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In early Philippine history, barangay is the term historically used by scholars to describe the complex sociopolitical units that were the dominant organizational pattern among the various Filipinos of the Philippine archipelago , . in the period immediately before the arrival of European colonizers. Academics refer to these settlements using the technical term "polity", but they are usually simply called "barangays".
Some barangays were well-organized independent villages, consisting of thirty to a hundred households. Other barangays — most notably those in Maynila, Tondo, Madja-as,"También fundó convento el Padre Fray Martin de Rada en Araut – que ahora se llama el convento de Dumangas – con la advocación de nuestro Padre San Agustín...Está fundado este pueblo casi a los fines del río de Halaur, que naciendo en unos altos montes en el centro de esta isla (Panay)...Es el pueblo muy hermoso, ameno y muy lleno de palmares de cocos. Antiguamente era el emporio y corte de la más lucida nobility de toda aquella isla."de SAN AGUSTIN OSA (1650–1724), Fr Gaspár; DIAZ OSA, Fr Casimiro (1698). Conquistas de las Islas Philipinas. Parte primera : la temporal, por las armas del señor don Phelipe Segundo el Prudente, y la espiritual, por los religiosos del Orden de Nuestro Padre San Augustin; fundacion y progreso de su Provincia del Santissimo Nombre de Jesus (in Spanish). Madrid: Imprenta de Manuel Ruiz de Murga. . OCLC 79696350. "The second part of the work, compiled by Casimiro Díaz Toledano from the manuscript left by Gaspár de San Agustín, was not published until 1890 under the title: Conquistas de las Islas Filipinas, Parte segunda", pp. 374-376. Caboloan, Caboloan, Cebu, Bohol, Butuan, Cotabato, and Sulu — were large cosmopolitan polities.
The term originally referred to both a house on land and a boat on water, containing families, friends and dependents.During the early part of the Spanish colonization of the Philippines the Spanish Augustinian Friar, Gaspar de San Agustín, O.S.A., describes Iloilo and Panay as one of the most populated islands in the archipelago and the most fertile of all the islands of the Philippines. He also talks about Iloilo, particularly the ancient settlement of Halaur, as site of a progressive trading post and a court of illustrious nobilities. The friar says: Es la isla de Panay muy parecida a la de Sicilia, así por su forma triangular come por su fertilidad y abundancia de bastimentos... Es la isla más poblada, después de Manila y Mindanao, y una de las mayores, por bojear más de cien leguas. En fertilidad y abundancia es en todas la primera... El otro corre al oeste con el nombre de Alaguer Halaur, desembocando en el mar a dos leguas de distancia de Dumangas...Es el pueblo muy hermoso, ameno y muy lleno de palmares de cocos. Antiguamente era el emporio y corte de la más lucida nobility de toda aquella isla...Mamuel Merino, O.S.A., ed., Conquistas de las Islas Filipinas (1565-1615), Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1975, pp. 374-376.
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. 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."Barangay
Some scholars such as Damon Woods, however, have recently challenged the use of the term barangay to describe the Philippines' various indigenous polities, citing a lack of linguistic evidence and the fact that all of the primary references suggesting that use of the term can be traced to just a single source - Juan de Plascencia's 1589 report Las costumbres de los indios Tagalos de Filipinas. Instead, Woods argues that this use of the term barangay reflected what was merely an attempt by the Spanish to reconstructing pre-conquest Tagalog society.
The term has since been adapted as the name of the basic political unit of the Philippines. So historical barangays should not be confused with present-day Philippine , which were officially renamed by the Philippine Local Government Code of 1991 as a reference to historical barangays.
Noting the mobile and maritime nature of Austronesian culture, these ancient barangays were coastal or riverine in nature. This was because most of the people relied on fishing for their supply of protein and livelihoods. They also travelled mostly by water up and down rivers, and along the coasts.
Trails always followed river systems, which were also a major source of water for bathing, washing, and drinking. Early chroniclers record that the name evolved from the term balangay, which refers to a plank boat widely used by various cultures of the Philippine archipelago prior to the arrival of European colonizers; in essence a barangay is a ship or a fleet of ships and also a house or a settlement.
The coastal villages were more accessible to trade with foreigners. These were ideal places for economic activity to develop. Business with traders from other Countries also meant contact with other cultures and civilizations, such as those of Japanese people, Han Chinese, India, and Arabs. The Cultural Influences of India, China, Arabia, and Japan
In time, these coastal communities acquired more advanced cultures, with developed social structures (sovereign principalities), ruled by established royalties and nobilities.For more information about the social system of the Indigenous Philippine society before the Spanish colonization confer Barangay in Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada Europea-Americana, Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, S. A., 1991, Vol. VII, p.624. The article also says: "Los nobles de un barangay eran los más ricos ó los más fuertes, formándose por este sistema los datu ó lord, prince á quienes heredaban los hijos mayores, las hijas á falta de éstos, ó los parientes más próximos si no tenían descendencia directa; pero siempre teniendo en cuenta las condiciones de fuerza ó de dinero...Los vassalos plebeyos tenían que remar en los barcos del lord, cultivar sus campos y pelear en la guerra. Los siervos, que formaban el término medio entre los esclavos y los hombres libres, podían tener propriedad individual, mujer, campos, casa y esclavos; pero los tagalos debían pagar una cantidad en polvo de oro equivalente á una parte de sus cosechas, los de los barangayes bisayas estaban obligados á trabajar en las tieras del señor cinco días al mes, pagarle un tributo anual en arroz y hacerle un presente en las fiestas. Durante la dominación española, el cacique, jefe de un barangay, ejercía funciones judiciales y administrativas. A los tres años tenía el tratamiento de don y se reconocía capacidad para ser gobernadorcillo, con facultades para nombrarse un auxiliar llamado primogenito, siendo hereditario el cargo de jefe." It should also be noted that the more popular and official term used to refer to the leaders of the district or to the cacique during the Spanish period was Cabeza de Barangay.
Grace Odal-Devora traces the etymology of the term bayan to the word bahayan, meaning a "community", or literally "a place with many households ( bahay)." The majority of these early "bayan" were economically complex communities situated river deltas where rivers exit out into the ocean, and featured a compact community layout which distinguished them from inland communities, thus the name.
Odal-Devors notes that bayan's root word, Ba-y or Ba-i, is linguistically related to other Philippine words for shoreline and perimeter (both baybay), woman ( babai or the Visayan term ba-i "great lady"), friend (the Visayan term bay), and writing ( baybayin). She also notes that these terms are the basis for many place-names in the Philippines, such as Bay, Laguna and Laguna de Bay, and Baybay.
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. Among the most significant of these dictionaries was the Vocabulario de la lengua tagala by the Augustinian missionary Fray Pedro de San Buenaventura, who described it as a large town with four to ten datu lived with their followers, called dulohan or barangay.
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".Another word, bansa or bangsa, is translated "nation". Among the most prominent of these bayan entities were those in Maynila, Tondo, Caboloan, Caboloan, Cebu, Bo-ol, Butuan, Cotabato, and Sulu.
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, Scott, and Junker 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:
Keifer compares this situation to similarly-structured African polities where "component units of the political structure consist of functionally and structurally equivalent segments integrated only loosely by a centralized authority dependent on the consensual delegation of power upwards (sic) through the system." Junker, expounding further on Keifer's work, notes:
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. Until that point, Spanish chroniclers continued to use the terms "king" and "kingdom" to describe the polities of Tondo and Maynila, but Goiti was surprised when Lakandula explained there was "no single king over these lands", and that the leadership of Tondo and Maynila over the Kapampangan polities did not include either territorial claim or absolute command. Antonio de Morga, in his work Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, expounds:
In communities which historically had strong political or trade connections with Indianized polities in Indonesia and Malaysia, (1984). 9789711002268, New Day Publishers. ISBN 9789711002268 the Paramount Ruler was called a rajah. Among the Subanon people of the Zamboanga Peninsula, a settlement's datus answer to a thimuay, and some thimuays are sometimes additionally referred to as thimuay labi, or as sulotan in more Islamized Subanon communities. In some other portions of the Visayas and Mindanao, there was no separate name for the most senior ruler, so the Paramount ruler was simply called a datu, although one datu was identifiable as the most senior.
The aristocratic group in these pre-colonial societies was called the datu class. Its members were presumably the descendants of the first settlers on the land or, in the case of later arrivals, of those who were at the time of migration or conquest. Some of these principalities have remained, even until the present, in unhispanizedHistorians classify four types of non-Hispanized societies in the Philippines, some of which still survive in remote and isolated parts of the Country: 1.) Classless societies; 2.) Warrior societies, characterized by a distinct warrior class, in which membership is won by personal achievement, entails privilege, duty and prescribed norms of conduct, and is requisite for community leadership; 3.) Petty Plutocracies, which are dominated socially and politically by a recognized class of rich men who attain membership through birthright, property and the performance of specified ceremonies. They are "petty" because their authority is localized, being extended by neither absentee landlordism nor territorial subjugation; 4.) Principalities. Cf. William Henry Scott, Cracks in the Parchment Curtain, Quezon City: 1998, p. 139. and mostly Islamized parts of the Philippines, in Mindanao.Cf. William Henry Scott, Cracks in the Parchment Curtain, Quezon City: 1998, pp. 127-147.
| + Social Hierarchy of Pre-colonial Polities ! width=5%, | Class ! width=5% | Title ! width=30% | Description |
| Paramount Leader of the confederacy of Barangay states. In a confederacy forged by alliances among polities, the datu would convene to choose a paramount chief from among themselves; their communal decision would be based on a datu's prowess in battle, leadership, and network of allegiances. | |||
| Datus were maginoo with personal followings (dulohan or barangay). His responsibilities include: governing his people, leading them in war, protecting them from enemies and settling disputes. He received agricultural produce and services from his people, and distributed irrigated land among his barangay with right of usufruct. | |||
| Maginoo comprised the ruling class of Tagalogs, Ginoo was both honorific for both men and women.
Panginoon were maginoo with many slaves and other valuable property like houses and boats. Lineage was emphasized over wealth; the nouveau riche were derogatorily referred to as maygintawo (fellow with a lot of riches). Members included: those who could claim noble lineage, members of the datu's family. | |||
| Sultan Powerful governor of a province within the caliphate or dynasties of Islamic regions. Their position was inherited by a direct descent in a royal bloodline who could claim the allegiances of the datu. Sultans took on foreign relations with other states, and could declare war or allow subordinate datus to declare war if need be. The sultan had his court, a prime minister ( gugu), an heir to the throne ( Yuvaraja or crown prince), a third-ranking dignitary ( Rajah Laut, or sea lord) and advisers ( pandita). | |||
| Non-slaves who can attached themselves to the Datu of their choice. They could use and bequeath a portion of barangay land.
In Luzon, their main responsibility to the datu was agricultural labor, but they could also work in fisheries, accompany expeditions, and rowboats. They could also perform irregular services, like support feasts or build houses.
In Visayas, they paid no tribute and rendered no agricultural labor. They were seafaring warriors who bound themselves to a datu. Member included: illegitimate children of Maginoo and slaves and former alipin who paid off their debts. | |||
| Warrior class of the barangay, rendered military services to the Datu and paid for their own equipment and weapons. They also received a share of the spoils. | |||
| Slaves who lived in their own houses apart from their creditor. If the alipin's debt came from insolvency or legal action, the alipin and his creditor agreed on a period of indenture and an equivalent monetary value in exchange for it. The alipin namamahay was allowed to farm a portion of barangay land, but he was required to provide a measure of threshed rice or a jar of rice wine for his master's feasts. He came whenever his master called to harvest crops, build houses, rowboats, or carry cargo.
Member included: those who have inherited debts from namamahay parents, timawa who went into debt, and former alipin saguiguilid who married and were allowed to live outside of master's house. | |||
| Slaves who lived in their creditor's house and were entirely dependent on him for food and shelter. Male alipin sagigilid who married were often raised to namamahay status, because it was more economical for his master (as opposed to supporting him and his new family under the same roof). However, female alipin sagigilid were rarely permitted to marry.
Member included: children born in creditor's house and children of parents who were too poor to raise them. |
Babaylan were highly respected members of the community, on par with the Maginoo. In the absence of the datu (head of the community), the Babaylan takes in the role of interim head of the community. Babaylans were powerful ritual specialists who were believed to have influence over the weather and tap various spirits in the natural and spiritual realms. 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. Among other powers of the babaylan were to ensure a safe pregnancy and child birth.
As a spiritual medium, babaylans also lead rituals with offerings to the various divinities or deities. As an expert in divine and herb lore, incantations, and concoctions of remedies, antidotes, and a variety of potions from various roots, leaves, and seeds, the babaylans were also regarded as allies of certain datus in subjugating an enemy, hence, the babaylans were also known for their specialization in medical and divine combat.
According to William Henry Scott a Katalonan could be of either sex, or male transvestites (bayoguin), but were usually women from prominent families who were wealthy in their own right. 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. Thus, the catalonas filled a very prestigious as well as lucrative role in society.
In the middle of the seventeenth century, the Jesuit missionary Francisco Colin made an attempt to give an approximate comparison of the social stratification in Tagalog culture with that in the Visayan culture. While social mobility was possible in the former, in the Visayas, the Datu (if had the personality and economic means) could retain and restrain competing peers, relatives, and offspring from moving up the social ladder.Cf. William Henry Scott, Cracks in the Parchment Curtain, Quezon City: 1998, p. 125.
The term Timawa came into use in the Tagalog social structure within just twenty years after the coming of the Spaniards. The term, however, was being applied to former Alipin (Third Class) who have escaped bondage by payment, favor, or flight. The Tagalog Timawas did not have the military prominence of the Visayan Timawa. The warrior class in the Tagalog society was present only in Laguna, and they were called the Maharlika Class. At the early part of the Spanish regime, the number of their members who were coming to rent land from their Datus was increasing.
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. In the Visayas, only the Oripuns were obliged to do that, and to pay tribute besides. The Tagalog who works in the Datu’s field did not pay him tribute, and could transfer their allegiance to another Datu.
The Visayan Timawa neither paid tribute nor performed agricultural labor. In this sense, they were truly aristocrats. The Tagalog Maharlika did not only work in his Datu’s field, but could also be required to pay his own rent. Thus, all non- Maginoo in Luzon formed a common economic class in some sense, though this class had no designation.
In other parts of the Archipelago, even though the majority of these 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 Project Gutenberg EBook of History of the Philippine Islands, Vols. 1 and 2, Chapter VIII.
This social order was divided into three classes. The members of the tumao class (which includes the datu) were the nobility of pure royal descent, compared by the Boxer Codex to the titled Spanish ( señores de titulo). 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).
Aside from this, the timawa also paid taxes and tribute ( buwis or handug) and were sometimes called upon for agricultural labor to the datu, though the personal vassals of the datu may be exempt from such obligations (the latter were characterized by the Boxer Codex as "knights and hidalgos). Below the timawa were the oripun class (commoners and slaves), who rendered services to the tumao and timawa for debts or favors.William Henry Scott, Cracks in the Parchment Curtain, Quezon City: 1998, pp. 112- 118.
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. Meanwhile, the datu keep their marriageable daughters secluded for protection and prestige.http://journals.upd.edu.ph/index.php/pssr/article/viewFile/1274/1630 Seclusion and Veiling of Women: A Historical and Cultural Approach These well-guarded and protected highborn women were called binokot (literally "veiled" or "swaddled"), and the datu of pure descent (at least for four generations) were called potli nga datu or lubus nga datu.William Henry Scott, Cracks in the Parchment Curtain, Quezon City: 1998, p. 113.
The more complex social structure of the Tagalogs was less stable during the arrival of the Spaniards because it was still in a process of differentiating. 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 term datu or lakan, or apo refers to the chief, but the noble class to which the datu belonged to was known as the maginoo class. Any male member of the maginoo class can become a datu by personal achievement.Cf. William Henry Scott, Cracks in the Parchment Curtain, Quezon City: 1998, p. 125.
The term timawa referring to freemen came into use in the social structure of the Tagalogs within just twenty years after the coming of the Spaniards. The term, however, was being incorrectly applied to former alipin (commoner and slave class) who have escaped bondage by payment, favor, or flight. Moreover, the Tagalog timawa did not have the military prominence of the Visayan timawa. The equivalent warrior class in the Tagalog society was present only in Laguna, and they were known as the maharlika class.
At the bottom of the social hierarchy are the members of the alipin class. There are two main subclasses of the alipin class. The aliping namamahay who owned their own houses and served their masters by paying tribute or working on their fields were the commoners and , while the aliping sa gigilid who lived in their masters' houses were the servants and slaves.
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 most glaring difference would be that the modern entity represents a geographical entity, the pre-colonial barangays represented loyalty to a particular head (datu).
Even during the early days of Spanish rule, it was not unusual for people living beside each other to actually belong to different barangays. They owed their loyalty to different datus. Also, while the modern barangay represents only the smallest administrative unit of government, the barangay of precolonial times was either independent, or belonged to what was only a loose confederation of several barangays, over which the rulers picked among themselves who would be foremost - known as the Pangulo or Rajah.
In most cases, his function was to make decisions which would involve multiple barangays, such as disputes between members of two different barangays. Internally, each datu retained his jurisdiction.
The term was originally coined by Benedict AndersonBenedict Anderson, ' Cacique Democracy in the Philippines: Origins and Dreams', New Left Review, I (169), May–June 1988 from the Taíno word Cacique and its modern derivative "caciquismo" (sometimes translated as "Bossism"),Robert Kern, The caciques: oligarchical politics and the system of caciquismo in the Luso-Hispanic world. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press 1973 which refers to a political boss or leader who exercises significant power in a political system.
This model has been applied to the historical polities of Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia which traded extensively with various Bayan polities in the Philippines. However, Southeast Asian historians such as Jocano, Scott, and Osbourne are careful to note that the Philippines and Vietnam were outside of greater India, and that the Philippines instead received an indirect Indian cultural influence through their relations with the Majapahit empire.
Philippine historiographers thus do not apply the term "Mandala" to describe early Philippine polities because doing so overemphasizes the scale of Indian influence on Philippine culture, obscuring the indigenous Austronesian cultural connections to the peoples of Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia.
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