Of the three regions under report hera, the Sulu Sea was the most strongly associated with piracy in the eyes of nineteenth-century observers. The raiders from Sulu were besides, for good reason, the most feared by the coastal populations of Southeast Asia, who comprised by far most of the victims of the depredations. Maritime raid in the Philippines predated the first gear spanish incursions in the region in the one-sixteenth century but was aggravated by the drawn-out conflict between the spanish colonisers and the Muslims of the southern Philippines from 1565 to 1898, deoxyadenosine monophosphate well as by the region ’ south consolidation into the ball-shaped commercial systems of the early modern period and the inflow of european firearms to the region. All of these factors initially served to strengthen the two major powers of the southern Philippines, the Sultanate of Maguindanao and – particularly from the moment half of the eighteenth century – the Sulu Sultanate. Spain never managed to assert authority over the southern Philippines, and effective imperial control over the region was established only by the US Army after a serial of bally campaigns at the begin of the twentieth hundred. Throughout the three and half centuries of conflicts between the spanish and the populations of the southerly Philippines, nautical raiding played a key function, not entirely for the accretion of wealth and slaves, but besides as a think of of war and anticolonial electric resistance .
Piracy, Raiding and the Moro Wars
With few exceptions, relations between the spanish colonisers in the northerly Philippines and the predominantly Muslim population of the southern parts of the archipelago were characterised by aggression and common abhorrence and distrust. The Muslims ferociously resisted spanish attempts to convert them to Christianity and to take control over their lands and waters. For conclude to three centuries, until the mid nineteenth hundred, this resistance effectively checked spanish colonial ambitions in the southerly Philippines. The spanish interpreted their prolong struggle with the Muslims in the confederacy by doctrine of analogy with the Reconquista, the effort of the Christian Iberian kingdoms to expel Muslims from the iberian Peninsula from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. The spanish consequently labelled their muslim adversaries in the Philippines ‘ Moros ’, a condescend term for Muslims derived from the Mediterranean and Iberian context. From the point of horizon of the spanish, and to some extent besides from the point of view of the Moros, the drawn-out dispute was interpreted as separate of a long-standing ball-shaped struggle between Christianity and Islam. In the path of this fight, and as a leave of increased contacts with the wide world from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the Muslim identity of the Moros was strengthened, largely in resistance to the spanish incursions and their attempts to propagate the christian faith.
The religious dimension was frankincense at the heart of the alleged Moro Wars, a series of wars and hostilities fought with varying intensity throughout the spanish colonial period in the Philippines from 1565 to 1899. In the context of these wars nautical raiding, including attacks on the enemy ’ s commercial vessels and coastal raids for the aim of taking slaves and loot, and as a mean of reprisal, was undertaken by both parties. As the Moros generally lacked the military capability and concentration of sea baron to combat the spanish naval vessels or troops directly, Moro war chiefly took the imprint of nautical raid, focusing on balmy targets, such as Christian Filipino seafarers and coastal populations. Although material gain, chiefly in the class of homo captives, was an significant aspect of the raids, they should therefore not be understand chiefly as motivated by private amplification, but as a function of the religious and political war that the Moros contend against the spanish. such an agreement of nautical marauding in the Philippines in the early modern period is credibly close to how the spanish colonisers interpreted the phenomenon during their foremost two centuries in the archipelago. As we have seen, nautical marauding was frequently used as a think of of war in the European context, and the raid of foe vessels and settlements was a regular depart of european wars at sea. The boundaries between pirates and privateers were besides far from clear-cut in european legal and political doctrine. For model, in the spanish Laws of the Indies, which was first compiled in the seventeenth hundred, the terms pirates ( piratas ) and privateers ( corsarios ) were used interchangeably. nautical violence in the context of the Moro Wars frankincense included spanish raids on the coasts and islands of the southerly Philippines. In the middle of the eighteenth century, for exercise, the spanish governor in Manila authorised the use of privateers to capture and enslave all Sulu men, women and children who could be seized, and to confiscate or destroy their property. Allegations of plagiarism were at times used by the spanish against the Muslims of the southerly Philippines and north Borneo ( particularly Brunei ) from the earliest days of the spanish colonial time period, but it was not a principal argue for the attack of the Moro Wars, nor a outstanding part of spanish discussion about the Moros during the beginning two hundred years of the spanish presence in the Philippines. To the extent that the terms pirate ( pirata ) or privateer ( corsario ), or their cognates, are mentioned in the digitize records of the Audiencia de Filipinas from the recently sixteenth to the center of the eighteenth centuries, they deal above all with european or chinese navigators whose activities were deemed to be illegal by the spanish colonisers. Maritime ferocity emanating from the southerly Philippines, by contrast, was not for the most part labelled plagiarism or tied foray into, but plainly described as attacks by enemies from versatile islands outside the control of the spanish, such as Borneo, Ternate, Sangir, Jolo and Mindanao. In the second half of the eighteenth hundred a fault in the design of maritime ferocity emanating from the southerly Philippines occurred as raids conducted by sealed cultural groups in the area, particularly Iranun and Sama, increased, and Sulu overtook Maguindanao as the principal center for slave raid. The scend in slave raid was associated with the addition in the China deal from the eighteenth hundred, which gave rebel to a great demand for natural products from the Sulu Archipelago and other parts of the Malay Archipelago. The much sought products from the southerly Philippines and eastern Indonesia included pearls, mother-of-pearl, sea cucumber, wax, bird ’ second nests, shark fins and tortoise shells, all of which were exported in central for textiles, opium and firearms. The Sulu Sultanate was strategically located to benefit from the trade boom, and Jolo emerged toward the end of the eighteenth century as an important commercialize for both slaves and natural products and early commodities. The chief sponsors and beneficiaries of the slave raids were the datus ( chiefs or headmen ) of the Sulu Sultanate, who used separate of the income from the bourgeoning craft to equip ever larger and well-armed raid expeditions. With the integration of the slave- and raid-based economy of the Sulu Archipelago in the global commercial system during the second half of the eighteenth century, the Sulu Sultanate prospered and overtook Maguindanao as the major Muslim ability in the region. From the second half of the eighteenth hundred the label piracy began to be used more frequently by spanish officials to describe Moro raid, and the efforts to contain or suppress such activities were stepped up. In 1754 the governor-general of the Philippines, Marquis Francisco José de Ovando, proposed the conquest of Jolo and Mindanao in orderliness to put an end to the ‘ piracy and grave evils ’ ( piratería yttrium gravísimos males ) that the Moros from these islands visited upon the spanish colony every year. When peace was negotiated between Spain and the sultan of Sulu late the same class, furthermore, the latter promised to punish any of his subjects who carried out raids against the spanish territories, although the actual word plagiarism ( piratería ) or any of its cognates were not mentioned in the spanish treaty text. The treaty however, nautical raiding emanating from the southern Philippines continued and increased during the final decades of the eighteenth century, driven, ironically, in part by spanish efforts to develop the commerce of the colony. The begin of the nineteenth hundred created far opportunities for maritime raid in Southeast Asia, in part because of the decline of european naval ability in Southeast Asia during the Napoleonic Wars. Iranun and Sama raiders formed large bands who undertook annual raid expeditions, not alone to the spanish colony in the northern Philippines, but besides to the Dutch East Indies, the Strait of Malacca and union Borneo. In the Philippines, the raiders ventured as far north as Luzon and even conducted raids close to the center of spanish office in the area, in Manila Bay, carrying off hundreds and sometimes thousands of slaves from different parts of the spanish colony every year. The spanish sent respective punitive expeditions to the Sulu Archipelago and tried to enforce a obstruct on Sulu ’ s trade with China and Manila, but despite the damage occasionally inflicted on the Iranun, Sama and early groups involved in the raids by spanish naval forces, they were unable to put an end to the depredations. The increase in Sulu raiding coincided with greater commercial interest in the region, not alone on the part of the spanish, but besides of the british and Dutch, all of whom saw the raids as a serious obstruction to their commercial and territorial interests. The problem of maritime security thus took on a newly importance, and the Sulu Sultanate was identified as a pirate department of state and the major sponsor of the raids. The term Moro, which for more than two hundred years had been used pejoratively by the spanish, besides came to be understood by Europeans in the area as more or less synonymous with commandeer. The spanish now systematically began to describe Moro raiding as plagiarism, and they much linked the drill to the influence of Islam, adenine good as to ethnic or racial deficiencies associated with the Moros. such notions were not unique to the spanish but were frequently expressed by other european observers vitamin a well. however, against the background of the drawn-out Moro Wars, the association between piracy and Islam seems to have been more emphasised by spanish observers and officials than by their british and Dutch counterparts. Proselytisation among the Moros was at times promoted by spanish colonial officials as a mean of weaning the Moros from their piratical habits, although such efforts were on the whole unsuccessful. In the 1820s, respective naval expeditions were dispatched by the spanish to the Sulu Archipelago and Mindanao with the aim of destroying the mainland bases and vessels of the raiders. The expeditions, however, proved largely ineffective due to the limited naval power of the spanish. The authorities in Manila then changed their tactics – partially besides in reply to the increased interest in the region shown by other colonial powers – and began rather to encourage more friendly commercial relations with the Sulu Sultanate. In 1836 two treaties were signed between Spain and the Sultanate, a commercial treaty and a treaty of friendship and alliance. The purpose of the first treaty was to discourage the Moros from engaging in piratical action, or at least to make them refrain from attacking spanish ship and territory, and to encourage them to take up more peaceful pursuits. The main aim of the second treaty was to keep other european powers from gaining a beachhead in the region. In especial, the spanish worried that Great Britain or the Netherlands might try to extend their influence in the East Indies to the Sulu Archipelago if the piratical incursions from the area were allowed to continue unbridled. The risk of intervention by early european countries was demonstrated in 1845, when France made an try to acquire the island of Basilan from the sultan of Sulu. The guess was abandoned only after King Louis Philippe rejected the suggestion in order to maintain good relations in Europe with Spain. The incident seemed to display Spain ’ south weak control over the southerly Philippines, but flush more worry for the spanish were the british designs on Sulu, particularly in see of Great Britain ’ s superior naval force, the british advances in north Borneo in the 1840s and the interest that the british had shown in the Sulu Sea since the eighteenth hundred. These developments, combined with the fact that the annual maritime raids emanating from the Sulu Sultanate continued more or less unbridled, cast doubts on Spain ’ s claim to sovereignty over the southerly Philippines. As Janice E. Thomson has shown, a fundamental requirement for the recognition of sovereignty in the international context since the nineteenth century has been that the sovereign is able to control extraterritorial violence emanating from his or her district. In regulate to enforce her claim to the Philippine Archipelago, Spain frankincense had to put an end to the piratical depredations of the Sulu raiders. For the beginning time in history, furthermore, Spain began to acquire the naval potency to do so, largely because of the arrival of steam navigation .
The Suppression of Piracy in Sulu
In 1848 a bombastic spanish naval expedition, which included three English-built steamboats, attacked and destroyed the Sama settlement on the island of Balangingi in the Sulu Archipelago, which was considered by the Europeans in the region to be the most formidable pirate base in the Malay Archipelago. On the eve of the attack, the island had a population of some 10,000 people, most of whom were engaged directly or indirectly in maritime raid, and a flit of 200 prahus ( traditional Malay outrigger boats ). The attack resulted in the death of more than 450 Sama raiders, along with some 200 women and children. Those who survived – apart from those who escaped or were out on raiding expeditions at the time of the assail − were deported to the Cagayan Valley in northern Luzon, where they were to be turned into farmers. The spanish besides took measures to prevent the Sama from re-establishing themselves on Balangingi by destroying 4 forts, 7 villages, 150 vessels and thousands of coconut trees, thereby making the island bad for habitation for many years to come. The end of Balangingi signalled the beginning of the end of the great foray into expeditions emanating from the Sulu Archipelago and other parts of the southerly Philippines. In contrast to most earlier spanish attempts to put an end to the nautical raiding emanating from Sulu, the attack had the desire effect of bringing about a drastic decline in slave foray into. As in other parts of Southeast Asia at the time, the main reason for the newly found military capability of the colonial navies vis-à-vis the raiders was the arrival of steam gunboats, combined with better intelligence about the writing, placement and modus operandi of the perpetrators. The victory strengthened the position of the spanish in the southerly Philippines, but it failed to remove the threat of other colonial powers gaining a beachhead in the region. The main menace to Spanish hegemony in the southern Philippines came from the two neighbouring colonial powers, the british and the dutch, both of whom seemed determined to increase their commercial activities and political influence in the Sulu Archipelago. In 1849 rumor of an at hand dutch try to take self-control of union Borneo and Sulu prompted James Brooke – a british soldier and explorer, who in 1841 had been installed by the sultan of Brunei as Raja of Sarawak in north Borneo − to sail to Jolo and negotiate a treaty of friendship and department of commerce with Sultan Muhammad Fadl Pulalun ( r. 1844–62 ). The destruction of Balangingi the year before had convinced the Sultan and the majority of the Sulu nobility of the necessity of reconciliation with Great Britain in order to counter the spanish assaults. The result was that a treaty was signed in which the Sultan, among other things, agreed to do all in his power to suppress piracy and not to harbour or protect any persons or vessels engaged in piratical activities. controversially from the spanish degree of see, the Sultan besides agreed not to cede any share of his territory to a foreign exponent or to acknowledge the reign of any other power without the accept of Great Britain. The newsworthiness of the treaty was received with alarm in Manila. The spanish claimed that it violated the treaty between Spain and Sulu from 1836, according to which Sultan Pulalun ’ mho harbinger had pledged not to enter into an confederation with a foreign exponent without the consent of Spain. The Brooke treaty was ratified by the british Parliament curtly after its conclusion, but the ratifications were not exchanged, and therefore the treaty did not formally come into force, and the british government did not pursue the issue for fear of provoking an outdoors conflict with Spain. however, the unclear status of Sulu continued to poison relations between Britain and Spain for several decades, and hampered any initiatives to cooperate in the efforts to suppress maritime raiding emanating from the region. The Brooke treaty, combined with Spain ’ s greatly improved naval potency, triggered far spanish interventions in Sulu. The destruction of Balangingi in 1848 had brought about a refuse in large-scale mastermind raid, and between 1848 and 1851 there were few reported slave raids in the Philippines. piratical action emanating from Sulu and affecting the Dutch East Indies besides declined well in the years after 1848. These circumstances however, allegations of plagiarism continued to be used as a justification for far spanish advances in the southerly Philippines. The reputation that Sulu had by now acquired as a hotbed of plagiarism and bondage made the charges seem credible to other european powers, regardless of their actual meaning. piratical activity, furthermore, continued, with smaller raids emanating from assorted other parts of the Sulu Archipelago, including the small islands of Tunkil, Bukutua and Bulan. To the colonial authorities, these raids provided a pretext not only for wiping out the alleged pirate bases on these islands, but besides for attacking Jolo, the capital of the Sulu Sultanate located on the north coast of the island with the same mention. The determination was to enforce the spanish title to sovereignty over the Sultanate and to take control over its craft. In justifying the assail, the spanish, among other wrongdoings, pointed to the robbery, bleakness, end and bondage that the Sulu pirates throughout history had visited upon the population of the spanish islands. In the context of Europe ’ s piratical prototype, such rhetoric served to place the sultan and his subjects among the generic enemies of world and make them apt to conquest and destruction. In December 1850 the governor of the Philippines, Don Antonio Urbiztondo, left Manila in command of a naval expedition that proceeded beginning to Zamboanga and then to the Sulu Archipelago, where they visited several islands, burning houses and vessels and killing several people. Upon arrival in the Sulu capital at Jolo the expedition was met with hostility and failed to obtain any concessions from the sultan. As Urbiztondo estimated that he did not have the persuasiveness to invade the strengthen das kapital, he sailed for Tunkil, where spanish troops conducted a foray into that left twenty-five Moros dead. They besides burnt down 1,000 houses and destroyed 106 boats before the expedition returned to Zamboanga. early the play along year the spanish returned to Jolo with a heavily reinforced excursion, which nowadays consisted of a corvette, a brigantine, three steamboats, two gunboats, nine tenders, nine transports and twenty-one smaller voyage boats ( barangay ), carrying altogether around four thousand regular and voluntary troops. Despite cutthroat resistance on the part of the Joloanos, the spanish captured the township in a struggle that lasted two days and left around three hundred Moros and thirty-six spanish troops dead. The rest of the population fled, and the town was burnt to ashes. Having frankincense accomplished their aim of destroying the Sulu capital, the spanish left without leaving a garrison on the island. The Joloanos promptly returned to the site of the conflict and started to rebuild the capital. In April 1851 a treaty between the sultan and the Spanish was signed, according to which the sultan – at least in the spanish text of the treaty – recognised spanish reign over the Sulu Sultanate and its dependencies and, among other things, agreed to allow the spanish to establish a trade factory and a naval station on Jolo. Neither of the signatories upheld the provisions of the treaty, however, and as Najeeb Saleeby has observed, it did not receive as much attention in Jolo as it did in Madrid or London. The spanish and Tausug text of the treaty besides differed significantly, a circumstance that Saleeby – based on his near examination of both versions of the treaty – put down to the interpreters ’ insufficient cognition of the Tausug language. It seems likely, however, that certain words and passages that no doubt would have been unmanageable to accept for the sultan and the leading datus of Sulu were measuredly omitted from the Tausug version of the treaty. In particular, this seems to have been the case with regard to Article 3, where Spain ’ s rights over the entire Sulu Archipelago were described in the spanish treaty textbook as ‘ ancient and indispensable ’ ( antiguos é indispensables ), a phrase that was omitted from the Tausug text. british sources from the years following the sign of the treaty besides indicate that the sultan did not think that he had surrendered his reign over Sulu to the spanish .The 1851 treaty also contained an article dealing with the suppression of piracy New promise : Pirates shall not be allowed at all here in Sulu. Should they commit any crime they shall be punished wherever they may be. The 1851 treaty besides contained an article dealing with the suppression of piracy, but there were differences in the Sulu and spanish versions in this respect angstrom well. Article 4 of the treaty text in Sulu, as translated into English by Saleeby, learn : The corresponding article in spanish, by contrast, was more exhaustive : They [ the Sultan and datus ] renew the earnest promise not to carry on plagiarism or allow anybody to carry on piracy within the dominions of Sulu, and to run down those who follow this ill-famed calling, declaring themselves enemies of all islands that are enemies of Spain and allies of her friends. The character to a renewed promise in the spanish ( but not in the Tausug ) text of the treaty referred to the 1836 Treaty of Peace, Protection and Commerce, according to which Spain and Sulu offered reciprocal protection for the vessels of the early country in its waters and territories. Article 5 of that treaty take : The Sultan and Datus of Sulu pledge themselves to prevent the piracies of the Ilanuns [ Iranuns ] and Samals in the Philippines, and if they are unable, the Sultan shall so report in order that the spanish Government may afford aid or undertake the undertaking entirely. The 1851 treaty therefore extended the promise of the sultan to suppress plagiarism to include not lone the raids of the Iranun and Sama against the spanish colony, but besides any form of piracy emanating from Sulu, without limitation in terms of location or ethnicity of the perpetrators. In contrast to the formulation in the treaty from 1836, the spanish text of the 1851 treaty distinctly resonated with the european agreement of pirates as the enemies of world. In that sense the treaty served as a sign to other colonial powers that Spain was committed to the suppression of piracy emanating from its district and affecting the neighbor british and dutch colonies. traditionally, Sulu noblemen had a radically different understand of plagiarism from that of the spanish, particularly as formulated in the treaty of 1851. Before the destruction of Balangingi in 1848, the Sultan and datus of Sulu had thrived on the slave raids conducted by the Iranun and Sama but sponsored by the Tausug datus. not only did the Sulu nobility esteem raiding as a legitimate and potentially honorable bodily process, it besides formed the footing for the economic prosperity and political world power of the Sulu Sultanate, and the slaves and material wealth that the raids brought enhanced the power and sociable condition of the nobility. As James Warren has shown, the raiding economy of the Sulu Sultanate flourished from the final decades of the eighteenth hundred largely as a solution of the region ’ mho integration into the global capitalist economy, but raiding and slavery had a long history, not alone in the southern Philippines but besides throughout the archipelago. From the 1840s, however, the system began to decline. The Sulu Sultanate came under press to end its sponsorship of nautical raid, not alone from the spanish but besides from the british and Dutch. The british, for example, attacked Jolo in 1846, and a couple of years late the Dutch absolutely destroyed by fire a dowry of the township, which was built on piles in the sea. The most serious boast to the marauding system was the destruction of Balangingi by the spanish in 1848, and subsequent spanish naval expeditions and attacks seemed to indicate that the organization was coming to an end. In reaction to these developments the Sulu Sultanate began to reorient its economy from an stress on raiding to trade. The latter had all along been an crucial foundation for the Sultanate, but the spanish barrage made the promotion of trade, particularly with the british in north Borneo, more significant. From the second gear half of the 1840s Sultan Fadl Pulalun began, at least superficially, to distance himself from the Iranun and Sama raiders and declare his commitment to the inhibition of plagiarism. The sultan was aware of the spanish purpose to use accusations of piracy as a guise for waging war on his nation and to assert spanish sovereignty over Sulu. In order to avert the spanish menace, the sultan sent his brother to negotiate with Manila, and he tried to placate the spanish by banning the Iranun and Sama raiders from bringing their captives to his capital at Jolo. In the wake of the destruction of Balangingi, furthermore, the sultan and the leading headmen of Sulu rejected proposals from one of the Sama chiefs who had escaped the spanish attack, Panglima Julano Taupan, to attack to the spanish in order to liberate the prisoners from the foray on Balangingi .The Spanish obviously did not believe – and probably did not want to believe − that the sultan and his followers were committed to the suppression of piracy. The British, however, were of a different opinion. According to Henry Keppel The Sultan, under the influence and rede of the Rajah of Sarāwak [ James Brooke ], had become opposed to piracy, and anxious for its suppression. His arm position gave him weight, which he had frequently thrown into the scale of humanness : and it must now be feared that many, whom he was able to hold in check, will again follow their evil propensities unrestrained, as they did under former dynasties. The spanish obviously did not believe – and credibly did not want to believe − that the sultan and his followers were committed to the suppression of plagiarism. The british, however, were of a different opinion. According to Henry Keppel, the Royal Navy officeholder who commanded the frigate Maeander, which carried James Brooke on a chew the fat to Jolo in 1849, the sultan was sincere in his wish to cooperate with the colonial navies in the suppression of piracy, but he was hampered in his efforts by spanish aggression : The reason for the military weakness of the sultan was to some extent due to the spanish attacks, but the Sulu Sultanate was besides a segmentary submit, in which the political determine of the sultan depended on his ability to form strategic alliances and enlist the corroborate of the leading datus and early influential groups. On his own, therefore, the sultan could lone muster a minor arm storm, and he had few means by which to impose his authority in the outback parts of the Sulu Archipelago. The naval attacks, not merely by the spanish but besides by the british and Dutch, contributed to weaken whatever power the sultan previously had to restrain the raiders dispersed around the archipelago, careless of his level of commitment to do so .
Imperial Rivalry
The spanish victory at Balangingi in 1848 had broken the back of the large raid expeditions emanating from Sulu, but it did not put an end to piratical activity. At the time of the attack more than half of the male population had been out on raids, and hundreds of others managed to escape. Many of those who were frankincense displaced by the spanish destruction of Balangingi and other naval campaigns around the middle of the nineteenth hundred took recourse in the borderlands between the Sulu Sultanate and the british, Dutch and spanish colonies, where colonial naval world power and political see were faint and hampered by imperial competition. The borderland region included the western parts of the Sulu Archipelago, south Palawan, northeast Borneo and the easterly islands of the Dutch East Indies, including Sulawesi, the Moluccas and Flores. From their new bases the raiders continued to harass maritime traffic and neighbor coastal settlements, albeit broadly on a smaller scale than ahead. In the consequence of the destruction of Balangingi in 1848, the Sama head Julano Taupan first continued to lead raids on deal boats and to conduct raids on the coasts of Samar and Leyte to the north of Mindanao. Followed by some of the most competitive of the survivors from Balangingi, Taupan settled in Tawi-Tawi, a group of small islands located in the western contribution of the Sulu Archipelago. From 1852 Taupan ’ s band scaled up their depredations, and they triggered a ‘ general ocean war ’, as James Warren put it, which for six years affected the region, costing the spanish colonial government large sums of money and resulting in many casualties, both on the side of the victims – most of whom were Filipinos, a well as coastal populations and seafarers in the Dutch East Indies and north Borneo − and on the side of the raiders. Taupan ’ s followers became known in european sources as ‘ Tawi-Tawi pirates ’, and at times they joined forces with Sama and Iranun raiders from other parts of the Sulu Archipelago. In doing then they were occasionally able to meet fleets of between sixty and one hundred prahus. The depredations were facilitated by the decrease in antipiracy operations by the british Navy in the region following criticism in London of the brutality of the operations, which much resulted in the kill of hundreds of alleged pirates. By the mid 1850s attacks on the Philippines and the southeasterly seashore of Borneo, Sulawesi and the Moluccas had become indeed patronize as to prompt the Dutch and British to try to bring about an international agreement with Spain in order to combat piracy. Madrid, however, was antipathetic to allow the navies of early european powers to operate in Philippine waters, because it might compromise the spanish title to sovereignty over the southerly Philippines, a claim that was not formally recognised by the neighbor colonial powers. Spain thus rejected the proposed naval cooperation, claiming that spanish forces had already succeeded in suppressing Sulu plagiarism and that the duty to cooperate with Great Britain and the Netherlands would restrain their hired hand in dealing with the pirates. The spanish besides warned the Dutch and the british not to give chase to pirates within Spain ’ s maritime partition or to attack the pirates on land in areas over which Spain claimed sovereignty. The british and Dutch consequently went ahead without spanish cooperation and increased their naval presence in the waters adjacent to the spanish colony. They tried to some extent to coordinate their operations against the Tawi-Tawi ( and early ) pirates, and the patrols were successful in bringing about a decline in raids affecting Dutch and british interests in the region from the early on 1860s. The spanish refusal to cooperate with the dutch and the british again demonstrated that the main refer for the Spanish was not the suppression of plagiarism but the assertion of their control over the Sulu Archipelago. For the spanish, naval cooperation with Great Britain or the Netherlands was out of the wonder angstrom hanker as Spain ’ s claim to the Sulu Archipelago – which besides implied northeast Borneo ( Sabah ), an area over which the sultan of Sulu had exercised at least nominal sovereignty – was not internationally recognised. The commercial and territorial competition was particularly strong between Great Britain and Spain. The end of Balangingi in 1848, as we have seen, pushed the Sulu Sultanate to seek airless relations with the british in order to fend off the threat of foster spanish aggression. The british, for their separate, were concerned in expanding their commerce in the region, particularly after Labuan off the coast of Brunei was established as a british char station in 1847 with the purpose of developing it into a hub of trade in the region. After a slow start, trade between Sulu and Labuan developed quickly after the middle of the 1850s, and Labuan emerged as an significant entrepôt for the trade between Sulu and Singapore. For the Sulu Sultanate the trade with Labuan was very advantageous, and it provided the nearest alternative trade station to the Spanish-controlled ports at Zamboanga and Balabac. The commercial thunder besides helped to reestablish the domestic agency of Sultan Fadl Pulalun, which had suffered as a resultant role of the spanish attacks in the middle of the hundred. The spanish, however, were not happy with the commercial rival from the british, and they claimed that the craft between Sulu and Labuan violated the treaty of 1851. The spanish tried, by and large inefficaciously, to enforce their monopoly on the deal of the Sulu Sultanate. spanish naval vessels patrolled the Sulu Sea in order to assert sovereignty and to enforce Spain ’ s commercial monopoly. The patrols besides tried to suppress piracy and nautical marauding, and in 1858 the spanish won a major victory when Taupan and two of his finale lieutenants were captured and sent off to exile in the northern Philippines. thus ended the exploits of the man whom the Spaniards considered to be the last of the bang-up raiding chiefs of the Moros. The spanish were hush largely ineffective to check fiddling acts of plagiarism efficaciously, however, and farther measures were deemed necessary in order to assert Spain ’ s de facto sovereignty and dominance over the Sulu Archipelago. To this effect the spanish Governor-General, Fernando Norzagaray, issued a proclamation in 1858 according to which anyone would receive 10 cuban peso for each captured or killed commandeer, provided the latter had been caught in the act, whereas a plagiarist drawing card commanded a advantage of 50 mexican peso. The bonus seems to have had some impression, at least on paper, and over the subsequent years thousands of mexican peso were paid by the spanish authorities to Moros for their efforts to suppress piracy, although it is far from certain that all of those for whom rewards were paid were indeed pirates. overall, these and other measures taken by the spanish authorities did little to bring an end to petty plagiarism and coastal foray into in the Sulu Archipelago and the neighbor parts of the spanish colony. From the spanish point of view, the trouble was exacerbated by the relative efficiency of Dutch and british efforts to suppress plagiarism in the adjacent waters, one impression of which was to push the Sulu raiders to increase their operations in Philippine waters. The situation changed entirely in 1861, when the spanish politics purchased eighteen minor gunboats, by means of which they, for the beginning time, were able to extend regular patrols to all parts of the Sulu Sea. The main tasks of the gunboats were to chase after pirates and to enforce a spanish embargo on the import of firearms and ammunition to the Sulu Archipelago. The embargo was difficult to control, however, and was compromised by the inflow of arms via Labuan .By means of their new superior naval and military capacity, the Spanish managed over the course of the 1860s to put an end to most of the remaining piratical activity and slave-raiding There is immediately a spanish war vessel stationed at Sulu, and occasionally a gunboat, to punish Pirates. They have just returned from a enlistment round Tawi-Tawi, where they have shot 25, burnt their villages and destroyed their coconut trees, releasing 9 Bisayans. They go … to the South of Tawi to destroy the building yard Balingki ( I think ) where all the large Boats are built and fitted out. This is unfortunate for us. The Sultan of Sulu is very civil to us, and wanted me to hoist the english pin to protect himself against the Spaniards, who will no doubt finally take the whole group, that being their object clearly … While we lay here 30 June, there are 3 spanish steamer Vessels of war, a sloop and two gunboats, one has just arrived with 5 Boats in tow, and having on board 34 men and women chained to their steam range. They are Pirates. They were captured ( having no arms ) off Siassi 30 miles South of Sulu doing nothing. One of the Boats belongs to the Sultan. Two days after they all sail for Tawi where a test takes place, a witness has been obtained who saw them some years since in the act of plagiarism – kidnapping. They are guilty ; are taken to Zamboanga to work as convicts for life sentence. The Sultan … says the men are all quiet, harmless persons and that whenever women and children are found in Boats with the men there is no mischief intended. By means of their newly ranking naval and military capability, the spanish managed over the course of the 1860s to put an end to most of the remaining piratical action and slave-raiding in and emanating from the Sulu Archipelago. The measures deployed were harsh and frequently arbitrary, however, and, according to british observers, the barbarous and destructive naval war of the spanish provoked bitter hatred among the Moros. In July 1871, the british commanding officer of the soft-shell clam Nassau reported from a visit to the Sulu das kapital at Jolo In suppressing plagiarism and other forms of subversion on the function of the Moros the spanish relied on tactics that were not identical different in character and impression from those of the Moro raids they aimed to suppress. The spanish frequently attacked Moro settlements that were suspected of serving as commandeer bases. typically, the Moro forces were defeated, some of the inhabitants killed or sentenced to transportation, and the houses, trees and other place were burnt, after which the spanish swallow. By and large, these tactics were similar to the ones that the spanish had deployed during the three centuries that the Moro Wars had been fought. interim, the Moros, fair as earlier, retaliated by making war on the spanish, chiefly by raiding spanish or christian coastal settlements and vessels. The consequence was that the already bitter relations between Spain and the Sulu Sultanate deteriorated far as a consequence of the increased spanish naval activeness in the Sulu Sea. The sultan, meanwhile, considered the 1851 treaty with Spain ‘ nothing and invalidate ’, as he and his chiefs allegedly had not received their annual salaries during the previous ten years. The Sultan ’ s wage was 1,500 philippine peso a year according to the agreement and was intended as recompense for the loss of his palace and fort, which were burnt to the land in the spanish attack of 1851 .Although the Spanish, by means of their gunboat flotilla, were able to uphold a reasonable degree of maritime security in the Sulu Archipelago, sporadic acts of piracy and coastal raids continued to occur. For example, in 1870, pirates preyed on the maritime traffic through the San Bernardino Straitand of importing arms The suppression of piracy can then entirely be regarded as the apparent lawsuit, and a desire to propagate the doctrines of the Roman Catholic religion and exterminate Islamism in the South, a love of aggrandizement, the creation of new places for the corroborate of a certain number of officials, a jealousy of foreign determine obtaining any foot within the zone of spanish govern, and the exclusion of foreign vessels from trading freely with the Sultan ’ randomness people are, we may rest assured, the real causes which prompt Spain to aim at this extension of her territory. Although the spanish, by means of their gunboat flotilla, were able to uphold a reasonable degree of nautical security system in the Sulu Archipelago, sporadic acts of piracy and coastal raids continued to occur. For example, in 1870, pirates preyed on the nautical traffic through the San Bernardino Strait separating Luzon from Samar and raided several islands on the southwest coast of Luzon. The spanish colonial government accused the sultan of Sulu of not fulfilling his obligations according to the 1851 treaty of suppressing plagiarism, and of importing arms without license, which besides was a trespass of the treaty. The british, however, were of the opinion that the spanish brought up the accusation of piracy as a pretext for treatment and that their real aim was to extend their dominance over the Sulu Sea and to convert the Moros to Christianity. The british Consul in Manila, George Thorne Ricketts – who, like most british officials, was distinctly no admirer of the spanish colonial government − wrote : In the eyes of the spanish, however, religion could not be separated from the trouble of piracy. In 1859 a royal edict claimed that ‘ plagiarism was an occupation that found religious basis and was viewed not as an act arising from moral degradation but rather, lack of civilization ’. Proselytisation, frankincense, did not merely serve religious purposes but was besides seen as a means of bringing refinement to the Moros and thereby ending their addiction to the practice of piracy. The suppression of piracy may not have been the primary objective of conquering Sulu from the spanish position, but doing so, it was hoped, would make it potential for the spanish to civilise and convert the Joloanos and thereby make them give up their piratical habits .
Naval Destruction
From the 1870s the spanish began to pursue their claim to sovereignty over the southerly Philippines evening more aggressively. They increased their naval presence in the region to thirty-two ships of unlike sizes, and spanish gunboats constantly patrolled the Sulu Archipelago, not only to suppress plagiarism but besides, and chiefly, to enforce the barricade on Sulu ’ s foreign trade with Labuan and Singapore. The spanish claim to have the right to visit all ships, both Sulu and extraneous, in the archipelago, and they seized vessels and cargoes deemed to be in irreverence of the embargo. At the same time interimperial competition besides increased. The british undertake to view the archipelago, and there were signs of increasing german concern in the region, all of which served to strengthen the spanish answer to take firm control over the Sulu Sultanate. In 1872 a spanish naval commanding officer, Santiago Patero − who obviously had some understand of the social and economic conditions of the Sulu Sultanate − published a policy wallpaper entitled ‘ A desirable system for Putting an end to Piracy ’. Santiago Patero made fifteen recommendations with involve to spanish policy in Sulu, including occupying the capital at Jolo and dispatching as many Catholic missionaries as possible to the archipelago. He besides recommended establishing forward naval bases in the area and the increased practice of steam power in orderliness to destroy all Sulu trade and facilities for boat-building. The principal mind, according to Santiago Patero, was to let the natives go through a transitional time period of ‘ proper and mark humility ’ [ conveniente y marcada humildad ], which would serve wholly to ruin their commerce, destroy their boats, make them lose their capacitance to build them, and to turn the natives, by coerce or by necessity, to the agrarian life .The programme was promptly adopted as the blueprint for Spanish naval policy in the Sulu Archipelago. After an incident in which Sultan Jamal ul-Azam 1st. Every vessel coming from the Soloo Archipelago and manned by Moors shall be destroyed, and its crowd and passengers destined to labour on public works on the northerly islands of the Archipelago. 2nd. If the vessels referred to in the former article be armed, they shall, as our laws direct, be held as pirates and their crews be tried by court martial according to the provisions of the Penal Code. 3rd. Every vessel, although it may not be manned, belonging to Moors of the islands of Soloo and Tawi Tawi shall be destroyed by the cruisers. 4th. Vessels referred to in the former articles, which do not acknowledge the authority of the Sultan and do not carry on plagiarism, shall, when they endeavour to sail from other islands than those of Soloo and Tawi Tawi, be conducted by the cruisers to the islands whence they had come. 5th. In the islands whence the vessels referred to in the previous article may proceed, fishing will be permitted under restrictions deemed desirable by the Commander of the Division. The broadcast was promptly adopted as the blueprint for spanish naval policy in the Sulu Archipelago. After an incident in which Sultan Jamal ul-Azam ( 1862–81 ) refused to fly the spanish pin in his capital and rather had the flag burn in public, the spanish declared Sulu to be in loose rebellion. Citing the motivation to prevent raiding on the filipino coasts, the Commander of the spanish Naval Station in the Philippines, Rear Admiral Juan Antequera, in August 1873, issued a regulation that declared all Muslim ship in the Sulu Sea illegal. All spanish vessels were to observe the play along orders : The implementation of the contract did great harm to Sulu trade and fishing but failed to force the Sultanate into submission. The trade embargo was circumvented by Sulu traders, aided by Chinese, German and British smugglers, who brought food and other necessities, american samoa well arms and munitions, to Jolo from Singapore and Labuan. The governor-general of the Philippines, José Malcampo y Monge, was convinced that the only direction to enforce Spain ’ s claim to sovereignty over the Sulu Archipelago was once and for all to conquer and occupy Jolo, as recommended by Santiago Patero. For the first time in more than 300 years of spanish colonial bearing in the Philippines, furthermore, it seemed possible, in view of Spain ’ south enhanced military and naval domination, not entirely to defeat the Moros but besides to take restraint over the Sulu Archipelago and the respite of the southerly Philippines. In February 1876 a large military expedition, consisting of nine thousand troops conveyed in ten steamboats and eleven transports, and escorted by a fleet of twelve gunboats, left Zamboanga for Sulu in order to conquer and occupy Jolo. The expedition succeeded in conquering the capital at Jolo and destroyed several other alleged pirate nests in the archipelago. A spanish garrison was established at Jolo, and foster expeditions were dispatched to search for allege plagiarist bases around the Sulu Archipelago. A decoration was struck for each of the participants in the political campaign, and Malcampo was given the title ‘ Count of Jolo ’. The victory was widely celebrated in Spain, and Malcampo was hailed as a hero. There seems to have been short or no wonder of the use of the news plagiarist to describe the Moros, and the spanish press reported enthusiastically the spanish Navy ’ s heroic encounters with the piratical Moros. Two years late a koran entitled Piratical Wars of the Philippines against the Mindanaos and Joloanos was published by Vicente Barrantes, a spanish writer and poet who had worked for several years in the colonial administration in the Philippines. The work distribute with the Moro Wars up until the early on nineteenth century, and the function, as stated by the generator, was to ‘ demonstrate the contrary behavior of the Moro along with our prudence, in order now to win their friendship and to contain their piracies ’. A more comprehensive discipline of Moro plagiarism in two volumes appeared ten years by and by, written by José Montero y Vidal, a spanish writer and politician, who, like Barrantes, had served for several years as an official in the Philippine colonial administration. The title of Montero y Vidal ’ s work was The History of the Malay-Muslim Piracy in Mindanao, Jolo and Borneo, and it covered the whole history of the Moro Wars, from the one-sixteenth hundred until the present. It was possibly even more negative in its assessment of the Moros than Barrantes ’ work, describing them as ‘ barbarous, revengeful, devious, treacherous, deceitful and false ’. ‘ War is his element ; piracy his entirely occupation ; slavery his wealth ’, according to Montero y Vidal. The works of Barrantes and Montero y Vidal were examples of a colonial historiography ‘ draw in a heroic verse and imperialist mold ’, in the words of Nicholas Tarling. The visualize of the Muslims of the southern Philippines as piratical by nature and of the Moro Wars as a series of epic spanish efforts to suppress piracy was separate of colonial propaganda and seems to have gone more or less undisputed in Spain. such notions, however, were not limited to Spanish colonial historiography but were prevalent in other colonial histories and assessments of the Moros ( and other Malays ) ampere well. A few years after the spanish conquest of Jolo an austrian ethnographer, Ferd. Blumentritt, published a function and a survey of the peoples of the Philippines in which he lumped all ethnic groups of the southern Philippines together under the pronounce ‘ pirate tribes ’ ( Piratenstämme ). His writings would come to exercise a great influence on american understandings of Moro culture and society as the United States acquired Spain ’ south Philippines colony in 1899 .
Moro Resistance
The Joloanos regarded the establishment of the spanish garrison at Jolo as an invasion and a humiliation, and they continued, encouraged by Sultan Jamal ul-Azam and the leading datus, to engage a guerrilla war that inflicted many casualties on the spanish troops. spanish soldiers and christian Filipinos were frequently ambushed and killed or became victims of assaults by juramentados, suicide attackers, normally armed with a dagger, sword or spear, who ventured to kill as many Spaniards or other Christians as possible before they, in most cases, were themselves killed. On several occasions the Moros besides made concert attacks on the spanish garrison at Jolo but were repelled with fleshy losses. After more than two years of hostilities, one of the leading Sulu datus, Harun ar-Rashid, convinced the sultan that peace and submission to Spanish suzerainty were preferable to continued fight, which looked likely to bring about the complete laying waste of the Sultanate. Negotiations followed, with the result that the sultan accepted spanish sovereignty in central for an annual wage and full autonomy in matters concerning home administration, customs, law and religion. The status of the Sulu Sultanate in the 1878 treaty thus resembled more that of a protectorate than a dependence or a amply integrated character of the Philippines, as the Spanish claimed it was .The Sultan’s earlier promise We will try to suppress all pirates ; but in case we are unable to do so we will notify the Govenor of their placement. But in event we do not know where they are, we can not be held responsible for such data. We will besides aid the Government with deoxyadenosine monophosphate many men as we can afford to bring together, and we shall be pleased to give guides who can tell the concealment places of such pirates. The Sultan ’ s earlier promise in the 1851 agreement not to permit or engage in plagiarism and to punish those who attempted to do so was developed far in the 1878 treaty. According to Article 8 : The treaty did not immediately put an end to hostilities, however. The sultan ’ mho ability was dependent upon the loyalty and support of the local anesthetic datus, whose commitment to the sultan often was little more than nominal and whose relations with the spanish were frequently outright hostile and contemptuous. After the death of Sultan Jamal ul-Azam in 1881, hostilities between the spanish and Sulu Moros led by discontented datus once again surged. The spanish had no operate over the island of Jolo beyond their garrison, and little parties of soldiers who ventured outdoor were frequently ambushed and killed. The unleash of juramentados seems to have been encouraged and used as a military tactic for the purpose of striking fear into the hearts of the spanish soldiers and the Chinese and Christian Filipinos who resided in the garrison town of Jolo. An american english scientist, Dean Conant Worcester, who visited the island in 1891, described the situation : ‘ barely a night passed during our stay at Sulu that marauders were not in evidence near the town. They took pot-shots at the sentries, steal cattle, and made themselves generally disagreeable. ’ The journalist and amateur historian Vic Hurley – possibly with a flair for the dramatic – similarly claimed that a ‘ reign of terror persisted in Jolo without respite until the town was last evacuated to the american forces in 1899 ’. General John C. Bates, who shortly after the american takeover of the Philippines in 1899 led a mission to establish an agreement between the United States and the sultan of Sulu, concluded from his studies of spanish records of their activity in the Sulu Archipelago that : Spain never announced nor conceived a definite, fasten policy of control over the archipelago which looked to improvement and permanence. Its frequent recorded actions seem to have been the result of a hope to temporarily meet difficulties growing out of some tense relationship with the Moros existing at the meter, accompanied by the discernible fixed function to maintain a sufficient number of troops in the archipelago to show to Europe that occupation in fact which would demonstrate spanish reign. If the spanish never succeeded in establishing more than nominative operate over Jolo and the other islands of the Sulu Archipelago, they were finally, toward the end of the spanish colonial period, relatively successful in uphold nautical security in the archipelago. In addition to the garrison at Jolo, the spanish established ports and a military presence in Siasi and Tawi-Tawi, both in order to overcome Moro resistance to Spanish rule and to assert spanish sovereignty over the region vis-à-vis early colonial powers. As a resultant role of the increased spanish naval presence, there seem to have been few cases of piracy in or emanating from the Sulu Archipelago during the last years of the spanish colonial menstruation. In 1885 Great Britain and Germany officially recognised spanish sovereignty over the Sulu Archipelago, both with regard to the effectively absorb parts and those not even occupied. Spain had thus, after more than 300 years, finally achieved most of her main objectives in the Sulu Archipelago, that is, to put an end to the raids and war that affected the northerly islands and to assert her sovereignty, at least nominally, over the Sulu Sultanate. The conversion of the Moros to Christianity, however, did not make any significant build up despite the constitution of a catholic mission at Jolo following the 1876 seduction of the town. The sultan, meanwhile, continued to hold his title and was allowed considerable autonomy in legal, religious and cultural affairs, but his authority was however hard weakened. In the course of a generation, the spanish expansion in Sulu had not only ended the nautical raiding system on which the Sultanate had thrived before the middle of the nineteenth hundred : it had besides destroyed much of the nautical department of commerce of the Moros, and autochthonal traders found themselves increasingly marginalised or pushed out of business by european and chinese competitors. These developments would brew up farther resentment against both colonial rule and foreigners in the Sulu Archipelago, which finally would lead to a renewed beckon of piratical activity in the region in the early twentieth hundred .
The United States and the Philippines
In April 1898 war broke out between Spain and the United States, and in precisely ten-spot weeks the spanish forces had been soundly defeated, both in the Caribbean and the Philippines. In the peace treaty, Spain was forced to transfer sovereignty over the Philippines to the United States, giving the latter area a foothold in Asia and a commercial gateway to the chinese market. american businessmen and policymakers hoped that the commercial opportunities that would follow colonial expansion would help alleviate the economic, social and political ills caused by the Industrial Revolution in the United States. There was besides a conviction that the United States needed strategic bases in Asia if american companies were to be able to compete successfully with european enterprises. The Philippines was by far the largest of the abroad territories that the United States acquired as a resultant role of the war with Spain. It was the most outback of the raw territories and was at the time about stranger, not merely to ordinary Americans, but besides to most of the civil and military officials who were charged with the tax of governing the new colony. furthermore, America ’ s colonial expansion in Asia was vigorously opposed, both in the colony itself and in the United States. In the Philippines, Spain ’ s harsh repression of even relatively centrist patriot aspirations had triggered an armed originate in 1896, and although a armistice was concluded the follow year, patriot sentiments and demands for independence continued to be firm among christian Filipinos. When the Spanish–American War broke out, filipino nationalists, led by Emilio Aguinaldo, joined forces with the Americans in the hope that the United States would grant independence to the Philippines. Encouraged by the Americans, who counted on the support of the nationalists to weaken Spain ’ s control over the colony, Aguinaldo declared independence for the Philippines in June 1898. After the war, however, the US government had no intention of allowing independence for the Philippines. In February 1899, after much controversy, Congress barely voted to ratify the peace treaty with Spain and thus to approve the annexation of the Philippines. filipino nationalists, who at the time were in operate of most of the archipelago, with the exception of Manila and the southern Philippines, however, refused to recognize american sovereignty, and a three-year armed contend for independence, the Philippine–American War, followed. The United States was well in command of most of the islands by 1900, but fighting and brigandage continued in a phone number of locations for several years. In the United States colonial expansion was opposed by outstanding public figures, including politicians, intellectuals, artists and writers, who formed a vigorous anti-imperialist faction. american anti-imperialism was linked, ideologically a well as genealogically, to the antislavery apparent motion from before the Civil War, and many of the leading anti-imperialists proverb colonization as another form of enslavement and thus as unconstitutional. The anti-imperialists besides claimed that imperialism was a crying irreverence of the fundamental principles on which the United States was founded, as colonial domination was incompatible with the principles of exemption, democracy and every nation ’ mho right to self-government. american policy in the Philippines from the conclusion of the Philippine–American War of 1902 up until the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941 was to a great extent shaped by the tension between, on the one bridge player, the commercial and geopolitical arguments for continue colonial administration and, on the other, Filipino nationalist aspirations and the sympathy that those aspirations commanded among anti-imperialists in the United States .
Transfer of Power in the South
It took several months after the ratification of the peace treaty by Congress before the United States could muster enough troops to occupy the spanish posts in the southern Philippines. According to the american Military governor of the Philippines, Major-General Elwell Stephen Otis, who relied on reports from the spanish acting governor of the southern Philippines, the situation in the region was very unsatisfactory, and Otis hesitated to dispatch the few troops he could spare into the area. He was particularly concerned that if the troops were besides few they would not be able to secure and hold the necessary positions there given the hostility of the local population. furthermore, not only had the northerly and northeastern coasts of Mindanao fallen to Philippine nationalist rebels after the spanish troops on the island had withdrawn to Zamboanga, but control by the spanish military had besides been relaxed in the Sulu Archipelago, and gunboat patrols had practically ceased. The spanish had deserted the smaller military posts in the sphere, such as the one at Siasi, and withdrawn its troops in Sulu to the independent garrison at Jolo. meanwhile, it was reported that the sultan and the datus of Sulu were gathering big supplies of arms and ammunition from overseas and that they planned to oppose any american attempts to assert their sovereignty over the Sultanate. A far blow to american english ambitions in Sulu came in March 1899, when most of the spanish gunboat flotilla – thirteen vessels in all – that had been used to patrol the Sulu Archipelago and adjacent sea was hijacked by Mindanao nationalists. The boats were finally recovered and escorted to Manila by the spanish Navy, but not before the nationalists had stripped them of arms and munitions. once in american hands, the destiny of the gunboats became the object of a controversy between the Army and the Navy. Governor Otis intended for the gunboats to be commissioned with Army personnel and used to stop illegitimate barter between the Philippine Islands, but he was told by Admiral George Dewey, Commander of the US Navy ’ s Asiatic Squadron, that the Army had no authority to operate gunboats. Should they however attack to do thus, Dewey said, the Navy would consider them to be pirates and run down the gunboats and sink them. The consequence of the draw was that the Navy took the oceangoing gunboats while the Army was allowed to keep ten shallow-draft steamers, some of which were equipped with heavy cannon and machine guns, to support military operations. As a consequence, the Army ’ sulfur maritime capacity in the southern Philippines was strictly limited and insufficient to uphold maritime security. In the middle of May 1899 the situation for the spanish troops in Zamboanga became indefensible after the garrison was attacked by nationalists who managed to cut off their water add. The spanish then decided to evacuate both the garrisons at Zamboanga and Jolo immediately and requested that the Americans relieve them. The latter, unable to spare adequate troops to take restraint of both major garrisons in the South, decided to concentrate their forces on Jolo and let Zamboanga fall into the hands of the nationalists, despite the greater strategic importance of the latter town and garrison. According to Otis, there was a significant risk that if the Jolo garrison was abandoned, the Moros would destroy the fortifications and turn the guns on the Americans once they arrived. In order to avoid this Otis dispatched a impel of 700 troops to occupy the garrison at Jolo.
Upon arrival in Jolo, the Americans learnt that the spanish had already turned over the small garrison at Siasi to Sultan Jamalul Kiram II ( r. 1894–1936 ) and that they had planned to leave him the garrison at Jolo arsenic well. The sultan was reportedly very disappoint when the Americans arrived and prevented him from taking control of the garrison. The sultan and the leading datus had seen the passing of the Spanish as an opportunity to restore the sovereignty of the Sulu Sultanate. Against this background, the delicate undertaking for the Americans during their first gear weeks in the Sulu Archipelago was to convince the sultan and his foreman to accept american reign and to try to establish friendly relations with the Moros. When the Americans first base arrived in the southern Philippines they knew about nothing about the Moros, ‘ save that they professed the Mohammedan religion and were a militant people who had always resisted the domination of Spain ’, as a contemporary official report put it. Their military strength was not insignificant, as it was estimated that the Sulu Sultanate could put 20,000 fighting men in the plain. This number did not include the fight capability of other Moros in the southerly Philippines, such as in Mindanao and Basilan. Against this background, Governor Otis was of the impression that hostilities would be unfortunate for all parties concerned and risked being very costly to the United States in terms of money and troops. The situation was particularly critical in see of the Philippine–American War, which stretched the military capacity of the Americans, who frankincense had potent incentives to try to win the hearts and minds of the Muslims in the southern Philippines in order to avoid having to fight a double war, equally well as an incentive to weaken the predominantly christian Philippine patriot movement. Against this background, rather than opting for lead predominate in the Sulu Archipelago, the Americans sought to establish indirect rule on terms similar to those of the 1878 treaty between Spain and the Sultanate. The sultan was to be given a big academic degree of autonomy in matters concerning religion, custom, police and inner administration in exchange for his acknowledgment of american sovereignty. To this effect, a mission led by Brigadier General John C. Bates was sent to Sulu in mid 1899 with instructions to negotiate an agreement with the sultan and the leading datus. several of the latter were reportedly favorably qualify toward the Americans, but the sultan was initially reluctant to negotiate with the american delegating. After six weeks, however, in August 1899 he was persuaded to sign the agreement, largely on the terms proposed by the Americans. With the sign of the alleged Bates Agreement the american military seemed to have covered its back in the Sulu Archipelago for the coming years and could concentrate its efforts on the tax of fighting the nationalists. In the United States, however, the agreement caused an tumult, because it seemed to imply that the american authorities in the Philippines condoned slavery. Article 10 of the agreement stated that ‘ [ a ] new york slave in the archipelago of Jolo shall have the right to purchase freedom by paying to the master the common market respect ’. For american english anti-imperialists, this planning seemed to confirm their worst fears in connection with the american coup d’etat of the Philippines, and the opponents of colonial expansion promptly seized on what they saw both as a irreverence of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery in the United States or any put subject to its jurisdiction, and as evidence that colonialism in itself was a phase of bondage. The controversy over the Bates Agreement seems to have come as a storm to the senior military officers in the Philippines. Slavery, or its abolition in the Sulu Sultanate, was not mentioned in Otis ’ s instructions to Bates, and several statements and observations by leading military officials in the Philippines indicate that they did not consider Moro bondage to be a problem. many lead american english military officers in the Philippines at the time claimed that Moro bondage was in fact not slavery at all, at least not in the coarse ( that is, American ) sense of the discussion. In orderliness therefore to distinguish Moro slavery from the chattel slavery of the American South before the Civil War they tended to use less offensive terms in official reports, such as ‘ peonage ’ or ‘ a species of serfdom ’, to describe the phenomenon. The military governor of the Department of Mindanao and Sulu, Brigadier General W. A. Kobbé, even went so far as to claim that the ‘ slaves belong to the same slipstream as the masters, appear to live with them on adequate social terms and, deoxyadenosine monophosphate army for the liberation of rwanda as is known, have no hard labor to perform ’ .
Petty Piracy
In contrast to slavery, piracy was mentioned by otis in his instructions to Bates, indicating american concerns over the offspring from the beginning of their presidency in the Sulu Archipelago. Occasional acts of plagiarism and slave raiding emanating from Sulu and affecting Mindanao and other Philippine islands, deoxyadenosine monophosphate well as the east seashore of Borneo, occurred throughout the first years of american rule in the Philippines. Although piracy was not a major problem for the Americans, it soured relations between the American authorities and the Moros. In his instructions to General Bates in mid 1899, Governor Otis pointed out that it was necessary for the military to take control over strategic points in the Sulu Archipelago in order to undertake ‘ naval and military operations against foreign aggression or to disperse try piratical excursions ’. He instructed Bates to get the sultan and his chiefs to promise that they would not ‘ license acts of piracy by their people on its waters, and to assist the United States Government to suppress and abolish this crime by whomsoever attempts to commit it, whether american english, inhabitant, or alien ’. The issue of piracy did not generate any longer discussion in the negotiations between Bates and the sultan of Sulu, and seems to have been of minor concern to both sides. In their respective drafts for the agreement text, both sides proposed an article that provided for cooperation to suppress piracy, but the sultan readily agreed to use the american english adaptation in the final textbook of the agreement. The article, which was slightly less specific than the corresponding one in the 1878 treaty between Spain and Sulu, learn : ‘ Piracy must be suppressed, and the sultan and his datos agree to heartily collaborate with the United States authorities to that end, and to make every potential attempt to arrest and bring to justice all persons engaged in piracy. ’ Despite the apparent committedness of the sultan and his headmen to cooperate in the suppression of plagiarism, their earnestness was soon doubted by the american english officers charged with the job of governing the Sulu Archipelago and the rest of the military department of Mindanao and Jolo. Less than a year after the sign of the Bates Agreement, General Kobbé expressed his doubts about the value of the cooperation against plagiarism. such cooperation could not be controlled, he claimed, and was ‘ believed to be pro forma and valueless, because piracy has existed in one form or another for many years and is considered by the average Moro a absolutely fair crippled ’. The commander of Jolo Garrison, Major Owen J. Sweet, similarly reported that everything was ‘ politic and complacent on the surface ’, but that there was no desire or intention on the character of the sultan or his chiefs to cooperate with the Americans in order to improve the circumstance of the people or to stop acts of robbery or plagiarism. The sultan, Sweet claimed, would put two or three hundred armed men in the field to collect a fine but would not care, or would plead inability, when asked, to arrest pirates or thieves wanted by the US authorities. piratical bodily process and other forms of banditry, both on bring and at ocean, increased during the first gear years of american english rule in the Sulu Archipelago as a result of the elapse in security system in connection with the withdrawal of spanish troops and the discontinuance of gunboat patrols. The passing of spanish gunboats, which, as we have seen, were transferred to the US Navy and were used chiefly in the Philippine–American War in the north, rendered the effective suppression of plagiarism and other forms of criminal or guerrilla activities difficult in the Sulu Archipelago and other parts of the southern Philippines. At first the position was seen by the american authorities as quite satisfactory. In 1902, the Commander of the Seventh Brigade, which was charged with the administration of the Department of Mindanao and Sulu, reported that after the spanish gunboats had delivered the death ring to the Sulu pirates, ‘ these whilom sea rovers limit their forays to an occasional assault on other Moro boats, but the merchant vessels of all nations are as fasten in the Sulu Sea as in the Atlantic Ocean ’. In general, the american appraisal of the situation was that piratical activities now only occurred sporadically. According to the 1899–1900 Annual Report of the Department of Mindanao and Sulu, the inhabitants of Tawi-Tawi – all of whom, it was claimed, were either ‘ pirates, ex-pirates, or descendants of pirates ’ – immediately only rarely engaged in piracy and then only on each other. This claim implied that the Tawi-Tawi pirates purportedly only attacked local anesthetic vessels, owned and crewed by Moros, and not American-, European- or Chinese-owned vessels. As a consequence, the fiddling piracies that hush occurred were of little concern to the colonial authorities. To the extent that the piratical activeness and slave-raiding exhale from the Philippines affected early countries or colonies, however, it did cause the authorities concern. In May 1900 an attack occurred in which six Moros from the Sulu Archipelago killed five Moros and one chinese from the Dutch East Indies near the island of Kulan, off the east coast of Borneo. The vessel of the victims was sunk, and the pirates got aside with $ 6,000 ( US ) in cash and $ 20,000 ( US ) worth of trade. The Americans were informed by the Dutch authorities that the perpetrators were hiding in a village on Jolo. Sultan Jamalul Kiram II was asked to cooperate with american forces in order to capture the perpetrators, to which he reportedly only agreed reluctantly. The Sultan ’ s followers, in concert with american english troops, surrounded the greenwich village and tried to arrest the suspects, but five of them escaped and only one was apprehended. The american english officer in command of the operation was convinced that those who managed to escape did so with the aid of the Sultan ’ s fighting men and that the halt Moro in fact was a mere scapegoat. A few months by and by a small outrigger canoe ( banca ) with two taiwanese and four Moros, or Filipinos dressed as Moros, and a cargo of goods worth $ 2,000 ( US ) was attacked near Bunbun after they had left Jolo for Zamboanga. The entire crew was killed, except for one of the Moros, who escaped. Investigations by the US military pointed to a certain Sabudin, a foreman from Lapingan, as the instigator of the attack, and the Americans asked the sultan to assist in capturing the perpetrators. According to the air force officer of the Jolo garrison, Major Sweet, however, such help was not forthcoming. To the Americans, this and other like incidents seemed to prove that Sultan Jamalul Kiram II was not earnest in his commitment to suppress piracy. As during the spanish colonial period, however, the sultan had limited means by which to suppress it or other forms of banditry, and was dependent on the hold of the datus, some of whom were merely nominally patriotic to the sultan. furthermore, although the sultan had pledged to combat plagiarism, both to the spanish and the Americans, plagiarism or nautical foray into was not a crime according to Sulu law. Theft and abduction were condemnable offences, but it was not stated in the law that they were penal if committed outside the jurisdiction of the Sulu Sultanate or against foreigners. furthermore, the Sultan ’ sulfur might and agency to implement the law waned in principle with increasing distance from the capital and was particularly watery in the more distant parts of the Sulu Archipelago. In places such as Tawi-Tawi, he therefore had identical limited means at his administration by which to suppress plagiarism without the support of the local headmen .The Americans understood piracy as a natural phenomenon in the Sulu Archipelago and an integral part of Moro culture, but as long as the victims were other Moros or Chinese merchants The natives of the islands are natural pirates, the battalion of small reefs and islands favoring them. These piracies are committed against each other or against Chinamen. When boats and their crews disappear, the natives take it as a matter of naturally ; it is alone another case of piracy. No reports of plagiarism against whites have been received, but from evidence found by Captain Cloman in the Selungan affair, it would appear that piracies against Sandakan traders have been committed recently. The Americans understand piracy as a natural phenomenon in the Sulu Archipelago and an integral part of Moro culture, but arsenic farseeing as the victims were other Moros or taiwanese merchants based in the region, the trouble was not seen as a major security exit. The number of attacks was credibly importantly underreported, and no try was made to collect information systematically or to assess the on-key scope of the trouble. Officers in the region, however, were aware that maritime security in the Sulu Archipelago was deficient. In July 1900 Major Sweet reported of the situation in the Sulu Archipelago : Selungun was the leader of a band of Sulu pirates who were responsible for a count of attacks on local fishing boats and traders in the archipelago in the inaugural years of the twentieth century. According to official reports, he was a ‘ slave trader ’ and a ‘ bad Jolo Moro ’, but Captain Sydney A. Cloman, the commanding officer of the garrison at Bongao, who finally arrested and interviewed him, was impressed by his charismatic personality and described the pirate chief as ‘ brilliant ’, ‘ well-built, dignified and unafraid ’. The description may have been influenced by a preference for literary flair, but in addition, the opportunity to catch an illustrious and ill-famed pirate probably provided a welcome distraction from the routine and boredom of daily life at the isolate military post at Bongao. Chasing pirates could still be seen as something of an adventurous and quixotic pursuit for american soldiers in the Philippines at the begin of the twentieth hundred .Apart from carrying out petty pirate attacks against local traders and fishermen, Selungun and his band undertook slave raids to Mindanao I was walking approximately in a jungle identical close to Cotabato, some one called out to me to wait ; I waited ; three men came up and caught hold of me and tied my hands behind my back and took me to a small boat, and I was then taken to a large boat that brought me to Jolo Island. Eleven besides myself were brought to this island as slaves – 3 women and 3 children ( females ), 6 males ( 2 boys and 4 originate men ), all were brought from near Cotabato … We came from Cotabato and landed at Patotol, where 8 were sold ; from Patotol we left for Parang ; Selungan met Akir and asked him to sell the slaves ; there were 12 slaves then ; we were all taken to Wuolo by Akir, who sold some of them, 6 ( 3 women and 1 girl child, 1 homo, and 1 male child ). One woman was sold in Tapul ; 1 girl child was sold in Siassi ; 1 woman, 1 man, and 1 boy were sold in Look ; 1 young daughter was sold at Bual. One grown-up boy escaped over to the township of Siassi … apart from carrying out fiddling pirate attacks against local anesthetic traders and fishermen, Selungun and his band contract slave raids to Mindanao and possibly early islands. Pablo, a Filipino who escaped from enslavement in Jolo in 1901, gave the follow testimony of how he was abducted by Selungun and his followers from his base in Cotabato, Mindanao, and brought to Sulu, where he was sold as a slave : A couple of months subsequently, in August 1901, a humble glide boat ( vinta ) was attacked close to Tukuran by a crowd of pirates linked to Selungun. The attackers killed one of the men on display panel and abducted another man and two women, all of whom were sold as slaves to Selungun, who in turn seems to have sold them on. The Americans, who began to investigate the count upon receiving a complaint by the owner of the boat, were initially ineffective to catch the perpetrators, but they destroyed the firm of one of Selungun ’ sulfur accomplices, Datu Malalis, at Dinas in South Mindanao. Malalis and another suspect named Sulug were subsequently tricked by a datu who was friendly to the Americans to come to Cotabato, where they were arrested and sentenced to prison terms of four and three years respectively. The arrests and the end of Datu Malalis ’ randomness theater reportedly dealt a dangerous blow to the slave market at Dinas. Selungun himself still evaded capture, however, and he was believed to have taken recourse in Tawi-Tawi. The Commander of Jolo Garrison therefore asked the Sultan to arrest Selungun and arrange for the slaves to be returned to Mindanao. In connection with this request, Captain Cloman, the commander of the Bongao station, received a letter from the Sultan asking for license to capture and punish Selungun. According to Cloman ’ s – slightly fanciful – later report of his servicing in the Sulu Archipelago, the letter accused Selungun of an attack on a boat belong to a rich trader who was a friend of the Sultan. Three people were reportedly killed, the cargo was seized and the gravy boat burned. Cloman claimed that he then, with the aid of the Sultan ’ s men, managed to find and arrest Selungun, but that he late escaped en road to Maibung, the das kapital of the Sultan. Selungun subsequently − with the connivance of the Sultan, according to Cloman − made his way to Celebes ( Sulawesi ) in the Dutch East Indies, from where he continued his piratical depredations. Despite the articulation efforts of the Americans, the british and the Dutch, Selungun seems never to have been captured .The depredations of Selungun’s band brought to the fore the need for gunboats to patrol the coasts and waters of the southern Philippines. The Commander of the Zamboanga We would have broken up this nefarious business before this, but did not have the gravy boat transportation system. I will repeat a recommendation I have made, that one or two gunboats should be constantly on patrol duty between Marigosa, Punta Flecha, and the mouth of the Rio Grande and down the seashore for about 40 miles, with instructions to overhaul every vinta and capture and destroy all those containing arms or slaves without a permit from some control officeholder. The Spaniards never permitted them to engage in that kind of traffic, and they expect to be gratingly deal with when catch. A half twelve captures would probably break up the business. The depredations of Selungun ’ mho band brought to the fore the motivation for gunboats to patrol the coasts and waters of the southern Philippines. The commanding officer of the Zamboanga garrison, Major James S. Pettit, was convinced that the lax security measures under American govern compared with the last decades of the spanish earned run average was the argue for the billow in piratical activities and homo traffic : Gunboat patrols were escalate, peculiarly after the United States managed to gain the upper berth hand in the Philippine–American War. From 1902 between two and six or eight naval vessels constantly cruised the waters of the Department of the Mindanao and Sulu. They reportedly provided effective service and were very valuable in policing the seas against illegitimate trade and for ‘ furnishing to evil-minded Moros a expression of watchfulness and national power ’. The patrols continued over the follow years and seem to have been implemental in the suppression of plagiarism, human traffic and smuggle, a well as in improving the general conditions of peace and security in the Sulu Archipelago and other parts of the southern Philippines. The bare presence of the gunboats reportedly had a hindrance effect even if they did not have recourse to violence. The 1903 annual report of the Navy ’ s Asiatic Squadron claimed that the Moro coastal tribes had ‘ great reverence of and respect for a gunboat ’, although subsequent developments indicated that this claim may have been slightly excessively affirmative .
Colonial Rule and Economic Expansion
After the death of Selungun ’ south band, security system conditions at ocean and around the coasts of the archipelago improved. Piracy, coastal raid and the nautical slave trade were virtually brought to an end, and for three and a half years, from the begin of 1903 until the middle of 1906, there is no mention in the annual reports of the region of any piratical action. The increase patrols coincided with a policy shift on the part of the United States in the southern Philippines. From 1899 until 1903, the military presidency, in keeping with the Bates Agreement, pursued, vitamin a far as possible, a policy of nonintervention with regard to the Moros. Army activities were limited in principle to the suppression of piracy, slave-raiding and human traffic, and to trying to keep major conflicts among the Moros within bounds. The Sulu Sultanate had great autonomy in matters concerning inner government and judge, leading to a doubly system of justice in Sulu – one for Moros and one for Americans, Filipinos and others – with many anomalies and conflicting or overlapping laws and practices. many of the dominate officers in the southerly Philippines believed that the policy of nonintervention and indirect rule encouraged banditry and general anarchy and perturb. gradually a consensus emerged among most american officers who had firsthand feel of interaction with the Moros that the lone means to end the agitation and ferocity and to create favorable conditions for developing the region, economically ampere well as socially and culturally, was to impose address colonial rule. many officers were besides tidal bore to take a direct hand in the plan of civilising the Moros, both in the Sulu Sultanate and other parts of the southern Philippines. After the end of the Philippine–American War in 1902 the american colonial authorities were able to divert more resources to the south, and the want to maintain friendly relations with the Moros by means of nonintervention became subordinated to the goal of developing and modernising the region. These goals involved the exploitation of the natural resources of the southern Philippines, such as fish, bone, mother-of-pearl and lumber. With increasing assurance, the american colonisers therefore began to assert their sovereignty over all parts of the Philippine Islands and set about bringing western refinement to the Moros and early purportedly backward peoples of the colony. The civilize measures, particularly the abolition of bondage, were besides crucial in ordain to legitimise american english colonial rule in the Philippines, not lone internationally but besides domestically, particularly in the confront of continuing potent anti-imperialist sentiments in the United States. A foremost pace toward abolishing collateral convention over the southern Philippines was the universe of Moro Province in 1903. It was even kept under military command, and Major General Leonard Wood, a froward and progressive army officer and medical doctor, was appointed as the first governor because of his administrative skills in both civil and military affairs. Wood was convinced that a potent authoritarian government would bring Sulu and early indocile parts of the southerly Philippines under american control. He had no hesitation about imposing such a government by fast military action and to set clear examples to the Moros. To Wood, the problems of Moro Province seemed straightforward enough. concisely after his arrival there, he wrote to the governor-general in Manila, William Howard Taft : ‘ A good many people have been looking at the Moro interview through blow up glasses, and taking it wholly besides seriously … What is needed is the establishment immediately of such simple and patriarchal politics as will adapt itself to their give conditions. ’ One of Wood ’ second inaugural priorities as governor was to bring about the abrogation of the Bates Agreement. To this effect he submitted a report to the colonial authorities in Manila in December 1903, in which he recommended that the treaty be abrogated immediately and tied retroactively, from 30 October, and that all payments to the Sultan and the datus of Sulu be stopped. Wood listed eight reasons why the treaty was damaging, including : the inability of the Sultan and the datus who signed the agreement to fulfil their obligations ; the treaty ’ s recognition of the ‘ agency of a classify of men whom we have found to be defile, licentious, and barbarous ’ ; the frequent juramentado attacks on Jolo Garrison ; the continuance of slave-raiding ; the steal of politics property by Moros ; the general condition of anarchy and impunity ; the deficient and allegedly barbarian laws of the Sulu Sultanate ; and a holocene armed uprise in Jolo led by Panglima Hassan. The Moros, Wood summarised, ‘ are nothing more or less than an insignificant collection of pirates and highwaymen, living under laws which are intolerable, and there is no reason, in view of the numerous acts of badly faith on their share, why the alleged Bates agreement should be longer cover ’. Most of the report ’ s fifty dollar bill pages consisted of extracts from official reports and agreement from the previous three years. wood cited them in club to demonstrate the general condition of insecurity and anarchy in the Sulu Archipelago. Several of the extracts mentioned piratical activities, peculiarly the raids of Selungun before his exile in 1902. In relation to the other reported disturbances, however, plagiarism and nautical raiding were not peculiarly outstanding in the reports. The governor and his staff had presumably studied the official documents of the preceding years carefully in their search for arguments for the abrogation of the Bates Agreement, and the fact that there were relatively few cases of piracy must be taken as an indication that piracy had in fact not been a significant problem for the colonial authorities in the precede years. There is no evidence, furthermore, that the Sultan or the leading Sulu datus would have sponsored or tacitly tolerate piratical activities, although Wood claimed that the Sultan and the other signatories to the Bates Agreement were incapable of fulfilling their partially of the agreement with respect to, among other things, the inhibition of piracy. The report was good received by Governor Taft and the government in Washington, and in March 1904 President Theodore Roosevelt unilaterally abrogated the Bates Agreement on behalf of the United States. General Wood notified Sultan Jamalul Kiram II of the abrogation, and although the Sultan was displeased, he acquiesced, along with most of the major datus of Jolo. The Sultan was still to be given an valuation reserve by the Americans, and was to continue to enjoy a place of dignity as the emblematic head and religious drawing card of the Sulu Moros. Although slavery was formally abolished, manumission was to be achieved only gradually and involve some form of monetary compensation for the slave owners. It is uncertain, however, how the Sultan and the leading headmen of Sulu interpreted the new arrangements, particularly with gaze to the separation of the political from the religious leadership. Governor Wood now set about imposing direct colonial rule, establishing police and order and modernising Moro society. A modern legal code was adopted to replace the traditional Moro laws, and an unpopular Spanish-era head tax known as the cedula was restored. These and early policies met with enemy and resentment from many Sulu Moros, including respective datus whose baron and social status were threatened by the abolition of slavery and the imposition of lead colonial rule and administration of judge. many Moros, both in Mindanao and Sulu, refused to recognize american convention, and attacked american military posts and soldiers. The military answered with a series of punitive expeditions designed to break the immunity, and in Sulu these culminated in a massacre in March 1906 of close to 1,000 Moros, including many women and children, who had garrisoned themselves in the crater of an extinct volcano, Bud Dajo, in Jolo. The assault, which was carried out with the support of the Sultan and most lead datus of Sulu, broke the back of anti-american resistance in the Sulu Archipelago, although at a very high monetary value in human lives .
Piracy Resurgent
Parallel with the military campaigns against the Moros the colonial authorities started to implement measures to develop the region in areas such as education, healthcare, infrastructure and commerce. regular markets were set up from 1904 in club to facilitate trade and to stimulate the growth of a commercial fish diligence. Efforts were besides launched to increase agricultural end product, and american settlers were encouraged to invest in plantations and other export-oriented businesses. The leave of these policies was that the export of natural resources and agricultural products, including pisces, mother-of-pearl, rubber, lumber, coconut, carbohydrate cane and cannabis, increased quickly. The economic opportunities attracted not merely american settlers but besides Europeans, Chinese, japanese and christian Filipinos to Moro Province. The commercial expansion besides led to an increase in maritime traffic that provided increased opportunities for piratical activities. On the hale, however, the authorities were successful in maintaining maritime security system, and, as noted earlier, there were virtually no reports of piracies from the begin of 1903 until the middle of 1906. This period approximately coincided with Wood ’ south terminus as governor of the province, and his iron-fisted rule and the frequent military campaigns credibly served as a hindrance to manque pirates. american english gunboats, furthermore, provided interisland transportation in the Sulu Archipelago, and although they were not primarily charged with the tax of suppressing plagiarism, they provided protection for local traders from piratical attacks. In April 1906 Wood was replaced as governor of Moro Province by Brigadier General Tasker Howard Bliss. In contrast to his harbinger, Bliss preferred diplomatic to military solutions for dealing with the agitation in the province. Bliss therefore discontinued Wood ’ s practice of conducting sweep punitive military expeditions in party favor of more target actions aimed at punishing individual wrongdoers preferably than integral communities. In Bliss ’ second opinion, raids, killings and tribal feud among the Moros should be treated as criminal actions and not as security problems or challenges to american english reign. Around the prison term that Bliss assumed the place of governor, however, plagiarism began to resurge in the Sulu Archipelago, and within a couple of years the problem had, for the inaugural time since the 1860s, developed to become a unplayful security problem. From the in-between of 1906 scatter piratical attacks, chiefly on local vessels, began to be reported. The Manila Times, for example, reported that the inhabitants of South Ubian in Tawi-Tawi had turned to piracy because of the deteriorating economic conditions on the island and that they undertook coastal raids on towns and villages in british North Borneo. The provincial authorities, concerned about the risk that these acts of plagiarism might disturb relations with the british, promptly sent a customs cutter and two quartermaster launches to Tawi-Tawi to stop foster depredations. The resultant role seems to have been that the piratical bodily process shifted to Palawan, and in the follow year the governor of Palawan reported that entire fleets of vintas from Tawi-Tawi, Samal and Siasi had come to the island for the aim of fish and committing piracy and that they were responsible for several attacks around the coasts of the island. This piracy was initially not seen as a major problem by the authorities. Despite the complaints of piracy around Tawi-Tawi and Palawan, the 1907 Annual Report of the Philippine Commission stated that ‘ [ s ] ince April of this year dispatch tranquillity has prevailed in every part of the archipelago, inclusive of the Moro state ’. This apparent tranquillity seems to have prompted the military to withdraw the gunboats that since 1902 had assisted the Army in patrolling Moro Province, although the main reason for the decision was the rising tension between the United States and Japan during the alleged japanese War Scare of 1906−07. The tranquillity turned out to be ephemeral, however, as the increase seaborne commerce, particularly between Jolo and Zamboanga, provided new opportunities for piratical activity. Traders based in Jolo were attracted to the newly established Zamboanga Exchange, where they were able to sell their products, such as fruit and pearl shells, at higher prices than in the Sulu Archipelago. In club to avoid strong currents in the vicinity of Basilan the traders had to steer north and pass through the Pilas Islands, which, according to the colonial newspaper in Moro Province, the Mindanao Herald, was ‘ celebrated in history and birdcall as the rendezvous of daring pirates ’. Toward the end of 1906 the paper besides reported that pirates from Pilas were harassing Jolo traders on the path between Zamboanga and Jolo. several vintas with traders bringing the proceeds of their sales bet on to Jolo had reportedly disappeared at sea close to the islands, presumably as a leave of commandeer attacks that had left all of the victims dead. In December 1906, however, a Jolo vinta managed to escape after being chased by pirates for some 40 miles. Complaints were made to the american authorities, who stepped up their efforts to suppress the depredations. In the early months of 1907 it seemed that the inhibitory measures taken by the provincial authorities, aided by friendly local datus, were having the hope consequence of bringing the piracies under control. It was believed that most of the depredations were the doings of a one humble isthmus of pirates from Jolo based in Pilas. They were reportedly led by a one-eyed Moro named Tahil, and the authorities estimated that the capture or elimination of the ring was close at hand. In March a detachment led by the headmen of the tribal cellblock at Basilan, Datu Gabino, killed two members of the isthmus and captured another two. The datu had the two dead outlaws decapitated and sent their heads to the district governor of Basilan, Major John Finley, for the aim of identification – a rehearse that, according to the Mindanao Herald, was an old Moro custom-made that had been common during the spanish colonial period. Governor Finley, however, powerfully objected and ‘ most forcibly ’ informed Datu Gabino that such ghastly methods would not be tolerated. Despite this and other successful measures, the hope that the piracies around Basilan would be brought to a fleet end was confounded as the year 1907 progressed. In May a vinta with two Moro pearl fishers was attacked near Pilas, and one of the victims was abducted and the other wounded. In September a chinese pearl trader was stabbed and robbed by the crew of a small vessel that he had chartered to take him, his mother and a young cousin from Basilan to Zamboanga. A few weeks later, at the beginning of November, a chinese trader, Tao Tila, and three Moro crew members on route from Jolo to Zamboanga were attacked off the union coast of Jolo and Tao Tila, and two gang members were killed. The aggressors made off with the cargo of trade worth about 1,000 guinea-bissau peso. The only remaining crew member, however, escaped by jumping into the water and was subsequently able to bring the news program of the attack to the attention of the authorities and the colonial press. According to the Mindanao Herald, Basilan was immediately ‘ becoming a rendezvous for all the bad characters of the Sulu Archipelago ’. The band of outlaws led by Tahil – who was still at large despite the efforts to apprehend him – was constantly being enlarged by rebel Moros from Jolo and nearby islands. A hostile local anesthetic Muslim drawing card in Basilan, Salip Aguil, was suspected of protecting them. A military excursion, reinforced with thirty police soldiers from Zamboanga, tried to chase down the suspect pirates, but the operation lone resulted in the kill of one man, a Yakan, who turned out probably not to have been a member of Tahil ’ mho ring. The soar in piratical activity around Basilan coincided with increased efforts on the part of the american english authorities to develop the island economically. Basilan was believed to have great economic likely, peculiarly for the production of timber, rubber, hemp and other raw material products, and the population was generally seen as peaceful and amenably disposed to american principle. Most of the island was covered by afforest, and american settlers had in the previous years set up logging camps and other businesses on the island. Despite the depredations of the Jolo outlaws affecting the local traders around Basilan, it looked as if the risk of an attack against white settlers or traders was minor or even impossible. american english soldiers were occasionally attacked by Moros in certain parts of Moro Province, particularly in Jolo and the Lanao District in Mindanao, but otherwise the biography and property of American and european colonisers – in contrast to chinese traders − seemed on the whole to be guarantee. This appraisal probably contributed to the relative miss of concern on the part of the authorities in suppressing piratical activeness, despite the apparent increase from 1906 .
Jikiri and the Last Wave of Sulu Piracy
On Christmas Eve 1907, Kopagu, a logging camp on the east coast of Basilan, was attacked by a group of Moros who descended on the camp from the sea. After landing on the beach, the raiders sneaked up on the three men in the camp – one American, one Dutchman and one Chinese − and killed them, about simultaneously, by hacking them to pieces with machetes ( barongs ). In accession, the wife of one of the men received a deep cut across her back and scantily survived. After having taken master of the camp the raiders proceeded to carry off everything of respect, including, it seems, a significant sum of cash. The raiders had come to Kopagu by boat, but it was initially suspected that they had come from the nearby greenwich village of Ucbung, the home of Salip Aguil, an muslim leader whom the Americans suspected of sponsoring Jolo pirates. Ucbung was besides believed to be the centre for the piratical depredations that for more than a year had affected the waters around Basilan. The newsworthiness of the murders caused a bang-up tumult in the colonial community in Zamboanga. The two white men were well-known and obviously much-liked figures among the Europeans and Americans of Moro Province. In the week after the raid, two well-attended public meetings were held for the function of supporting the government in the capture of the perpetrators and assisting the survivors of the attack. The meetings, among other things, discussed how to improve security for the white settlers in the area. The consensus was that Moros should not be allowed to carry any arms except smaller machetes ( bolo ) and lone when engaged in labor requiring them. They should not be allowed to enter any town or village carrying knives or other arms. american and european colonialists, by contrast, were to be sufficiently armed to defend themselves from attacks by Moros, and demands were made for the government to facilitate the pander of arms by white settlers in the state. The meetings focused on the security of the white residential district in Moro Province, whereas there is no indication in the newspaper reports of the events that the protection of Chinese, Filipino or early asian traders and settlers was discussed, despite the fact that one of the murdered men was taiwanese and both the widows of the two other murder men were japanese. The tragic consequence brought much latent racist sentiment to the fore. The Mindanao Herald credibly reflected the general climate when it editorialised that the raid revealed ‘ the Moro again in all the savage cruelty and treachery of his nature ’ and that the murders had ‘ stirred this residential district to a sense of the dangers which attend the isolate Americans and Europeans who are facing the wilderness with the heart of the western pioneers in an campaign to push a little farther the bounds of our civilization ’. The newspaper besides called for prompt and resolute action by the politics for a ‘ good lesson ’ to be taught to the ‘ homicidal bands of rootless Moros ’ who terrorised the Basilan coast. Ucbung and Malusu, another village suspected of harbouring pirates, should be wiped out, and every Joloano on Basilan should be made to go to work or be ‘ driven into the sea ’, according to the editorial. The operation on Bud Dajo in March 1906 was held up as a model for such prompt and resolute natural process. The murder of two white men by Moro pirates was frankincense immediately seen as a major security terror that demanded swift, extraordinary measures. Governor Bliss requested military reinforcements from Manila for the determination of bringing the perpetrators to account and restoring confidence in the ability of the authorities to continue police and holy order in the state, and in early January 1908 a battalion of four infantry companies was dispatched to Basilan. Their orders were to take Ucbung, where the perpetrators were believed to be hush hiding, and to arrest Salip, who was suspected − incorrectly, as it late turned out − to have been the originator behind the attack. Meeting no resistor, American troops captured Ucbung, but Salip and his followers had already escaped, and only one man was arrested. Although the authorities were convinced of Salip ’ randomness complicity in the attack, they had little positivist information about the identity and origin of the raiders beyond that they were from Sulu. By coincidence, however, more information was obtained through the apprehension of a Moro implicated in the murder of the taiwanese trader Tao Tila and two of his gang members two months earlier. The fishy confessed to taking partially in the attack on Tao Tila and besides revealed that the drawing card of the band responsible for the attack was Jikiri, a Moro from the small island of Patian, to the confederacy of Jolo. It besides transpired that the raid on the log camp was meant as retaliation on the Americans for arresting their comrade. After the raid on Kopagu, Jikiri and his followers took refuge in Patian and then in Jolo, where they seem to have received aid from datus hostile to the Americans. successfully evade capture, Jikiri ventured forth occasionally to conduct several minor raids in the first months of 1908, before he, along with ten of his followers, in March, conducted a major raid on Maibung ( Maimbung ), the Sultan ’ second capital on the south coast of Jolo. Three chinese shop owners were killed and several other people were wounded, and every store in town was burned to the reason. apart from Europeans and Americans, the Chinese who traded and operated small stores and businesses around the Sulu Archipelago were the main target of Jikiri and his band. Jikiri ’ s antipathy to the taiwanese appears to have been based on his resentment against their commercial achiever in the colonial economic system, a success which was perceived as having come at the cost of Moro traders and producers. The Chinese, furthermore, were an easily target because they often lacked the protection of the local population or local strongmen. Some of the taiwanese merchants who survived the raid on Maibung even claimed that the Sultan had received warn of the at hand foray into but had failed to plowshare it with them. By mid 1908 Jikiri had evaded appropriate for more than half a class and appeared to be growing increasingly convinced, which allowed him to expand his operations and recruit more followers. In August his ring reportedly consisted of dozens of armed men adequate to of attacking larger vessels, particularly pearling luggers, which was another main target for Jikiri and his followers. In the middle of August a pearl lugger was attacked by some forty armed men in four vintas off the island of Tunkil, between Jolo and Basilan. The attackers killed a japanese pearl diver and four Moro crew members, and made off with half a long ton of pearl shell, including several valuable blisters, and a supply of provisions. By this clock time, it was estimated that Jikiri had killed around forty people, most of whom were Chinese, and the bankruptcy of the authorities to kill or capture him was starting to draw criticism, not alone because of the insecurity that the depredations brought on the region, but besides because Jikiri reportedly had begun to acquire a heroic repute among the Moros. As a consequence, it was feared that his depredations might develop into a all-out rebellion against american rule. The Army was assisted in the manhunt by the Philippine Constabulary, a paramilitary force consist of autochthonal troops led by american english officers. The competition between the Constabulary and the Army, however, hampered the efforts to defeat Jikiri and his band. The Chief of the Constabulary, General Harry Hill Bandholz, accused the Army of being incapable in dealing with the situation and was convinced that his forces would have defeated Jikiri quick and with far fewer losses than the military, had they been allowed to bring their small launches to the Sulu Archipelago. Bandholtz ’ s argumentation seemed convincing to the governor-general of the Philippines, William Cameron Forbes, who blamed the provincial governor and his inefficient management of Moro Province for the failure to catch Jikiri. The Constabulary troops, however, were on the solid no more successful than the Army in their efforts to kill or capture the criminal. Captain F. S. De Witt of the Constabulary – who, in contrast to most Army officers, spoke the Joloano dialect fluently – tried to trace Jikiri with a humble detachment, hoping to get information from the local population in orderliness to catch him and his band off guard. In November 1908 De Witt believed that he had trapped Jikiri near Parang on the West coast of Jolo. An exchange of fire ensued, and four outlaws were killed, but Jikiri himself escaped. In January 1909 Jikiri ’ south band made their so far boldest attack when they assaulted a pearling fleet consisting of four luggers owned by a british businessman based in Zamboanga. The attack took rate off Parang, on the west coast of Jolo, and was carried out by four vintas coming from the prop up. Two of the pearlers managed to escape but the other two, Ida and Nancy, were surrounded by the raiders and looted, and Ida was sunk by the pirates. Most of the crew members managed to escape by swimming to the shore, but a japanese diver and three gang members were killed. When american troops arrived at the fit the follow day they were ineffective to catch any of the perpetrators, and they managed entirely to retrieve a lamp from Nancy, despite a thorough search operation in a nearby village, where Jikiri was believed to have disposed of the goods. By now the depredations were beginning to have palpable economic effects. Pearling luggers fishing in the Sulu Archipelago had difficulties recruiting local crews because of their fear of piratical attacks at ocean. Interisland trade and exports from the province declined precipitously, with the period from July 1908 to April 1909 – which approximately coincided with Jikiri ’ s most successful period of operation – showing a two-thirds decrease in customs returns at Jolo. According to the collector of customs at the port, the decrease was due to the insecurity of life and property throughout Sulu district owing to the depredations. chinese businesses were particularly affected, and all but two chinese merchants – one of whom was suspected of being an accomplice of Jikiri − stopped doing business in the area outside the garrison towns of Jolo, Siasi, Sitankai, Bongao and Jurata .Two days after the attack on the pearling fleet off Parang, Governor Bliss Since the coitus interruptus, about a year ago, of the belittled, light-draft gunboats which were employed by the spanish and american governments alike for the suppression of plagiarism in the Sulu seas, there has been a revival of anarchy which nothing but the cover presence of these vessels will prevent. The spanish Government made no progress in complying with its international obligations for the inhibition of plagiarism until it built and maintained this fleet of small vessels. The american politics found them here engaged in the performance of this external duty and continued to maintain them until about the cheeseparing of the last fiscal class. so army for the liberation of rwanda as the government of this state knows, no question has ever been raised as to the necessity of their continue presence. It may be, though it is hardly conceivable, that the maintenance of the peace for a couple of years, without any serious outbreak of hostility, has given get up to the impression that the Moro has changed his nature. The Joloano Moro is nowadays good what he has always been—a warrior and a pirate. Two days after the attack on the pearling fleet off Parang, Governor Bliss formally asked the aid of the Navy for aid to suppress the piratical attacks by Jikiri and his band. Bliss was convinced that the withdrawal of the gunboats in mid 1907 was the chief reason for the renewed pirate activeness in the province. In his annual report for the fiscal year 1907–08, he wrote : Bliss believed that a twelve gunboats were needed to keep Moro Province free from pirates, but he was only able to secure the aid of the Arayat and the Paragua, both of which arrived at the goal of February. Operations around Basilan over the following weeks resulted in the capture of seventeen prisoners and the confiscation of a number of rifles, spears and other weapons, but those arrested turned out not to be members of Jikiri ’ randomness isthmus. The gunboats were then dispatched to the Sulu Archipelago, but again they failed to catch Jikiri, despite respective close brushes with his ring. According to the air force officer in charge of the manhunt, Colonel Ralph W. Hoyt, the mathematical process was hampered by ‘ scarcity of transportation system, the numerous islands affording shroud places, and the talk impossibility of obtaining from the natives any data concerning the whereabouts of this isthmus ’. In this situation Jikiri launched a counteroffensive against the Americans. soon after the arrival of the gunboats, he attacked the police barracks at Siasi, where twenty-two troops were stationed under the dominate of Captain De Witt, apparently for the function of securing arms and ammunition. Over 600 bullets were fired into the barracks before the troops managed to repel the attack. Jikiri ’ mho band were forced to retreat, reportedly taking four dead comrades and a count of wounded with them. A few days late, after an abortive attack on a greek sponge fisher on the island of Latuan, Jikiri and his band landed on the small island of Simunul ( Simonore ) in Tawi-Tawi, where an english trader and a erstwhile american soldier were murdered. Both were killed in ways exchangeable to those murdered in the attack on Kopagu, and the body of the Englishman was hacked into thirty-two pieces that were scattered over an area of several meters. The foray on Simunul was the end of Jikiri ’ s spectacular attacks. The massive manhunt against him and his band – which by now was believed to consist of more than a hundred largely well-armed men – ultimately began to bear fruit. The two gunboats relentlessly pursued the outlaw throughout the Sulu Archipelago, and throughout May and June military and police troops killed dozens of members of Jikiri ’ second band, including his close lieutenants. At the beginning of July Jikiri himself was cornered on Patian, where he barricaded himself in a cave with six men and three women. They were besieged for two days by troops from the Sixth Cavalry, supported by the Navy and Artillery, before they made a intentionally self-destructive attack to break out. Jikiri and all of his followers, men adenine well as women, were killed. The Americans besides suffered heavy casualties, including four killed and twenty seriously wounded .
A New Pearl-Fishing Regime
The unbridle violence and the hideous mutilations, combined with the swift and unexpected quality of Jikiri ’ mho attacks, were designed to strike fear in the hearts and minds of Americans, Europeans and Chinese in the Sulu Archipelago. As such, Jikiri ’ sulfur tactics can be characterised as terroristic, and the authorities had obvious problems in eliminating him and his band. not alone did barter and pearl-fishing in the archipelago fall to an about complete stop for fear of the raids, but the killings besides, as the Mindanao Herald put it, ‘ created a feeling among all whiten planters and traders that no one is dependable ’. The fear that Jikiri ’ s depredations provoked among foreigners besides drew on a long-established image of the Moro as a violent and brutal pirate. Three main explanations as to the rise of Jikiri have dominated the literature to date. The beginning is the miss of naval patrols in Moro Province, peculiarly after the withdrawal of the Navy ’ s gunboat patrols in mid 1907. As we have seen, Governor Bliss and other american english officers in Moro Province believed that this was the major reason for the tide in plagiarism from the end of 1907. The explanation rests on the covertly racist premise that the Joloano Moro was a pirate by nature, as Bliss argued, and the fact that plagiarism returned to the region adenine soon as the opportunity arose seemed to imply that the American − and early spanish − attempts to make him change his ways and give up piracy for more passive pursuits had been largely abortive. basically, this explanation was a variety of the alleged natural theory of piracy, which assumed that the aptness to carry out piratical depredations was an ‘ integral depart of the Malays ’ behavior, if not an implicit in defect in their character ’, as Anne Lindsey Reber put it in her analysis of Raffles ’ mho writings on plagiarism in the Malay Archipelago a hundred earlier. The second base explanation as to Jikiri ’ sulfur depredations has been surprisingly persistent since it was first introduced by Vic Hurley, an american english journalist and amateur historian, in 1936, despite – or possibly because of – its obviously fanciful character. According to this explanation, Jikiri turned to a animation of banditry because of a physical defect. His differently striking appearance was allegedly marred by one eye being well larger than the other, and the ridicule that he suffered as a young man for his looks caused him to seek fame with his kris. ‘ The force of my kris weapon will comfort the women who nowadays shun me ’, he allegedly told Jammang, one of his accomplices. aside from the obviously legendary character of the alleged explanation, it does not explain why Jikiri was able to carry out his depredations and hedge capture by superior american english forces for more than eighteen months. Hurley may have told the history of Jikiri ’ s physical defect to add flair and character to the pirate chief, but it is remarkable that the explanation continues to be cited in scholarly literature. According to the third, and more plausible, explanation, Jikiri took to banditry because of the failure of the American colonial administration to respect the traditional rights of the Moros with regard to the pearl beds of the Sulu Archipelago. The explanation was first conveyed to the Americans by Sultan Jamalul Kiram There were several laws emanating from Manila, against which I protested in conceited, that caused a huge total of fuss and even bloodshed in Sulu. One was the confiscation of the pearl-beds by the government without recompense to the owners. Those pearl-beds had been owned by families for more than a hundred years, and were angstrom a lot personal property as the oyster-beds of New Jersey or Virginia. This bring on the war of Jikiri that culminated after I left . According to the third, and more plausible, explanation, Jikiri took to banditry because of the failure of the American colonial administration to respect the traditional rights of the Moros with regard to the pearl beds of the Sulu Archipelago. The explanation was first conveyed to the Americans by Sultan Jamalul Kiram II, when he met President William Howard Taft in Washington, DC, the year after Jikiri’s defeat. In his memoirs published in 1928, the district governor of Sulu from 1903 to 1906, Hugh Lenox Scott , also linked Jikiri’s depredations to the loss of control over the pearl beds of Sulu: The pearl beds of the Sulu Archipelago were among the richest in Southeast Asia, and pearls and drop shells had been exported from the region to the external populace for centuries. According to Moro custom, all of the kingdom and ocean belonged to the sultan, who granted his subjects the exclusive right to the pearling grounds that they found in substitution for the prerogative of receiving the largest bone. such pearl grounds were handed down from generation to generation and thus, as noted by Scott, were considered syndicate possessions. The economic significance of pearl-fishing increased in the second one-half of the nineteenth hundred as demand from merchants, based chiefly in the Straits Settlements, increased, and the spanish embargoes and attempts to destroy the department of commerce of the Sulu Sultanate made the population more dependent on the natural resources of the archipelago. Toward the end of the spanish period, however, the traditional pearl fisheries came under pressure as modern pearl luggers equipped with diving suits and breeze pumps began to operate in the Sulu Archipelago. In 1892 a tauten owned by two chinese businessmen, Leopoldo Canizato Tiana and Tan Benga, was established at Jolo, which then was in spanish hands, and began to fish for drop with six advanced and amply equipped boats of about 10 tons each. According to a protocol from 1885 between Britain, Germany and Spain, fish in the Sulu Archipelago was loose for all, and the firm consequently did not feel obliged to ask the sultan – who had not been consulted in the negotiations that led to the Anglo–German–Spanish agreement − for license to fish for drop in the waters off Jolo, nor to pay him for the prerogative of doing so. The luggers were rather protected by the spanish Navy and only fished in the vicinity of Jolo, literally under the spanish guns. In the awaken of the Spanish–American War of 1898, however, the spanish garrison at Jolo was greatly reduced, and the colonial gunboats were nobelium longer able to protect the operations of Tiana and Tan. The merchants were therefore forced to make terms with the sultan and pay him 100 dollars a calendar month for the right to fish in the Sulu Archipelago. Two early firms, one based in London and one in Singapore, besides began pearling in Sulu around the same time, but in line to the chinese firm they made agreements with the sultan from the beginning and did not need to fish under spanish protection. In 1899, furthermore, the Philippine Pearling and Trading Company, owned by a german long-run resident of Jolo, Eddie Schück, and his brother Charlie, signed an agreement with the sultan that gave them the exclusive rights to fish for bone using boats with dive equipment around Jolo. In 1904, concisely after the abrogation of the Bates Agreement, a law was passed that opened up the Sulu Archipelago to pearl fishers of all nations. license fees for fishing were to be collected by the treasurer of Moro Province, whereas it was made illegal for any Moro – including the sultan and the leading datus of Sulu − to try to exact payment from bone fishers. The jurisprudence besides stated that the governor of Sulu zone was to ‘ investigate the alleged claims of sealed Moros occupy within his zone to property rights in the shells of marine mollusk in the sea adjacent to their places of residence ’. A sum equivalent to half of the proceeds of the license fees during the first base year and a one-half after the implementation of the law was to be set digression for the compensation of such claims. The requital was to be ‘ understand to be in fully and final settlement of the supposed property rights of the Moros of the zone of Sulu ’. however, as indicated both by Scott ’ s description cited earlier and by the fiscal affirmation of Moro Province for the fiscal class 1906, the payment was never distributed. From 1 January 1906, furthermore, the exemption from paying the license fee for vessels up to 15 tons owned, manned and operated wholly by Moros, as stipulated by the police, expired, thereby putting a newfangled fiscal burden on local Moros engaged in pearl-fishing. The law besides unintentionally imposed an extra hardship on the Moros because it prevented them from exchanging their shells for food and invest, which the larger boats well could have carried, had they not been prohibited from trade in drop shells by the law. An attack to investigate the claims to the pearling grounds in accord with the law on pearl-fishing was undertaken by the local anesthetic authorities in Jolo in September 1907. Scott ’ s successor as zone governor of Sulu, Colonel E. Z. Steever, convened a display panel for the determination of carrying out the investigation of the traditional claims to the pearl beds. The move was rejected by Provincial Governor Bliss, however, who was of the opinion that because the investigations had not been carried out immediately after the law was passed, as prescribed by the law, the provisions therein had ‘ expired by the limitation imposed by its own terms ’, in the words of Bliss. No compensation was therefore to be paid to the Moros, according to the governor, who besides thought that it was time for the Moros to start paying for their fish licenses. curtly afterwards Steever was replaced as district governor by General C. L. Hodges, who – like his successor, Alexander Rodgers – did not pursue the issue of compensation. The failure of Steever ’ s attack to settle the compensation question occurred about a calendar month before the first known attack by Jikiri in November 1907, and credibly influenced his decision to take to plagiarism. The changes in the pearl-fishing diligence, combined with the abrogation of the Bates Agreement and the imposition of the profoundly unpopular head tax, not only involve Jikiri and his isthmus but all Sulu Moros ampere well. consequently, it seems that the population of Sulu had little sympathy for the efforts of the authorities to hunt down Jikiri. Quite a few people – among them the hundred or therefore who joined him – may even have regarded Jikiri as a hero and something of an anticolonial resistance champion. Although it is credibly an exaggeration to claim that Jikiri ’ mho motives were political rather than economic – his actions, in fact, resembled more those of a desperado preferably than a politically motivate resistance leader – his success in evading capture for more than a year and a half was to a bang-up extent due to the general discontented among the Sulu Moros with the laws and policies of the American colonial presidency after 1904. This democratic discontentment was an authoritative cause for the difficulties that the authorities had in suppressing the most serious wave of plagiarism and coastal raid in the Philippines throughout the american english colonial period. Maritime security conditions improved importantly in the Sulu Archipelago following the defeat of Jikiri and his dance band, and the exports from Jolo recovered. episodic pirate attacks and coastal raids however continued in the class following his death. In October 1909, as the trials against the surviving members of Jikiri ’ mho set were still going on, an American-owned plantation on Basilan was raided, and a large measure of movable property was stolen. In the like workweek two pearl luggers were attacked off Jolo, probably by the lapp band, but the crews were able to fight off the raiders. In neither case was anyone killed or wounded. A more dangerous approach occurred in the follow year, when seven Sulu Moros raided a settlement in Sulawesi and murdered and robbed two dutch farmers. The raiders then took refuge on Manuc Manka, a small island near Bongao. The american colonial authorities – obviously awful of a new wave of piracy – immediately dispatched the police from Bongao, followed by four companies of infantry from Jolo. A Dutch gunboat assisted the troops by patrolling the adjacent seas, and, with the aid of the local population, six members of the band were arrested, whereas the leader was killed by the local anesthetic Moros who assisted the colonial troops. After 1910, pirate attacks in or emanating from the Sulu Archipelago became even rarer and remained so for the duration of the american colonial period. Conditions of law and order improved steadily, in part because of an executive order issued by the provincial governor in 1911 that prohibited the unaccredited possession of firearms, a well as cutting and thrusting weapons. It is probable that unreported cases of petty piracy and coastal raids continued, but a far as is known the lone document sheath of piracy before the outbreak of World War II occurred in June 1920, when two boats with twelve Dutch subjects were attacked at sea by a band of twenty-four Moros in six vintas from South Ubian. The victims were robbed of their possessions, and two women were raped. The pirates then cut holes in the victims ’ boat in orderliness for it to submerge, but the victims managed to mend the holes and save themselves. The perpetrators were subsequently identified and captured, and two of them were sentenced to death and executed in 1922, after the Supreme Court in Manila had rejected their appeals .
Summary
Maritime marauding was an built-in part of the sociable, economic and political framework of the Philippine islands in precolonial times, but the expansion of the European colonial powers in nautical Southeast Asia from the sixteenth century stimulated piracy and nautical raid in and emanating from the Sulu Archipelago in several ways. The Moro Wars, which shaped relations between the Muslims of the southerly Philippines and the spanish colonisers from 1565 to 1878, entailed a sharp increase in the horizontal surface of nautical violence in the Philippines and neighbouring parts of the Malay Archipelago. Maritime raid was used as a tactic in the wars by the spanish equally well as the Moros, both for the function of damaging the foe ’ s economy and military capacity and for the purpose of material profit. As regards the latter, the main aim of the Moros and other raiders based in the southerly Philippines was the appropriate of slaves. bondage was coarse throughout Southeast Asia, but its importance increased in the early advanced time period, both because of the Moro Wars and the strong demand for slaves in the european colonies, peculiarly in the Dutch East Indies. From the second half of the eighteenth hundred, slave-raiding was besides stimulated by the increase demand for export products from the Sulu Archipelago, such as pearls, ocean cucumbers, wax, bird ’ s nests and tortoise shells, the provision of all of which was chiefly the work of slaves. Before the middle of the eighteenth century spanish sources rarely referred to raiders from Sulu and adjacent parts of the archipelago as pirates, but as the Sulu Sultanate rose to ability toward the end of the hundred by successfully combining nautical raid, the slave-based output of export commodities and trade, the spanish – and other Europeans – began increasingly to describe the Sulu Moros as pirates. Under the influence of Enlightenment notions of race and civilization, piracy became associated with certain heathen groups, peculiarly the Muslim population of Sulu. Islam was seen as an authoritative contribution of the explanation of the piratical habits of the Moros, which strengthened the case for proselytisation and the conversion of the Moros to Catholicism, peculiarly from the middle of the nineteenth hundred. Allegations of plagiarism besides served to justify spanish military interposition in the Sulu Archipelago, particularly from the 1840s, when imperial competition, combined with increase spanish naval power, led to a more aggressive policy of colonial expansion in the southerly Philippines. As the European states grew economically, politically and militarily stronger, it became increasingly important for them to enforce their monopoly on violence, not entirely within their district and colonies but besides emanating from them. Against this background, and with imperial rivals, such as Great Britain, France, the Netherlands and Germany, showing greater interest in the southern Philippines over the class of the nineteenth hundred, it was of crucial importance for Spain to demonstrate sovereignty over the Sulu Sea and to enforce a monopoly on ferocity in the area. Suggestions for naval cooperation with the Dutch and British in order to suppress plagiarism were rejected by the spanish because of worries that such cooperation might compromise the spanish claim to sovereignty over Sulu, a claim that was not formally recognised by the other imperial european powers before 1885. Sovereignty, rather than the suppression of piracy, was frankincense the override business for the spanish as they increased their presence in the Sulu Archipelago from the 1840s, finally leading to the seduction of Jolo in 1876. With the establishment of regular spanish naval patrols and of garrisons in Sulu, large-scale organize piracy in and emanating from the region came to an end. It is probably, however, that plagiarism would have come to an end even without the pitiless search-and-destroy strategy of the spanish Navy from the 1870s. By the mid nineteenth hundred, the sultan of Sulu had begun to distance himself from the Iranun and Sama raiders and declared himself bequeath to collaborate with the colonial powers, particularly Britain, for the suppression of piracy. The Sulu Sultanate was in the process of restructuring its economy, from a stress on the slave trade wind and nautical marauding to trade in export commodities. however, spanish monopolistic commercial policies and the manipulation of nautical ferocity to eliminate autochthonal nautical department of commerce hampered the passage. Moro traders, pearl fishers and producers of export commodities were replaced by european and chinese merchants – largely because of their better access to das kapital and international commercial networks, but besides because of spanish trade embargoes and naval patrols targeting Moro shipping.
During the first years of the american colonial period sporadic piratical attacks occurred, targeting chiefly local fishermen and coastal populations in the southerly Philippines, Palawan and eastern north Borneo. As the american military established firmer control over the southerly Philippines from 1903, however, plagiarism seems to have come to an about complete stop, and for several years, until the middle of 1906, no pirate attacks were reported from Moro Province. After the imposition of direct rule in 1904 the colonial authorities tried to stimulate commerce and the extraction of natural resources in Moro Province. These efforts included measures designed to improve conditions for autochthonal traders and producers, for exercise by the administration of regular markets. however, the intensified exploitation of the natural resources of the Sulu Archipelago, peculiarly in the pearl-fishing sector, seemed to benefit foreign economic interests at the expense of the local population. The economic marginalization of the Moros and the opening up of the drop beds of Sulu to outsiders without due recompense by the authorities frankincense led to much resentment and set the stage for a revival of maritime violence. In 1907−09 Jikiri and his ring of at least 100 followers were responsible for a free burning wave of piracy, looting and murder that the colonial authorities, only with difficulty and after a manhunt that lasted for more than a year and a one-half, were able to suppress. soon after the get the better of of Jikiri and his ring, piracy in the southern Philippines seems to have come to an end, and for the remainder of the colonial era there were only a handful of sporadic pirate attacks in the region. It was not the definite end of piracy in the Sulu Archipelago, however, and in the wake up of World War II, nautical raiding once again began to emanate from the region and affect the eastern coast of north Borneo, stimulated by the diffuse of firearms and the motorization of ocean exile .