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Luzones ( pt, Luções, ; also ''Luzones'' in
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
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**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
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Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
) was a
demonym used by
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
sailors in Malaysia
during the early 1500s, referring to the
Kapampangan and
Tagalog people who lived in
Manila Bay
Manila Bay ( fil, Look ng Maynila) is a natural harbor that serves the Port of Manila (on Luzon), in the Philippines. Strategically located around the capital city of the Philippines, Manila Bay facilitated commerce and trade between the Phi ...
, which was then called ''
Lusong'' ( pt, Luçon).
The term was also used for Tagalog settlers in
Southern Tagalog
Southern Tagalog ( fil, Timog Katagalugan, also known colloquially as ''Rehiyong Timog Tagalog''), designated as Region IV, was an administrative region in the Philippines that comprised the current regions of Calabarzon and Mimaropa, the pro ...
region.
Eventually, the term "Luzones" would refer to the inhabitants of
Luzon
Luzon (; ) is the largest and most populous island in the Philippines. Located in the northern portion of the Philippines archipelago, it is the economic and political center of the nation, being home to the country's capital city, Manila, as ...
island, and later on, would be exclusive to the peoples of the central area of Luzon (now
Central Luzon
Central Luzon ( pam, (Reyun ning) Kalibudtarang Luzon, pag, (Rehiyon na) Pegley na Luzon, tgl, (Rehiyon ng) Gitnang Luzon, ilo, (Rehion/Deppaar ti) Tengnga ti Luzon), designated as Region III, is an administrative region in the Philippines, ...
).
None of the Portuguese writers who first used the term in the early 1500s had gone to Lusong themselves, so the term was used specifically to describe the seafarers who settled in or traded with Malay Archipelago at that time.
The last known use of the Portuguese term in surviving records was in the early 1520s, when members of
Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan ( or ; pt, Fernão de Magalhães, ; es, link=no, Fernando de Magallanes, ; 4 February 1480 – 27 April 1521) was a Portuguese explorer. He is best known for having planned and led the 1519 Spanish expedition to the Eas ...
's expedition, notably
Antonio Pigafetta
Antonio Pigafetta (; – c. 1531) was an Venetian scholar and explorer. He joined the expedition to the Spice Islands led by explorer Ferdinand Magellan under the flag of the emperor Charles V and after Magellan's death in the Philippine Islands, ...
, and Rodrigo de Aganduru Moriz used the term to describe seafarers from Lusong whom they encountered on their journeys.
This included a "young prince" named Ache
who would later become known as
Rajah Matanda
Rajah Ache ( Abecedario: ''Rája Aché'' pronounced ''Aki''), better known by his title Rajah Matanda (1480–1572), was one of the rulers of Maynila, a pre-colonial Indianized and Islamized Tagalog polity along the Pasig River in what is now ...
.
There have proposals to rename the current Central Luzon region into Luções or an abbreviation of the current provinces of the region.
Primary sources and orthography
Surviving primary documents referring to the Luzones (as ''Luções'') include the accounts of
Fernão Mendes Pinto
Fernão Mendes Pinto (; c.1509 – 8 July 1583) was a Portuguese explorer and writer. His voyages are recorded in ''Pilgrimage'' ( pt, Peregrinação) (1614), his autobiographical memoir. The historical accuracy of the work is debatable due t ...
(1614);
Tomé Pires
Tomé Pires (1465?–1524 or 1540)Madureira, 150–151. was a Portuguese apothecary from Lisbon who spent 1512 to 1515 in Malacca immediately after the Portuguese conquest, at a time when Europeans were only first arriving in Southeast As ...
(whose written documents were published in 1944);
and the survivors of
Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan ( or ; pt, Fernão de Magalhães, ; es, link=no, Fernando de Magallanes, ; 4 February 1480 – 27 April 1521) was a Portuguese explorer. He is best known for having planned and led the 1519 Spanish expedition to the Eas ...
's expedition, including expedition members Gines de Mafra
and Rodrigo de Aganduru Moriz
and the Italian scholar
Antonio Pigafetta
Antonio Pigafetta (; – c. 1531) was an Venetian scholar and explorer. He joined the expedition to the Spice Islands led by explorer Ferdinand Magellan under the flag of the emperor Charles V and after Magellan's death in the Philippine Islands, ...
who served as the expedition's primary scribe, and published his account in 1524.
These original references deferred to the Portuguese orthography for the term, which spells it out Luções. Later authors, writing after English had become an official language of the Philippines, spell the term out using the English and Spanish orthography, "Luzones."
Maynila as “Luçon”
Portuguese and Spanish accounts from the early
to mid
1500s state that the Maynila polity was the same as the "kingdom"
[Scott (1994) notes that Spanish chroniclers continued to use the terms "king" and "kingdom" to describe the polities of Tondo and Maynila until late 1571, when ]Martin de Goiti Martin may refer to:
Places
* Martin City (disambiguation)
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Antarctica
* Martin Peninsula, Marie Byrd Land
* Port Martin, Adelie Land
* Point Martin, South Orkney Islands
Aust ...
's first forays into Bulacan and Pampanga clarified to the Spanish that the alliances of the Tondo and Maynila polities with the Kapampangan polities did not include territorial claim or absolute command. San Buenaventura (1613, as cited by Junker, 1990 and Scott, 1994) later noted that Tagalogs only applied the term ''hari'' (king) to foreign monarchs, rather than their own leaders. that had been referred to as the "Kingdom of Luzon" (
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
: ''Luçon'' (old) or ''Lução'' (
modern
Modern may refer to:
History
* Modern history
** Early Modern period
** Late Modern period
*** 18th century
*** 19th century
*** 20th century
** Contemporary history
* Moderns, a faction of Freemasonry that existed in the 18th century
Phil ...
),
[p. 12: https://ec.europa.eu/translation/portuguese/magazine/documents/folha61_pt.pdf] locally called ''Lusong''), and whose residents had been called "''Luções''".
Magellan expedition member Rodrigo de Aganduru Moriz's account of the events of 1521 specifically describes
how the Magellan expedition, then under the command of
Sebastian Elcano after the death of Magellan, captured of one of the ''Luções'':
Prince Ache, who would later be known as
Rajah Matanda
Rajah Ache ( Abecedario: ''Rája Aché'' pronounced ''Aki''), better known by his title Rajah Matanda (1480–1572), was one of the rulers of Maynila, a pre-colonial Indianized and Islamized Tagalog polity along the Pasig River in what is now ...
, who was then serving as a commander of the Naval forces of Brunei.
Aganduru Moriz described the "young prince" as being "''the Prince of Luzon – or Manila, which is the same.''”
corroborated by fellow expedition member
Gines de Mafra
Gines is a municipality in the south-west Spain, in the province of Seville, Andalusia. It is part of the metropolitan area of Seville. Gines has a population of 13,529 inhabitants as of 2021 and an area of .
Founded in Roman times, the land h ...
and the account of expedition scribe Antonio Pigaffetta.
This description of Ache as "King of Luzon" was further confirmed by the Visayan allies of
Miguel Lopez de Legaspi, who, learning that he wanted to "befriend" the ruler of Luzon, led him to write a letter to Ache, whom he addressed as the "King of Luzon".
Kapampangan scholar Ian Christopher Alfonso,
however, posits that the demonym Luções was probably expansive enough to include even Kapampangan sailors, such as the sailors from Hagonoy and Macabebe who would later be involved in the 1572
Battle of Bangkusay Channel.
Contacts with the Portuguese (1510s to 1540s)
The Portuguese first established a presence in
Maritime Southeast Asia
Maritime Southeast Asia comprises the countries of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and East Timor. Maritime Southeast Asia is sometimes also referred to as Island Southeast Asia, Insular Southeast Asia or Oceanic Sout ...
with
their capture of Malacca in 1511,
[Newton, Arthur Percival (1929) ''The Cambridge History of the British Empire'' p. 1]
/ref> and their contacts with the seafarers they described as ''Luções'' (people from "''lusong''"), the area now known as Manila Bay
Manila Bay ( fil, Look ng Maynila) is a natural harbor that serves the Port of Manila (on Luzon), in the Philippines. Strategically located around the capital city of the Philippines, Manila Bay facilitated commerce and trade between the Phi ...
became the first European accounts of the Tagalog people, as Anthony Reid recounts: ''The first European reports on the Tagalogs classify them as “Luzons”, a nominally Muslim commercial people trading out of Manila, and “almost one people” with the Malays of Brunei.''
Descriptions of culture, social organization and trade activities
Pires noted that the Luzones were "mostly heathen" and were not much esteemed in Malacca at the time he was there, although he also noted that they were strong, industrious, given to useful pursuits. Pires' exploration led him to discover that in their own country, the Luções had "foodstuffs, wax
Waxes are a diverse class of organic compounds that are lipophilic, malleable solids near ambient temperatures. They include higher alkanes and lipids, typically with melting points above about 40 °C (104 °F), melting to giv ...
, honey, inferior grade gold," had no king, and were governed instead by a group of elders. They traded with tribes from Borneo and Indonesia and Philippine historians note that the language of the Luções was one of the 80 different languages spoken in Malacca When Magellan's ship arrived in the Philippines
The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no),
* bik, Republika kan Filipinas
* ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas
* cbk, República de Filipinas
* hil, Republ ...
, Pigafetta noted that there were Luzones there collecting sandalwood
Sandalwood is a class of woods from trees in the genus ''Santalum''. The woods are heavy, yellow, and fine-grained, and, unlike many other aromatic woods, they retain their fragrance for decades. Sandalwood oil is extracted from the woods for us ...
. Pigafetta noticed the presence of Luzones who were loading their ship at Timor
Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is divided between the sovereign states of East Timor on the eastern part and Indonesia on the western part. The Indonesian part, also ...
.[The Mediterranean Connection](_blank)
By William Henry Scott (Published in "Philippine Studies" ran by Ateneo de Manila University Press)
Naval and military actions
When the Portuguese arrived in Southeast Asia in the early 1500s, they witnessed the Luzones' active involvement in the political and economic affairs of those who sought to take control of the economically strategic highway of the Strait of Malacca
The Strait of Malacca is a narrow stretch of water, 500 mi (800 km) long and from 40 to 155 mi (65–250 km) wide, between the Malay Peninsula (Peninsular Malaysia) to the northeast and the Indonesian island of Sumatra to the southwest, connec ...
. For instance, the former sultan of Malacca decided to retake his city from the Portuguese with a fleet of ships from Lusung in 1525 AD. One famous Luzones was Regimo de Raja, who had been appointed by the Portuguese at Malacca as Temenggung
Temenggong or Tumenggung ( Jawi: تمڠݢوڠ; ''Temenggung'', Hanacaraka: ꦠꦸꦩꦼꦁꦒꦸꦁ; ''Tumenggung'') is an old Malay and Javanese title of nobility, usually given to the chief of public security.
Responsibilities
The Tem ...
( Jawi: تمڠݢوڠ ) or Governor and General. Pires noted that Luzones and Malays (natives of Malacca) had settled in Mjmjam (Perak) and lived in two separate settlements and were "often at variance" or in rivalry with each other.
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. In 1539 Filipinos (Lucoes) formed part of a Batak-Menangkabau army which besieged Aceh, as well as of the Acehnese fleet which raised the siege under command of Turkish Heredim Mafamede sent out from Suez by his uncle, Suleiman, Viceroy of Cairo. When this fleet later took Aru on the Strait of Malacca, it contained 4,000 Muslims from Turkey, Abyssinia, Malabar, Gujarat and Luzon, and following his victory, Heredim left a hand-picked garrison there under the command of a Filipino by the name of Sapetu Diraja. Sapetu Diraja, was then assigned by the Sultan of Aceh 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.
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
South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical
Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth descr ...
where Lungshanoid pottery made in Luzon were discovered in burials.
Scholars have thus suggested that they could be mercenaries valued by all sides. The Luzones had military and commercial interests mainly across Southeast Asia with some minor reach in East Asia and South Asia, so much so that the Portuguese soldier Joao de Barros considered the Lucoes who were militarily and commercially active across the region, "the most warlike and valiant of these parts."
Luzones as sailors
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.
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 Marco Polo and then 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. In 1547 AD, Jesuit missionary and Catholic saint Francis Xavier encountered his first Japanese convert from Satsuma disembarking from a Lusung ship in Malacca.
Contact with the survivors of Magellan's expedition (1521)
Aside from the Portuguese, the Luzones were also encountered by the survivors of the Magellan Expedition, who were under the command of Sebastian Elcano, in 1521. This encounter was mentioned by expedition scribe Antonio Pigafetta and extensively described in an account by expedition members Gines de Mafra, Rodrigo de Aganduru Moriz, among others.
The Aganduru Moriz account describes how Elcano's crew was attacked somewhere off the southeastern tip of Borneo by a Bruneian fleet commanded by one of the Luzones. Historians such as William Henry
Scott and Luis Camara Dery assert that this commander of the Bruneian Fleet was actually the young prince Ache of Maynila, a grandson of the Bruneian sultan who would later become Maynila's Rajah Matanda
Rajah Ache ( Abecedario: ''Rája Aché'' pronounced ''Aki''), better known by his title Rajah Matanda (1480–1572), was one of the rulers of Maynila, a pre-colonial Indianized and Islamized Tagalog polity along the Pasig River in what is now ...
.
Under orders from his grandfather the Sultan of Brunei, Ache had previously sacked the Buddhist city of Loue in Southwest Borneo for being faithful to the old religion and rebelling against the authority of Sultanate. Ache had then just won a naval victory at the time, and was supposed to be on his way to marry a cousin – a typical custom by which Tagalog nobles at that time gained influence and power.
Dery suggests that Ache's decision to attack must have been influenced by a desire to bring Elcano's ship back to Manila bay, for use as leverage against his cousin, the ruler of Tondo, who was usurping territory from Ache's mother, who was ruling Maynila at the time.
Elcano, however, was able to defeat and capture Ache. According to Scott, Ache was eventually released after a ransom was paid. Nevertheless, Ache left a Spanish speaking Moor in Elcano's Crew to assist the ship on the way back to Spain, "a Moor who understood something of our Castilian language,
who was called Pazeculan." This knowledge of the Spanish language was scattered across the Indian Ocean and even into Southeast Asia after the Castilian conquest of the Emirate of Granada
)
, common_languages = Official language: Classical ArabicOther languages: Andalusi Arabic, Mozarabic, Berber, Ladino
, capital = Granada
, religion = Majority religion: Sunni IslamMinority religions: Ro ...
forced the Spanish speaking Granadan Muslims to migrate across the Muslim world even until Islamic Manila.
End of historical references (after 1571)
Portuguese references to the "Luções" ended after the arrival of Miguel Lopez de Legaspi to Manila, notes Anthony Reid:
"''Luzons disappear from descriptions of the archipelago after the Spanish conquest of Manila in 1571, presumably assimilating to the Malay diaspora.''"
The Spaniards together with their Mexican and Visayan allies had exploited political divisions in Luzon to support one faction against the other. The grandson of Miguel Lopez de Legaspi, a conquistador born in Mexico, Juan de Salcedo
Juan de Salcedo (; 1549 – March 11, 1576) was a Spanish- Novohispanic conquistador. He was born in Mexico in 1549 and he was the grandson of Miguel López de Legazpi and brother of Felipe de Salcedo. Salcedo was one of the soldiers who accompa ...
, pursued a romance with the Tondo princess Gandarapa (As Tondo was a rival Hindu Polity of Muslim Manila). The Luçoes easily switched allegiance from the Ottoman Caliphate
The Caliphate of the Ottoman Empire ( ota, خلافت مقامى, hilâfet makamı, office of the caliphate) was the claim of the heads of the Turkish Ottoman dynasty to be the caliphs of Islam in the late medieval and the early modern era. ...
to the Iberian Union
pt, União Ibérica
, conventional_long_name =Iberian Union
, common_name =
, year_start = 1580
, date_start = 25 August
, life_span = 1580–1640
, event_start = War of the Portuguese Succession
, event_end = Portuguese Restoration War
, ...
after the Spanish incorporation of Luzon.
The book "Wakan Sansai Zue
The is an illustrated Japanese ''leishu'' encyclopedia published in 1712 in the Edo period. It consists of 105 volumes in 81 books. Its compiler was Terashima or Terajima (), a doctor from Osaka. It describes and illustrates various activiti ...
", a Japanese translation of Ming era history, recorded that before Spain came, the Emperor of China referred to the rulers of Luzon as "Kings" (呂宋國王). However, after Spanish occupation, Luzon's rulers were only referred to as lords or princes (呂宋國主).[Wakan Sansai Zue, Paginas 202-216]
See also
*Pintados
Visayans ( Visayan: ''mga Bisaya''; ) or Visayan people are a Philippine ethnolinguistic group or metaethnicity native to the Visayas, the southernmost islands of Luzon and a significant portion of Mindanao. When taken as a single ethnic group, ...
*East Indies
The East Indies (or simply the Indies), is a term used in historical narratives of the Age of Discovery. The Indies refers to various lands in the East or the Eastern hemisphere, particularly the islands and mainlands found in and around ...
* Malay world
*Visayans
Visayans ( Visayan: ''mga Bisaya''; ) or Visayan people are a Philippine ethnolinguistic group or metaethnicity native to the Visayas, the southernmost islands of Luzon and a significant portion of Mindanao. When taken as a single ethnic group ...
*Tagalog people
The Tagalog people ( tl, Mga Tagalog; Baybayin: ᜋᜅ ᜆᜄᜎᜓᜄ᜔) are the largest ethnolinguistic group in the Philippines, numbering at around 30 million. An Austronesian people, the Tagalog have a well developed society due to their ...
* Lakandula
*Portuguese Malacca
Portuguese control of Malacca, a city on the Malay Peninsula, refers to the 130 year period (1511–1641) when it was a possession of the Portuguese East Indies. It was conquered from the Malacca Sultanate as part of Portuguese attempts to ...
*Maynila (historical polity)
In early Philippine history, the Tagalog Bayan ("country" or "city-state") of Maynila ( tl, Bayan ng Maynila; Pre-virama Baybayin: ) was a major Tagalog city-state on the southern part of the Pasig River delta, where the district of Intram ...
Footnotes
Sources
Additional sources
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Luções
Ancient peoples
History of the Philippines (1565–1898)
National histories
Tagalog people
Malay people
Kapampangan people