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The Pre-Colonial
Philippines |
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By Alison Kroulek
Monday, September 03, 2007
The island nation of the Philippines has a rich history. The Philippines today is a tapestry of different cultural influences, each stemming from a particular event in the history of the islands. Examining this history provides a lot of insight into how the Philippines became the country that it is today. Philippine history can be conveniently divided into 2 different sections-before and after European colonization. To start, we will look at the cultures that existed and the events that occurred before the arrival of settlers from Spain, and how they have influenced the modern-day Philippines. The original settlers of the Philippines were a dark-complexioned Australo-Melanesian people who lived as hunter-gatherers in small bands. They arrived around 30,000 years ago. Gradually, they became small in stature to adapt to a life in the Philippine jungles. These people still survive in isolated mountainous areas of the islands, and are known today as Negritos, or the Aeta (www.ualberta.ca/~vmitchel/rev1.html). However, these hunter-gatherers were overwhelmed during a period known as the Austronesian expansion (around 2500 BC), when groups of Asian natives spread out from Taiwan and began island-hopping, forming colonies wherever they landed. These people were a horticultural people, who survived via a combination of light agriculture and fishing, and they out-competed the hunter gatherers. The Austronesians contributed a great deal toward modern Filipino culture. For example, today Austronesian languages are the native languages of three quarters of the Philippine population (www.ualberta.ca/~vmitchel/rev3.html). Also, women have a lot of power in horticultural societies, the type of subsistence strategy practiced by the Austronesians at the time of the expansion. This is because they contribute a great deal to the food supply via gardening (www.ualberta.ca/~vmitchel/rev2.html). So, another legacy of the Austronesians is the high status of women in Philippine society. For example, the Philippines have a female president, Gloria Arroyo-an accomplishment that even women in the United States have yet to claim for themselves! The social organization after the Austronesian expansion changed from small bands to larger kinship groups known as barangays. The head of the barangay was a chieftain known as the datu. This method of societal organization persisted for centuries. It was revived after the country became an independent nation, so even today the barangay survives as the smallest unit of Philippine government. Around 200 AD, the Philippines and other nearby countries were somewhat influenced by the rise of Hindu kingdoms. However, despite trade connections with India, Hinduism never became a major religion on the islands. Of more importance is that connections to either mainland India or China led to the spread of new knowledge, such as metal working, irrigation and wet rice field agricultural techniques. Also, a new domesticated animal, the water buffalo, was introduced during this time (www.ualberta.ca/~vmitchel/rev4.html). In the 15th century, the Islamic faith began to spread throughout the region, and it soon reached the Philippines via Brunei and Malaysia (http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-23713/Philippines). Many datus converted from the old religion of animism to the new religion of Islam. The Islamic faith spread as far north as Manila, but most of the converts could be found in the southern islands, closer to Malaysia. These Islamic converts became today’s Moros. Many Moros consider themselves separate from the rest of the nation because of their faith, and want to govern themselves. An often-violent conflict has erupted between independence-hungry Moros and the Philippine government. |
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