Warring Societies of Pre-colonial Southeast AsiaMindanao and the Sulu IslandsThe large island of Mindanao and the smaller Sulu Islands to the
southwest of it form the southern part of what is now the Philippines.
Together they have an area of about 127,000 km^2 , approximately the
same as Java. Unfortunately, there are no estimates of the population
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, considering the
estimate for Luzon and the Visayas, mentioned above, there is a good
chance that the number of population may have been 250,000 or more.
Like the Visayas north of them, Mindanao and the Sulu Islands were
areas of agriculturists, fishermen and hunters. There were also trade rela-
tions with China and other parts of Southeast Asia. Besides chiefdoms,
in Mindanao there existed a sultanate, formally from 1645 onwards,
called Tubok or Maguindanao, with a Muslim court from where several
“pagan” communities were ruled. Through its datu, regional chiefs, the
court controlled the relatively well-developed rice-producing area along
the Pulangi River. Tribute in rice was a main income for the sultan, who
used part of it for export. Jolo, one of the islands of the Sulu Archipelago,
was the centre of another Muslim sultanate, since the beginning of
the sixteenth century. These sultanates had the character of “harbour
principalities”, i.e. “monarchies” ruled by “dynasties”. Information about
eighteenth-century Sulu reveals that society was rather stratified, with a
ruling class, the datu, at the centre and the sultanate possessing juridical,
religious, fiscal and territorial rights, up to the point of mobilizing the
free villagers for war, not least against the Spaniards in the Visayas.^6
Dutch information of 1628 about the “kingdom” or rajaship of
Sarangani on Mindanao’s south coast shows that in case of war, this area
could raise 500 able-bodied men – Muslims – as well as two thousand
Alfurese from the mountains and 200 Bajaus or “sea gypsies”, both
groups “pagans”, armed with bows, arrows and javelins. Together with
men from about eight other villages, Sarangani’s force consisted of ten
kora-kora, outrigger canoes. Dutch sources use the word kora-kora, where
22–29; Scott, Barangay, 3-4, 193, 231–33; F. N. Rodriguez, “Juan de Salcedo Joins
the Native Form of Warfare”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
46 (2003): 149, 151–53, 155, 157–59.- Warren, The Sulu Zone 1768–1898, xx–xxv; Laarhoven, Triumph of Moro
Diplomacy, xiii, xvi, 66–67, 99, 143; Shinzo Hayase, Mindanao, Ethnohistory beyond
Nations: Maguindanao, Sangir, and Bagobo Societies in East Maritime Southeast Asia
(Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2007): 19–20, 52.