Military history of the Philippines
Negritos were among the archipelago's earliest inhabitants, descendants of the first human migrations out of Africa via the coastal route along southern Asia to the now sunken landmasses of Sundaland and Sahul area around 48,000 to 5000 BC.
[5] By 1000 BC, the inhabitants of the Philippine archipelago had developed into four distinct kinds of peoples: tribal groups, such as the Aetas, 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 such as the Tagalogs, Visayans, Taūsugs, Maranaos and the Maguindanaons that grew along rivers and seashores while participating in trans-island maritime trade.
[7][8] Archaeological findings dating from prehistoric eras have discovered a variety of stone and metal weaponry, such as axes, arrows and spearheads.
[citation needed] By the 800s, British Historian Robert Nicholl citing Arab chronicler Al Ya'akubi, had written that on those years, the kingdoms of Muja (Then Pagan Brunei/Vijayapura) and Mayd (Ma-i) waged war against the Chinese Empire.
[9]: 38 In the aftermath of the Indian Chola invasion of Srivijaya (1025 AD), Datu Puti led some dissident datus from Borneo (including present day Brunei which then was the location of the Vijayapura state which was a local colony of the Hindu-Buddhist Srivijaya empire)[10] and Sumatra in a rebellion against Rajah Makatunao, who was a Chola-appointed local rajah.
This oral legend of ancient Hiligaynons rebelling against Rajah Makatunao have corroboration in Chinese records during the Song dynasty when Chinese scholars recorded that the ruler during a February 1082 AD diplomatic meeting, was Seri Maharaja, and his descendant was Rajah Makatunao and was together with Sang Aji (grandfather to Sultan Muhammad Shah).
The Bornean warriors Labaodungon and Paybare, after learning of this injustice from their father-in-law Paiburong, sailed to Odtojan in Borneo where Makatunaw ruled.
Using local soldiers recruited from the Philippines as well as fellow pioneers, the warriors sacked the city, killed Makatunaw and his family, retrieved the stolen properties of the 10 datus, enslaved the remaining population of Odtojan, and sailed back to Panay.
[18] Antecedent to these raids, sometime between A.D. 1174 and 1190, a traveling Chinese government bureaucrat Chau Ju-Kua reported that a certain group of "ferocious raiders of China's Fukien coast" which he called the "Pi-sho-ye", believed to have lived on the southern part of Formosa.
[19] In A.D. 1273, another work written by Ma Tuan Lin, which came to the knowledge of non-Chinese readers through a translation made by the Marquis D'Hervey de Saint-Denys, gave reference to the Pi-sho-ye raiders, thought to have originated from the southern portion of Formosa.
Furthermore, the Sulus counter-invaded deep into Majapahit held East Kalimantan and North Kalimantan[25] During the early 1400s, Rajamuda Sri Lumay, a Chola dynasty prince who rebelled against the Cholas and sided with his Malay subjects established an independent Tamil-Malay Indianized kingdom in Cebu called the Rajahnate of Cebu, he established his country by waging scorched earth tactics against raiders from Mindanao.
Prince Ache could not accept this and thus left Maynila with some of his father's trusted men, to go to his "grandfather", the Sultan of Brunei, to ask for assistance.
In 1521, Prince Ache was coming fresh from a military victory at the helm of the Bruneian navy and was supposedly on his way back to Maynila with the intent of confronting his cousin when he came upon and attacked the remnants of the Magellan expedition, then under the command of Sebastian Elcano.
The Battle of Mactan on April 27, 1521, is celebrated as the earliest reported resistance [dubious – discuss] of the natives in the Philippines against western invaders.
Lapu-Lapu, a Chieftain of Mactan Island, defeated Christian European explorers led by the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan.
Suitably impressed by Spanish firearms and artillery, Rajah Humabon suggested that Magellan project power to cow Lapu-Lapu, who was being belligerent against his authority.
Magellan deployed 49 armored men, less than half his crew, with crossbows and guns, but could not anchor near land because the island is surrounded by shallow coral bottoms and thus unsuitable for the Spanish galleons to get close to shore.
As the crew were fleeing to the boats, Pigafetta recorded that Magellan covered their retreat, turning at them on several occasions to make sure they were getting away, and was finally surrounded by a multitude of warriors and killed.
By 1563, before the full Spanish colonization agenda came to Bohol, the Kedatuan of Dapitan was at war with the Sultanate of Ternate, a Papuan speaking Muslim state in the Moluccas, which was also raiding the Rajahnate of Butuan.
His brother, Datu Pagbuaya, together with his people fled to Mindanao and established a new Dapitan in the northern coast of the Zamboanga peninsula and displaced its Muslim natives.
[37] One famous Lucoes is Regimo de Raja, who was appointed by the Portuguese at Malacca as Temenggung (Jawi: تمڠݢوڠ[40]) or Supreme Governor and Chief General.
The Lucoes were so commercially and militarily influential that the Portuguese soldier Joao de Barros considered them, "the most warlike and valiant of these parts.
After assuming command of Filipino forces on May 24, Aguinaldo reignited the Philippine Revolution begun in 1896 and initiated land campaigns against the Spanish colonial government.
By June 9, Aguinaldo's forces gained control of the provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Bataan, Zambales, Pampanga, Pangasinan, and Mindoro, and had laid siege to the Spanish capital in Manila.
A Philippine Constabulary organized in 1901 to deal with the remnants of the insurgent movement and gradually assumed the responsibilities of the United States Army.
The first Filipino to die in World War I was Private Tomas Mateo Claudio who served with the U.S. Army as part of the American Expeditionary Forces to Europe.
First Officer Isidro Juan Paredes of the Air Transport Auxiliary was killed on November 7, 1941, when his aircraft overshot a runway and crashed at RAF Burtonwood.
Some 10,450 Philippine Armed Forces troops were dispatched to South Vietnam and primarily supported medical and other civilian pacification projects.
Subic Bay and Clark Air Base achieved maximum functionality during the war, as well as supporting an estimated 80,000 locals in allied tertiary businesses that ranged from shoe making to prostitution.
The Philippines sent 200 medical personnel to assist coalition forces in the liberation of Kuwait from the stranglehold of Iraq then led by Saddam Hussein.
