Liberal institutions of higher education, especially in Europe, were a major catalyst of the Philippine Revolution in 1896 against the Spanish Empire. In the mid-to-late 19th century, a burgeoning Chinese mestizo class in the Philippines was arising due to their acquisition of agricultural lands and establishment as a solid economic middle class to counter the hegemony of Spanish elites in the colony. As a result of their relative economic prosperity, it was common for these mestizos to send their children to universities in Manila or even overseas in Spain or Europe. During the 19th century, nationalism as an ideology was very much in vogue in European politics and intellectual circles, e.g. the unifications of Germany and Italy and the beginnings of Zionist thought. In the context of these Philippine intellectuals, the result of this was the Propaganda movement, which sought among other things greater representation and autonomy of the Philippines within the Spanish Empire and the secularization of the clergy, i.e. the use of diocesan priests and bishops instead of friars from Catholic religious orders.

This last demand was particularly explosive amongst the friar orders, who controlled large swathes of the Philippine countryside. As a consequence of the failure of secular Spanish bureaucrats to develop their influence outside Manila, friars instead were the symbol of Spanish authority in the more remote reaches of the Philippines, owning large tracts of agricultural land as haciendas and indoctrinating the native population by way of their dominance of local educational institutions. The friars and the secular government had already had a long history in the colony of political tensions and outright clashes. Additionally, the rise of a landowning Chinese mestizo class, whose children studied in institutions in Europe where friar influence was not as powerful, also posed a clear and tangible threat not just to their economic holdings but also their ideological sway over many native Filipinos.

In particular, the Propagandists resented what they perceived to be a sharply anti-intellectual and anti-liberal bent in the teachings and the attitudes of the friars, most famously depicted in Jose Rizal's novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. The friars attributed this hostility from intellectuals to their alleged Freemasonry, along with a liberalizing secular government that was willing to tolerate such freedom of thought. Many Propagandists, Jose Rizal included, were indeed Freemasons, along with Andres Bonifacio, co-founder of the insurrectionist Katipunan that sought complete and immediate independence from Spain. As a secret society, the Katipunan was also influenced by the masonic leanings of its founders and used masonic imagery in its rankings and ideology.

The friars tangibly listed their grievances in a document known as the Friars Memorial of 1898, written two years after the outbreak of the Philippine Revolution. Intended for the Spanish government in Madrid, it never reached its destination due to the outbreak of the Spanish-American War and the occupation of Manila Bay by the US Navy. Written by representatives of all the prominent friar orders in the Philippines at the time (i.e. Augustinians, Franciscans, Recollects, Dominicans, and Jesuits), the Memorial enumerated what the friars believed to be causes of the insurrection, masonry included:

Partial causes: masonry. Will it be necessary to explain this simple consideration? We do not think so. But should we desire to unfold it, it would be easy for us to add that the anti-religious propaganda; the ideas of erroneous liberty and forbidden independence, incited and aroused in certain Filipinos by European politicians and writers; the antipathy and opposition, clearly shown by certain Spaniards, even by those ruling and by government employees, against the religious corporations; the establishment of masonry and of other secret societies, the former’s legitimate offspring; the most favorable reception that the revolutionary Filipinos found for their plans in many centers and papers of Madrid and other places; the lack of religion in many peninsulars; the ease with which the ancient laws of Filipinas have been changed; the mobility of public functionaries which, giving opportunity for many irregularities, has contributed greatly to the continual lessening of the credit of the Spanish name; and in part, the backwardness, which has been observed sometimes in the sons of the country with regard to public appointments: [all these] are partial aspects, various phases and confluent factors (of which we do not attempt to enumerate all) of the fundamental and synthetical cause that we have expressed.

No one is unaware that the chief of all those partial phases and factors of the social disorganization of the archipelago has been masonry. The Asociación Hispano-Filipina of Madrid was masonic. Those who encouraged the Filipinos in their campaign against the clergy and against the peninsulars here resident, were masons in almost their totality. Those who authorized the installation of lodges in the archipelago were masons. Those who founded the Katipunan, a society so mortally masonic, that even in its terrible suggestive pact of blood it has done naught but imitate the masonic carbonarios, were masons.

Practical consequences of that. The traditional submission to the fatherland, diffused and deeply settled in the archipelago by the religious corporations, having disappeared in part and having been greatly weakened in part; the voice of the parish priest, thanks to the above-mentioned propaganda, having been disregarded by many natives, especially in Manila and conterminous provinces, who were taught in that way to give themselves airs as intelligent and independent men; the prestige of the Spanish name having been greatly tempered, and the ancient respect with which every peninsular was formerly regarded in the islands having been almost annihilated in many towns: is it strange that race instincts should have asserted themselves strongly, and, considering that they have a distinct language, and distinct lands and climate, that they should have discussed and have attempted to raise a wall of separation between Spaniards and Malays? Is it not logical that, after having been made to believe that the religious is not the father and shepherd of their souls and their friend and enthusiastic defender, but a vile exploiter, and that the peninsular here is no more than a trader constituted with greater or less authority and rank, that they should madly and illegally have imagined that they could easily separate from España and aspire to self-government?

(transl. by Blair and Robertson)

u/BingBlessAmerica took us on a journey to the Philippines in 1896, let's turn the clock back 81 years to 1815 Germany.

Many returning veterans of the Napoleonic Wars felt dissatisfied with the existing Kleinstaaterei that made up the territory we now refer to as Germany. They felt that the various princes and dukes that governed the small states exercised too much power, and when they took up arms against the French, they did so for the sake of all Germany, not just the small states that would make up the post-Napoleonic German Confederation. While some thought the German Confederation could be used as a stepping stone to stronger pan-German institutions, others wanted to take things in a more radical direction. At universities across the German Confederation, students returning from the Napoleonic Wars formed Burschenschaften, nationalistic fraternities dedicated to reforming University life and society to attain a more German character. Many Burschenschaften drew inspiration from Ernst Moritz Arndt, who wanted to replace the German Confederation with a constitutional monarchy in Berlin.

A major turning point for the Burschenschaften came in 1817. In October of that year, members gathered at the Wartburg Castle in Thuringia to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation and the fourth anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig. There, the students listened to pro-German speeches and symbolically burnt books and pamphlets, including the Napoleonic Code, texts that encouraged collaboration with the French, and tracts that criticized the Burschenschaften (in The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914, Evans notes that the students actually burned wastepaper labelled with the different titles of the text; the students couldn't actually afford to burn expensive books).

One of the most notable texts burnt was the History of the German Empire, written by August von Kotzebue, a playwright and journalist. Kotzebue was exiled to Russia and ended up joining the Russian foreign service. Through his service to Tsar Alexander I, he was able to return to Weimar, where he would correspond with the Russians, reporting on political events. Kotzebue was highly critical of the nationalism espoused by the Burschenschaften. Kotzebue believed that the extreme nationalism and chauvinism espoused by thinkers like Arndt would harm the German cause, and argued that many of their desires, for a uniform culture and polity were closer to Bonapartism. When Kotzebue traveled to Mannheim in 1819, a student from Jena named Karl Sand visited Kotzebue's lodgings and stabbed the author, killing him. Sand would attempt to kill himself after the attack on Kotzebue, but would survive the attempt and be tried, convicted, and executed for his crimes.

For Austrian foreign minister Klemens von Metternich, Kotzebue's assassination (and an attempted assassination of a Nassau government official by a Burschenschaft member) as grounds to introduce repressive measures designed to crack down on universities and their students. Leaders of 10 members of the German Confederation met in Karlsbad, in Bohemia (today know as Karlovy Vary, in the Czech Republic) and wrote the Karlsbad Decrees. The Karlsbad Decrees, which would later be passed into law by the German parliament in Frankfurt, were a highly reactionary crackdown on alleged "subversives." Teachers and students who espoused such beliefs could be barred from employment, secret societies were banned, publications were censored heavily, and police forces engaged in heavy surveillance to suppress any emergence of radical beliefs.

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Sources:

Evans, Richard. The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914. New York: Penguin, 2017.

Williamson, George S. "What Killed August Von Kotzebue? The Temptations of Virtue and the Political Theology of German Nationalism, 1789–1819." The Journal of Modern History 72, no. 4 (2000): 890-943.