History Of The Philippines (1521-1898)

Earliest hominin activity in the Philippine archipelago is dated back to at least 709,000 years ago. ''Homo luzonensis'', a species of archaic humans, was present on the island of Luzon at least 67,000 years ago. The earliest known anatomically modern human was from Tabon Caves in Palawan dating about 47,000 years. Negrito groups were the first inhabitants to settle in the prehistoric Philippines. By around 3000 BC, seafaring Austronesians, who form the majority of the current population, migrated southward from Taiwan.

Scholars generally believe that these ethnic and social groups eventually developed into various settlements or polities with varying degrees of economic specialization, social stratification, and political organization. Some of these settlements (mostly those located on major river deltas) achieved such a scale of social complexity that some scholars believe they should be considered early states. This includes the predecessors of modern-day population centers such as Manila, Tondo, Pangasinan, Cebu, Panay, Bohol, Butuan, Cotabato, Lanao, Zamboanga and Sulu as well as some polities, such as Ma-i, whose possible location is either Mindoro or Laguna.

These polities were influenced by Islamic, Indian, and Chinese cultures. Islam arrived from Arabia, while Indian Hindu-Buddhist religion, language, culture, literature and philosophy arrived through expeditions such as the South-East Asia campaign of Rajendra Chola I. Some polities were Sinified tributary states allied to China. These small maritime states flourished from the 1st millennium. These kingdoms traded with what are now called China, India, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia. The remainder of the settlements were independent barangays allied with one of the larger states. These small states alternated from being part of or being influenced by larger Asian empires like the Ming Dynasty, Majapahit and Brunei or rebelling and waging war against them.

The first recorded visit by Europeans is Ferdinand Magellan's expedition who landed in Homonhon Island, now part of Guiuan, Eastern Samar on March 17, 1521. They lost a battle against the army of Lapulapu, chief of Mactan, where Magellan was killed. Spanish colonialism began with the arrival of Miguel López de Legazpi's expedition on February 13, 1565, from Mexico. He established the first permanent settlement in Cebu. Much of the archipelago came under Spanish rule, creating the first unified political structure known as the Philippines. Spanish colonial rule saw the introduction of Christianity, the code of law, and the oldest modern university in Asia. The Philippines was ruled under the Mexico-based Viceroyalty of New Spain. After this, the colony was directly governed by Spain.

Spanish rule ended in 1898 with Spain's defeat in the Spanish–American War. The Philippines then became a territory of the United States. U.S. forces suppressed a revolution led by Emilio Aguinaldo. The United States established the Insular Government to rule the Philippines. In 1907, the elected Philippine Assembly was set up with popular elections. The U.S. promised independence in the Jones Act. The Philippine Commonwealth was established in 1935, as a 10-year interim step prior to full independence. However, in 1942 during World War II, Japan occupied the Philippines. The U.S. military overpowered the Japanese in 1945. The Treaty of Manila in 1946 established the independent Philippine Republic.

Timeline

Prehistory

Stone tools and fossils of butchered animal remains discovered in Rizal, Kalinga are evidences of early hominins in the country to as early as 709,000 years. Oldest human fossil is from the third metatarsal of the Callao Man of Cagayan at about 67,000 years. This and the Angono Petroglyphs in Rizal suggest the presence of human settlement before the arrival of the Negritos and Austronesian speaking people. The Callao Man remains and 12 bones of three hominin individuals found by subsequent excavations in Callao Cave were later identified to belong in a new species named ''Homo luzonensis''. For modern humans, the Tabon Man remains are the still oldest known at about 47,000 years.

The Negritos were early settlers, but their appearance in the Philippines has not been reliably dated. They were followed by speakers of the Malayo-Polynesian languages, a branch of the Austronesian language family. The first Austronesians reached the Philippines at 3000–2200 BC, settling the Batanes Islands and northern Luzon. From there, they rapidly spread downwards to the rest of the islands of the Philippines and Southeast Asia, as well as voyaging further east to reach the Northern Mariana Islands by around 1500 BC. They assimilated the earlier Australo-Melanesian Negritos, resulting in the modern Filipino ethnic groups that all display various ratios of genetic admixture between Austronesian and Negrito groups. Before the expansion out of Taiwan, archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence had linked Austronesian speakers in Insular Southeast Asia to cultures such as the Hemudu, its successor the Liangzhu and Dapenkeng in Neolithic China.

The most widely accepted theory of the population of the islands is the "Out-of-Taiwan" model that follows the Austronesian expansion during the Neolithic in a series of maritime migrations originating from Taiwan that spread to the islands of the Indo-Pacific; ultimately reaching as far as New Zealand, Easter Island, and Madagascar. Austronesians themselves originated from the Neolithic rice-cultivating pre-Austronesian civilizations of the Yangtze River delta in coastal southeastern China pre-dating the conquest of those regions by the Han Chinese. This includes civilizations like the Liangzhu culture, Hemudu culture, and the Majiabang culture. It connects speakers of the Austronesian languages in a common linguistic and genetic lineage, including the Taiwanese indigenous peoples, Islander Southeast Asians, Chams, Islander Melanesians, Micronesians, Polynesians, and the Malagasy people. Aside from language and genetics, they also share common cultural markers like multihull and outrigger boats, tattooing, rice cultivation, wetland agriculture, teeth blackening, jade carving, betel nut chewing, ancestor worship, and the same domesticated plants and animals (including dogs, pigs, chickens, yams, bananas, sugarcane, and coconuts).

A 2021 genetic study, which examined representatives of 115 indigenous communities, found evidence of at least five independent waves of early human migration. Negrito groups, divided between those in Luzon and those in Mindanao, may come from a single wave and diverged subsequently, or through two separate waves. This likely occurred sometime after 46,000 years ago. Another Negrito migration entered Mindanao sometime after 25,000 years ago. Two early East Asian waves were detected, one most strongly evidenced among the Manobo people who live in inland Mindanao, and the other in the Sama-Bajau and related people of the Sulu archipelago, Zamboanga Peninsula, and Palawan. The admixture found in the Sama people indicates a relationship with the Htin and Mlabri people of mainland Southeast Asia, both peoples being speakers of an Austroasiatic language and reflects a similar genetic signal found in western Indonesia. These happened sometime after 15,000 years ago and 12,000 years ago respectively, around the time the last glacial period was coming to an end. Austronesians, either from Southern China or Taiwan, were found to have come in at least two distinct waves. The first, occurring perhaps between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago, brought the ancestors of indigenous groups that today live around the Cordillera Central mountain range. Later migrations brought other Austronesian groups, along with agriculture, and the languages of these recent Austronesian migrants effectively replaced those existing populations. In all cases, new immigrants appear to have mixed to some degree with existing populations. The integration of Southeast Asia into Indian Ocean trading networks around 2,000 years ago also shows some impact, with South Asian genetic signals present within some Sama-Bajau communities. There is also some Papuan migration to Southeast Mindanao as Papuan genetic signatures were detected in the Sangil and Blaan ethnic groups.

By 1000 BC, the inhabitants of the Philippine archipelago had developed into four distinct kinds of peoples: tribal groups, such as the Aetas, Hanunoo, Ilongots and the Mangyan who depended on hunter-gathering and were concentrated in forests; warrior societies, such as the Isneg and Kalinga who practiced social ranking and ritualized warfare and roamed the plains; the petty plutocracy of the Ifugao Cordillera Highlanders, who occupied the mountain ranges of Luzon; and the harbor principalities of the estuarine civilizations that grew along rivers and seashores while participating in trans-island maritime trade. It was also during the first millennium BC that early metallurgy was said to have reached the archipelagos of maritime Southeast Asia via trade with India

Around 300–700 AD, the seafaring peoples of the islands traveling in ''balangays'' began to trade with the Indianized kingdoms in the Malay Archipelago and the nearby East Asian principalities, adopting influences from both Buddhism and Hinduism.

Maritime Jade Road

The Maritime Jade Road was initially established by the animist indigenous peoples between the Philippines and Taiwan, and later expanded to cover Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and other countries. Artifacts made from white and green nephrite have been discovered at a number of archeological excavations in the Philippines since the 1930s. The artifacts have been both tools like adzesFather Gabriel Casal & Regalado Trota Jose, Jr., Eric S. Casino, George R. Ellis, Wilhelm G. Solheim II, ''The People and Art of the Philippines'', printed by the Museum of Cultural History, UCLA (1981) and chisels, and ornaments such as lingling-o earrings, bracelets and beads.Bellwood, Peter, Hsiao-Chun Hung, and Yoshiyuki Iizuka. "Taiwan Jade in the Philippines: 3,000 Years of Trade and Long-distance Interaction." Paths of Origins: The Austronesian Heritage in the Collections of the National Museum of the Philippines, the Museum Nasional Indonesia, and the Netherlands Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde (2011): 31–41. Tens of thousands were found in a single site in Batangas. The jade is said to have originated nearby in Taiwan and is also found in many other areas in insular and mainland Southeast Asia. These artifacts are said to be evidence of long range communication between prehistoric Southeast Asian societies. Throughout history, the Maritime Jade Road has been known as one of the most extensive sea-based trade networks of a single geological material in the prehistoric world, existing for 3,000 years from 2000 BCE to 1000 CE. The operations of the Maritime Jade Road coincided with an era of near absolute peace which lasted for 1,500 years, from 500 BCE to 1000 CE. During this peaceful pre-colonial period, not a single burial site studied by scholars yielded any osteological proof for violent death. No instances of mass burials were recorded as well, signifying the peaceful situation of the islands. Burials with violent proof were only found from burials beginning in the 15th century, likely due to the newer cultures of expansionism imported from India and China. When the Spanish arrived in the 16th century, they recorded some warlike groups, whose cultures have already been influenced by the imported Indian and Chinese expansionist cultures of the 15th century.

The Sa Huỳnh culture

The Sa Huỳnh culture centered on present-day Vietnam, showed evidence of an extensive trade network. Sa Huỳnh beads were made from glass, carnelian, agate, olivine, zircon, gold and garnet; most of these materials were not local to the region, and were most likely imported. Han dynasty-style bronze mirrors were also found in Sa Huỳnh sites.

Conversely, Sa Huỳnh produced ear ornaments have been found in archaeological sites in Central Thailand, Taiwan (Orchid Island), and in the Philippines, in the Palawan, Tabon Caves. One of the great examples is the Kalanay Cave in Masbate; the artefacts on the site in one of the "Sa Huỳnh-Kalanay" pottery complex sites were dated 400BC–1500 AD. The Maitum anthropomorphic pottery in the Sarangani Province of southern Mindanao is c. 200 AD.

Ambiguity of what is Sa Huỳnh culture puts into question its extent of influence in Southeast Asia. Sa Huỳnh culture is characterized by use of cylindrical or egg-shaped burial jars associated with hat-shaped lids. Using its mortuary practice as a new definition, Sa Huỳnh culture should be geographically restricted across Central Vietnam between Hue City in the north and Nha Trang City in the south. Recent archeological research reveals that the potteries in Kalanay Cave are quite different from those of the Sa Huỳnh but strikingly similar to those in Hoa Diem site, Central Vietnam and Samui Island, Thailand. New estimate dates the artifacts in Kalanay cave to come much later than Sa Huỳnh culture at 200–300 AD. Bio-anthropological analysis of human fossils found also confirmed the colonization of Vietnam by Austronesian people from insular Southeast Asia in, e.g., the Hoa Diem site.

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:::''Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details''
::: Prehistoric (or Proto-historic) Iron Age Historic Iron Age

Prehispanic period (900 AD to 1565) – Independent polities

Also known to a lesser extent as the Pre-Philippines period, is a pre-unification period characterized by many independent states known as polities each with its own history, cultures, chieftains, and governments distinct from each other. According to sources from Southern Liang, people from the kingdom of Langkasuka in present-day Thailand have been wearing cotton clothes made in Luzon as early as 516–520 AD.
The British Historian Robert Nicholl citing Arab chronicler Al Ya'akubi, had written that on the early years of the 800s, the kingdoms of Muja (Then Pagan Brunei) and Mayd ( Kedatuan of Madja-as or Ma-i) waged war against the Chinese Empire. Medieval Indian scholars also referred to the Philippines as "Panyupayana" (The lands surrounded by water).

By the 1300s, a number of the large coastal settlements had emerged as trading centers, and became the focal point of societal changes. The Barangic Phase of history can be noted for its highly mobile nature, with barangays transforming from being settlements and turning into fleets and vice versa, with the wood constantly re-purposed according to the situation. Politics during this era was personality-driven and organization was based on shifting alliances and contested loyalties set in a backdrop of constant inter-polity interactions, both through war and peace.

Legendary accounts often mention the interaction of early Philippine polities with the Srivijaya empire, but there is not much archaeological evidence to definitively support such a relationship. Considerable evidence exists, on the other hand, for extensive trade with the Majapahit empire.

The exact scope and mechanisms of Indian cultural influences on early Philippine polities are still the subject of some debate among Southeast Asian historiographers, but the current scholarly consensus is that there was probably little or no direct trade between India and the Philippines, and Indian cultural traits, such as linguistic terms and religious practices, filtered in during the 10th through the early 14th centuries, through early Philippine polities' relations with the Hindu Majapahit empire. The Philippine archipelago is thus one of the countries, (others include Afghanistan and Southern Vietnam) just at the outer edge of what is considered the "Greater Indian cultural zone".

The early polities of the Philippine archipelago were typically characterized by a three-tier social structure. Although different cultures had different terms to describe them, this three-tier structure invariably consisted of an apex nobility class, a class of "freemen", and a class of dependent debtor-bondsmen called "alipin" or "oripun." Among the members of the nobility class were leaders who held the political office of "Datu," which was responsible for leading autonomous social groups called "barangay" or "dulohan". Whenever these barangays banded together, either to form a larger settlement or a geographically looser alliance group, the more senior or respected among them would be recognized as a "paramount datu", variedly called a Lakan, Sultan, Rajah, or simply a more senior Datu. Eventually, by the 14th to 16th century, inter-kingdom warfare escalated and population densities across the archipelago was low.

Initial recorded history

During the period of the south Indian Pallava dynasty and the north Indian Gupta Empire, Indian culture spread to Southeast Asia and the Philippines that led to the establishment of Indianized kingdoms.

The date inscribed in the oldest Philippine document found so far, the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, is 900 AD. From the details of the document, written in Kawi script, the bearer of a debt, Namwaran, along with his children Lady Angkatan and Bukah, are cleared of a debt by the ruler of Tondo. It is the earliest document that shows the use of mathematics in precolonial Philippine societies. A standard system of weights and measures is demonstrated by the use of precise measurement for gold, and familiarity with rudimentary astronomy is shown by fixing the precise day within the month in relation to the phases of the moon. From the various Sanskrit terms and titles seen in the document, the culture and society of Manila Bay was that of a Hindu–Old Malay amalgamation, similar to the cultures of Java, Peninsular Malaysia and Sumatra at the time.

There are no other significant documents from this period of precolonial Philippine society and culture until the Doctrina Christiana of the late 16th century, written at the start of the Spanish period in both native Baybayin script and Spanish. Other artifacts with Kawi script and baybayin were found, such as an Ivory seal from Butuan dated to the early 10th–14th centuries and the Calatagan pot with baybayin inscription, dated to not later than early 16th century.

In the years leading up to 1000, there were already several maritime societies existing in the islands but there was no unifying political state encompassing the entire Philippine archipelago. Instead, the region was dotted by numerous semi-autonomous ''barangays'' (settlements ranging in size from villages to city-states) under the sovereignty of competing thalassocracies ruled by datus, wangs, rajahs, sultans or lakans. or by upland agricultural societies ruled by "petty plutocrats". A number of states existed alongside the highland societies of the Ifugao and Mangyan. These included:
*the Kingdom of Maynila
*the Kingdom of Taytay in Palawan (mentioned by Antonio Pigafetta to be where they resupplied when the remaining ships escaped Cebu after Magellan was slain)
*the Chieftaincy of Coron Island ruled by fierce warriors called Tagbanua as reported by Spanish missionaries mentioned by Nilo S. Ocampo,
*the Confederation of Namayan
*the polities of Tondo and Cainta
*the Sinitic wangdom of Pangasinan
*the nation of Ma-i
*the Kedatuans of Madja-as and Dapitan
*the Indianized rajahnates of Sanmalan, Butuan, and Cebu
*the sultanates of Maguindanao, Lanao, and Sulu

Some of these regions were part of the Malayan empires of Srivijaya, Majapahit and Brunei.

The polity of Tondo

The earliest historical record of local polities and kingdoms is the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, which indirectly refers to the Tagalog polity of Tondo (–1589) and two to three other settlements believed to be located somewhere near Tondo, as well as a settlement near Mt. Diwata in Mindanao, and the temple complex of Medang in Java. Although the precise political relationships between these polities is unclear in the text of the inscription, the artifact is usually accepted as evidence of intra- and inter-regional political linkages as early as 900 CE. By the arrival of the earliest European ethnographers during the 1500s, Tondo was led by the paramount ruler called a "Lakan". It had grown into a major trading hub, sharing a monopoly with the Rajahnate of Maynila over the trade of Ming dynasty products throughout the archipelago. This trade was significant enough that the Yongle Emperor appointed a Chinese governor named Ko Ch'a-lao to oversee it.

Since at least the year 900, this thalassocracy centered in Manila Bay flourished via an active trade with Chinese, Japanese, Malays, and various other peoples in Asia. Tondo thrived as the capital and the seat of power of this ancient kingdom, which was led by kings under the title "Lakan" that belongs to the caste of the Maharlika, who were the feudal warrior class in ancient Tagalog society. At its height, they ruled a large part of what is now known as Luzon from Ilocos to Bicol from possibly before 900 AD to 1571, becoming the largest precolonial state. The Spaniards called them ''Hidalgos''.

The people of Tondo had developed a culture that is predominantly Hindu and Buddhist, they were also good agriculturists, and lived through farming and aquaculture. During its existence, it grew to become one of the most prominent and wealthy kingdom states in precolonial Philippines due to heavy trade and connections with several neighboring nations such as China and Japan.

Due to its very good relations with Japan, the Japanese called Tondo as ''Luzon'', even a famous Japanese merchant, Luzon Sukezaemon, went as far as to change his surname from ''Naya'' to Luzon. Japan's interaction with Philippine states have precedence in the 700s when Austronesian peoples like the Hayato and Kumaso settled in Japan and culturally mediated with the locals and their Austronesian kin to the South, served at the Imperial court and sometimes waged battles in Japan. Japan also imported Mishima ware manufactured in Luzon. In 900 AD, the lord-minister Jayadewa presented a document of debt forgiveness to Lady Angkatan and her brother Bukah, the children of Namwaran. This is described in the Philippines' oldest known document, the Laguna Copperplate Inscription.

The Chinese also mention a polity called "Luzon." This is believed to be a reference to Maynila since Portuguese and Spanish accounts from the 1520s explicitly state that "Luçon" and "Maynila" were "one and the same", although some historians argue that since none of these observers actually visited Maynila, "Luçon" may simply have referred to all the Tagalog and Kapampangan polities that rose up on the shores of Manila Bay.

The polity of Cainta

The Polity of Cainta which is in Rizal province, was a fortified settlement known for the Pasig river bisecting it in the middle while a moat surrounded its log walls and stone bulwarks armed with native cannons (Lantakas) while the city itself was encased by Bamboo thickets. By the time of Spanish contact, it was ruled by a native Chief named Gat Maitan.

Confederation of Namayan

Namayan arose as a Confederation of local Barangays. Local tradition says that it achieved its peak in 1175. Archeological findings in Santa Ana, Namayan's former seat of power, have produced the oldest evidence of continuous habitation among the Pasig-river polities, pre-dating artifacts found within the historical sites of Maynila and Tondo.Fox, Robert B. and Avelino M. Legaspi. 1977. ''Excavations at Santa Ana. ''Manila: National Museum of the Philippines

Caboloan (Pangasinan)

Places in Pangasinan like Lingayen Gulf were mentioned as early as 1225, when Lingayen as known as Li-ying-tung had been listed in Chao Ju-kua's ''Chu Fan Chih'' (An account of the various barbarians) as one of the trading places along with Mai (Mindoro or Manila). In northern Luzon, Caboloan (Pangasinan) () sent emissaries to China in 1406–1411 as a tributary-state, and it also traded with Japan. Chinese records of this kingdom, named Feng-chia-hsi-lan (Pangasinan), began when the first tributary King (Wang in Chinese), Kamayin, sent an envoy offering gifts to the Chinese Emperor. The state occupies the current province of Pangasinan. It was locally known the ''Luyag na Kaboloan'' (also spelled ''Caboloan''), with ''Binalatongan'' as its capital, existed in the fertile Agno River valley. It flourished around the same period, the Srivijaya and Majapahit empires arose in Indonesia which had extended their influence to much of the Malay Archipelago. The ''Luyag na Kaboloan'' expanded the territory and influence of Pangasinan to what are now the neighboring provinces of Zambales, La Union, Tarlac, Benguet, Nueva Ecija, and Nueva Vizcaya. Pangasinan enjoyed full independence until the Spanish conquest.

In the sixteenth century Pangasinan was called the "Port of Japan" by the Spanish. The locals wore native apparel typical of other maritime Southeast Asian ethnic groups in addition to Japanese and Chinese silks. Even common people were clad in Chinese and Japanese cotton garments. They also blackened their teeth and were disgusted by the white teeth of foreigners, which were likened to that of animals. Also, used porcelain jars typical of Japanese and Chinese households. Japanese-style gunpowder weapons were also encountered in naval battles in the area. In exchange for these goods, traders from all over Asia would come to trade primarily for gold and slaves, but also for deerskins, civet and other local products. Other than a notably more extensive trade network with Japan and China, they were culturally similar to other Luzon groups to the south.

In northern Luzon, Caboloan (Pangasinan) () sent emissaries to China in 1406–1411 as a tributary-state, and it also traded with Japan.

The nation of Ma-i

Arab chronicler Al Ya'akubi, had written that in the 800s, the kingdoms of Muja (Then Pagan Brunei) and Mayd (Ma-i) militarily competed with the Chinese Empire. Volume 186 of the official history of the Song dynasty describes the polity of Ma-i (). Song dynasty traders visited Ma-i annually, and their accounts described Ma-i's geography, trade products, and the trade behaviors of its rulers. Chinese merchants noted that Ma-i's citizens were honest and trustworthy. Because the descriptions of Mai's location in these accounts are unclear, there is dispute about Mai's location, with some scholars believing it was located in Bay, Laguna, and others believing it was on the island of Mindoro. The Buddhist polity traded with Ryukyu and Japan. Chao Jukua, a customs inspector in Fukien province, China wrote the '' Zhufan Zhi'' ("Description of the Barbarous Peoples"). William Henry Scott said, that unlike other Philippine kingdoms or polities which needed backing from the Chinese Imperial Court to attract commerce, the Polity of Ma-i was powerful enough to have no need to send tributes to the Chinese throne.

Visayan belligerence against Imperial China

Writing in the 13th century, the Chinese historian Chao Ju-Kua mentioned raids conducted by the ''Pi-sho-ye'' on the port cities of southern China between A.D. 1174–1190, which he believed came by way of the southern portion of the island of Taiwan. Subsequent historians identified these raiders as Visayans while the historian Efren B. Isorena, through analysis of historical accounts and wind currents in the Pacific side of East and Southeast Asia, concluded that said raiders were most likely the people of Ibabao (the precolonial name for the eastern coast and a portion of the northern coast of Samar).

Kedatuan of Madja-as

One theory espoused by some historians is that during the 11th century, ten exiled datus of the collapsing empire of Srivijaya led by Datu Puti migrated to the central islands of the Philippines, fleeing from Rajah Makatunaw of the island of Borneo. Upon reaching the island of Panay and purchasing the island from Negrito chieftain Marikudo, they established a confederation of polities and named it Madja-as centered in Aklan and they settled the surrounding islands of the Visayas. This is according to Pedro Monetclaro's book Maragtas. However the actual personage of Rajah Makatunaw was mentioned in earlier Chinese texts about Brunei dating him to 1082, when he was the descendant of Seri Maharaja and he was accompanied by Sang Aji (The ancestor of Sultan Muhammad Shah). There is thus a disparity of dates between the Maragtas Book (Based on oral legends) and the Chinese texts.The Pre-Islamic Kings of Brunei By Rozan Yunos taken from the Magazine "Pusaka" published on year 2009. Historian Robert Nicholl also positively identify the Preislamic Bruneian Buddhist kingdom of Vijayapura, itself a tributary of the Srivijaya Empire in Palembang, as the ancestral homeland of the Visayans of the 10 Datus of Panay. Furthermore, he identified the Rajah Makatunao mentioned in the Maragtas book with Rajah Tugau of the Melano nation centered in Sarawak. Either way, Madja-as was allegedly founded on Panay island (named after the destroyed state of Pannai as well as populated by Pannai's descendants, Pannai was a constituent state of Srivijaya which was located in Sumatra and was home to a Hindu-Buddhist Monastic-Army that successfully defended the Strait of Malacca, the world's busiest maritime choke-point, which was a significant challenge to defend due to it being surrounded by the three most populous nations of the world back then, China, India and Indonesia. The people of Pannai policed the Strait against all odds for 727 years.) Upon their rebellion against an invading Chola Empire, the people of Madja-as, being loyalist warriors, conducted resistance movements against the Hindu and Islamic invaders that arrived from the west from their new home base in the Visayas islands. This confederation reached its peak under Datu Padojinog. During his reign the confederations' hegemony extended over most of the islands of Visayas. Its people consistently made piratical attacks against Chinese imperial shipping. Augustinian Friar Rev. Fr. Santaren recorded that Datu Macatunao or Rajah Makatunao who was the “sultan of the Moros,” and a relative of Datu Puti who seized the properties and riches of the ten datus was eventually killed by the warriors named Labaodungon and Paybare, after learning of this injustice from their father-in-law Paiburong, sailed to Odtojan in Borneo where Makatunaw ruled. The warriors sacked the city, killed Makatunaw and his family, retrieved the stolen properties of the 10 datus, enslaved the remaining population of Odtojan, and sailed back to Panay. Labaw Donggon and his wife, Ojaytanayon, later settled in a place called Moroboro. Afterwards, datus in Panay and southern Luzon founded various towns.

The Rajahnate of Cebu

The Rajahnate of Cebu was a Precolonial state. It was founded by Sri Lumay otherwise known as Rajamuda Lumaya, a half-Malay and half-Indian, and was a minor prince of the Hindu Chola dynasty which happened to occupy Sumatra-Indonesia. He was sent by the maharajah to establish a base for expeditionary forces to subdue the local kingdoms but he rebelled and established his own independent Rajahnate instead. The Chinese recorded the name of the Rajahanate of Cebu as Sokbu (束務). While the Indianized royalty of Cebu ruled the native Cebuano people from the Sanskrit/Tamil-labeled capital, Singhapala (சிங்கப்பூர்)yTHE GENEALOGY OF HARI' TUPAS: AN ETHNOHISTORY OF CHIEFLY POWER AND HIERARCHY IN SUGBU AS A PROTOSTATE Astrid Sala-Boza
Page 280. which is Tamil-Sanskrit for "Lion City", the same rootwords with the modern city-state of Singapore. This rajahnate warred against the 'magalos' (slave traders) of Maguindanao and had an alliance with the Rajahnate of Butuan and Indianized Kutai in South Borneo, before it was weakened by the insurrection of Datu Lapulapu.

The Rajahnate of Butuan

The official history of the Song dynasty next refers to the Rajahnate of Butuan () in northeastern Mindanao which is the first polity from the Philippine archipelago recorded as having sent a tribute mission to the Chinese empire—on March 17, 1001, CE. Butuan later attained prominence under the rule of Rajah Sri Bata Shaja. In the year 1011, Rajah Sri Bata Shaja, the monarch of the Indianized Rajahnate of Butuan, a maritime-state famous for its goldwork sent a trade envoy under ambassador Likan-shieh to the Chinese Imperial Court demanding equal diplomatic status with other states. The request being approved, it opened up direct commercial links with the Rajahnate of Butuan and the Chinese Empire thereby diminishing the monopoly on Chinese trade previously enjoyed by their rivals, Tondo and the Champa civilization. Evidence of the existence of this rajahnate is given by the Butuan Silver Paleograph. Researcher Eric Casino, believes the name of the first Rajah mentioned in Chinese records, Rajah Kiling, is not Visayan in origin but rather, Indian, because Kiling refers to the people of India. The Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals) of the nearby country of Malaysia, refers to the similarly worded Keling as immigrant people from India.

The Rajahnate of Sanmalan

At the same time as the rise of Butuan was the emergence of the Rajahnate of Sanmalan. Sanmalan was a precolonial Philippine kingdom on what is now Zamboanga. Known in Chinese records as "Sanmalan" 三麻蘭. The Chinese chronicled during 982, a tribute from its Rajah or King, Chulan, represented at the imperial court by ambassador Ali Bakti.

Struggle against Hindu Majapahit

During the 1300s, the Chinese annals, ''Nanhai zhi'', reported that Brunei invaded or administered Sarawak and Sabah as well as the Philippine kingdoms of Butuan, Sulu and Ma-i (Mindoro) which would regain their independence at a later date. Afterwards, the Javanese-centered Hindu empire of Majapahit, in turn invaded Brunei and had briefly ruled over Luzon island and the Sulu Archipelago as recorded in the epic poem Nagarakretagama, which stated that they had colonies in the Philippines at Saludong (Manila) and Solot (Sulu). It even incorporated the Butuan and Cebu Rajahanates' Bornean ally, Kutai. But they failed to take hold of the Visayas islands, which was populated by Srivijayan loyalists who were waging incessant guerrilla warfare against them. Citing Kapampangan oral legends Nick Joaquin wrote about a princess of Namayan named Sasaban who married the Emperor of Majapahit, locally known as Soledan and is allegedly the Maharajah Anka Widyaya. Eventually, the kingdoms of Luzon regained independence from Majapahit after the Battle of Manila (1365) and Sulu also reestablished independence, and in vengeance, assaulted the Majapahit province of Poni (Brunei) before a fleet from the capital drove them out.

Sulu reaction against Majapahit Imperialism didn't stop with the sacking of Poni (Brunei) as Sulu also invaded North and East Kalimantan in Borneo, which were former Majapahit territories.
The subsequent start of the Islamic era ushered the slow death of Majapahit as its provinces eventually seceded and became independent sultanates. With the upsurge of Islam, the remnants of Hindu Majapahit eventually fled to the island of Bali.

The Sultanate of Sulu

In 1380, Karim ul' Makdum and Shari'ful Hashem Syed Abu Bakr, an Arab trader born in Johore, Malaysia; arrived in Sulu from Malacca and established the Sultanate of Sulu by converting its previous ruler, the Hindu king, Rajah Baguinda, to Islam and then marrying his daughter. This sultanate eventually gained great wealth due to its diving for fine pearls. Before Islamization, the then Rajahnate of Sulu was established by Visayan speaking Hindu migrants from the Rajahnate of Butuan to the Sulu Archipelago as Tausug, the language of the Sulu state is classified as a Southern Visayan language. During the 10th-13th centuries the Champa civilization and the port-kingdom of Sulu traded with each other which resulted in Cham merchants settling in Sulu where they were known as Orang Dampuan . The Orang Dampuan were slaughtered by envious native Sulu Buranuns due to the wealth of the Orang Dampuan. The Buranun were then subjected to retaliatory slaughter by the Orang Dampuan. Harmonious commerce between Sulu and the Orang Dampuan was later restored. The Yakans were descendants of the Taguima-based Orang Dampuan who came to Sulu from Champa. As told before, Sulu was also briefly ruled under the Hindu Majapahit empire as narrated in the Nagarakretagama but afterwards, Sulu and Manila both rebelled and sacked Brunei which was a nearby loyal province of Majapahit as Sulu extended its conquest to the former Majapahit territory of East and North Kalimantan. However, with the onset of Islam by the 15th century, they associated themselves with their new Arab descended Sultans whose origins was in Malacca and their fellow co-religionist Moros (ethnic groups of the Philippine who had accepted Islam) than their still Hindu, Visayan speaking cousins. This culminated with royal intermarriages between the families of the then newly Islamized Rajahnate of Manila as well the Sultanates of Brunei, Sulu and Malacca.

The Sultanate of Maguindanao

The Sultanate of Maguindanao rose to prominence at the end of the 15th century, Shariff Mohammed Kabungsuwan of Johor, Malaysia: introduced Islam in the island of Mindanao and he subsequently married Paramisuli, an Iranun princess from Mindanao, and established the Sultanate of Maguindanao.

It ruled most parts of Mindanao and continued to exist prior to the Spanish colonialization until the 19th century. The Sultanate also traded and maintained good relations with the Chinese, Dutch, and the British.

The Sultanate of Lanao

The Sultanates of Lanao in Mindanao, Philippines were founded in the 16th century through the influence of Shariff Kabungsuan, who was enthroned as first Sultan of Maguindanao in 1520. Islam was introduced to the area by Muslim missionaries and traders from the Middle East, Indian and Malay regions who propagated Islam to Sulu and Maguindanao.
Unlike in Sulu and Maguindanao, the Sultanate system in Lanao was uniquely decentralized. The area was divided into Four Principalities of Lanao or the Pat a Pangampong a Ranao which are composed of a number of royal houses (Sapolo ago Nem a Panoroganan or The Sixteen (16) Royal Houses) with specific territorial jurisdictions within mainland Mindanao. This decentralized structure of royal power in Lanao was adopted by the founders, and maintained up to the present day, in recognition of the shared power and prestige of the ruling clans in the area, emphasizing the values of unity of the nation (kaiisaisa o bangsa), patronage (kaseselai) and fraternity (kapapagaria). By the 16th century, Islam had spread to other parts of the Visayas and Luzon.

The Bruneian Empire and the expansion of Islam

Upon the secession of Poni (Brunei) from the Majapahit Empire, they imported the Arab Emir from Mecca, Sharif Ali, and became an independent Sultanate. During the reign of his descendant, Sultan Bolkiah, in 1485 to 1521, the recently Islamized Bruneian Empire decided to break the Dynasty of Tondo's monopoly in the China trade by attacking Tondo and defeating Rajah Gambang and then establishing the State of Selurong (Kingdom of Maynila) as a Bruneian satellite-state and placing his descendants on the throne of Maynila. A new dynasty under the Islamized Rajah SalalilaSantiago, Luciano P.R., The Houses of Lakandula, Matanda, and Soliman 571–1898 Genealogy and Group Identity, Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society 18 990/ref> was also established to challenge the House of Lakandula in Tondo. In addition to establishing the satellite state of Manila, Sultan Bolkiah also married Laila Mecana, the daughter of Sulu Sultan Amir Ul-Ombra to expand Brunei's influence in both Luzon and Mindanao. Furthermore, Islam was further strengthened by the arrival to the Philippines of traders and proselytizers from Malaysia and Indonesia. Brunei was so powerful, it already subjugated their Hindu Bornean neighbor, Kutai to the south, though it survived through a desperate alliance with Hindu Butuan and Cebu which were already struggling against encroaching Islamic powers like Maguindanao. Brunei had also conquered the northern third and the southern third of the Philippines but failed to conquer the Visayas islands even though Sultan Bolkiah himself was half-Visayan from his Visayan mother. Sultan Bolkiah is associated with the legend of Nakhoda Ragam the singing captain, a myth about a handsome, virile, strong, musically gifted and angelic voiced prince who is known for his martial exploits. There is contextual evidence that Sultan Bolkiah may indeed be Nakhoda Ragam, since he is of half Visayan-Filipino descent since later Spanish accounts record that Filipinos, especially Visayans, were obsessed with singing and the warrior castes were particularly known for their great singing abilities.

The Lucoes in South, Southeast and East Asia

Concurrent with the spread of Islam in the Philippine archipelago, was the rise of the Lucoes who were the people of Luzon. They rose to prominence by establishing overseas communities all across South and Southeast Asia as well as maintaining relations with East Asia, participating in trading ventures, navigation expeditions and military campaigns in Burma,The Mediterranean Connection
By William Henry Scott (Published in "Philippine Studies" ran by Ateneo de Manila University Press) Japan, Brunei, Malacca, East Timor and Sri Lanka where they were employed as traders and mercenaries. One prominent Luções was Regimo de Raja, who was a spice magnate and a Temenggung ( Jawi: تمڠݢوڠ) (Governor and Chief General) in Portuguese Malacca. He was also the head of an international armada which traded and protected commerce between the Indian Ocean, the Strait of Malacca, the South China Sea, and the medieval maritime principalities of the Philippines.

Pinto noted that there were a number of Luzones in the Islamic fleets that went to battle with the Portuguese in the Philippines during the 16th century. The Sultan of Aceh together with the Ottoman commander Heredim Mafamede whose uncle was the Viceroy of Egypt, assigned Luzones to defend Aceh, and gave one of them, Sapetu Diraja, the task of holding Aru (northeast Sumatra) in 1540. Pinto also says one was named leader of the Malays remaining in the Moluccas Islands after the Portuguese conquest in 1511. Pigafetta notes that one of them was in command of the Brunei fleet in 1521.

However, the Luzones did not only fight on the side of the Muslims. Pinto says they were also apparently among the natives of the Philippines who fought the Muslims in 1538.

The Luzones were also pioneer seafarers and it is recorded that the Portuguese were not only witnesses but also direct beneficiaries of Lusung's involvement. Many Luzones chose Malacca as their base of operations because of its strategic importance. When the Portuguese finally took Malacca in 1512 AD, the resident Luzones held important government posts in the former sultanate. They were also large-scale exporters and ship owners that regularly sent junks to China, Brunei, Sumatra, Siam and Sunda. One Lusung official by the name of Surya Diraja annually sent 175 tons of pepper to China and had to pay the Portuguese 9000 cruzados in gold to retain his plantation. His ships became part of the first Portuguese fleet that paid an official visit to the Chinese empire in 1517 AD.

On Mainland Southeast Asia, Luzones aided the Burmese king in his invasion of Siam in 1547 AD. At the same time, Luzones fought alongside the Siamese king and faced the same elephant army of the Burmese king in the defence of the Siamese capital at Ayuthaya. Lucoes military and trade activity reached as far as Sri Lanka in South Asia where Lungshanoid pottery made in Luzon were discovered in burials.

The Portuguese were soon relying on Luzones bureaucrats for the administration of Malacca and on Luzones warriors, ships and pilots for their military and commercial ventures in East Asia.

It was through the Luzones who regularly sent ships to China that the Portuguese discovered the ports of Canton in 1514 AD. And it was on Luzones ships that the Portuguese were able to send their first diplomatic mission to China 1517 AD. The Portuguese had the Luzones to thank for when they finally established their base at Macao in the mid-1500s.

The Luzones were also instrumental in guiding Portuguese ships to discover Japan. The Western world first heard of Japan through the Portuguese. But it was through the Luzones that the Portuguese had their first encounter with the Japanese. The Portuguese king commissioned his subjects to get good pilots that could guide them beyond the seas of China and Malacca. In 1540 AD, the Portuguese king's factor in Brunei, Brás Baião, recommended to his king the employment of Lusung pilots because of their reputation as "discoverers." Thus it was through Luzones navigators that Portuguese ships found their way to Japan in 1543 AD. The Luzones so impressed the Portuguese soldier, Joao de Barros, he considered the Luzones who were militarily and commercially active across the region, "the most warlike and valiant of these parts."

Rise and fall of the Dapitan Kedatuan

Around 1563 AD, at the closing stages of the precolonial era, the Kedatuan of Dapitan in Bohol achieved prominence and it was known to a later Spanish missionary, Alcina, as the "Venice of the Visayas", because it was a wealthy, wooden and floating city-state in the Visayas. However, this kedatuan was eventually attacked and destroyed by soldiers from the Sultanate of Ternate, a state made up of Muslim Moluccans. The survivors of the destruction, led by their datu, Pagbuaya, migrated to northern Mindanao and established a new Dapitan there. They then waged war against the Sultanate of Lanao and settled in the lands conquered from them. Eventually, in vengeance against the Muslims and Portuguese allied to the Ternateans, they aided the Spanish in the conquest of Muslim Manila and in the Spanish expeditions to capture Portuguese Ternate.

Inter-Kingdom Rivalries

During this period there was also a simmering territorial conflict between the Polity of Tondo and the Bruneian vassal-state, the Islamic Rajahnate of Maynila, to which the ruler of Maynila, Rajah Matanda, sought military assistance against Tondo from his relatives at the Sultanate of Brunei. The Hindu Rajahnates of Butuan and Cebu also endured slave raids from, and waged wars against the Sultanate of Maguindanao.Marivir Montebon, Retracing Our Roots – A Journey into Cebu's Pre-Colonial Past, p.15 Simultaneous with these slave-raids, was the rebellion of Datu Lapulapu of Mactan against Rajah Humabon of Cebu. The population was sparse due to warfare and also due to the common frequency of typhoons and the Philippines' location on the Pacific ring of fire.Storms of history Water, hazard and society in the Philippines 1565–1930
By Greg Bankoff The multiple states competing over the limited territory and people of the islands simplified Spanish colonialization by allowing its conquistadors to effectively employ a strategy of divide and conquer for rapid conquest.

Spanish settlement and rule (1565–1898)

Early Spanish expeditions and conquests

A Spanish expedition around the world led by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sighted Samar Island but anchored off Suluan Island on March 16, 1521. They landed the next day on Homonhon Island, now part of Guiuan, Eastern Samar. Magellan claimed the islands he saw for Spain and named them Islas de San Lázaro. He established friendly relations with some of the local leaders especially with Rajah Humabon and converted some of them to Roman Catholicism. In the Philippines, they explored many islands including the island of Mactan. However, Magellan was killed during the Battle of Mactan against the local datu, Lapulapu.

Over the next several decades, other Spanish expeditions were dispatched to the islands. Ruy López de Villalobos led an expedition that visited Leyte and Samar in 1543 and named them ''Las Islas Filipinas'' in honor of Philip of Austria, the Prince of Asturias at the time. Philip became Philip II of Spain on January 16, 1556, when his father, Charles I of Spain (who also reigned as Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor), abdicated the Spanish throne. The name was then extended to the entire archipelago later on in the Spanish era.

European colonialization began in earnest when Spanish explorer Miguel López de Legazpi arrived from Mexico in 1565 and formed the first European settlements in Cebu. Beginning with just five ships and five hundred men accompanied by Augustinian monks, and further strengthened in 1567 by two hundred soldiers, he was able to repel the Portuguese and create the foundations for the colonialization of the Archipelago. In 1571, the Spanish, their Latin-American recruits and their Filipino (Visayan) allies, commanded by able conquistadors such as Mexico-born Juan de Salcedo (who was in love with Tondo's princess, Kandarapa) attacked Maynila, a vassal-state of the Brunei Sultanate and liberated plus incorporated the kingdom of Tondo as well as establishing Manila as the capital of the Spanish East Indies. During the early part of the Spanish colonialization of the Philippines the Spanish Augustinian Friar, Gaspar de San Agustín, O.S.A., describes Iloilo and Panay as one of the most populated islands in the archipelago and the most fertile of all the islands of the Philippines. He also talks about Iloilo, particularly the ancient settlement of Halaur, as site of a progressive trading post and a court of illustrious nobilities.

Legazpi built a fort in Maynila and made overtures of friendship to Lakan Dula, Lakan of Tondo, who accepted. However, Maynila's former ruler, the Muslim rajah, Rajah Sulayman, who was a vassal to the Sultan of Brunei, refused to submit to Legazpi, but failed to get the support of Lakan Dula or of the Pampangan and Pangasinan settlements to the north. When Tarik Sulayman and a force of Kapampangan and Tagalog Muslim warriors attacked the Spaniards in the battle of Bangkusay, he was finally defeated and killed, the Spanish also destroyed the walled Kapampangan city-state of Cainta.

In 1578, the Castilian War erupted between the Christian Spaniards and Muslim Bruneians over control of the Philippine archipelago. On one side, the newly Christianized Non-Muslim Visayans of the Kedatuan of Madja-as and Rajahnate of Cebu, plus the Rajahnate of Butuan (which were from northern Mindanao), as well as the remnants of the Kedatuan of Dapitan had previously waged war against the Sultanate of Sulu, Sultanate of Maguindanao and Kingdom of Maynila, then joined the Spanish in the war against the Bruneian Empire and its allies, the Bruneian puppet-state of Maynila, Sulu which had dynastic links with Brunei as well as Maguindanao which was an ally of Sulu. The Spanish and its Visayan allies assaulted Brunei and seized its capital, Kota Batu. This was achieved as a result in part of the assistance rendered to them by two noblemen, Pengiran Seri Lela and Pengiran Seri Ratna. The former had traveled to Manila to offer Brunei as a tributary of Spain for help to recover the throne usurped by his brother, Saiful Rijal. The Spanish agreed that if they succeeded in conquering Brunei, Pengiran Seri Lela would indeed become the Sultan, while Pengiran Seri Ratna would be the new Bendahara. In March 1578, the Spanish fleet, led by De Sande himself, acting as Capitán General, started their journey towards Brunei. The expedition consisted of 400 Spaniards and Mexicans, 1,500 Filipino natives and 300 Borneans. The campaign was one of many, which also included action in Mindanao and Sulu.

The Spanish succeeded in invading the capital on April 16, 1578, with the help of Pengiran Seri Lela and Pengiran Seri Ratna. Sultan Saiful Rijal and Paduka Seri Begawan Sultan Abdul Kahar were forced to flee to Meragang then to Jerudong. In Jerudong, they made plans to chase the conquering army away from Brunei. The Spanish suffered heavy losses due to a cholera or dysentery outbreak. They were so weakened by the illness that they decided to abandon Brunei to return to Manila on June 26, 1578, after just 72 days. Before doing so, they burned the mosque, a high structure with a five-tier roof.

Pengiran Seri Lela died in August–September 1578, probably from the same illness that had afflicted his Spanish allies, although there was suspicion he could have been poisoned by the ruling Sultan. Seri Lela's daughter, the Bruneian princess, left with the Spanish and went on to marry a Christian Tagalog, named Agustín de Legazpi of Tondo and had children in the Philippines.

Concurrently, northern Luzon became a center of the "Bahan Trade" (comercio de bafan), found in Luís Fróis’ Historia de Japam, mainly refers to the robberies, raids, and pillages conducted by the Japanese pirates of Kyūshūa as they assaulted the China seas. The Sengoku Period (1477–1603) or the warring states period of Japan had spread the wakō's 倭寇 (Japanese Pirates) activities in the China Seas, some groups of these raiders relocated to the Philippines and established their settlements in Luzon. Because of the proximity to China's beaches, the Philippines were favorable a location to launch raids on the provinces of Guangdong and Fujian, and for shipping with Indochina and the Ryūkyū Islands. These were the halcyon days of the Philippine branch of the Bahan trade. Thus, the Spanish sought to fight off these Japanese Pirates, prominent among whom was warlord Tayfusa, whom the Spaniards expelled after he set up the beginnings of a city-state of Japanese pirates in Northern Luzon. The Spanish repelled them in the fabled 1582 Cagayan battles. Due to the 1549 Ming ban on trade leveled against the Ashikaga Shogunate as a consequence of the Wokou pirate raids, this resulted in the ban for all the Japanese to enter China, and for Chinese ships to sail to Japan. Thus, Manila became the only place where the Japanese and Chinese can openly trade, often also trading Japanese silver for Chinese silk.

In 1587, Magat Salamat, one of the children of Lakan Dula, along with Lakan Dula's nephew and lords of the neighboring areas of Tondo, Pandacan, Marikina, Candaba, Navotas and Bulacan, were executed when the Tondo Conspiracy of 1587–1588 failedMartinez, Manuel F. Assassinations & conspiracies : from Rajah Humabon to Imelda Marcos. Manila: Anvil Publishing, 2002. in which a planned grand alliance with the Japanese Christian-captain, Gayo, (Gayo himself was a Woku who once pirated in Cagayan) and Brunei's Sultan, would have restored the old aristocracy. Its failure resulted in the hanging of Agustín de Legaspi and the execution of Magat Salamat (the crown-prince of Tondo). Thereafter, some of the conspirators were exiled to Guam or Guerrero, Mexico.

Spanish power was further consolidated after Miguel López de Legazpi's complete assimilation of Madja-as, his subjugation of Rajah Tupas, the Rajah of Cebu and Juan de Salcedo's conquest of the provinces of Zambales, La Union, Ilocos, the coast of Cagayan, and the ransacking of the Chinese warlord Limahong's pirate kingdom in Pangasinan. Joaquin, Nick. (1988). ''Culture and History: Occasional Notes on the Process of Philippine Becoming''. Manila: Solar Publishing.

The Spanish also invaded Northern Taiwan and Ternate in Indonesia, using Filipino warriors, before they were driven out by the Dutch. The Sultanate of Ternate reverted to independence and afterwards led a coalition of sultanates against Spain. While Taiwan became the stronghold of the Ming-loyalist and pirate state of the Kingdom of Tungning. The Spanish and the Moros of the sultanates of Maguindanao, Lanao and Sulu also waged many wars over hundreds of years in the Spanish–Moro conflict, they were supported by the Papuan language speaking Sultanate of Ternate in Indonesia which regained independence from Spain, as well as the Sultanate of Brunei, not until the 19th century did Spain succeed in defeating the Sulu Sultanate and taking Mindanao under nominal suzerainty.

The Spanish considered their war with the Muslims in Southeast Asia an extension of the Reconquista, a centuries-long campaign to retake and rechristianize the Spanish homeland which was invaded by the Muslims of the Umayyad Caliphate. The Spanish expeditions into the Philippines were also part of a larger Ibero-Islamic world conflict that included a war against the Ottoman Caliphate which had just invaded former Christian lands in the Eastern Mediterranean and which had a center of operations in Southeast Asia at its nearby vassal, the Sultanate of Aceh. Thus the Philippines became a theatre of the ongoing world-wide-ranging Ottoman–Habsburg wars.

In time, Spanish fortifications were also set up in Taiwan and the Maluku islands. These were abandoned and the Spanish soldiers, along with the newly Christianized natives of the Moluccas, withdrew back to the Philippines in order to re-concentrate their military forces because of a threatened invasion by the Japan-born Ming-dynasty loyalist, Koxinga, ruler of the Kingdom of Tungning. However, the planned invasion was aborted. Meanwhile, settlers were sent to the Pacific islands of Palau and the Marianas.

In 1593, a diplomatic entourage addressed to the "King of Luzon" from the King of Cambodia which bore an elephant as a tribute arrived in Manila. The King of Cambodia which witnessed the military activity of precolonial Luzones people who were mercenaries across Southeast Asia including at Burma and Siam, now implored the new rulers of Luzon, the Spaniards, to aid him in a war to retake his kingdom from an invasion by the Siamese. That had caused the ill-fated Spanish expedition to Cambodia that although ended in failure had set the foundations of the future restoration of Cambodia from Thai rule under French Cochinchina which tapped Spanish allies.

Incorporation to the Mexico-based Viceroyalty of New Spain

The founding of the City of Manila by uniting the dominions of Sulayman III of Namayan, Sabag, Rajah Ache ''Matanda'' of Maynila who was a vassal to the Sultan of Brunei, and Lakan Dula of Tondo who was a tributary to Ming Dynasty China – caused the establishment of Manila on February 6, 1579, through the Papal bull ''Illius Fulti Præsidio'' by Pope Gregory XIII, encompassing all Spanish colonies in Asia as a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Mexico. Aside from Manila the capital, the Spanish and Latin American populations were first concentrated in the 5 newly founded Spanish Royal Cities of Cebu, Arevalo, Nueva Segovia, Nueva Caceres, and Vigan. Aside from these cities, they were also scattered across the Presidios of Cavite, Calamianes, Caraga, and Zamboanga. For much of the Spanish colonial period, the Philippines was part of the Mexico-based Viceroyalty of New Spain.

Spanish settlement during the 16th and 17th centuries

The "Memoria de las Encomiendas en las Islas" of 1591, just twenty years after the conquest of Luzon, reveals a remarkable progress in the work of colonialization and the spread of Christianity. A cathedral was built in the city of Manila with an episcopal palace, Augustinian, Dominican and Franciscan monasteries and a Jesuit house. The king maintained a hospital for the Spanish settlers and there was another hospital for the natives run by the Franciscans. In order to defend the settlements the Spaniards established in the Philippines, a network of military fortresses called "Presidios" were constructed and officered by the Spaniards, and sentried by Latin-Americans and Filipinos, across the archipelago, to protect it from foreign nations such as the Portuguese, British and Dutch as well as raiding Muslims and Wokou as well as its surroundings, were initially settled by 1200 Spanish families. In Cebu City, at the Visayas, the settlement received a total of 2,100 soldier-settlers from New Spain. At the immediate south of Manila, Mexicans were present at Ermita and at Cavite"Forced Migration in the Spanish Pacific World" By Eva Maria Mehl, page 235. where they were stationed as sentries. In addition, men conscripted from Peru, were also sent to settle Zamboanga City in Mindanao, to wage war upon Muslim pirates. These Peruvian soldiers who settled in Zamboanga were led by Don Sebastián Hurtado de Corcuera who was governor of Panama."SECOND BOOK OF THE SECOND PART OF THE CONQUESTS OF THE FILIPINAS ISLANDS, AND CHRONICLE OF THE RELIGIOUS OF OUR FATHER, ST. AUGUSTINE"
(Zamboanga City History)
"He (Governor Don Sebastían Hurtado de Corcuera) brought a great reënforcements of soldiers, many of them from Perú, as he made his voyage to Acapulco from that kingdom." There were also communities of Spanish-Mestizos that developed in Iloilo, Negros and Vigan.

Interactions between native Filipinos and immigrant Spaniards plus the Latin-Americans and their Spanish-Mestizo descendants eventually caused the formation of a new language, Chavacano, a creole of Mexican Spanish. Meanwhile, in the suburb of Tondo, there was a convent run by Franciscan friars and another by the Dominicans that offered Christian education to the Chinese converted to Christianity. The same report reveals that in and around Manila were collected 9,410 tributes, indicating a population of about 30,640 who were under the instruction of thirteen missionaries (ministers of doctrine), apart from the monks in monasteries. In the former province of Pampanga the population estimate was 74,700 and 28 missionaries. In Pangasinan 2,400 people with eight missionaries. In Cagayan and islands Babuyanes 96,000 people but no missionaries. In La Laguna 48,400 people with 27 missionaries. In Bicol and Camarines Catanduanes islands 86,640 people with fifteen missionaries. Based on the tribute counts, the total founding population of Spanish-Philippines was 667,612 people, of which: 20,000 were Chinese migrant traders, 15,600 were Latino soldier-colonists sent from Peru and Mexico (In the 1600s), Another source gave an additional number of 35,000 Mexican immigrants in the 1700s. Immigrants included 3,000 Japanese residents, and 600 pure Spaniards from Europe. There was also a large but unknown number of Indian Filipinos as majority of the slaves imported into the archipelago were from Bengal or Southern India, adding Dravidian speaking South Indians and Indo-European speaking Bangladeshis into the ethnic mix, and the rest were Malays and Negritos. They were under the care of 140 missionaries, of which 79 were Augustinians, nine Dominicans and 42 Franciscans. Adding During the Spanish evacuation of Ternate, Indonesia, the 200 families of mixed Mexican-Filipino-Spanish and Moluccan-Portuguese descent who had ruled over the briefly Christianized Sultanate of Ternate (They later reverted to Islam) were relocated to Ternate, Cavite and Ermita, Manila. and they were presaged by their previous ruler, Sultan Said Din Burkat who was enslaved but eventually converted to Christianity and was freed after being deported to Manila.

The islands were fragmented and sparsely populated due to constant inter-kingdom wars and natural disasters (As the country is on the Typhoon belt and Pacific Ring of Fire), which made it easy for Spanish invasion. The Spanish then brought political unification to most of the Philippine archipelago via the conquest of the various small maritime states although they were unable to fully incorporate parts of the sultanates of Mindanao and the areas where the ethnic groups and highland plutocracy of the animist Ifugao of Northern Luzon were established. The Spanish introduced elements of western civilization such as the code of law, western printing and the Gregorian calendar alongside new food resources such as maize, pineapple and chocolate from Latin America.

Education played a major role in the socio-economic transformation of the archipelago. The oldest universities, colleges, and vocational schools and the first modern public education system in Asia were all created during the Spanish colonial period, and by the time Spain was replaced by the United States as the colonial power, Filipinos were among the most educated subjects in all of Asia. The Jesuits founded the Colegio de Manila in 1590, which later became the Universidad de San Ignacio, a royal and pontifical university. They also founded the Colegio de San Ildefonso on August 1, 1595. After the expulsion of the Society of Jesus in 1768, the management of the Jesuit schools passed to other parties. On April 28, 1611, through the initiative of Bishop Miguel de Benavides, the University of Santo Tomas was founded in Manila. The Jesuits also founded the Colegio de San José (1601) and took over the Escuela Municipal, later to be called the Ateneo de Manila University (1859). All institutions offered courses included not only religious topics but also science subjects such as physics, chemistry, natural history and mathematics. The University of Santo Tomás, for example, started by teaching theology, philosophy and humanities and during the 18th century, the Faculty of Jurisprudence and Canonical Law, together with the schools of medicine and pharmacy were opened.

Outside the tertiary institutions, the efforts of missionaries were in no way limited to religious instruction but also geared towards promoting social and economic advancement of the islands. They cultivated into the natives their taste for music and taught Spanish language to children. They also introduced advances in rice agriculture, brought from America maize and cocoa and developed the farming of indigo, coffee and sugar cane. The only commercial plant introduced by a government agency was the plant of tobacco.

Church and state were inseparably linked in Spanish policy, with the state assuming responsibility for religious establishments. One of Spain's objectives in colonialization of the Philippines was the conversion of the local population to Roman Catholicism. The work of conversion was facilitated by the disunity and insignificance of other organized religions, except for Islam, which was still predominant in the southwest. The pageantry of the church had a wide appeal, reinforced by the incorporation of indigenous social customs into religious observances. The eventual outcome was a new Roman Catholic majority, from which the Muslims of western Mindanao and the upland tribal and animistic peoples of Luzon remained detached and alienated from (Ethnic groups such as the Ifugaos of the Cordillera region and the Mangyans of Mindoro).

At the lower levels of administration, the Spanish built on traditional village organization by co-opting local leaders. This system of indirect rule helped create an indigenous upper class, called the ''principalía'', who had local wealth, high status, and other privileges. This perpetuated an oligarchic system of local control. Among the most significant changes under Spanish rule was that the indigenous idea of communal use and ownership of land was replaced with the concept of private ownership and the conferring of titles on members of the ''principalía''.

Around 1608 William Adams, an English navigator contacted the interim governor of the Philippines, Rodrigo de Vivero y Velasco on behalf of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who wished to establish direct trade contacts with New Spain. Friendly letters were exchanged, officially starting relations between Japan and New Spain. From 1565 to 1821, the Philippines was governed as a territory of the Viceroyalty of New Spain from Mexico, via the ''Royal Audiencia'' of Manila, and administered directly from Spain from 1821 after the Mexican revolution, until 1898.

The Manila galleons, were constructed in Bicol and Cavite. The Manila galleons were accompanied with a large naval escort as it traveled to and from Manila and Acapulco. The galleons sailed once or twice a year, between the 16th and 19th centuries. The Manila Galleons brought with them goods, settlers and military reinforcements destined for the Philippines, from Latin America.Letter from Fajardo to Felipe III From Manila, August 15 1620.(From the Spanish Archives of the Indies)
"The infantry does not amount to two hundred men, in three companies. If these men were that number, and Spaniards, it would not be so bad; but, although I have not seen them, because they have not yet arrived here, I am told that they are, as at other times, for the most part boys, mestizos, and mulattoes, with some Indians (Native Americans). There is no little cause for regret in the great sums that reënforcements of such men waste for, and cost, your Majesty. I cannot see what betterment there will be until your Majesty shall provide it, since I do not think, that more can be done in Nueva Spaña, although the viceroy must be endeavoring to do so, as he is ordered.") The reverse voyage also brought Asian commercial products and immigrants to the western side of the Americas. Legally, the Manila Galleons were only allowed to trade between Mexico and the Philippines, however illegal trade, commerce, and inter-migration, were happening in secret between the Philippines and other would be nations in the Spanish Americas due to the tremendous demand and profitability of Asian products in Latin America and this clandestine defiance of Spanish colonial decrees forbidding trade, continued all throughout the term of the Manila Galleons.

The Spanish military fought off various indigenous revolts and several external challenges, especially from the British, Dutch, and Portuguese and Chinese pirates. Roman Catholic missionaries converted most of the lowland inhabitants to Christianity and founded schools, universities, and hospitals. In 1863 a Spanish decree introduced education, establishing public schooling in Spanish.

In 1646, a series of five naval actions known as the Battles of La Naval de Manila was fought between the forces of Spain and the Dutch Republic, as part of the Eighty Years' War. Although the Spanish forces consisted of just two Manila galleons and a galley with crews composed mainly of Filipino volunteers, against three separate Dutch squadrons, totaling eighteen ships, the Dutch squadrons were severely defeated in all fronts by the Spanish-Filipino forces, forcing the Dutch to abandon their plans for an invasion of the Philippines.

In 1687, Isaac Newton included an explicit reference to the Philippines in his classic Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica by mentioning Leuconia, the ancient Ptolemaic name for the Philippines.

Spanish rule during the 18th century

Colonial income derived mainly from entrepôt trade: The Manila Galleons sailing from the port of Manila to the port of Acapulco on the west coast of Mexico brought shipments of silver bullion, and minted coin that were exchanged for return cargoes of Asian, and Pacific products. A total of 110 Manila galleons set sail in the 250 years of the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade (1565 to 1815). There was no direct trade with Spain until 1766.

The Philippines was never profitable as a colony during Spanish rule, and the long war against the Dutch from the West, in the 17th century together with the intermittent conflict with the Muslims in the South and combating Japanese Wokou

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