Chapter Two

The Philippines in Maritime Asia to

the Fourteenth Century

EARLY SOUTHEAST ASIAN POLITIES

A central paradox in discussing the Philippine past is that “the Philippines”

did not exist as such in the tenth century, or even in the sixteenth century
when the archipelago received this name from colonizing Spaniards. In fact,
present-day Filipinos might have a hard time recognizing themselves in their
tenth-century predecessors. There were some familiar social features, such
as the importance of family ties and a reliance on the sea for food. Less-
familiar traits included body tattooing to mark achievement in battle and
slave raiding. But while early communities in the archipelago did not con-
stitute a single and recognizable Philippine polity, they did contain elements
of social organization, material life, and interisland contacts that would con-
tribute to the present nation-state. It should be kept in mind, however, that
neither commonalities found within the archipelago nor continuities ob-
served through time are exclusive characteristics of the Philippines or Fil-
ipinos. Many are shared with other Southeast Asian societies and constitute
a kind of sociocultural milieu out of which the Philippines and other modern
nations of the region developed.

Localities and Leadership

What were the characteristics of early Southeast Asia? Most languages in the
maritime region (the archipelagos, islands, and peninsula jutting out from the
Asian mainland) belong to the Austronesian family of languages. Numbering in
the thousands, some major examples of Austronesian languages today are the
national languages of Indonesia and Malaysia, along with the widely spoken

19
20 Chapter Two

Tagalog and Visayan of the Philippines. This linguistic affinity stems from the
probable dispersal through the region more than 4,000 years ago of people from
today’s southern China who became the ancestors of most Southeast Asians. (A
separate group populated mainland Southeast Asia, speaking languages of the
Austroasiatic family.) These early migrants were not yet Sinicized, or culturally
Chinese, but their movement south points to the important fact that “in these
early times southern China was culturally and environmentally a part of South-
east Asia.”1 As we will see, that link continues to be important to the region as
a whole and to the Philippines in particular ways.
Another characteristic of the region from early times was the widespread
practice of cognatic kinship, in which families trace descent through both the
male and female lines. In practical terms, this means that both sons and
daughters may have inheritance rights and that neither “disappears” from the
family tree upon marriage. (Contrast this with the strictly patrilineal descent
of the Chinese.) Where cognatic kinship is practiced in Southeast Asia, it has
had immense significance socially and politically. Children grow up and
marry but continue to be part of their natal family, and sibling relationships
are significant throughout life. People who are not biologically related can
make new claims on each other through fictive kinship, which creates ritual
brothers, godmothers, and godfathers. And political alliances are typically
confirmed through marriage, creating larger family networks. Where family
relations proliferated so readily, kinship became the way most social ties were
expressed, “the idiom of social organization.”2
Family also played an important part in religious life. The earliest religions
in Southeast Asia, as elsewhere, were animistic, seeing and worshipping di-
vinity in the surrounding environment, which had the power to give life (e.g.,
a good harvest, a successful hunt) or bring harm (death in childbirth, a ship-
wreck). To navigate through this world and into the next, people made offer-
ings to the divinities of nature and to relatives who had already passed on. An-
cestor worship was a spiritual expression of kinship ties that were relied upon
and imposed duties in daily life.
Finally, interaction between people and the geography they inhabited led to
distinctive settlement patterns through most of Southeast Asia. With the ex-
ception of certain large plains, such as the Red River delta in northern Viet-
nam and the central plain of Java, the region features central mountain ranges
that were once thickly forested. Natural resources were abundant, especially
from the sea, but travel over land was often difficult; rivers running from
mountain to coastline were separated by difficult terrain. These factors, com-
bined with a low population density, yielded a patchwork of human settle-
ments, often along rivers and initially isolated from one another, rather than
concentrated population centers. Even when settlements grew into networks
 The Philippines to the Fourteenth Century 21

that traded and competed, a local mindset persisted—people felt strongly at-
tached to their own locality and didn’t feel it to be less important than other
larger or more powerful settlements. Historian Oliver Wolters described this
multicentrality of early Southeast Asia: “Every center was a center in its own
right as far as its inhabitants were concerned, and it was surrounded by its
own groups of neighbours.”3
What type of state arose in these conditions? We need to examine the ques-
tion itself before beginning to answer it. The question has been shaped by
scholarship on the development of Western European states, on the one hand,
and by the Chinese sources that provide some of the earliest evidence about
Southeast Asia, on the other. Through the Weberian lens, an early state would
emerge from and exist above a growing population engaging in trade and
other economic activities. The classical Chinese-defined state would feature
dynastic succession within defined territorial boundaries. But we find neither
in early Southeast Asia, particularly in the Philippines, so should we conclude
that there was no state? Or can we look instead for early state formation in the
engagement of social forces—in the spiritual life, social and economic hier-
archies, and cultural practices of a society? (See box 2.1.) To find this picture
of “state” in early Southeast Asia, we should take a closer look at the early
river-based settlements.
As a source of water and food, rivers were logical settlement sites. They
also provided channels of transportation, so that communities at the mouth
of a river could trade with those upriver. This trade was an important feature
of early Southeast Asian societies, for to sustain life, upriver settlements
needed salt and protein (seafood) from the coast. In exchange, they traded
rice and forest products that coastal dwellers needed for food and external

Box 2.1. Looking for States in Early Southeast Asia

“The two sets of signifiers—Western and Chinese—have precise meaning only in cul-
tural contexts outside Southeast Asia. . . . In other words, the criteria for incipient and
fully-fledged states are established by an arbitrary vocabulary drawn from an archae-
ology with an economic bias and from Chinese conventions transferred to a part of
the world which was virtually unknown to them. The result is that one is in danger of
looking for what could never be there in either prehistoric or protohistoric times. If,
however, we think simply of ‘political systems’—a neutral expression—the way is
open for considering other cultural phenomena such as religious and social behavior
that can be expected to affect political and economic activities in both prehistory and
protohistory.”
—O. W. Wolters, History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives,
rev. ed. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, in cooperation with
the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 1999), 24–25
22 Chapter Two

trade. Settlements at river mouths were particularly strategic, having the po-
tential to control the entry of upriver goods into the trading system. But re-
alizing such potential required social organization through the mobilization
of kinship ties to establish one settlement’s dominance within a network of
similar settlements.
The person capable of mobilizing people to achieve these goals has been
described in various ways: “chief” or “big man” in anthropological studies,
“charismatic leader” in Weberian political scholarship, and “man of prowess”
in Southeast Asia. This person exhibited unusual achievement in warfare and
trade, an indication of spiritual power that could enhance community well-
being. His achievements and charisma enabled him to command the personal
loyalty of an extended kinship group and continually increase the number of
his followers, including slaves. Such a man of prowess was often called datu,
a title common throughout the maritime region. During his life, he was sub-
ject to frequent challenge and could keep his position only through continu-
ous success. After his death, he might be worshipped as a revered ancestor by
those who hoped to succeed him. These successors were not necessarily bio-
logical offspring; dynasties were difficult to establish because a son was not
guaranteed to inherit the prowess of his father. The power conveyed by an-
cestors could be claimed by anyone with talent.
While the phrase “man of prowess” signifies male leadership, there are in-
dications that women were central to community life as well. These are most
obvious in the origin myths that feature women and highlight the comple-
mentarity of male and female roles. We cannot rule out the existence of fe-
male datus, but women were more likely to be prominent as ritual specialists
with power to access and influence the spirits existing in nature. The sources
that historians rely on, however, are very scarce for the early historical period.
Later periods, for which sources are more abundant, already feature the male-
centered political and cultural hierarchies that obscure women in the histori-
cal record. Nor can we make firm generalizations, given the importance of lo-
cal context in Southeast Asian cultures. However, “gender regimes”—the
assignment of attributes, roles, and power to male and female human beings
as part of the “wider social order”—are vitally important to the state’s rela-
tionship with and control of society.4 (See box 2.2.)
As we have stressed above, each locality felt itself to be central. So was
each datu convinced of his own superior stature, putting him in endless com-
petition with his counterparts and requiring diplomatic skills and constant
knowledge of what his rivals were doing. Trade via the region’s waterways
was vital to this competition. Busy harbors enriched and empowered the
coastal datu in several ways. As the biggest local merchant, he profited di-
rectly from the trade. As the one who maintained the port—providing safety,
 The Philippines to the Fourteenth Century 23

Box 2.2. Gender, Family, and the State in Southeast Asia

“Although interpretations of the ‘state’ in Southeast Asia are constantly debated, there
is a growing realization that indigenous governance grew out of cultural understand-
ings of the obligations and responsibilities embedded in family relationships. Because
enforcement of any overarching authority often relied on the metaphor of family hi-
erarchies, ruling elites became deeply committed to ‘gender regimes’ that both re-
flected and influenced the wider social order. Regardless of military or territorial
strength, the dynamics of gender in Southeast Asia is intimately connected with the
rise of states and their efforts to redefine and regulate appropriate roles for men and
women in the society at large.”
—Barbara Watson Andaya, “Introduction,” in Other Pasts: Women, Gender, and
History in Early Modern Southeast Asia, ed. Barbara Watson Andaya (Honolulu:
Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, 2000), 21

facilities, and provisions to traders—he collected harbor fees. And as the po-
litical leader, he demanded tribute from visiting merchants and enforced his
authority through armed force. The latter was necessary to deter piracy and
prevent visiting foreign ships from bypassing his port to trade in competitors’
ports. Regional producers with items to trade (typically rice, spices, aromat-
ics such as sandalwood, and other forest products) were obliged to feed goods
into his port, which in turn attracted rich foreign merchants, resulting in a cos-
mopolitan entrepôt—a center of trade and transshipment of goods. These de-
velopments enabled some datus to style themselves as royalty, maintaining a
court and richly rewarding followers.
Whether large entrepôts or subregional centers, the polities created by datu
leadership were not centrally ruled or based on abstract principles or institu-
tions. They were networks of personal loyalties and marriage alliances that
were held together by personal achievement and diplomatic skill. The al-
liances were hierarchical; one datu was the acknowledged superior to whom
others owed regular tribute (usually a portion of the local product) and man-
power for warfare or the maintenance of infrastructure. But the polity was
quite fluid and impermanent, because subordinate datus (or vassals) were al-
ways on the lookout for better alliances, more reliable protectors, and more
profitable opportunities. Warfare was a frequent part of this jockeying for po-
sition, but it usually took the form of raids to seize people, who were in short
supply, not the conquest of land, which was plentiful. In any case, men of
prowess did not have the institutional capacity to rule large areas. The key
characteristic of premodern polities in Southeast Asia was that political com-
munity was defined and space was organized by personal relationships, not
territorial boundaries.
24 Chapter Two

Localization and the Growth of Regional Networks

As sea trade between India and China increased in the first millennium of the
common era (C.E.), coastal Southeast Asian polities had more and more con-
tact with other peoples, cultures, and ideas. We have already sketched the ba-
sic logic of how trade facilitated political hierarchy and datuship. The ex-
panding Asian trade routes multiplied that effect by bringing knowledge of
new belief systems and ways of governing. From this time on, Southeast Asia
could be characterized as a crossroads, a place where local and foreign ideas,
goods, and people interact to produce cultural and social change. Until re-
cently, some people felt the “crossroads” characterization implied a lack of
identity, suggesting that Southeast Asians were easily shaped by foreign in-
fluence. But this negative interpretation has been eclipsed by two ideas. First
is the acknowledgment that all societies change through contact with out-
siders; Southeast Asia’s geography simply exposed it to much more contact
than most other places. Perhaps as a result, fluidity continued to characterize
local polities, and “outsiders” relatively easily became “insiders” through
marriage, commerce, or possession of useful expertise.
The second idea concerns how societies change. Many scholars now argue
that foreign ideas and practices adopted by Southeast Asians were precisely
those that enhanced their existing values and institutions, rather than radically
transforming them overnight. We feel that this view of change—a “localiza-
tion” of new elements—is broadly correct. But we should remember that as
societies became differentiated hierarchically, values and institutions were
differentiated as well, serving the interests of some more than others. The rel-
atively benign view of how new social, religious, and trade practices are
adopted should not obscure competition between social forces or the occur-
rence of coercion and violence.
The first transformative localization in Southeast Asian statecraft occurred
when Indian merchants and Brahmans (priests) began to frequent Southeast
Asian ports with textiles to trade for local and Chinese products. With the In-
dian textiles came Hindu religious beliefs and political practices that enabled
local rulers to enhance both their spiritual power and political authority.
Adopting Hindu modes of worship, a Southeast Asian ruler gained in stature
by association with a particular god and participation in his divinity. Eco-
nomically valuable gifts the ruler presented to court officials and local datus
became spiritually precious because they were imbued with the ruler’s new
divinity; this in turn enhanced the recipients’ power in their own communi-
ties. Likewise, titles adopted from Sanskrit (such as rajah) enabled the most
powerful datus to distinguish themselves and their kin groups as royalty and
nobility—classes with an enhanced capacity to transfer political power to
their descendents. These cultural assets represented a measurable increase in
 The Philippines to the Fourteenth Century 25

the benefits a ruler could provide to his followers and resulted in a greater
concentration of political power.
Localizing Indian cultural practices linked the ruler to a powerful “univer-
sal” religion, which did not displace but joined the local divinities people al-
ready worshipped. The divine ruler made his stature clear to the populace by
building religious monuments and temples proclaiming his devotion to the
deities and instructing the people in their duty and place in the cosmos. At the
same time, localization domesticated the foreign system, filtering out ele-
ments that did not resonate with the local culture. In short, the localization of
Indian beliefs and practices did not replace the old culture, but added new
meanings and utilities to it.
Politically, the stakes became higher in the endless datu competition as
Hindu, and later Buddhist, religio-political practices made possible large-
scale polities. By late in the first millennium, for example, Java and Cambo-
dia were home to land-based kingdoms ruled by divine kings supported by
large populations engaged in wet-rice agriculture. These kingdoms left be-
hind the magnificent monuments of Borobudur and Angkor Wat, which tes-
tify to the spiritual and political prowess of their rulers. Divine kingship did
not obliterate the smaller centers, however; it enabled the growth of wider
networks of personal loyalties called mandalas (circles of kings) with one
king at the center acknowledged as the universal ruler.
Angkor (in present-day Cambodia) is a classic example of a durable land-
based mandala of the Hindu-Buddhist era, and Srivijaya (centered in present-
day Indonesia) was its rough contemporary in the maritime region. Srivijaya
was a trade-based mandala that dominated east–west commerce through the
Strait of Malacca for four hundred years (c.700–1100 C.E.). From its center in
Sumatra, its powerful navy suppressed piracy in the strait, provided safe pas-
sage to foreign ships, and downgraded competing entrepôts into collection
centers for Southeast Asian products forwarded to Srivijaya’s harbors for
transshipment and export to international markets. The kingdom’s initial mil-
itary force of twenty thousand included sea nomads, people whose mobility
allowed them to remain outside the hierarchy of datus and who constituted
the king’s loyal personal following. His military forces eventually grew to in-
clude the followings of rival, subjugated datus. Finally, and crucially, Srivi-
jaya was able to dominate shipping through the strait because China recog-
nized how well it ordered trade and granted preferential status to ships
arriving from Srivijayan ports.
Commercially, Srivijaya oversaw commerce in western manufactured
goods (Indian cottons and beads, Middle Eastern glassware), local goods
(mostly jungle produce such as ivory, rhinoceros horn, tin, camphor, san-
dalwood, and spices), and superior Chinese silk and porcelain. Culturally, it
26 Chapter Two

became an important stopover and center of Buddhist learning for religious

pilgrims traveling between India and China. Because foreign ships sailed
with the seasonal monsoon winds, they stayed in port for many months,
during which Srivijaya provided safe berth for ships, cargos, and crews, as
well as food for all these diverse people. Food imports included rice, which
indicates that Srivijaya was not self-sufficient and needed to maintain hege-
mony over regional production centers.
But such large polities, stable over the decades and capable of mobiliz-
ing many people, were still held together by personal connections. And
while they sometimes left a visible heritage in monuments and temples—
Srivijaya, for one, did not—these large polities were not the norm in early
Southeast Asia. More common were the small trading centers that enjoyed
a combination of one or two local products in regional demand, decent har-
bors, and a location along a trade route. There were many of these whose
prosperity allowed the formation of an elite class, and they rose and fell in
power as they competed with one another and responded to fluctuations in
the fortunes of the larger centers. All such polities were dependent on net-
works of personal loyalty and characterized by a local mindset, with each
center under its own ruler. It is this underlying pattern that best represents
the Philippine experience.
Unfortunately, Filipinos and foreign observers searching for evidence of an
early state have often looked for authoritative law codes, centralized political
rule, and temple complexes. This way of looking at the Philippines began
with Spanish rule in the sixteenth century. The Spaniards themselves were or-
ganized under a highly centralized, autocratic kingship, and when they en-
countered datus, they initially assumed they were seeing kings in the Euro-
pean sense. They soon realized, however, that a typical datu had only a local
following and that there were many datus competing within a small area.
Then they often erred in the other direction, seeing “no kings or rulers wor-
thy of mention.”5 In seeking to impose its own state structure and universal
moral code, discussed in the next chapter, Spanish rule nearly succeeded in
obscuring the cultural and political links of the Philippine archipelago with
the rest of maritime Asia.
But through recent advances in archaeology, as well as new studies in
philology and anthropology, we can say with increasing certainty that the
Philippines was indeed part of the maritime Asian trading network. It was a
sparsely populated archipelago of local communities that spoke different lan-
guages but shared many of the cultural traits, values, and practices outlined
above. As another Spaniard with more local knowledge would observe, they
were “governed by kings in the manner of the Malays”—the ethnic group
from the western end of the Indonesian archipelago whose language was the
 The Philippines to the Fourteenth Century 27

lingua franca of regional trade.6 In this part of the world, history happened in
many centers, and many of those were in the Philippines.

EARLY COMMUNITIES IN THE PHILIPPINE ARCHIPELAGO

Spatial and Spiritual Arrangement

An early settlement in the Philippines was referred to as barangay, a Tagalog
word originally meaning “boat,” referring to a boatload of related people,
their dependents, and their slaves. These kinship groups were led by a datu,
hence “barangay” also meant the following of a datu, a political community
defined by personal attachment, not territorial location. The barangay settled
together in a community ranging from thirty to one hundred households, and
through subdivision, many were still that size when the Spanish arrived in the
sixteenth century.
Settlements were arranged along rivers, as in other parts of Southeast Asia.
Those at the river’s mouth were oriented toward the sea, where they obtained
most of their protein and had the potential to grow into trading ports in con-
tact with foreign merchants. But they were intimately connected with upriver
settlements that grew rice and had access to the forest. Permanently settled
upriver farmers practiced swidden cultivation, in which parts of the forest
were cut down and cultivated and then allowed to lie fallow to regenerate sec-
ondary growth while alternate sites were sown—a system that did not cause
environmental degradation. In these settlements, the products of the land, but
not the land itself, could be owned and sold, enabling coastal communities to
buy mountain-grown rice and cotton, root crops, medicinal herbs, and other
forest products. In exchange, people upriver obtained fish and salt from the
sea and manufactures such as pottery and cloth. There was often raiding be-
tween upriver and coastal settlements, but this only underscores their inter-
dependence.
Power and spirituality in the archipelago were interwoven in an animistic
world permeated with religious belief. Visayans (of the central Philippines)
had a pantheon of divinities, which they referred to with the Malay-Sanskrit
word diwata. Tagalogs (of central and southern Luzon) called these anito and
had a principle deity among them, Bathala, whose name derived from the
Sanskrit “noble lord,” variations of which appeared as titles in the southern
Philippines, Borneo, and Java. Everywhere in the islands, divinities resided
all around people in nature and were appealed to and appeased regularly. Di-
vinity was found in the sun and the moon, the rain and the fields, in very old
trees, and in crocodiles, an ever-present danger which was appeased with a bit
28 Chapter Two

of food when people went out on the river. A Spanish missionary would later
ask, “What more did they adore? the very stones, cliffs, and reefs, and the
headlands of the shores of the seas or the rivers.” Perhaps most important
were ancestors, especially “those who distinguished themselves through
valiant deeds,” objects of veneration who were thought to offer personal pro-
tection if their names were invoked at feasts and upon leaving the house.7
These potentially helpful divinities lived alongside evil spirits, which were
avoided, and evil omens, which were respected.
Offerings, sacrifices, ceremonies, and feasting were the modes of worship.
Offerings were made routinely and individually to diwata or anito (the words
here refer to the painted wooden figures that represented divinities) in house-
hold shrines or on passing a locality inhabited by a god. With the help of a
paid spirit ritualist—someone with power to intercede in the spirit world—
ceremonies were held to heal the sick, bless a marriage, or ensure safe child-
birth. At crucial times in the agricultural cycle, or before commencing a voy-
age or raid, the datu would sponsor a feast, an event that demonstrated the
obligations and exercise of power in early Philippine societies. The feast
would be held in a temporary shelter built beside the datu’s house or at the
entrance to the village, and the spirit ritualist would make offerings of cooked
food, live poultry, and hogs. Later, the community ate the food and drank
quite a lot of alcohol. Both serious and fun, feasting had the underlying pur-
pose of fulfilling both society’s duty to its divinities and the datu’s obligation
to share his wealth with the community.
The spirit ritualist, baylan in Visayan and catalonan in Tagalog, was typi-
cally an elderly woman of high status or a male transvestite (therefore female
by gender), who learned her profession from her mother or other female rel-
atives. She cultivated contacts among the friendlier spirits who possessed her
in a trance as she interceded for the community, family, or individual who
sought her services. In many cases, spirit power itself was gendered female,
as with the Visayan divinity Laon, who was worshipped at harvest time.8

Social Stratification: A Web of Interdependence

Datus were part of a hereditary class (maginoo in Tagalog) that married en-
dogamously. Datuship was also a political office that included military, judi-
cial, religious, and entrepreneurial roles (see box 2.3). Success and power al-
ways depended on an individual’s charisma and valor, a combination of
diplomacy and military prowess resulting in wealth that was used to attract
and support more followers. A further skill possessed by powerful datus was
noticed by Antonio Pigafetta, the chronicler of the first Spanish voyage to the
archipelago in 1521: “Kings know more languages than the other people.”
 The Philippines to the Fourteenth Century 29

Box 2.3. Two Faces of Datu Power

“A datu was expected to govern his people, settle their disputes, protect them from en-
emies, and lead them into battle. He was assisted by a considerable staff. His chief
minister or privy counselor was atubang sa datu—literally, ‘facing the datu’—and his
steward or majordomo was paragahin, dispenser, who collected and recorded tribute
and crops. . . . His sheriff or constable was bilanggo, whose own house served as a
jail. . . . A kind of town crier, paratawag, . . . was a slave. He announced proclama-
tions, mantala, either by shouting them out from the top of a tall tree, or by deliver-
ing them to the persons concerned—for example, timawa being summoned for a hunt
or sea raid. [These] served as the datu’s military forces, armed at their own expense.”
*****
“A powerful datu’s power was enhanced by popular fear of his arcane knowledge of
black magic, sometimes reputed to be handed down from one generation to another.
Ropok was a charm which caused the one who received it to obey like a slave. Pan-
lus was a spear or G-string which caused leg pains or swelling in the victim as soon
as he stepped over it. Bosong caused intestinal swelling in those who crossed the
datu. Hokhok was to kill simply with a breath or the touch of a hand, and kaykay was
to pierce somebody through just by pointing a finger at him from a distance. A repu-
tation for such powers no doubt both facilitated a datu’s effective control over his sub-
jects, and arose from it.”
—William Henry Scott, Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society
(Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1994), 130, 83

Another observer remarked upon the extent to which datus were self-made
men: “There is no superior who gives him authority or title, beyond his own
efforts and power.” Those who especially distinguished themselves attributed
their success to divine forces and after their death became ancestors who were
the focus of “adoration and deification.”9
Datus were distinguished by the way they lived, looked, and dressed. The
datu’s large entourage and the many dependents in his household (a sign of
his power) were partly self-supporting and partly supported by tribute paid by
the people under his control and protection. In the Visayas, where tattooing
was practiced by both men and women, datus added a tattoo with each mili-
tary victory. The most powerful were painted from head to toe. Datus wore
gold, fine cotton, and silk, in contrast to ordinary clothing woven from tree
bark fiber. They sponsored the feasts that validated their status and led the
season’s raiding parties on local enemies.
Below the datu class in social rank were the warrior-supporters: the people
who formed the datu’s entourage, served him as aides and bodyguards, fought
with him as warriors and oarsmen, and surrounded him at feasts. They were
quite often related to the datu and included the offspring of his various wives.
30 Chapter Two

This created a bond between the two upper classes that broadly separated
them from commoners. In the Visayas, this class was called timawa and never
did common agricultural labor. In the Tagalog region, wet-rice agriculture
was becoming important and social stratification was more advanced. Here
this class was subdivided into the lower-status timawa, who did labor in the
datu’s fields and waters, and the higher-status maharlika, who were more
likely to do military service, although they too could be called upon to labor
in the field or pay tribute in agricultural goods. Like everyone else outside the
datu class, timawa could not bequeath wealth to their children because every-
thing formally belonged to the datu. But great wealth did not guarantee power
nor did its absence preclude it. A man of timawa birth might rise to datuship
if he had the right qualities and opportunities; likewise, he could fall in status
through indebtedness or capture.
The mass of society was the tao (common people)—farmers, fishers, and
artisans—who owed tribute to the datu and service in general to the upper
classes. Many of these people spent some portion of their lives in servitude.
This is the most complex and least understood aspect of early Philippine so-
ciety, largely because the details were recorded only after the society was un-
der stress and in transition, just before and during Spanish colonization. The
Spanish called many of those in servitude “slaves” (esclavo), though there
was no such single word in any Philippine language for the many degrees of
labor obligation that existed. What follows is a brief discussion highlighting
how people moved into and out of servitude and its role in society.10
One route into bondage was to be convicted of a crime. The judicial sys-
tem consisted solely of the datu, who heard witnesses, rendered judgment,
and handed down punishment. Most crimes, including theft and often murder,
were punished with a fine, often a heavy one inflicted on the criminal’s whole
family. If unable to pay, all responsible parties owed labor to the wronged
party (or to the money lender they borrowed from) until the debt was paid off.
People could also be purchased—there was a large regional trade in human
labor—or captured in warfare. This kind of slaving, whether in periodic raids
on neighboring villages or on the sea, occurred well into the early modern pe-
riod when Europeans in the region both practiced and fell victim to it them-
selves. Anyone could become a slave in this way, though a captured datu was
usually ransomed by his family.
Indebtedness was perhaps the most common way people fell into servitude.
A family that borrowed rice, for example, was given a whole agricultural cy-
cle to repay the debt in kind, but an unpaid debt doubled every year. If ulti-
mately unable to pay, the whole family became debt slaves to their creditor.
Hoping for good treatment in the not unlikely event of this happening, people
chose their creditors carefully. During famines, they tended to go to wealthy
 The Philippines to the Fourteenth Century 31

“relatives and surrender themselves to them as slaves—in order to be fed.”11

This was a kind of voluntary bondage, broadly understood as dependency
within another’s household, survival at the price of social status.
But bondage was not a static or monolithic condition. Upward and down-
ward mobility on complex and regionally varied social ladders was common.
The lowest in status were akin to the chattel slaves of the West: These were
“hearth slaves” who lived in the master’s home; children born to them auto-
matically belonged to the master. But where male hearth slaves were allowed
to marry and start their own household, they could rise in status. Most
“householders”—slaves who maintained their own residence—were debtors
who were allowed to work a few days a week for themselves and the rest for
their creditors. While a whole household was liable for one member’s debt,
their creditor was obliged to release them once the debt was repaid. A child
born to one slave parent and one free parent inherited her parents’ status in
equal measure and owed half her labor to the master. If she, in turn, had a
child with a fully free person, that child would owe one-fourth of his labor,
and so forth. A slave who accompanied his chief on a raid might distinguish
himself in battle and so begin a rise from bondage to leadership. There were
even “rich and respectable slaves” who themselves had slaves.12
These carefully calculated degrees of dependency and status, as well as the
widespread vulnerability to bondage, are a clue to the nature of slavery in the
premodern Philippines and Southeast Asia generally. It was not an indelible
status attached to a particular ethnic group, but a way of controlling and mo-
bilizing labor in a society with an abundance of natural resources and a short-
age of human resources. Some Spanish observers thought slavery in the
Philippines was “mild” compared to that practiced by Europeans, but the fact
that it was so widespread was more significant. Control over people was the
attribute of power in this system and the imperative to accumulate dependents
operated at all levels. It was part of a system of interdependence marked by
mutual obligations up and down the social ladder.

TRADE, TRIBUTE, AND WARFARE

IN A REGIONAL CONTEXT

Relations between Settlements

In this locally focused world, attachment to one’s own group and village was
strong. This can be seen in the attitude toward outsiders. At the beginning of
the tilling season, no strangers were allowed in a village while ceremonies
were conducted for a productive harvest. Likewise, a family engaged in
32 Chapter Two

harvesting rice would allow no outsiders into the house, lest the fields yield
nothing but straw. Upon pain of death, strangers were warned away during
the funeral of a datu. Further evidence is found in the differential treatment of
slaves from within the community and those from outside. Slaves born within
a household were considered part of the family and were rarely sold. On the
other hand, when a life was to be sacrificed—for instance, when a slave was
to be buried with a great datu to serve him in the afterlife—someone captured
in war or purchased from outside would be chosen.
But evidence of early shipbuilding indicates that communities were not in-
sular. Travel for the purpose of trade was common and had an impact on the
growth of settlements and the way they were governed. An archaeological site
in Tanjay, Negros Oriental (in the Visayas), shows a settlement’s evolution
from before the tenth century to the sixteenth century. In its earliest form, this
coastal community at the mouth of a large river covered less than seven
hectares (around fifteen acres). The excavation of Chinese porcelain from the
twelfth century is a sign of early trade, but doesn’t prove direct contact with
China. By the sixteenth century, when the settlement engaged in metal pro-
duction, it covered thirty to fifty hectares (roughly one hundred acres).
Houses by then varied in type and size and included one with fortifications—
all signs of growing social stratification.
As more goods were imported into coastal settlements, those who con-
trolled the trade grew in material wealth and status. Not surprisingly, these
were the datus who controlled harbors, collected trade duties, and imported
goods. As a class, they were distinguished by their possession of larger-than-
average, well-constructed, sometimes stockaded houses filled with such for-
eign prestige goods as Chinese porcelains, gold ornaments, musical instru-
ments, wood carvings, and fine silks and cottons.
This evolving elite did not merely siphon off wealth in the form of duties;
it also created wealth. There is some evidence from the Tanjay site that the
datu himself was a producer of various grades of pottery (and that his work-
force was probably female). The everyday ceramics would have been sold to
commoners and the high-quality decorated ceramics given as gifts to allies
and high-status followers. But even where datus were not themselves pro-
ducers, they did finance production, create a market for high-end goods, and
facilitate both interisland and foreign trade. Increased commerce, in turn, at-
tracted more people to the settlement and stimulated cottage industries to sup-
ply and equip the traders. Iron- and woodworking, the building trades, ship-
building and repair, and food supply were all areas that thrived.
As some settlements grew large through trade or manufacturing, their da-
tus sought to project power beyond their immediate settlement, often
 The Philippines to the Fourteenth Century 33

through warfare. According to a late sixteenth-century Spanish account,

“There were many chiefs who dominated others less powerful. As there
were many without much power, there was no security from the continual
wars that were waged between them.”13 Common reasons for going to war
included avenging a killing, mistreatment, or abduction; there were also
customary times of year to plunder and capture slaves. But although the sit-
uation was fluid, it was not as chaotic as it appeared to the Spanish. Al-
liances were made, often through marriage, for friendship and help against
mutual enemies. These alliances yielded hierarchies of chiefs who paid trib-
ute to those above—at once a system of trade and a way to reinforce the hi-
erarchy (see box 2.4). Alliances were always sensitive to the relative
strength of the partners, as is the case in international diplomacy still, and
were liable to be tested by warfare. But warfare was episodic, not contin-
ual, ending quickly with the seizure of goods and people. The end of hos-
tilities usually saw the withdrawal of the victorious forces and the payment
of heavy tribute by the defeated datu. Each locality remained under its own
datu, although of course a datu was liable to fall to an externally sponsored
rival if unsuccessful in war.

Box 2.4. Prestige Goods and Datu Alliances

“Ethnohistorical analyses indicate that for . . . Philippine chiefs, gifts of prestige goods
were the primary material means of cementing strategic alliances with other elites and
rewarding the loyalty of subordinates. In a society in which political coalitions are not
automatically defined by territory or unilineal descent groups, personalized alliance
networks were, by necessity, built through intermarriage and the circulation of pres-
tige goods. Archeological evidence . . . suggests that, before the early-second-millen-
nium beginnings of the Chinese porcelain trade, chiefs and other elites circulated lo-
cally manufactured ‘fancy’ earthenware and either locally made or trade-obtained
metal implements and glass beads both within a polity and between island chiefdoms.
The growth of the chiefly political systems in the first millennium A.D. created the con-
ditions for an ever-increasing demand for valuable and exotic prestige goods. The ex-
pansion of trading networks to encompass extra-archipelagic trade for Chinese porce-
lains and other status goods may be a reflection of this intensifying desire for
sumptuary goods to validate positions of status and authority. At the same time, com-
petition for access to foreign prestige goods may have transformed these internal al-
liance and prestige goods exchange systems. The desire of foreign traders for interior
forest products and other local exports would have enhanced the need for extensive
internal alliance and exchange systems cemented by prestige goods redistribution.”
—Laura Lee Junker, Raiding, Trading, and Feasting: The Political Economy of Philip-
pine Chiefdom (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999), 311–12
34 Chapter Two

Connections within and beyond the Archipelago

The standard textbook long used in Philippine classrooms, Gregorio Zaide’s
Philippine Political and Cultural History, held that the Philippines was
once ruled by Srivijaya’s maritime empire. Later scholarship discounted
this view, citing lack of evidence of Hindu/Buddhist beliefs, statecraft, and
monuments in the Philippines. A more recent textbook suggests that be-
cause the archipelago lay at the end of the “long route from Arabia and In-
dia, any cultural push from those cultural centers would have petered out
before reaching it”; mainland Southeast Asia is also said to have “served as
a protective screen” against China.14 In this perspective, “great traditions”
become diluted as they move away from their source and are reduced to a
“trickle” of “influence.” Both Zaide’s view and its correction are flawed.
The first reflects a conception of empire that did not pertain to early South-
east Asia’s mandalas. The second ignores the dynamics of localization and
the multicenteredness of Southeast Asia, as well as Luzon’s geographical
proximity to China. Further, it misinterprets a large centralized polity like
Hinduized Angkor as a normative political structure from which the Philip-
pines deviated. This leads to the erroneous conclusion that the archipelago
was “isolated from the rest of Southeast Asia . . . [and] largely unaffected
by foreign influences.”15
But the archipelago was not isolated; we have increasing evidence of its
economic, linguistic, and political connections within maritime Asia. In-
habitants of the archipelago were capable of oceangoing trade from at least
the fourth century, judging from a boat relic dated to 320 C.E. that was found
in northeastern Mindanao. And ceramic tradeware from China, Siam (Thai-
land), and Vietnam dated several centuries earlier has been excavated from
Philippine sites, though we don’t know if these arrived through direct
trade.16
There is also the important evidence of the Malay-Sanskrit titles powerful
coastal datus gave themselves—“Rajah (Ruler), Batara (Noble Lord), . . .
[and] Salipada, Sipad, and Paduka, [which are variations of] the Sanskrit Sri
Paduka . . . (His Highness).”17 These titles were common throughout mar-
itime Southeast Asia. Rather than seeing the absence of a large state as evi-
dence of the Philippines’ marginality to the main cultural currents of the re-
gion, we could see the communities of the archipelago participating
according to their economic and geographical opportunities and priorities, as
did all local centers in the region. This included the adoption of foreign prac-
tices as they were encountered, if they were compelling and useful, and a role
in the region’s networks of trade and political alliance. These, in turn, were
given order by tribute relations with China.
 The Philippines to the Fourteenth Century 35

From the Tang dynasty (618–907) though the Qing dynasty (1644–1911),
relations between China and the “barbarian states” that surrounded it were
based on China’s view of itself as the “middle kingdom”—the moral center
to which tribute was due on account of its superior virtue backed by military
power. Like the vassals who owed tribute to superior datus in Southeast Asia,
tributary states throughout maritime Asia acknowledged China’s supremacy.
This reinforced a hierarchical order among the rulers of the region because
only those recognized by the Chinese emperor were permitted to send the
tribute missions that formed the basis of regional trade (see box 2.5). Subor-
dinate rulers became part of a network of vassals; their trade moved along
feeder routes into the recognized ports. Sending a tribute mission was thus a
sign of political independence and an achievement in itself, requiring the or-
ganization, resources, and power to command ships and assemble valuable
goods.
Philippine contact with China almost certainly began during the Tang dy-
nasty. Chinese currency and porcelains from this period have been found
from Ilocos in the north to the Sulu Archipelago in the south. Chinese records
refer to “Ma-i,” probably Mindoro, which brought goods directly to Canton
for the first time in 982. By this time, China’s Sung government (960–1279)
had established the office of superintendent of maritime trade in various
coastal cities. One was assigned to handle “all Arab, Achen, Java, Borneo,
Ma-i, and Palembang barbarians, whose trade passed through there.” These

Box 2.5. Tribute Relations and Trade

“Tribute was the only way to trade legally and safely with China, and it proved ex-
tremely lucrative to rulers as well as to those who arranged the missions. The language
of tribute to a faraway emperor, expressed in an alien language, did not appear to
trouble Southeast Asian rulers. . . . Within the East Asian world of exchanges in writ-
ten Chinese, trade was legitimate only as an aspect of the formal relations among
rulers.
“Within Southeast Asia there were replications of this kind of ‘tribute,’ often little
more than an opportunity to trade at a larger port in return for a symbolic acceptance
of its primacy. States in Borneo, South Sumatra, and the Lesser Sundas frequently of-
fered such tribute to Java, while those in the Malayan Peninsula offered the ‘golden
flowers’ (bunga emas) of fealty to the court of Siam. In the 1680s even faraway Jambi
(Sumatra) was sending the golden flowers to Siam with a ‘return gift’ of pepper for the
China trade, in response to the Siamese king’s ‘gift’ of saltpetre and sulphur. Only
when a neighbouring state was conquered by force of arms did tribute become a one-
way flow of goods and manpower to the capital.”
—Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680, vol. 2,
Expansion and Crisis (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993), 234
36 Chapter Two

traders sold “aromatics, rhinoceros horn and ivory, coral, amber, pearls, fine
steel, sea-turtle leather, tortoise shell, carnelians and agate, carriage wheel
rims, crystal, foreign cloth, ebony, sapan wood, and such things.”18 Pearls
were a signature Philippine product, and other sea and forest products could
have been among Ma-i’s trade goods.
Another Philippine place name appearing in Sung trade records is that of
Butuan, a gold mining and trading center in northeastern Mindanao that sent
its first tribute mission to China in 1001. From the tenth to the thirteenth cen-
turies, Butuan was known for manufacturing metal tools and weaponry
(blades, knives, and projectiles), musical instruments (bells, cymbals, and
gongs), and gold jewelry (earrings, buckles, and rings). Though probably the
earliest major trading center in the Philippine archipelago, Butuan did not
send tribute missions of the same level as those of Champa, a coastal power
in what is now southern Vietnam. The Sung trade history records Butuan
trade as part of Champa’s, indicating the latter’s superior power and impor-
tance, but also providing evidence of Butuan’s regional links.
A significant change in the pattern of trade occurred in the twelfth century
when Chinese trading vessels began sailing directly to Southeast Asian pro-
ducers, thus eliminating the need for a major entrepôt to gather merchandise
for export. This caused Srivijaya’s decline, boosted the importance of smaller
trading centers like Butuan, and gave Chinese merchants dominance in re-
gional shipping. During the following period, the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368),
Chinese contacts with Philippine trade centers proliferated, especially with
Visayan settlements such as Butuan, Tanjay, and Cebu. The last had grown
from a fishing village into a manufacturing center specializing in metallurgy
and shipbuilding. Even before it began to be visited by international mer-
chants around the 900s, it was already a center of interisland trade and a “so-
ciety with developing technologies and a settled existence.”19 In the Yuan pe-
riod, it entered the international network directly.
Meanwhile, newer power centers had begun to expand their reach through
trade and settlement. In the eleventh or twelfth century, Malays from Brunei,
a north Borneo port, first settled in Tondo (part of present-day metropolitan
Manila) and intermarried with the local population. These developments
stimulated an expansion in agriculture, industry, and coastal population cen-
ters, as well as the emergence of prosperous elites who adopted new ideas and
fashions from their cosmopolitan connections. In Tondo, for example, the na-
tive Tagalogs adopted Malay social customs and Malay words. Around this
time, a new religion—Islam—was beginning to spread through the trading
and ruling networks of other parts of Southeast Asia, but had not yet reached
the Philippine archipelago.
 The Philippines to the Fourteenth Century 37

By the time the first Spaniards arrived in 1521, their chronicler could
give the following description of a Butuan chief that testifies to his ruling
status, access to foreign and manufactured goods, and military achieve-
ment: “According to their customs he was very grandly decked out, and the
finest looking man that we saw among those people. His hair was exceed-
ingly black, and hung to his shoulders. He had a covering of silk on his
head, and wore two large golden earrings fastened to his ears. He wore a
cotton cloth all embroidered with silk, which covered him from the waist to
the knees. At his side hung a dagger, the haft of which was somewhat long
and all of gold, and its scabbard of carved wood. He had three spots of gold
on every tooth, and his teeth appeared as if bound with gold. He was per-
fumed with storax and benzoin. He was tawny and painted [tattooed] all
over.”20

An Early Legal Document

In 1986, an inscribed copperplate measuring about 8 ⫻ 12 inches was found
in Laguna province near Manila. It was later carbon-dated to 900 C.E., mak-
ing it the oldest document found in the Philippines to date. We close this
chapter with a discussion of the Laguna Copperplate Inscription because of
what it contributes to and confirms of our knowledge about early Philippine
political structure.21 (See the text of the inscription in box 2.6.)
First, we can see in this document—which resembles thousands found in
Indonesia—the centrality of debt and servitude in early Philippine society.

Box 2.6. The Laguna Copperplate Inscription

“Hail! In the Saka-year 822 [900 C.E.] in the month of March–April, the 4th day of the
dark half of the moon, on Monday, Lady Angkatan together with her relative, Bukah,
the child of His Honor Namwran, was given, as a special favor, a document of full ac-
quittal by Jayadewa, Chief and Commander of Tundun, to the effect that His Honor
Namwran was totally cleared of a debt to the amount of 1 kati and 8 suwarna, in the
presence of His Honor Kasumuran, the Leader of Puliran; His Honor Ganasakti, the
Leader of Pailah; and His Honor Bisruta, the Leader of Binwangan. And on orders of
the Chief of Dewata representing the Chief of Mdang: because of his loyalty as a sub-
ject of the Chief, all the descendants of His Honor Namwran have been cleared of the
whole debt that His Honor owed the Chief of Dewata. This document is issued in case
there is someone, whosoever, some time in the future who will state that the debt is
not yet acquitted of His Honor. . . .”

E. P. Patanñe, The Philippines in the Sixth to Sixteenth Centuries (Manila: LSA Press, 1996), 85; based
on the translation by Anton Postma
38 Chapter Two

We can tell that the debtor in question, Namwran, was a man of status (“His
Honor”) who had become a “subject” (debt slave or servant) to the chief of
Dewata. Because of Namwran’s absence from these proceedings, where he is
represented by Lady Angkatan (his wife?) and his child, we can surmise that
he had died and his relatives were seeking release from the obligation they
would otherwise inherit. On the basis of Namwran’s loyalty to the chief, their
request is granted, and his relatives will have this document to prove their free
status.
Second, the document demonstrates political hierarchy and networks.
Jayadewa, the chief and commander of Tundun (Tondo), is the authority who
summons the vassal chiefs of Puliran, Pailah, and Binwangan to witness the
acquittal of Namwran’s debt. Jayadewa invokes the authority of the chief of
Dewata, who in turn represents the chief of Mdang. Through the document’s
language and place names, scholars have tried to reconstruct the political con-
nections mentioned here. Jayadewa and many of the other chiefs’ names are
Sanskrit and most of the document is written in Old Malay, which had ab-
sorbed much from Sanskrit and was the lingua franca of commerce through-
out the region dominated by Srivijaya. Jayadewa’s title is given in Javanese,
suggesting political links there as well.
Place names help fill in the picture. Tondo is in present-day Manila. Its
commander’s loyalty is to the chief of Dewata (present-day Mt. Diwata), near
Butuan, discussed above. Mdang seems to refer to a temple complex in Java,
where the kingdom of Mataram was emerging as a rival to Srivijaya. Ac-
cording to E. P. Patanñe, “This relationship is unclear but a possible explana-
tion is that the chief of Dewata wanted it to be known that he had a royal con-
nection in Java. The picture [of Jayadewa] that emerges is that of a Srivijayan
subordinate of a vassal chief . . . in Dewata [who is] appointed [as] a chief
and commander in Tundun . . . to take charge of a vital trading center in the
Tondo-Manila-Bulacan area.”22

To summarize the claims of this chapter: The Philippines in early times had
less-populated and less-centralized polities than did other parts of Southeast
Asia, but was of the same cultural and political realm, sharing the hierarchi-
cal, yet fluid, ruling practices of the region and contacts organized through
the Chinese tribute trade. Small barangays were often linked through net-
works of datus, while retaining a high sense of locality and resolute inde-
pendence. Despite the lack of “supra-barangay” political institutions, we can
see state formation in kinship practices, religious beliefs, and systems of so-
cioeconomic status and dependency. Increasing trade from the twelfth cen-
tury on resulted in growing populations, social stratification, political inno-
vation, and the concentration of political power. These developments would
 The Philippines to the Fourteenth Century 39

greatly accelerate starting in the fourteenth century, a subject to be taken up

in the next chapter.

NOTES

1. Mary Somers Heidhues, Southeast Asia: A Concise History (New York: Thames
and Hudson, 2001), 16.
2. O. W. Wolters, History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives,
rev. ed. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, in cooperation with The Insti-
tute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 1999), 18.
3. Wolters, History, Culture, and Region, 17.
4. Barbara Watson Andaya, ed., Other Pasts: Women, Gender, and History in
Early Modern Southeast Asia (Honolulu: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Uni-
versity of Hawai’i at Manoa, 2000), 21.
5. Seventeenth-century Spanish missionary Francisco Colin, in F. Landa Jocano,
ed., The Philippines at the Spanish Contact: Some Major Accounts of Early Filipino
Society and Culture (Manila: MCS Enterprises, 1975), 175.
6. Quoted in William Henry Scott, Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino and Other
Essays in Philippine History (Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1992), 59 n. 3.
7. Father Pedro Chirino, writing around the turn of the seventeenth century, in Jo-
cano, Philippines at the Spanish Contact, 142–43.
8. Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr.’s Clash of Spirits: The History of Power and Sugar
Planter Hegemony on a Visayan Island (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998)
is an excellent account of power and its spiritual dimensions in the precolonial and
colonial Philippines.
9. Antonio Pigafetta, Colin, and Chirino, in Jocano, Philippines at the Spanish
Contact, 44, 178, 142.
10. Based on Scott’s “Oripun and Alipin in the Sixteenth-Century Philippines,” in
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino, 84–103.
11. Spanish chronicler Miguel Lopez de Loarca, writing in 1582, in Jocano,
Philippines at the Spanish Contact, 92.
12. Loarca, in Jocano, Philippines at the Spanish Contact, 97.
13. Colin, in Jocano, Philippines at the Spanish Contact, 176.
14. Rosario Mendoza Cortes, Celestina Puyal Boncan, and Ricardo Trota Jose, The
Filipino Saga: History as Social Change (Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 2000), 1–2.
15. Cortes, Boncan, and Jose, The Filipino Saga, 14.
16. The following discussion is based on E. P. Patanñe, The Philippines in the Sixth
to Sixteenth Centuries (Manila: LSA Press, 1996).
17. William Henry Scott, Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and So-
ciety (Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1994), 128–29.
18. Sung Shih (Sung History) Monographs, 1345, chap. 139, quoted in William
Henry Scott, Prehispanic Source Materials for the Study of Philippine History, rev.
ed. (Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1984), 65.
40 Chapter Two

19. Patanñe, Philippines in the Sixth to Sixteenth Centuries, 134.

20. Pigafetta, in Jocano, Philippines at the Spanish Contact, 50.
21. See Patanñe’s discussion of Anton Postma’s conclusions and other scholarship
on early inscriptions and linguistic history; Philippines in the Sixth to Sixteenth Cen-
turies, 83–96.
22. Patanñe, Philippines in the Sixth to Sixteenth Centuries, 95.
 Chapter Three

New States and

Reorientations, 1368–1764

TRANSFORMATIONS IN COMMERCE AND RELIGION

The first emperor of China’s Ming dynasty (1368–1644) declared a new pol-
icy in 1368: Maritime trade would henceforth be a government monopoly.
Only countries recognized as tribute-paying vassals would be permitted to
trade with China, and private trade would no longer be allowed. This new def-
inition of the tribute trade refocused Southeast Asian polities both economi-
cally and politically. The Chinese emperor welcomed tribute missions
bringing goods, information, and affirmations of loyalty; Southeast Asian port-
polities with the organizational and financial resources took advantage of the
opportunity. These included at least twenty-two places in the Philippines: For
example, “Luzon” sent missions in 1372, 1405, and 1410, and the rising south-
ern port of Sulu sent six missions between 1370 and 1424. Some rulers trav-
eled to China to pay fealty in person, and when one Sulu ruler died at the Chi-
nese court, he was given a respectful funeral attended by the emperor. Official
Chinese ships paid return visits to recognize their vassals—Admiral Zheng
He’s seven expeditions from 1405 to 1443 included one or two visits to Sulu.
The number of Ming ceramics found in Philippine archaeological sites and
shipwrecks confirm the high level of trade in the Ming period.
These parameters for the tribute trade lasted only about a century before
Chinese emperors abandoned state trading. But it was long enough to stimu-
late the development of powerful port-states throughout the region. On the
mainland, Ayutthaya (in Thailand), Champa (southern Vietnam), and Cambo-
dia and, in island Southeast Asia, Brunei, Java, and Melaka all benefited from
Chinese engagement. Melaka was established about 1400 by a prince in ex-
ile from Srivijaya. On the west coast of the Malay Peninsula facing the strait

41
42 Chapter Three

that came to bear its name, Melaka (Malacca) was in a position to control
maritime trade between India and China. The Ming trade edict offered the
first rulers of this new port-state a timely opportunity, and they made several
personal appearances at the Chinese capital to secure the emperor’s backing.
The port-state polities that grew during the Ming tribute trade were urban
and cosmopolitan. Their populations reached 100,000 or more, comprised of
the diverse groups who traded in the region—Chinese and Southeast Asians,
Indians, Arabs, Turks, and Armenians. After the Chinese emperors lost inter-
est in the southern trade, these port-states continued to dominate the region as
political, commercial, and cultural centers until the end of the sixteenth cen-
tury. They played a particularly important role in the diffusion of Islam as a
faith and political system.
At this juncture—with the Philippine archipelago on the brink of historic
reorientations in religion and governance—it is worth considering again its
place in Southeast Asia. To some people, the conversion of most of the pop-
ulation to Hispanic Catholicism over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
confirms a sense of cultural apartness; some Filipinos even see it as diver-
sion from an “authentic” identity. When viewed from a wider lens, however,
we see that the whole region was undergoing tremendous change at this
time, much of which served to differentiate one area from another. Anthony
Reid, a historian who has written extensively on early modern Southeast
Asia, argues that religious change often occurs during upheavals and disrup-
tions of the old order that highlight inadequacies in the old belief system:
“The period 1550–1650 was such a period of dislocation in Southeast Asia
as a whole . . . one that stimulated a remarkable period of conversion toward
both Sunni Islam and Catholic Christianity.”1 For the Philippine and eastern
Indonesian archipelagos, which became targets of commercial and territorial
conquest and competing missionary pressure, this period certainly repre-
sented a disruption of the old order. In this sense, the Philippines was well
within the regional mainstream of religious change. And like religions al-
ready practiced in Southeast Asia, Islam and Christianity closely linked spir-
ituality to governance.

Islam
Islam had first entered Southeast Asia in the thirteenth century through In-
dian and Arab traders and missionaries who converted port rulers on the
coasts of Sumatra and Java. By the fourteenth century, the Mongol-ruled
Yuan dynasty of China had conquered Muslim regions as far west as Bagh-
dad, facilitating the flow of Muslim scholars, preachers, and traders into East
and Southeast Asia. The Ming tribute trade beginning in 1368 brought even
 New States and Reorientations, 1368–1764 43

more traffic, including Chinese Muslim merchants and Arab and Indian mis-
sionaries. The first important commercial center in Southeast Asia to convert
to Islam was Melaka, heir to Hindu-Buddhist Srivijaya’s geographical reach
and cultural pull. Srivijaya’s court style—based on loyalty to the ruler, hier-
archy, marriage alliances, and the proceeds of thriving trade—did not disap-
pear with Melaka’s conversion, but was gradually imbued with Islamic
traits, beliefs, and practices. The court language of Malay, widely used
throughout the maritime region, began to be written in Arabic script, and the
Arabic language itself replaced Sanskrit as the source of new terminologies
of governance. As Melaka’s power and commercial success grew, so did the
moral, military, and commercial momentum of the new faith among port
rulers seeking advantage against rivals.
A Muslim ruler found that Islam helped him build and centralize political
power, which rested on three bases: material reward, coercion, and spiritual
power. Conversion strengthened a datu’s commercial advantages through fa-
vored access to growing Muslim trade networks. Greater wealth led to more
armed troops and slaves, which in turn increased the ability to collect tribute
and make alliances. The third element of power was more complicated. Cer-
tain aspects of Islam—equality of all believers before God, the importance of
religious officials, a body of learning external to the realm—challenged older
forms of spiritual power. The Muslim ruler was not divine, but “God’s
shadow on earth” and defender of the faith. Yet a royal ruler—a sultan—was
imbued with a charge of spiritual power (daulat) that had clear antecedents in
pre-Islamic culture. So the surrounding religious experts, rather than compet-
ing with his spiritual power, worked in its service to “overrule” local spirits
and local datus alike. The faith also lent the ruler moral justification for con-
quering rivals and final authority in appointing religious officials and adjudi-
cating disputes.
Sultans commissioned royal genealogies and claimed the right to bequeath
power to their heirs, a significant institutionalization of political power. Sub-
ordinate datus benefited too, with higher status and titles—especially those in
charge of the palace and the port. The datu class as a whole took advantage
of greater social stratification by distinguishing itself as “nobility.” This
“sanctified inequality” justified exaction of tribute from commoners and
made datuship hereditary in fact as well as in name.2
Sulu, the island group near northeast Borneo, was home to the first sul-
tanate and supra-barangay state in the Philippine archipelago. Sulu appeared
in Chinese records beginning in 1349 and sent several tribute missions dur-
ing the early Ming dynasty. According to historian Cesar Majul, Sulu was vis-
ited by Chinese Muslim traders and Arab missionaries who began to spread
the faith in the late fourteenth century. Paduka Batara, the Sulu ruler who died
44 Chapter Three

Figure 3.1. The Mosque at Tawi-Tawi: Said to be the first in the Philippines (courtesy
of the Philippine National Historical Institute)

in China, left two sons to be raised among Chinese Muslims. But Sulu did not
have a Muslim ruler until about 1450, when Rajah Baginda (a Minangkabau
prince) and Sayyid Abu Bakr (sayyid signifies descent from the Prophet
Muhammad) fled Sumatra after its defeat by non-Muslim Javanese. Baginda
arrived in Sulu with a group of wealthy merchants and married locally, but
lacked the spiritual credentials to become more than a paramount datu. Abu
Bakr, with his prestigious lineage, had the necessary stature. He allied with
Baginda by marrying his daughter and became Sultan Sharif ul-Hashim.
Majul tells us that Abu Bakr introduced “not Islam as such but Islam as a
form of state religion with its attendant political and social institutions” mod-
eled on those of Melaka.3 The sultanate spread its religion and authority from
the port of Jolo to the interior of Sulu and neighboring islands, claiming own-
ership of land and rights over all subject peoples. Authority was established
through missionary activity and the creation of political districts. Each district
was administered by a panglima, an official one rank lower than a datu, who
collected taxes, adjudicated disputes, organized conscripted labor, and an-
nounced royal decrees. A later observer confirmed the centralization of Mus-
lim polities, noting that laws were enacted by “the greatest chief, whom all
the rest obeyed.”4 Sulu’s diverse population was incorporated into the au-
thority of the sultanate through the assignment of panglima posts to leading
 New States and Reorientations, 1368–1764 45

members of each resident community, including the Chinese, Tausug, and

Sama-Bajaw ethnic groups.5 The Tausug were the dominant local group, with
whom the new rulers intermarried; their language began to borrow heavily
from Malay and to be written in the Arabic script.
As rulers converted to Islam, their subjects followed. Contemporary Arab
and European observers noted, however, how little their lifestyles changed
with conversion, sometimes entailing only abstention from eating pork. Igno-
rance of the Koran, arbitrary application of Islamic law, and marriage with
nonbelievers frequently persisted. This is an example of localization—Islam
being incorporated gradually into existing beliefs and practices, as it contin-
ues to be today. Groups that did not accept Islam were proselytized, but gen-
erally not forcibly converted as long as they accepted the political authority
of the sultanate. Nevertheless, they were clearly set apart from the commu-
nity, and were henceforth treated differently from Muslims (see box 3.1).
The important new division between believers and nonbelievers—those in-
side and those outside the community—is reflected in the practice of slavery.
Among Muslims, who were considered equal before God, slaves were no
longer taken except in debt bondage; chattel slaves who accepted Islam were
usually freed. Henceforth, non-Muslims became the targets of slave-raiding
expeditions, allowing the perpetuation of a trade/slave/plunder economy. The
insider–outsider division had an important effect within the community as
well. Thomas McKenna discusses the “amalgam of armed force, material re-
muneration, and cultural commitment” that maintained the social order in
Muslim Mindanao. According to McKenna: “The presence of disdained
aliens may have worked to sustain the stratification system largely through its
psychological effect on subordinates, who were inclined to draw the most
meaningful social dividing line below rather than above themselves and iden-
tify with insider Muslims as opposed to outsider pagans and Christians.”6

Christianity
Only decades before traveling to the Philippines, Spanish Catholics had
ended almost eight hundred years of Muslim political rule over much of the
Iberian Peninsula (711–1492) and expelled Spanish and North African Mus-
lims and Jews from their realm. In all their endeavors, Spanish religious
zeal—the spirit of reconquista—was particularly acute. But the Spanish were
also driven by the desire for wealth and profit, something they had in com-
mon with Muslim traders in Southeast Asia. Despite the protests of mission-
aries on board, the five Spanish expeditions to the Philippines in the sixteenth
century frequently traded in commodities and slaves with Muslims. Without
this trade, they would not have survived.