Precolonial barangay
[4][page needed][6][7] Other barangays — most notably those in Maynila, Tondo, Panay,[8] Pangasinan, Caboloan, Cebu, Bohol, Butuan, Cotabato, and Sulu[5][9] — were large cosmopolitan polities.
[10][11] Anthropologist F. Landa Jocano defines this period of the barangay states' dominance — approximately the 14th to the 16th centuries — as the "Barangic Phase" of early Philippine history.
[4] The Barangic Phase of Philippine history can be noted for its highly mobile nature, with barangays transforming from being settlements and turning into fleets and vice versa, with the wood constantly re-purposed according to the situation.
[16] In time, these coastal communities acquired more advanced cultures, with developed social structures (sovereign principalities), ruled by established royalties and nobilities.
This was the typical size of inland settlements by the time the Spanish colonizers arrived in the late 1500s, whereas larger, more cosmopolitan polities dominated the coasts, particularly river deltas.
[9][3] When barangays grew larger, as was the case in Ma-i, Maynila, Tondo, Madja-as of Panay, Pangasinan, Caboloan, Cebu, Bohol, Butuan, Sanmalan, Cotabato, Sulu, and Lanao,[9] among others, they took on a more complex social organization.
Several barangays, consisting of households loyal to a datu, Rajah or Sultan banded together to form larger cosmopolitan polities as an apex city states.
[18] The earliest documentation of the term "Bayan" was done by early Spanish missionaries who came up with local language dictionaries to facilitate the conversion of the peoples of the Philippine archipelago to Roman Catholicism.
[19][page needed] After the various polities of the Philippine archipelago were united into a single political entity during colonial times, the term gradually lost its original specific meaning, and took on more generic, descriptive denotations: population center (poblacion) or capital (cabisera); municipality; or in the broadest sense, "country".
Although popular portrayals and early nationalist historical texts sometimes depict Philippine paramount rulers as having broad sovereign powers and holding vast territories, critical historiographers such as Jocano,[4]: 160–161 Scott,[2][page needed] and Junker[5] explain that historical sources clearly show paramount leaders exercised only a limited degree of influence, which did not include claims over the barangays and territories of less-senior datus.
For example, F. Landa Jocano, in his seminal work Filipino Prehistory: Rediscovering Precolonial Heritage, notes: Even if different Barangays entered into alliances with one another, there was no sovereign datu over them.
[5] This explanation of the limited powers of a paramount leader in cultures throughout the Philippine archipelago explains the confusion experienced by Martin de Goiti during the first Spanish forays into Bulacan and Pampanga in late 1571.
[2][page needed] The barangays in some coastal places in Panay,[27] Manila, Cebu, Jolo, and Butuan, with cosmopolitan cultures and trade relations with other countries in Asia, were already established Principalities before the coming of the Spaniards.
In these regions, even though the majority of these barangays were not large settlements, yet they had organized societies dominated by the same type of recognized aristocracy (with birthright claim to allegiance from followers), as those found in established principalities.
Babaylans were held in such high regard as they were believed to possess powers that can block the dark magic of an evil datu or spirit and heal the sick or wounded.
According to Luciano P. R. Santiago (To Love and to Suffer) as remuneration for their services they received a good part of the offerings of food, wine, clothing, and gold, the quality and quantity of which depended on the social status of the supplicant.
In the contemporary era of critical scholarly analysis, the more prominent such works include the studies of anthropologist F. Landa Jocano[4][5] and historian-historiographer William Henry Scott.
[35] Unlike the Visayan Datus, the Lakans and Apos of Luzon could call all non-Maginoo subjects to work in the Datu’s fields or do all sorts of other personal labor.
[35] In other parts of the Archipelago, even though the majority of these barangays were not large settlements, yet they had organized societies dominated by the same type of recognized aristocracy and Lordships (with birthright claim to allegiance from followers), as those found in more established, richer and more developed Principalities.
The members of the tumao class (which includes the datu) were the nobility of pure royal descent,[2][page needed] compared by the Boxer Codex to the titled Spanish lords (señores de titulo).
[38] Below the tumao were the vassal warrior class known as the timawa, characterized by the Jesuit priest Francisco Ignatio Alcina as "the third rank of nobility" and by the conquistador Miguel de Loarca as "free men, neither chiefs nor slaves".
These were people of lower nobility who were required to render military service to the datu in hunts, land wars (Mangubat or Managayau), or sea raids (Mangahat or Magahat).
[2][page needed][40] To maintain purity of bloodline, the tumao usually marry only among their kind, often seeking high ranking brides in other barangay, abducting them, or contracting brideprices in gold, slaves and jewelry.
[42] The different type of culture prevalent in Luzon gave a less stable and more complex social structure to the pre-colonial Tagalog barangays of Manila, Pampanga and Laguna.
Taking part in a more extensive commerce than those in Visayas, having the influence of Bornean political contacts, and engaging in farming wet rice for a living, the Tagalogs were described by the Spanish Augustinian friar Martin de Rada as more traders than warriors, and possessed distinct religious practices concerning anitos and dambanas.
A Jesuit priest Francisco Colin made an attempt to give an approximate comparison of it with the Visayan social structure in the middle of the 17th century.
The policy coerced inhabitants of several far-flung and scattered barangays to move into a centralized cabecera (town) where a newly built church was situated.
There are a number of distinctions between the modern Barangay or Barrio, and the city-states and independent principalities encountered by the Spanish when they first arrived in 1521 and established relatively permanent settlements beginning in 1565.
The term "cacique democracy" has been used to describe the feudal political system of the Philippines where in many parts of the country local leaders remain very strong, with almost warlord-type powers.
In the late 20th century, European historians who believed that historical Southeast Asian polities did not conform to classical Chinese or European views of political geography began adapting the Sanskrit word "Mandala" ("circle") as a model for describing the patterns of diffuse political power distributed among Mueang or Kedatuan (principalities) in early Southeast Asian history.
