A Tributary Mode of Production

The three main indigenous populations of the Cotabato Basin—the Magindanaon, Iranun, and Tiruray—were linked together from the earliest historic period in a single political-economic system based on the external acquisition of plunder and slave labor and the internal production of commodities for external trade. It was a system propelled by the direct extraction of surpluses from primary producers by political or military means, and the circulation of that surplus "through the transactions of commercial intermediaries" (Wolf 1982, 82), what has been called a tributary mode of production (Amin 1973; Wolf 1982).

That system comprised two principal socioeconomic categories that crosscut ethnolinguistic boundaries: tribute-takers and tribute-providers.^[2] Tribute-providers were predominantly direct producers, either freemen or slaves.^[3] Tribute-takers consisted primarily of local overlords (datus) linked with one another through intermarriage, through patronage arrangements, and by means of the ideology of nobility related in the previous chapter.

Chinese sources from the Ming period and earlier suggest that, by at least A.D. 1300, there existed in Cotabato a harbor principality engaged in substantial direct trade with China.^[4] Early Spanish accounts of Cotabato from the mid-sixteenth century are the first to report the existence of two rival power centers in the Cotabato Valley. These adjacent sultanates had areas of influence corresponding to the dialect boundaries between Tau Sa Ilud and Tau Sa Laya, with the seat of the Magindanao Sultanate in present-day Cotabato City at the mouth of the Pulangi River, and that of the Buayan Sultanate upstream near what is now Datu Piang. However, at different points in the history of their rivalry, each one was controlled for significant lengths of time by the other.

The upriver and downriver sultanates were similarly structured, and they conformed to a general sociopolitical type that has been characterized as a "segmentary state" (Southall 1965) or "contest state" (Adas 1981). They were loose confederations of local overlords, or datus. Datus formed a tribute-taking aristocracy with hereditary claims to allegiance from followers. While a ruling datu was almost always associated with a specific district, or inged,^[5] the index of relative political potency was command of people rather than control of territory. In accord with the pattern that pertained throughout precolonial Southeast Asia, where arable land was more abundant and thus less valuable than human resources (Reid 1988), the wealth of a ruling datu was secured through rights over persons rather than rights in land. The land under cultivation in a particular domain was held in usufruct by individuals, but the datu had the final right of disposition (see W. H. Scott 1982).

Datus usually held large tracts of land for their own use that were worked by slave labor. The nonslave followers (endatuan) of a datu were obliged to provide him support in the form of scheduled payments of a portion of their crops and unscheduled contributions for prestige feasts or bridewealth payments. They were also required to perform military and nonmilitary labor service. Datus used surplus wealth to support themselves and the armed followings that were the basis of their power (compare Gullick 1958). Wealth also was used as capital to engage in or finance trading or slave-raiding expeditions. Chattel slaves (banyaga), taken in raids or warfare or purchased, were a common form for storing (and investing) surplus wealth (compare W. H. Scott 1982; Warren 1981). Banyaga were exchanged as part of bridewealth payments and were also a medium of commercial exchange (Forrest (1969 [1779]).^[6] Other nonfree subjects of datus were debt-slaves (ulipun). Endatuan could be reduced to ulipun for a number of causes, the rate of reduction often being related to the availability and cost of banyaga at a given time (Warren 1981, 216). New debt-slaves were either added to a datu's personal following or put to work to produce food or provide menial services to the datu's household. Typically, a significant portion of a datu's debt-slaves were utilized as personal retinue or armed retainers and were supported by banyaga or other debt-slaves.^[7]

The Magindanaon tribute-taking elite recognized the hereditary claim of one among them to allegiance from all other members of the

aristocracy. Because of the existence of a royal (barabangsa) bloodline, the sultan was not simply a primus inter pares ruler. He was, nonetheless, a datu who, as a result of a combination of pedigree and political savvy, commanded the allegiance of other datus. That allegiance was accomplished and maintained primarily through the creation of dyadic alliances between the sultan and individual datus—arrangements commonly sealed either by his bestowal of a daughter in marriage or his marriage to a daughter of another datu. Because datus ruling ingeds were the basic components of a sultanate, the authority of a sultan was exerted not over a royal domain as such but over his datu supporters, linked together in a network of dyadic alliances.

A reigning sultan had the formal right to collect taxes and tariffs, render legal decisions, and make various administrative appointments. He did not hold a monopoly on the means of violence, and, despite his capability to apply substantial coercive force, military power was widely diffused (W. H. Scott 1982).^[8] In addition to the taxes collected by the sultan (primarily tolls on commercial river traffic) and the tribute he received in various forms from datu supporters, the sultan had his own inged and tribute-providing commoners. A significant portion of a sultan's wealth, however, probably came from his privileged access to sources of wealth external to his realm, derived from wars conducted on his enemies, slave raids on (or tribute-collecting visits to) non-Muslim neighbors, and his privileged access to trade with external powers.^[9] Much of a sultan's wealth was also held in the form of slaves, the number of which was "the most important index of prestige and power" (Ileto 1971, 50).