Military Capability and the State in Southeast Asia’s Pacific Rimlands, 1500–1700
The early-seventeenth-century Jesuit Francisco Alcina divided
indigenous warfare in Luzon and the Visayas into two types: on land,
perpetrated by small bands, much like “highway banditry”, in order to
take people by surprise, severing their heads or at best taking them as
hostages; and on sea, during raids with large boats, also taking heads and
captives as hostages or “slaves”. Thus, even warfare on the sea, which re-
quired more organization than that on land, was not primarily oriented
at territorial conquest. “Getting people”, in the sense of hostages and/
or slaves, seems to have been a primary motivation, particularly in ac-
tions on the sea or near the coast; headhunting occurred much more
in the mountainous, “tribal” area. As the aforementioned barangay also
had the meaning of “boat”, William Henry Scott thought that, socially
speaking, a barangay was in fact a unit of people who built and operated
a war vessel, a caracao, a large outrigger canoe. On board, oarsmen were
indispensable to get the vessel going, but there were also people not
using the paddle. They were the real warriors, mainly archers, besides
people carrying daggers, swords, spears, lances and shields. Both the
oarsmen and the warriors were a sort of “free men” having the obliga-
tion to take part, on their own account, in the community’s actions of
violence. A few of the political entities above barangay-level had sizeable
fleets of caracaos, some 20 to 30, each mounted with one small piece of
artillery, i.e. a swivel gun, probably of Southeast Asian produce. On land,
every major polity seems to have had a place of “last resort” or defence,
usually on a mountain or hilltop. Narrow passes and trails were in case
of emergency blocked by stockades. Incidentally, the places of last resort
were true fortifications up to the level of earthworks, stockades and
even moats, equipped with some culverins or swivel guns. Among the
weaponry, matchlocks were ocassionally mentioned. Manila is reported
to have had some sort of a gun foundry.^5
Enterprises, 1975), 3, 10–11, 19–23; B. L. Fenner, Cebu under the Spanish Flag ,
1521–1896: An Economic-Social History (Cebu City: San Carlos Publications,
1985): 14, 20–21; Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450–1680, 2.294-
95; W. H. Scott, Barangay: Sixteenth Century Philippine Culture and Society (Manila:
Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1994), 173–78, 191–92; Idem, Cracks in the
Parchment Curtain and Other Essays in Philippine History (Quezon City: New Day,
1982): 99–120, 123–26- Keesing, Ethnohistory, 30, 62, 64, 147, 183, 190, 192, 199, 210–12, 242; V. B.
Lopez, The Mangyans of Mindoro: An Ethnohistory (Quezon City: University of the
Philippines Press, 1976): 17–18; Scott, Parchment Curtain, 3-4, 91; Fenner, Cebu,