Imperial ambiguities

Pre-colonial Muslim polities

Unlike the rest of the Philippines, southwestern Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago adhered to sociocultural practices typical to insular Southeast Asia (Warren, 2007 [1981]). Although Islam and its associated political institutions made strong inroads into the island world by the 16th century, power structures remained extremely fluid and intensely personal. The ability to accrue and disburse resources to client groups determined the stability of social hierarchies. Once patronage chains collapsed, power was redistributed and reconstituted by coercive means. Alliances with foreign traders provided the monetary, military, and material inputs needed to sustain followings. Supra-local elites consolidated internal control via multiple external resource flows. Local strongmen in turn utilized similar strategies to accumulate material and charismatic power.

The influx of European merchant companies into the eastern Indies after 1500 sharply increased the quantity of material resources on offer. Inter-European competition for high-value commodities and commercial trade routes allowed local rulers to play foreign interlopers off against each other and obtain lucrative deals. Yet, a fragmented geography and dispersed oceanic communities made it extremely difficult to funnel this wealth into a fixed number of polities.

The pre-colonial polities of the Muslim Philippines remained highly fragmented entities. At the regional level the various chieftainships and sultanates that ranged across the southern archipelago were never united under a single overarching authority. Beyond the fact that most of them shared a common faith, they frequently worked at cross purposes to one another and proved more than willing to unite with hostile Christian powers to their north and south against regional Muslim rivals. At the inter-polity level, these entities differed from one another in terms of their political structures and degrees of cohesion. All were segmentary raider states of a kind but power dynamics differed according to geographical factors and access to high-value commodities (Warren, 2007 [1981]: xliii–xliv). The fortunes of sultanates waxed and waned with the rise and demise of charismatic leaders and shifting trade routes. Finally, long-term instability characterized intra-polity politics (Beckett, 1982: 395–396; Lara, 2014: 29). While systems of supra-local authority were strong enough to maintain political independence for several centuries after the Spanish colonization of the lowland Philippines, they were never durable enough to resist challenges from within. In addition, the existence of autonomous raider communities, the Iranun and Balangingi being the most formidable, created a ready supply of military labour available to the highest bidder (McKenna, 1998: 77; Warren, 2007 [1981]: Chap. 8). When sufficient remuneration for armed service was lacking, raider chiefs launched attacks against coastal communities on their own initiative, thereby accumulating substantial quantities of plunder and slaves. These combined factors allowed local strongmen to retain substantial concentrations of coercive and charismatic power. This power was deployed to assemble followings and carve out local zones of domination outside the effective reach of superordinate authorities.

Several centuries of intermittent conflict with Spanish colonial forces did not spur reactive territorial consolidation. Attempts by the Spaniards to conquer and convert the Muslim south were fiercely resisted, but these external assaults were never threatening enough to override particularistic loyalties. Datus (chiefs) willingly traded with Christian ports and saw Spanish military campaigns in rival Muslim areas as opportunities to consolidate control over their own turf.

Scholars of pre-colonial Muslim polities have made broad demarcations between sultanates and chieftainships (Mednick, 1974: 23–35). Sultanates ostensibly encompassed a clutch of localities while chieftainships seldom exercised power beyond a circumscribed area. Access to overseas commerce determined the success or failure of supra-local sultanates. The accumulation of resources through oceanic trade gave superordinate rulers the means necessary to reward subordinate followers. Consequently, sultanates generally formed around coastal river mouths that controlled access to resource-rich interiors, or on islands that straddled the Indonesian archipelago and South China Sea (Hayase, 2007: 40–41). The sultanates of Maguindanao ¹ and Sulu were the most successful examples of these two respective types. Chieftainships that lacked access to commercial networks were far more fragmented and consequently far less developed. The chieftains that held sway in the Lake Lanao region could not match the larger sultanates in terms of wealth; yet, their fragmented nature made them far harder to conquer (Mednick, 1965: 33–35). Spanish pacification efforts would not gain ground in the Maranao areas until the end of the 19th century (Funtecha, 1979: 4–6).

The Maguindanao sultanate proved far more adept at concentrating power around its rulers than the Sulu sultanate later would. Maguindanao’s exposure to European trading delegations in the late 17th and early 18th centuries necessitated sumptuous court spectacles that held foreign dignitaries in awe (Laarhoven, 1989). The assemblage and subservient displays of datus at the sultan’s court brought the local and supra-local into closer contact. Acting in unison to obtain favourable agreements with British and Dutch traders fostered greater cohesion. Maguindanao sultans used their strategic location to gain ascendancy over the inland sultanate of Buayan which produced forest and upland products generally channeled through Maguindanao ports. Maguindanao also recruited European mercenaries that were hurled against inland rivals. Thus, its coastal court united oceanic and inland trade currents within itself (Laarhoven, 1989: 182). Shifting trade patterns in the late 18th century and Spanish suppression of slave raids during the mid-19th century precipitated Maguindanao’s long decline. Former geographic blessings became a curse as Spain’s steam-driven gunboats were deployed to bring Maguindanao to heel. Court datus fell away and increasingly looked to their own interests. Upriver sultanates now came into their own (Ileto, 2007 [1971]: 16). Buayan made good the loss of Maguindanao-channeled slaves from the central and northern Philippines by accelerating the enslavement of its own upland peoples. Its more tenuous access to the sea made for less strict observation of seaborne Islamic doctrines. Buayan’s rajas had little real power and it would be dominated by its orang besar (big men), Datu Utto being the mightiest among them. For several decades, Datu Utto both tyrannized and mobilized his subjects to resist Spanish colonial expansion until he was finally overwhelmed in the late 1880s (Ileto, 2007 [1971]). Spain’s success owed as much to co-optation as to coercion. Compliant datus manifested symbolic subservience to the foreign occupiers while continuing to accumulate autonomous power and advantage with little regard for grander colonial designs (Beckett, 1982: 398–399).

The Sulu sultanate assumed an increasing position of pre-eminence from the second half of the 18th century onward due to its semi-peripheral status in the Anglo-Chinese trade. English country traders from India eagerly procured the Sulu zone’s marine and forest products for the China market in exchange for manufactured goods and weaponry (Warren, 2007 [1981]). Greater political cohesion was needed among sultans and their datus to obtain the slave labour required to produce these highly coveted commodities. Ecological degradation and Maguindano’s decline also attracted military labour from Iranun communities based on the southwest coast of Mindanao. This combination of overseas demand for commodities and semi-mercenary armed service increased the prevalence of plantation slavery; yet, captives were also put to use as menials and armed retainers.

Despite this burgeoning commerce, Sulu’s sultans never effectively centralized their power. The archipelagic nature of their polity meant datus could set up autonomous checkpoints to collect tribute and sell goods to foreign merchants without giving the sultan his due. The lucrative bird’s nest caves on Borneo’s northeast coast were theirs for the taking (Warren, 2007 [1981]: 76). Datus even made separate deals with European traders on the roadstead of Jolo town, the sultanate’s capital. In addition, sultans possessed nothing in terms of coercive capacity that was not readily available to local datus. While a sultan could bestow legitimacy on a strongman’s position through sacral acts, kingly sanctity could not tame a chieftain’s secular might (Kiefer, 1972: 107–109). While oceanic trade increased the prominence of the supra-local sultanates it did not fully eliminate the autonomy of the datus within them.

Subaltern social orders that stood between slaves and datus led a precarious existence. The fact that raids and captivity were reserved for non-Muslim peoples gave common folk some solace, but few concrete benefits. Commoners could rise to high positions, generally through military service, and mechanisms did exist to ennoble parvenus who proved clever enough to construct durable followings (McKenna, 1998: 55; Mednick, 1974: 20–21). Most commoners, however, had to endure the violence and extortion that came from being ruled by a heavily armed warrior elite. Religion itself was harnessed to the cause of social stratification. As Islam gradually seeped into the southern Philippines during the 16th and 17th centuries, local datus accrued its powers to their persons. Most constructed elaborate tarsilas (genealogies) to claim they were direct descendants of the prophet Mohammed (McKenna, 1998: 270–272). As God’s vice-regent on earth, no man could inflict bodily harm on a datu without suffering grievous punishment in this world and the next. While clerics did play a role in Muslim communities, particularly after the acceleration of pilgrimage-related traffic between insular Southeast Asia and Arabia in the 19th century, religious questions were primarily decided by individual chieftains. Commoners could flee these overbearing masters, but this had its risks: fellow datus often tracked down and returned runaways with the understanding that they could expect the same courtesy in return. Subaltern social groups explained their powerlessness by endowing datus with supernatural attributes beyond the reach of mere mortals. Muslim polities were not so much political communities as unstable coercive hierarchies.

Establishing imperial linkages: Muslims under American military rule

The Philippine struggle for independence and subsequent Spanish-American war rapidly eroded whatever presence the Spaniards managed to establish in the Muslim south. Non-Muslim communities faced violent attacks as local strongmen reasserted their control over strategic trade routes and towns. Faced with a massive insurgency in the northern and central Philippines, American military commanders instituted a system of indirect rule in Muslim areas. The Bates Treaty, signed with the sultan of Sulu in 1899, was coupled with a series of more informal agreements with local datus in southwest Mindanao. Suppression of the Philippine insurrection became a top priority and interference in Muslim affairs was kept at a minimum. Americans found the institution of slavery troubling but did not aggressively pursue its eradication. Slaves who managed to flee to American military lines received protection from pursuing datus, but officers were effectively prohibited from emancipating slaves residing on their masters’ property. The containment of insurgent bands in the lowland Christian zones by 1902 allowed the colonial state to turn its attention southwards. American officials could no longer countenance the existence of autonomous armed chieftains acting as a law unto themselves. The immediate abolition of slavery provided an ideal pretext for the assertion of American sovereignty. Direct military rule was declared in Moro Province in 1903 and was to continue until 1913. The Bates Treaty was unilaterally abrogated in 1904. Such a brazen assault on traditional prerogatives sparked widespread armed resistance across the region. American army units responded with extreme violence, launching a series of counter-insurgency operations over the next decade.

Moro Province was administratively demarcated from the lowland Christian zones. It experienced a highly invasive form of colonial rule more akin to European colonies in Asia and Africa (Abinales, 2003: 148–149, 162). ² Administered by progressive army officers who had an intense aversion to the machine politics taking root further north, Muslim areas were subjected to intensive state-led modernization. The American military’s antipathy toward electoral machines managed by self-serving political bosses had metropolitan origins. At the turn of the 20th century, military officers struggled mightily to modernize America’s armed forces by strengthening the regulatory and administrative powers of the federal government. Many officers felt modernization from above should also extend to wider segments of American society. In their view, rational bureaucracies committed to administrative procedures brought social improvement. Party machines that ran municipal and state governments fiercely defended their particularistic arrangements and privileges, often resorting to corruption to avoid federal interference in local affairs. The military’s struggle for progressive reform at home was far from complete by the time America seized the southern Philippines. Freed from domestic political constraints, army administrators pursued their progressive vision on the colonial periphery.

As in other colonies, infrastructural investments facilitated commerce and state control. Roads, harbours, and market centres were quickly established to ease the flow of primary commodities. A series of schools was founded to spread the rudiments of technical education and the English language. Military authorities sidelined Spanish-era confessional distinctions between Christians and Muslims and instead focused on the unique racial attributes of their Muslim charges (Amoroso, 2003: 119–121, 125). As a thoroughly ‘savage race’, Moros required greater degrees of colonial tutelage to civilize them up to standards found among Christian Filipinos. Those who refused to modernize for their own good would be subjected to liberal applications of coercion.

Yet, American rule also created opportunities for advancement among Muslim elites and subalterns. The Bates Treaty was not just a stopgap measure temporarily imposed before the colonial state could fully assert itself. This interim allowed datus to size up their new masters in terms of coercive capabilities and commercial interests. Some chose to meet the fearsome firepower of these foreign invaders head on; many, however, chose not to risk the consequences of open rebellion. Noticing an American distaste for slavery, certain datus branched out into other economic activities. Cockfighting, the production and sale of bladed weapons, cattle rustling, gold panning, and human trafficking continued well into the American period. Colonial authorities turned a blind eye to these illicit ventures provided the datus engaging in them contributed to the peace and order of Moro Province (Lara, 2014: 151). The Americans were especially eager to form partnerships with datus able to mobilize commercial networks deemed necessary for agricultural development (Beckett, 1982: 400, 402). As Francisco Lara (2014: 234) has convincingly demonstrated, it was not so much America’s intention to divide and rule datus as to unite with the compliant in order to isolate the defiant. Crucially, colonial officials did not interfere with customary Islam. Concepts of the separation of church and state had carried over to the colonial sphere from the continental United States. Datus were allowed to maintain their hold over the faithful (Abinales, 2000: 62–63). This gave less space to radicalized clerics who had imbibed more purist forms of belief overseas. Although so called hajis did cause colonial authorities some anxiety, they were never able to mobilize a critical mass of believers and launch a jihadi movement led by a clerical counter-elite. ³

Sustained applications of American military power resulted in a sharp contraction of the datu elite, yet those who chose to play the military’s colonial game became more powerful than ever before. Collaborating datus soaked up the resources and charisma of defeated rivals. The fluid hierarchies of the pre-colonial era were replaced by a fixed social order undergirded by colonial coercive institutions. The establishment of tribal wardships, inspired by methods used to administer native peoples in the southwestern United States, further expanded chiefly authority by allowing indigenous elites to dispense justice to their subjects (Funtecha, 1979: 41–43). In contrast to their British counterparts on the Malay Peninsula, the Americans empowered local strongmen to the detriment of supra-local monarchs.

Datu Piang, based in Cotabato, benefited greatly from these new power dynamics. As a Chinese mestizo of relatively humble origins, he needed foreign patronage to ascend the social hierarchy. Faced with a large scale rebellion led by Datu Ali, heir apparent to the Buayan sultanate, army commanders turned to Piang to provide assistance and intelligence. This information allowed American forces to corner and kill Ali in 1905 (McKenna, 1998: 94). Piang thus used colonial firepower to nullify the superior genealogical claims of a rival to rule the upriver polity. Once ensconced in his position as a colonial datu, he rapidly brought the Cotabato basin to order and reaped substantial profits from its buoyant agricultural sector.

Other parts of Moro Province proved far more difficult to pacify. The minor polities around Lake Lanao split into pro- and anti-American camps, with communities around the lake’s northern shore demonstrating greater loyalty to colonial agents than their southern counterparts. ⁴ Maranao divisions prevented the coalescence of a unified resistance, but the lack of orang besar with trans-local authority made pacification a protracted process. As early as 1902, Captain John J Pershing met with numerous datus in an effort to diffuse increasing resentment toward American rule (Funtecha, 1979: 24–26; Gowing, 1983: 89). Pershing attempted to widen the circle of compliance by utilizing datus who had already submitted to bring more hostile colleagues into the colonial fold. This was not always successful and numerous kotas (forts) that refused to submit were subsequently subjected to bombardment and assault. Once it became clear the Americans could not be defeated militarily, collaborating Maranao provided army and police units with valuable intelligence regarding rebel bands. At times, they even captured insurgents themselves and delivered them to the authorities. Banditry remained a problem nevertheless. Military units were deployed to destroy Maranao forts as late as the 1930s. Feuding and armed raids were eventually contained but never entirely eradicated (Mednick, 1965: 35–38).

The Sulu archipelago fiercely resisted the imposition of American sovereignty at certain points (Kiefer, 1972: 4). Military officials had little admiration or use for a severely weakened sultan, and attempted directly to assert domination over local datus. ⁵ Piracy remained endemic and had to be suppressed by armed force. Colonial violence was particularly severe on Jolo Island where attempts to institute a poll tax led to the massacre of Bud Dajo in 1906. A campaign to disarm Moro communities let to another mass killing on Jolo at Bud Bagsak in 1913 (Gowing, 1983: 160–163, 238–242). When encountering a porous border region with a long history of armed raids and illicit smuggling, the colonial state came down with a very heavy hand. Much like in the Lanao region, however, these activities continued, albeit on a reduced scale.

Muslim savagery was both ominous and admirable to the colonial imaginary. Provincial authorities made considerable efforts to institutionalize warrior traditions. Moro Constabulary and Scout battalions were founded to assist in government pacification campaigns (Funtecha, 1979: 45–48). Ostensibly a diffusion of prior practices used to good effect in Christian provinces, Muslim military and police units possessed unique cultural features. Moro troops wore tasseled fezes in order not to impinge on their spiritual sensibilities. Constabulary units in Lanao bore the traditional kris along with the modern Krag. These martial accoutrements gave Muslim soldiers a distinct status. They also served barefoot to project a fierce countenance. Moro violence was thus not eliminated but regimented and yoked to colonial purposes. Once domesticated, this martial race could be safely displayed at festivals, exhibitions, and fairs (Hawkins, 2013: 51–52). Such voyeuristic exoticism was hardly dignifying. But Muslims gleaned substantial benefits from being branded a martial race.

Moros who served in military and police units typically came from the lowest rungs of the social order. During the chaotic colonial transition, numerous slaves had escaped their masters and eagerly filled the ranks of nascent coercive institutions. American commanding officers were viewed as powerful patrons who prevented a trooper’s re-enslavement. Once slavery was formally abolished, Muslim soldiers zealously fought datus who refused to give up the practice. As counter-insurgency campaigns evolved, Moro Constabulary units became particularly useful from a tactical point of view. American firepower easily obliterated rebel kotas and mountaintop fortifications. However, destroying fixed enemy positions disaggregated Muslim resistance into small roving bands against which heavy ordinance was useless. Locally recruited Constabulary troops familiar with the physical and political landscape could more readily harry, capture, or kill insurgents (Funtecha, 1979: 52–54, 121–124). Moro soldiers were admired in areas beyond the colonial optic. Outside battlefields, barracks, and exhibitions, young Muslim males aspired to become uniformed and regimented dealers in state violence.

Educational opportunities were also opened up to subaltern social orders. Datus who were highly suspicious of Western learning initially refused to send their own children to colonial schools. They dispatched slave children instead, many of whom later went on to become teachers and bureaucrats (McKenna, 1998: 312 n. 8); empowerment was possible for subalterns willing to help pacify the land.

According to American administrators, the tribes of Moro province had to become modern while remaining Muslim. The racialization of religious difference made Muslim Filipinos an insoluble entity in relation to the rest of the archipelago. Preserving racial distinctions between Muslims and Christians justified the continuation of military rule (Hawkins, 2013: 47–48). Only the firm oversight of army officers could prevent communal violence and a Muslim regression back to savagery. It was never the Americans’ intention to eliminate the natives, as was the case with indigenous peoples in the continental United States, only to civilize them.

Ironically, the very civilizing processes meant to lift Moros out of their benighted state rendered them vulnerable to displacement and marginalization in the long run (Abinales, 2003: 169). Colonial efforts to impose a monopoly of legitimate violence were substantially carried out. Firearms were subject to seizure and fortified dwellings slated for systematic destruction. Banditry and raiding continued in more remote areas and on the oceanic fringes of Moro Province. Yet, Muslims could no longer organize sustained resistance against supra-local authority. Even more damaging was an influx of Christian settlers from the northern archipelago (Funtecha, 1979: 76–77). Again, it was not the colonial government’s intention to replace the natives with more civilized populations. Rather, American authorities felt bringing Christians and Muslims closer together would facilitate a diffusion of more advanced civilizational norms from the former to the latter. Muslims would emulate the superior agricultural and governmental practices of their Christian Filipino neighbours. The best way to bring about social improvement was by example. American officials stood above this coalescing bi-national society, ensuring that inter-communal relations remained ordered and civil. Should they ever leave, it was claimed, a bloodbath would not be long in coming.

From sub-colonialism to marginalization

Yet, leave they eventually did. 1913 saw the Democrats return to the White House after nearly two decades of Republican rule. The Wilson administration sought to indigenize the Philippine state, thereby replacing direct colonial control with more circumspect imperial oversight. Military rule in Moro Province was abolished in 1913 and power was increasingly handed over to Christian Filipino elites. These elites had continuously chafed under the restrictions imposed by their American masters in relation to Mindanao. They were eager to exploit this resource-rich frontier without unnecessary hindrances. Army officers attempted to resist this transition without success. The military’s own institutional structures undermined efforts at retention. Frequent transfers of personnel at the district level prevented a critical mass of soldiers with administrative expertise in Muslim affairs from developing. America’s growing involvement in the First World War also siphoned off many officers to Western Europe. Ultimately, army administrators were too thin on the ground to sustain their presence in a far-flung frontier that no longer interested policy makers in Washington.

At its core, relations between Philippine elites and American officials assumed an increasingly imperial rather than colonial quality. Once remade in America’s image, indigenous elites could administer state institutions on their own. Regular elections at the local, provincial, and national levels gave officeholders sufficient legitimacy in American eyes. So long as they respected US military and strategic concerns in the Pacific, Filipino politicians were free to do as they saw fit with regard to domestic affairs. Christian Filipinos thus took up America’s mission to civilize the ‘savage’. Bereft of their American patrons and deprived of autonomous coercive power, Moro elites were compelled to reach an accommodation with their new overlords. The Muslim-American capillary thus lay dormant while Manila consolidated its own sub-colonial linkages with the Muslim provinces.

Manila ruled the Muslim south through an amalgam of indirect rule and colonial democracy. ⁶ Capital-elites formed alliances with provincial strongmen who had a firm grip on their local constituencies. This spared a geographically remote central state from directly administering areas historically hostile to Christian rule. Muslim datus were co-opted and rewarded with material and political advantages in exchange for keeping order and delivering votes (Abinales, 2000, 2003: 170–171). An expanding franchise made Philippine elections far more complicated affairs. The expense and organizational difficulties associated with mobilizing votes on behalf of national politicians were not easily resolved. Southern datus reinforced traditional notions of deference among their clients to construct reliable vote-banks rendered available to Manila politicians willing to pay the right premiums for them. The ensuing patronage flows from the centre to the periphery guaranteed a modicum of stability on a potentially turbulent frontier. Muslim subalterns received little in return for their votes. They became the primary victims of a sub-colonial democratic system that held them in thrall.

The Second World War rapidly accelerated strongman empowerment and subaltern exclusion. Chaotic conditions generated by the Japanese occupation released a steady stream of loose firearms into the countryside. This weaponry remilitarized the datu class in previously pacified areas and aggravated warlordism in locales never entirely brought to heel. Slave raids and clan feuds returned with a vengeance. Tens of thousands of Christian settlers were driven from their homes by Muslim militias who viewed them as a hostile foreign entity. Traditional big men with modern weapons fought over turf and scarce resources. The central state proved unable to reassert its monopoly of organized violence after liberation. Electoral contests still determined the distribution of power but became far bloodier than before. Similar dynamics unfolded in the Christian provinces; yet, Mindanao retained a distinct historical trajectory. As the island had experience far less destruction than other parts of the archipelago, it was seen as the key to Philippine postwar recovery (Abinales, 2000: 95).

Mindanao was thus subjected to unprecedented levels of centrally directed social engineering. Extreme privation brought on by the war had generated mass social movements calling for agrarian reform in the northern and central Philippines. The Huk Rebellion was a profound challenge to the country’s landed elite. Launched by communist and leftist groups during the Japanese occupation, Huk bands had expropriated lands belonging to various plantations and redistributed them to peasants. Government forces could not defeat insurgents in the field and desperately turned to their former colonial masters for assistance. Without such exogenous intervention, leftist currents might have taken the Philippines in a different direction, possibly even tilting the country toward the communist bloc. As it was, elite dependence on American patronage sustained capillary links between the United States and its former colony.

The ideational and material resources Washington injected into these capillaries exacerbated Muslim marginalization in Mindanao. Refurbishing the country’s security forces was only half the battle. Agrarian grievances had to be diffused through a distributional mechanism that did not threaten the landed interests of pro-American elites. Mindanao was viewed as a safety valve that offered land to the landless through resettlement rather than revolution. The United States thus established and financed a series of resettlement programmes that rapidly shifted the demographic balance in favour of Christian migrants throughout southwestern Mindanao (Abinales, 2000: 99; McKenna, 1998: 113–114). Large-scale settlement continued until the late 1960s. Most of these settlers were desperately poor, a number being former Huk rebels. Muslim communities, generally lacking official title to ancestral lands, were deceived or driven off their holdings by Christian settlers. Emerging Christian political bosses formed tight links with their subaltern clients on the Mindanao frontier. Both groups proved equally eager to exploit untapped or underused lands. Since indigenous labour was not needed, Muslims became superfluous to these burgeoning settler communities. All Christians wanted was their land. Through this spatial transposition, the victims of agrarian inequities further north became victimizers in the far south.

Muslim datus were complicit in the settler project. In exchange for keeping order in Muslim areas and not interfering with Christian land-grabs they were lavishly rewarded with national patronage. Datu Salipada Pendatun, who served both as a senator and as a member of congress, spent more time politicking in Manila than among his own constituents in Cotabato. He willingly allowed pieces of his province to be sliced off and reformed into Christian majority territories, ⁷ thus crowding contentious Muslim elites into an ever smaller area. Datus intimated that only they were capable of keeping the Muslim masses in line, thus allowing the settler transformation to continue (McKenna, 1998: 137). Should their privileges be threatened in any way they might, unwillingly or deliberately, lose control. Such assumptions proved increasingly false as Muslim communities, all but abandoned by their traditional elites, turned to new political leaders touting an ethno-nationalist narrative. The groundswell of communal resentment would soon become too great to contain.

Political dynamics unfolded according to a different logic in the Sulu archipelago. Here there were no Christian settlers in any appreciable numbers. Yet, the utter refusal of archipelagic peoples to accept Philippine national law and the infringements it placed on customary practices regarding private violence and clan feuds resulted in seething discontent. Residents were also extremely reluctant to surrender their firearms to state authorities for fear this would leave them exposed to their enemies.

Despite differences between archipelagic and mainland communities, common grievances bound Muslims across the south. The few initiatives for socioeconomic development that Manila bothered to initiate quickly fell under the control of Muslim elites who appropriated the necessary funds for their own benefit. Local education remained woefully under-resourced compared to the colonial period. Those who could obtain a higher education had to seek it in Manila or the Arab world, settings that only increased their sense of ethno-national difference. The Philippine state never promoted a counter-ideology to wean Muslims away from their poignant memories of their American overlords. ⁸ Little wonder that when Thomas Kiefer was conducting ethnographic fieldwork among the Tausug on Jolo Island in the 1960s he was frequently asked when the Americans were coming back (Kiefer, 1972: 135).

Armed separatism and state violence

Ferdinand Marcos’s rise to power finally tipped the Muslim south into full-scale rebellion (Abinales, 2000: 155–157, 159). Coming from the fringes of the national elite, Marcos owed little to traditional political conventions. He mobilized his kinsmen, university fraternity brothers, fellow Ilocanos, and a spurious war record to break into Manila politics. First as a member of congress, then as a senator, Marcos presented himself as a modernizer committed to making the Philippines one of Asia’s leading lights. Upon winning the presidency in late 1965, he lost no time undoing established arrangements. State institutions played a key role in his proposed socioeconomic transformations. Technocrats and military officers were tasked with centralizing power into Marcos’s hands.

Regional strongmen with autonomous control over manpower and resources were naturally viewed with suspicion. Marcos thus began to dismantle the political networks of hostile Muslim datus. Salipada Pendantun was among the first to fall; others soon followed. This created a political vacuum filled by ethno-nationalist political leaders who had forged linkages with sympathetic governments across the Muslim world. Military aid and training provided by Libya and Malaysia led to the coalescence of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). The MNLF called on Muslims to separate from the Philippines and found their own independent state. Marcos used separatist threats and a growing communist insurgency as a justification for declaring martial law in September 1972. The military launched brutal attacks on Muslim rebel camps throughout the south, only deepening Moro resentment and widening the insurgency in the process. State violence gave the MNLF greater legitimacy in areas initially hostile to the organization’s mainly Tausug leadership. Maguindanao politicians and clan chiefs in the Cotabato basin joined up to obtain access to the weaponry and financing provided by the MNLF’s foreign patrons. As a result, Manila had to conduct combat operations across the Sulu archipelago and southern Mindanao simultaneously. This placed further strains on an already overstretched military.

The Moro war was a major drain on the martial law state. At its height, the conflict was costing Marcos a million dollars a day (Abinales and Amoroso, 2017: 217). After suffering heavy losses, MNLF commanders shifted tactics from the defence of fixed positions to more mobile guerilla operations. Porous coastal frontiers prevented government forces from interdicting the flow of arms to insurgent bands. Ordinary Muslims found little inspiration in Moro nationalist pronouncements but fought fiercely to protect their communities and families from the Philippine military’s depredations (McKenna, 1998: 272–275). Faced with a stalemate, Marcos was compelled to sign the Tripoli Agreement in 1976, which promised some form of future Muslim autonomy. He then proceeded to divide the resistance against itself by co-opting traditional datus into his government and enticing certain rebel commanders to abandon the separatist cause in exchange for state patronage. The conflict waned in intensity but did not end. New insurgent organizations, the Mindanao-based Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) being the most prominent, broke away from and soon overshadowed the MNLF. Insurgent and state violence led to the development of heavily armed family clans that carved out lucrative rackets and fought for whichever side served their interests best (Lara, 2014: 86, 95). It became impossible to establish clear boundaries between insurgency, counter-insurgency, and criminality.

American support massively contributed to Marcos’s state centralization and peripheral aggression. His rise coincided with the US military buildup in Indochina. American bases at Clark Field and Subic Bay were essential to the Indochina war’s prosecution. The Nixon administration fully backed Marcos’s bid for re-election in 1969 and declaration of martial law in 1972. A progressive withdrawal of American forces only intensified Washington’s commitment to the regime. As Indochina succumbed to communism, its neighbours had to be inoculated from infection. Ever increasing quantities of aid were pumped through imperial capillaries to shore up America’s faithful ally. The Philippines received US$18.5 million in military aid in 1972 and US$45.3 million the following year (Abinales and Amoroso, 2017: 209, 211). The Soviet Union’s strengthening alliance with a united communist Vietnam after 1975 was matched by an expanding American commitment to an authoritarian Philippines. The Iranian Revolution and Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979 strengthened America’s need for a backdoor to the Indian Ocean. President Carter’s human rights administration provided Marcos with US$500 million in military assistance. Without these external infusions the Moro war might have been far less destructive.

Both insurgents and state actors plugged into their respective transnational networks to obtain the resources necessary to wage war in the southern Philippines. This conventional conflict resulted in an intractable stalemate. Due to Cold War concerns, Marcos was able to consistently increase the flow of assistance from his American patrons. This influx allowed him to fragment, but never entirely eradicate, the resistance by offering alternate sources of patronage to rebel commanders previously reliant on largess from the wider Islamic world. ⁹

Reactivating imperial capillaries

The end of the Cold War saw the United States quickly lose interest in the Philippines. America’s support for Marcos generated popular resentment which led to the closure of Clark Field and Subic Bay in 1992. Imperial linkages lay dormant as American interests shifted elsewhere. NATO expansion, security spats with China and North Korea, and the punishment of rogue states occupied the United States military during the 1990s. President George W Bush’s declaration of a war on terror after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington suddenly revived interest in the Philippines. By early 2002, US special operations forces, embedded in Philippine military units, began counter-terror operations against Islamic extremists in the Muslim south. Their primary target was the Abu Sayyaf group, purportedly a propagator of fundamentalist doctrines but in actuality more akin to an armed gang engaged in extortion, kidnapping, and robbery. Although American troops did not officially engage Islamist groups in combat, they provided the intelligence, training, and surveillance that facilitated armed encounters between insurgents and Philippine troops. Joint US-Philippine military exercises, meant to deter growing Chinese involvement in Southeast Asia, also ramped up as the 21st century progressed.

These developments have been viewed by both activists and scholars as an infringement on Philippine sovereignty. Aware of the potential political fallout from a re-establishment of military bases on Philippine soil, American policy makers opted for the introduction of small special operations forces that could be rapidly inserted into insurgent zones (McCoy, 2009: 514–515). Counter-terror was only a partial explanation for US intervention. The war against radical Islam justified continual imperial oversight across the Philippine archipelago, a highly strategic area in America’s efforts to contain a rising China. In exchange for allowing American involvement in Philippine military affairs, Manila has received substantial infusions of military aid and a free hand in dealing with leftist activists whose progressive politics threaten elite interests.

Yet, this reactivation of imperial capillaries had another side. Patricio Abinales (2010) makes a strong case for refocusing scholarly attention on American intervention from the national to the regional. Sub-national imperial connections were revived beyond the Washington-Manila nexus. Both ordinary and elite Muslims in the south gleaned substantial benefits from America’s return. Hashim Salamat, leader of the MILF, played a leading role in initiating imperial reconnection. Shortly before his death in 2003, Salamat wrote a letter to President Bush in which he defined the MILF as a ‘national liberation organization’ and urged the United States to help mediate a peace settlement to the separatist conflict (Quimpo, 2016: 70–71). Salamat thus circumvented Washington-Manila capillaries to form a direct link with the White House, effectively reactivating a separate Muslim-American relationship. Upon openly renouncing terror, the MILF was made a full partner in the peace process. More importantly, the US did not subject the MILF to counter-insurgency operations and instead focused its attention on the far smaller and more marginal Abu Sayyaf group.

The United States Agency for International Development began to deliver much needed aid to impoverished Muslim areas and assist in the reintegration of former insurgents into civilian society. Local datus took advantage of an improving civil infrastructure to expand commercial activities and reward their followers (Abinales, 2010: 186–189, 209). These social inputs came directly from American personnel, bypassing the whims of imperial Manila. The MILF leadership marginalized jihadist members and assumed an increasingly moderate stance toward the Philippine government when the benefits of imperial patronage became clear. As in the colonial period, elites were co-opted to imperial projects via the distribution of patronage. Ordinary Muslims in Mindanao appreciated American advisers redirecting Philippine military violence away from their communities and against Islamist groups based in the Sulu zone (Hawkins, 2013: 137). This porous frontier remained disordered, but residents proved willing to help hunt down extremists that preyed on their villages and challenged the dominance of local clans unwilling to relinquish lucrative smuggling routes to jihadi groups. Rather than resist foreign interlopers, clan leaders manoeuvered onto the right side of American violence. The presence of American military personnel, interposed between Muslims villages and Philippine soldiers, often prevented excesses. All this made American involvement in the southern Philippines far less costly and relatively more successful than interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Indigenous agency had rearranged capillary linkages to local and imperial benefit.

Conclusion

The capillaries of empire are more than fixed structures that facilitate American domination of the Philippines. This imperial circuitry has been repeatedly re-routed across the archipelago to serve national and sub-national interests. Upon their initial entry, the Americans chose to rule different Filipinos in contrasting ways. They established separate connective links in Christian and non-Christian zones that operated according to distinct logics. These separate colonial streams were to merge once the ‘savage tribes’ achieved a level of civilization comparable to Christians. Yet, contradictions soon crept in. US military officials attempted to retain the Muslim south, but were compelled to surrender their charges to Christian rule when Washington decided to sever sub-national imperial linkages. Manila treated the south as a sub-colonial zone within the American empire. Independence in 1946 only increased Muslim dispossession as Christian settlers radically transformed the landscape. Marginalization led to insurrection and further impoverishment. Finding few benefits in national rule, Muslims eagerly (re)formed associations with American agents when geopolitical interests necessitated imperial return. Supra-national patronage proved beneficial to numerous localities and hence these capillary links have been sustained through Muslim initiative. Rather than being resisted, empire was taken advantage of.