Datu

Datu is a title which denotes the rulers (variously described in historical accounts as chiefs, sovereign princes, and monarchs) of numerous Indigenous peoples throughout the Philippine archipelago.

[2][3][4] In large coastal polities such as those in Maynila, Tondo, Pangasinan, Cebu, Panay, Bohol, Butuan, Cotabato, Lanao, and Sulu,[2] several datus brought their loyalty-groups, referred to as barangays or dulohan, into compact settlements which allowed greater degrees of cooperation and economic specialization.

[17] In the traditional structure of Moro societies, the sultans were the highest authority followed by the datus or rajah, with their rule being sanctioned by the Quran, though both titles predate the coming of Islam.

Datus were supported by their tribes, and in return for tribute and labor, the datu provided aid in emergencies and advocacy in disputes with other communities, and warfare through the Agama and Maratabat laws.

Heavy migration to Mindanao of Visayans, who have settled in the Island for centuries, spurred by government-sponsored resettlement programmes, turned the Lumads into minorities.

[17] There are 18 Lumad ethnolinguistic groups: Ata people, Bagobo, Banwaon, B'laan, Bukidnon, Dibabawon, Higaonon, Mamanwa, Mandaya, Manguwangan, Manobo, Mansaka, Subanon, Tagakaolo, Tasaday, Tboli, Teduray and Ubo.

[19] In more affluent and powerful territorial jurisdictions and principalities in the Visayas, such as Panay,[a][20][21] Cebu and Leyte[22][23](which were never conquered by Spain but were accomplished as vassals using pacts, peace treaties, and reciprocal alliances),[24] the datu class was at the top of a divinely sanctioned and stable social order in a sakop or kinadatuan (kadatuan in ancient Malay; kedaton in Javanese; and kedatuan in many parts of modern Southeast Asia), which is elsewhere commonly referred to also as a barangay.

The kadatuan (members of the Visayan datu class) were compared by the Boxer Codex to the titled lords (señores de titulo) in Spain.

[26] As agalon or amo (lords),[27] the datus enjoyed an ascribed right to respect, obedience, and support from their oripun (commoner) or followers belonging to the third order.

[28] To maintain the purity of bloodline, datus marry only among their kind, often seeking high ranking brides in other Barangays, abducting them, or contracting brideprices in gold, slaves and jewelry.

[32] 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.

The Tagalog people enjoyed a more extensive commerce than those in Visayas, having the influence of Bornean political contacts, and engaging in farming wet rice for a living.

[34] The datu class (first estate) of the four echelons of Filipino society at the time of contact with the Europeans (as described by Juan de Plasencia), was referred to by the Spaniards as the principalía.

Loarca,[35] and the canon lawyer Antonio de Morga, who classified the society into three estates (ruler, ruled, slave), also affirmed the usage of this term and also spoke about the preeminence of the principales.

[40] King Philip II of Spain, signed a law on June 11, 1594,[41] which commanded the Spanish colonial officials in the archipelago that these native royalties and nobilities be given the same respect, and privileges that they had enjoyed before their conversion.

However, there were cases when succession in leadership was also done through the election of new leaders (i.e., cabezas de barangay), especially in provinces near the central colonial government in Manila where the ancient ruling families lost their prestige and role.

However, in distant territories, where the central authority had less control and where order could be maintained without using coercive measures, hereditary succession was still enforced until Spain lost the archipelago to the Americans.

[51] Anthropologist Laura Lee Junker's comparative analysis of historical accounts from cultures throughout the archipelago, depicts datus functioning as primary political authorities, war leaders, legal adjudicators, the de facto owners of agricultural products and sea resources within a district, the primary supporters of attached craft specialists, the overseers of intra-district and external trade, and the pivotal centers of regional resource mobilization systems.

Anthropologists like F. Landa Jocano[3] and Junker,[5] historians, and historiographers like William Henry Scott[4] distinguish between the nobility and aristocratic nature of the datus against the exercise of sovereign political authority.

[3][59] The noble or aristocratic nature of datus and their relatives is asserted in folk origin myths,[28] was widely acknowledged by foreigners who visited the Philippine archipelago, and is upheld by modern scholarship.

"This "essential inequality of individuals and their mutual obligations to each other" informed the reciprocal relationships (expressed in the Filipino value of utang na loob) that defined the three-tiered social structure typical among early Philippine peoples.

In some cases, such as the more developed sakop or kinadatuan in the Visayas (e.g., Panay, Bohol and Cebu), origin myths and other folk narratives placed the datu and the aristocratic class at the top of a divinely sanctioned and stable social order.

[54]Since the culture of the pre-colonial societies in the Visayas, northern Mindanao, and Luzon were largely influenced by Hindu and Buddhist cultures, the datus who ruled these principalities (such as Butuan Calinan, Ranau Gandamatu, Maguindanao Polangi, Cebu, Bohol, Panay, Mindoro and Manila) also shared many customs of royalties and nobles in Southeast Asian territories, especially in the way they used to dress and adorn themselves with gold and silk.

[56] The Spanish expeditions of Ferdinand Magellan in the 1520s and Miguel López de Legazpi in the 1570s initially referred to paramount datus (lakans, rajahs, sultans, etc.)

as kings, though the Spanish stopped using this term when those under the command of Martin de Goiti first travelled to the polities in Bulacan and Pampanga in late 1571[68] and realized that the Kapampanan datus had the choice to not obey the wishes of the paramount datus of Tondo (Lakandula) and Maynila (Rajahs Matanda and Sulayman), leading Lakandula and Sulayman to explain that there was "no single king over these lands",[68][4] and that the influence of Tondo and Maynila over the Kapampangan polities did not include either territorial claim or absolute command.

[5][4][69] The concept of a sovereign monarchy was not unknown among the various early polities of the Philippine archipelago, since many of these settlements had rich maritime cultures and traditions and traveled widely as sailors and traders.

As noted by Fray San Buenaventura (1613, as cited by Junker, 1990 and Scott, 1994), however, the Tagalogs only applied hari (king) to foreign monarchs, such as those of the Javanese Madjapahit kingdoms, rather than to their own leaders.

[4] Although early Philippine datus, lakans, rajahs, sultans, etc., were not sovereign in the political or military sense, they later came to be referred to as such due to the introduction of European literature during the Spanish colonial period.

For example, on January 22, 1878, Sultan Jamalul A'Lam of Sulu appointed the Baron de Overbeck (an Austrian who was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire's consul-general in Hong Kong) as Datu Bendahara and as rajah of Sandakan, with the fullest power of life and death over all the inhabitants.

1, Series of 1998, of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples specifically under Rule IV, Part I, Section 2, a-c), which reads:[80] From the above-mentioned ordinance of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, the current usage of the title datu for newly created offices of leadership of tribal minorities does not accord nobility, which is forbidden by the Constitution of the republican state.