History of the Philippines

[11] This includes the predecessors of modern-day population centers such as Manila, Tondo, Pangasinan, Cebu, Panay, Bohol, Butuan, Cotabato, Lanao, Zamboanga and Sulu[12] as well as some polities, such as Ma-i, whose possible location is either Mindoro or Laguna.

Aside from language and genetics, they also share common cultural markers like multihull and outrigger boats, tattooing, rice cultivation, wetland agriculture, teeth blackening, jade carving, betel nut chewing, ancestor worship, and the same domesticated plants and animals (including dogs, pigs, chickens, yams, bananas, sugarcane, and coconuts).

[7] By 1000 BCE, the inhabitants of the Philippine archipelago had developed into four distinct kinds of peoples: tribal groups, such as the Aetas, Hanunoo, Ilongots and the Mangyan who depended on hunter-gathering and were concentrated in forests; warrior societies, such as the Isneg and Kalinga who practiced social ranking and ritualized warfare and roamed the plains; the petty plutocracy of the Ifugao Cordillera Highlanders, who occupied the mountain ranges of Luzon; and the harbor principalities of the estuarine civilizations that grew along rivers and seashores while participating in trans-island maritime trade.

[61] The British Historian Robert Nicholl citing Arab chronicler Al Ya'akubi, had written that on the early years of the 800s, the kingdoms of Muja (then Pagan Brunei) and Mayd (Ma-i) waged war against the Chinese Empire.

[116][117][118] However, the actual personage of Rajah Makatunaw was mentioned in earlier Chinese texts about Brunei dating him to 1082, when he was the descendant of Seri Maharaja and he was accompanied by Sang Aji (the ancestor of Sultan Muhammad Shah).

[119] Historian Robert Nicholl also positively identify the pre-Islamic Bruneian Buddhist kingdom of Vijayapura, itself a Bornean tributary of the Srivijaya Empire in Palembang, and in earlier times was a rump state in Sarawak of the fallen Funan Civilization formerly at what is now Cambodia,[120]: 36  this was the ancestral homeland of the Visayans of the 10 Datus of Panay.

[130] In the year 1011, Rajah Sri Bata Shaja, the monarch of the Indianized Rajahnate of Butuan, a maritime-state famous for its goldwork[131] sent a trade envoy under ambassador Likan-shieh to the Chinese Imperial Court demanding equal diplomatic status with other states.

[144] In Luzon, citing Kapampangan oral legends, Nick Joaquin wrote about a princess of Namayan named Sasaban who married the Emperor of Majapahit, locally known as Soledan and is allegedly the Maharajah Anka Widyaya.

The Spanish expeditions into the Philippines were also part of a larger Ibero-Islamic world conflict[214] that included a war against the Ottoman Caliphate which had just invaded former Christian lands in the Eastern Mediterranean and which had a center of operations in Southeast Asia at its nearby vassal, the Sultanate of Aceh.

These were abandoned and the Spanish soldiers, along with the newly Christianized natives of the Moluccas, withdrew back to the Philippines in order to re-concentrate their military forces because of a threatened invasion by the Japan-born Ming-dynasty loyalist, Koxinga, ruler of the Kingdom of Tungning.

Based on the tribute counts, the total founding population of Spanish-Philippines was 667,612 people,[242] of which: 20,000 were Chinese migrant traders,[243] 15,600 were Latino soldier-colonists sent from Peru and Mexico (In the 1600s),[244] Immigrants included 3,000 Japanese residents,[245] and 600 pure Spaniards from Europe.

[251] The islands were fragmented and sparsely populated[252] due to constant inter-kingdom wars[253] and natural disasters (as the country is on the Typhoon belt and Pacific Ring of Fire),[184] which made it easy for Spanish invasion.

The Spanish then brought political unification to most of the Philippine archipelago via the conquest of the various small maritime states although they were unable to fully incorporate parts of the sultanates of Mindanao and the areas where the ethnic groups and highland plutocracy of the animist Ifugao of Northern Luzon were established.

The eventual outcome was a new Roman Catholic majority, from which the Muslims of western Mindanao and the upland tribal and animistic peoples of Luzon remained detached and alienated (Ethnic groups such as the Ifugaos of the Cordillera region and the Mangyans of Mindoro).

The repeated wars, lack of wages and near starvation were so intense, almost half of the soldiers sent from Latin America either died or fled to the countryside to live as vagabonds among the rebellious natives or escaped enslaved Indians (from India)[272] where they race-mixed through rape or prostitution, further blurring the racial caste system Spain tried hard to maintain.

The Royal Fiscal of Manila wrote a letter to King Charles III of Spain in which he advises to abandon the colony, but the religious orders opposed this since they considered the Philippines a launching pad for the conversion of the Far East.

In 1774, colonial officers from Bulacan, Tondo, Laguna de Bay, and other areas surrounding Manila reported with consternation that discharged soldiers and deserters (from Mexico, Spain and Peru) during the British occupation were providing the indios military training for the weapons that had been disseminated all over the territory during the war.

[297] On August 1, 1851, the Banco Español-Filipino de Isabel II was established to attend the needs of the rapid economic boom, that had greatly increased its pace since the 1800s as a result of a new economy based on a rational exploitation of the agricultural resources of the islands.

[298] John Bowring, Governor General of British Hong Kong from 1856 to 1860, wrote after his trip to Manila: Credit is certainly due to Spain for having bettered the condition of a people who, though comparatively highly civilized, yet being continually distracted by petty wars, had sunk into a disordered and uncultivated state.

[299]In The Inhabitants of the Philippines, Frederick Henry Sawyer wrote: Until an inept bureaucracy was substituted for the old paternal rule, and the revenue quadrupled by increased taxation, the Filipinos were as happy a community as could be found in any colony.

He was supported by local soldiers as well as former officers in the Spanish army of the Philippines who were primarily from the now sovereign Mexico[318] as well as the freshly independent nations of Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Costa Rica.

This would inspire the Propaganda Movement in Spain, organized by Marcelo H. del Pilar, José Rizal, Graciano López Jaena, and Mariano Ponce, that clamored for adequate representation to the Spanish Cortes and later for independence.

It included, in addition to the rapid building of a public school system based on English teaching, and boasted about such modernizing achievements as: In 1903 the American reformers in the Philippines passed two major land acts designed to turn landless peasants into owners of their farms.

[422] Ruling by decree, Marcos curtailed press freedom and other civil liberties, abolished Congress, closed down major media establishments, ordered the arrest of opposition leaders and militant activists, including his staunchest critics: senators Benigno Aquino Jr., Jovito R. Salonga, and José W.

[442] Progress was made in revitalizing democratic institutions and respect for civil liberties, but Aquino's administration was also viewed as weak and fractious, and a return to full political stability and economic development was hampered by several attempted coups staged by disaffected members of the Philippine military.

Halfway through her second term, Arroyo unsuccessfully attempted to push for an overhaul of the constitution to transform the present presidential-bicameral republic into a federal parliamentary-unicameral form of government, which critics describe would be a move that would allow her to stay in power as Prime Minister.

[473] When US President Barack Obama visited the Philippines on April 28, 2014, Aquino signed the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, facilitating the return of United States Armed Forces bases into the country.

[478][479] On January 25, 2015, 44 members of the Philippine National Police-Special Action Force (PNP-SAF) were killed during an encounter between MILF and BIFF in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, leading to a delay in the passage of the Bangsamoro Basic Law.

[491] Later that November, president Ferdinand Marcos' remains were buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani (the country's official cemetery for heroes) after the Supreme Court of the Philippines ruled in favor of the burial, provoking protests from various groups.

Duterte also signed into law the Universal Health Care Act, the creation of the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development, establishing a national cancer control program, and allowing subscribers to keep their mobile numbers for life.