Warring Societies of Pre-colonial Southeast Asiaforest and marine produce for opium, textiles and especially arms. As
James Warren observes,
There is an apparent correlation between intensified Maguindanao/
Iranun raiding in the Philippine archipelago and the munitions traffic
that was conducted at Jolo by the factors of the East India Company and
private country traders from Bengal.^10Islamizing ResistanceScholars are divided with regard to Islam’s probable role in the raids origi-
nating from the southern Philippines. While some negate the “plainly
religious motivation” to raids,^11 others have associated such religious
motivation with Sulu than Maguindanao where Islam was supposedly
a more “prominent factor.”^12 This section re-examines Maguindanao’s
Islamic ties and explores how it figured, if at all, in its political and military
interaction with the larger Malay-Indonesian Archipelago (Figure 3.1).
In a letter to King George III in 1775 the Sultan of Maguindanao
sought to attract British geopolitical and mercantile interests through a
list of concessions. Among these is the cession of Bongo island located
strategically near the delta of the Maguindanao Basin as well as the sup-
posedly “not yet properly discovered and known” Talaud Archipelago
and Yap Island (part of the Carolines).^13 The sultan favored the British
because “whereas the Spaniards intermeddled with the island’s reli-
gion, and the Dutch usurped dominion and sovereignty, the English
confined their attention to trade.”^14 The explicit defense of religious
autonomy alongside the openness to foreign trade is not confined
with Maguindanao. A similar insistence on religious autonomy was
previously made during British commercial negotiations in Sulu with its
- James Francis Warren, “Balambangan and the Rise of the Sulu Sultanate, 1772-
1775,” Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 50.1 (1977): 81. - Domingo M. Non, “Moro Piracy during the Spanish Period and Its Impact”,
Southeast Asian Studies (Kyoto) 30.4 (1993): 404. - Heather Sutherland, “Review Article: The Sulu Zone Revisited,” Journal of
Southeast Asian Studies 35.1 (2004): 150. - References to this letter are found in Samuel Charles Hill, Catalogue of the Home
Miscellaneous Series of the India Office Records (London: India Office, 1927): 70,
75, 83. - As interpreted in Fry, Alexander Dalrymple (1737–1808): 138–139.