extremely recent: "President Ferdinand Marcos, during a brutal period of martial law in the Philippines, declared the Kalayaan Island Group (the Philippines’ claim to the Spratly Islands) a ‘distinct and separate municipality of the Province of Palawan’ in 1978 (Presidential Decree No., 1596, 1978). In 2009, the Philippines promulgated Republic Act No. 9522, amending Republic Act No. 3046, to define archipelagic baselines". It is also in 2009 that "the Kalayaan Island Group and Scarborough Shoal were declared ‘as “Regime of Islands” under the Republic of the Philippines".
This is consistent with the fact that when the Philippines gained independence from the U.S. in 1946 (the Philippines were an American colony) the Treaty of Manilla, relinquishing U.S. possession of the Philippines and recognizing the Republic of the Philippines, excluded the Spratlys and the Scarborough Shoal from Filipino territory. If you read the Treaty, Filipino territory is based on the definition of it in the 1898 Treaty of Paris in which Spain ceded the Philippines to the US. This is the definition (Article III): https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/sp1898.asp… As you can read, the coordinates described do not encompass the Spratly Islands or the Scarborough Shoal.
It's important to understand all of this when judging the South China Sea dispute, because the current narrative would have you believe that the Philippines is an innocent victim here, with "big bad China" trying to steal its territory. When the truth is that factually speaking the Philippines are being expansionist as their territorial claims over these features are very recent and not backed by history. Furthermore, this issue doesn't involve only China and the Philippines: for instance Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the ROC also have territorial claims over the Spratlys. Don't fall for easy black and white, "good vs bad guy" narratives: the truth is always much more complicated and nuanced.