c. 900 – 1565

Barangays, datus and sultanates: the islands before Spain

Long before there was a "Philippines", the islands are home to seafaring communities led by datus, linked by trade to China, Southeast Asia and the Islamic world, with sultanates rising in the south.

Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society — William Henry Scott, Ateneo de Manila University Press (1994)
Raiding, Trading, and Feasting: The Political Economy of Philippine Chiefdoms — Laura Lee Junker, University of Hawai'i Press (1999)
The Laguna Copper-Plate Inscription: Text and Commentary — Antoon Postma, Philippine Studies 40(2) (1992)
State and Society in the Philippines — Patricio N. Abinales and Donna J. Amoroso, Rowman & Littlefield (2017)
History of the Filipino People — Teodoro A. Agoncillo, Garotech (1990)

Well established identitystatehoodtradefaith

The ancestors of most Filipinos were Austronesian-speaking seafarers who spread through the islands thousands of years ago, joining older Negrito populations. By the time written records appear, people lived in coastal and riverside communities called barangays, a word that also meant the plank-built boats, the balangay, in which they travelled. Each was led by a datu, with a society of nobles, freemen and dependents, some of them debt-bondsmen or captives taken in raids.

Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society — William Henry Scott, Ateneo de Manila University Press (1994)
Raiding, Trading, and Feasting: The Political Economy of Philippine Chiefdoms — Laura Lee Junker, University of Hawai'i Press (1999)

The oldest known document from the islands, the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, is dated to 900 CE. Written in an Old Malay–influenced script, it records the clearing of a debt, a glimpse of a literate, connected society linked to the Hindu-Buddhist world of Java.

The Laguna Copper-Plate Inscription: Text and Commentary — Antoon Postma, Philippine Studies 40(2) (1992)

Trade with China brought porcelain and silk in exchange for gold, pearls and forest goods, and the ports of Butuan, Cebu and Tondo grew rich. Many people wrote in baybayin, an indigenous script, on bamboo and leaves.

Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society — William Henry Scott, Ateneo de Manila University Press (1994)
Raiding, Trading, and Feasting: The Political Economy of Philippine Chiefdoms — Laura Lee Junker, University of Hawai'i Press (1999)

Islam arrived through Malay traders and missionaries from about the fourteenth century. The Sultanate of Sulu took shape in the fifteenth century and Maguindanao in the sixteenth, and Muslim rulers were also established in Manila by the time the Spanish arrived; its ruler, Rajah Sulayman, fought them in 1570–71.

State and Society in the Philippines — Patricio N. Abinales and Donna J. Amoroso, Rowman & Littlefield (2017)
History of the Filipino People — Teodoro A. Agoncillo, Garotech (1990)

There was no single state across the islands: the unity that became the Philippines was created by colonial rule, which is one reason regional and linguistic identities remain so strong.

State and Society in the Philippines — Patricio N. Abinales and Donna J. Amoroso, Rowman & Littlefield (2017)

Why it matters today

The Philippines

Filipinos still call their smallest unit of government the barangay, after the boats that carried their ancestors, and many look to the pre-colonial past as proof of a civilisation before Spain. For Muslim Filipinos in the south, the sultanates of Sulu and Maguindanao are the root of a separate history that was never fully conquered.