Interpreting Political Relations in Precolonial Cotabato

How are we to characterize the political relations represented by the myth of sanctified inequality? In recent years, the most favored interpretive stance for reconstructing the precolonial polities of Southeast Asia has been to privilege local epistemologies and search self-consciously for authenticity (see, e.g., Geertz 1980; O. W. Wolters 1982; Milner 1982; Errington 1989; Bentley 1986).^[30] Proponents of this approach tend to focus interpretive attention on sacred texts, courtly ceremony, and the formal schemata of social hierarchy as crucial bases of traditional political order. These phenomena are analyzed not as instances of symbolic power relations but rather as expressions of broadly shared "structures of experience" (Milner 1982, 113) signifying that "political systems are expressions of culture" (O. W. Wokers 1982, 9).

The works cited above—and particularly those by Clifford Geertz and Shelly Errington—present evocative and finely detailed portraits of traditional Southeast Asian polities and demonstrate the value of an anthropological perspective for illuminating Southeast Asia's precolonial past. Nevertheless, their aversion to exploring linkages between political culture, material relations of domination, and the reproduction of disparities in social power raises the suspicion that they don't

provide the full picture. That impression is reinforced by the fact that these works nearly always present an exclusively elite view of traditional arrangements. What anthropologists should also be able to offer as a complement to Southeast Asian historical sources is a village-level view of the traditional social world; yet ethnography in these works is not employed to examine possibly divergent viewpoints from the peasant periphery, but relied upon only for oral description of the "exemplary center" (Geertz 1980, 11; see also Errington 1989).^[31]

The works by Milner and O. W. Wolters mentioned above share this top-down perspective and its limitations. Concern with shared "structures of experience" tends to overlook the fact that traditional nobilities and their mostly rural subjects had very different life experiences, and that, as Pierre Bourdieu reminds us, those occupying disparate economic and political positions in a social configuration tend to produce distinct "practical interpretations" of objective conditions (1977, 116). It is precisely those sorts of divergent practical interpretations that I have attempted to draw out and analyze in my own reconstruction of the precolonial social order in Cotabato.

In contrast to the emphasis on the unifying effect of shared culture found in the works just cited, various depictions of political relations in the precolonial sultanates of the Philippines have emphasized material remuneration and dyadic negotiation between leaders and followers as the principal bases for political adherence (see, e.g., Mednick 1974; Gowing 1979; W. H. Scott 1982). The writers of these works have been tempted to view precolonial political relations through the same "dyadic alliance" (Lande 1965) lens so prominently utilized to analyze contemporary political activity in the Philippines (see, e.g., Lande 1965; Lynch 1984; Hollnsteiner 1963). Exclusive attention to "rational actors" and personalized relationships obscures the profoundly constraining effect of political-economic structures on the negotiation of vertical dyadic ties.^[32] As we shall see, the larger political context in precolonial Cotabato—one marked by armed coercion and legal insecurity—diminished much of the negotiating advantage of subordinates, despite the fact that land was plentiful and followers were a relatively scarce, and thus highly valued, resource.

William Henry Scott (1982) characterizes the tacit agreements binding datus and subordinates in the Philippine sultanates as follows:

The datu's power stems from the willingness of his followers to render him respect and material support, to accept and implement his decisions, and to obey and enforce his orders, and is limited by the consensus of his

peers. Followers give their support in response to his ability and willingness to use his power on their behalf, to make material gifts or loans in time of crisis, and to provide legal or police protection and support against opponents. . . . Failure to discharge such duties may result in the quiet withdrawal of cooperation and support, so that autocratic behavior on the part of any datu is the result rather than the cause of subservience on the part of others. (W. H. Scott 1982, 139–40)

Scott's depiction of the sultanates as virtual free markets for the negotiation of political linkages between individual datus and followers is not well-supported by the evidence from Cotabato and elsewhere.

Relations of subjection in the Philippine sultanates exemplify what Orlando Patterson (1982, 18) has termed the "personalistic idiom" of power. In such social settings power relations are humanized, often employing the principle of kinship, but not mystified. Domination is direct and discernible. "No dependent in such societies ever loses sight of the stark and obvious fact that he or she is directly dependent on a more powerful party" (Patterson 1982, 19).

In the Philippine sultanates, as elsewhere in such systems, dependency was often euphemized as the receipt of protection. An alternate term for Magindanaon "endatuan" (one who is ruled) was "sakup," meaning one who is protected. While commoners had a genuine need for protection, the search for a powerful datu protector was driven less by the benefits to be gained from dependency than by the hazards associated with freedom from it. The social context for the protection offered by datus is outlined in Charles Wilkes's 1842 depiction of the predicament of subordinates in the Sulu Sultanate:

the untitled freemen . . . are at all times the prey of the hereditary datus, even those who hold no official status. By all accounts these constitute a large proportion of the population, and it being treason for any low-born freeman to injure or maltreat a datu, the latter, who are of a haughty, overbearing, and tyrannical disposition, seldom keep themselves within bounds in their treatment of their inferiors. The consequence is that some lower class of freemen are obliged to put themselves under the protection of some particular datu, who guards them from the encroachment of others. The chief to whom they thus attach themselves is induced to treat them well in order to retain their services, and attach them to his person, that he may, in case of need, be enabled to defend himself from depredations, and the violence of his neighbors. (Wilkes 1842 quoted in Mednick 1974, 21)

Wilkes's observation indicates that some of the commoners compelled to bind themselves to a datu for their own defense might be utilized to

protect that datu against his enemies. Similar arrangements pertained in the Cotabato sultanates, according to my Magindanaon consultants. Although the officers of the armed forces of a datu or sultan were usually members of the nobility, the soldiers were principally drawn from the endatuan. In an unpublished paper, Muhammad Adil, who holds the title of "Sultan of Kutawatu," describes the traditional protective relationship this way: "Usually the nucleus of an 'inged' is the house of the ruler who in the early days was both ruler and protector but later on, when the caste system was fully developed, was only a ruler, protected and defended by the people" (Adil 1955).

Another benefit cited by W. H. Scott is the datu's redistribution of food or goods in the form of gifts or loans in times of crisis. None of my elder Magindanaon consultants could recall accounts of datus redistributing food in periods of shortage, although all could remember the details of tribute collection and some remembered stories of droughts, epidemics, or other natural calamities so severe that families were forced to sell their children.^[33]

I heard only one story, told by Hadji Abbas, of gifts provided to followers by datus, and those coincided with debts incurred to other followers: "In previous times in our inged the datu would sometimes donate the remainder of the bantingan [bridewealth] of young men who were unable to raise the entire amount. However, he never actually paid any money to the family of the bride but only promised it as a debt owed by him."

The most frequent service performed by datus, according to W. H. Scott, was adjudication and the provision of legal protection. Adjudication was the principal official function of Magindanaon datus, but, according to published sources and Magindanaon memories, it was almost always performed for immediate compensation and very rarely conducted impartially.^[34]

The Cotabato sultanates employed a set of written legal codes known as the Luwaran ("selection"). The Luwaran consisted of selections from the Shafi'i school of Islamic law combined with customary (adat ) law. Saleeby (1905), who first translated these codes into English, estimated that the Luwaran was compiled in the mid-eighteenth century. He also had the following to say about Magindanaon jurisprudence: "The Moros are not strict nor just in the execution of the law. The laws relating to murder, adultery, and inheritance are seldom strictly complied with . . . [and] Moro law is not applied equally to all classes. Great preference is shown to the datu class" (1905, 66).

Stories told me by various Magindanaon elders tend to concur with this assessment. After detailing the various customary fines assessed by a datu for murder or adultery, Hadji Abbas related with some hesitation the "real situation" in his inged in former times: "The elders [mga lukes ] told secret stories of the datu in our place. He was one of the highest officials of the Sultan of Magindanao. That datu was very harsh with the common people but he showed great leniency when passing judgment on his relatives, some of whom were notorious rustlers of water buffalo. Those water buffalo often found their way to the land of the datu. I was also told that troublesome wives brought to the datu by their husbands for judgment were sometimes raped by the datu or his men."

Datu Adil, in detailing the misdeeds of "bad" datus provided similar stories. According to him, the justice administered by these datus was inequitable and their fines oppressive. He also recalled stories of datus raping young unmarried women accused of unlawful (usually premarital) sexual activity or elopement. A young man caught thus would be fined for seduction and elopement. The punishment prescribed in the Luwaran is one hundred lashes each for the man and woman and mandatory marriage (Saleeby 1905, 71, article XL). These accounts suggest that partiality and inequity may have been the rule rather than the exception in datu adjudication.^[35]

Finally, Scott suggests that followers were able to withdraw support from datus who failed to discharge their obligations. Mednick concurs when remarking that "about the only choice a freeman seems to have had was the right to attach himself to a leader and to abandon him if he chose" (1974, 21). Other evidence indicates that even this choice was very narrowly constrained. It seems likely that the open competition among datus for followers both moderated the behavior of datus toward their followers and encouraged followers to look for better arrangements if unsatisfied with their present situation. All the same, the actual ability of followers to change leaders was probably severely limited. Both leaving one's current datu and joining another were risky undertakings because of the advantages and interests held by datus collectively. A datu could convert his follower into a debt-bondsman (ulipun) practically at will and without warning; and, because all notable datus had debt-slaves, members of the ruling class respected each other's property rights in acquired persons and tended to honor requests for the return of escaped debt-bondsmen (Ileto 1971; Gullick 1958). Followers were undoubtedly aware of these possibilities and

presumably avoided behavior (including obvious dissatisfaction with their situation) that would raise the suspicions of the datu or his lieutenants as to their constancy. That followers occasionally deserted their datus for new ones is certain. Nevertheless, switching datus was not nearly as commonplace and unproblematic as envisioned by W. H. Scott. The exchange of one leader for another probably occurred most commonly en masse, under conditions where a datu was so severely weakened that followers were certain he could neither protect them against other datus nor retaliate against them if they abandoned him.

Alternative Sources of Political Control

It is worth noting that in both historical accounts and oral traditions of precolonial politics, the most consistent theme concerns the notably autocratic and arbitrary nature of traditional rule. Dampier (1906) explains the "laziness" of seventeenth-century Magindanaons by suggesting that it ". . . seems to proceed not, so much from their natural Inclinations, as from the severity of their Prince of whom they stand in awe: For he dealing with them very arbitrarily, and taking from them what they get, this damps their Industry, so they never strive to have anything but from Hand to Mouth" (1906, 334).

Dampier provides several examples, including one of the Sultan's ploys to extort money from subjects: "Sometimes he will send to sell one thing or another that he hath to dispose of, to such whom he knows to have Money, and they must buy it, and give him his price; and if afterward he hath occasion for the same thing, he must have it if he sends for it" (1906, 342).^[36] Thomas Forrest, in his 1775 journal of his visit to Cotabato, also notes the capriciousness of the Magindanao sultan (Forrest 1969, 278).^[37] Both Dampier (1906, 370) and Forrest (1969, 289, 291) describe swift and harsh punishments for disobedient followers.

Oral traditions primarily concern Datu Utu, the nineteenth-century Sultan of Buayan. Ordinary Muslims continue to tell stories of Datu Utu as the man who reduced recalcitrant followers to "human ducks" (itik a tau ) by crushing their knees and depositing them to live in the mud beneath his house.^[38] Beckett also reports folk memories depicting Utu as a "monster" (1982, 399) and remarks that he held his dominion together by terror; yet the many examples of the severity of traditional rule suggest that Datu Utu's tyranny was exceptional only in its heinousness.

Those examples also suggest that, while datus might rely upon endatuan to defend against external threats, a local ruler's control of the means of destruction was a fundamentally important mechanism for dominating followers and suppressing dissent. Datu Adil (1955) describes political relations within a typical inged in precolonial Cotabato: "To express one's opinion unasked on any question invites not only dire consequences but almost certain condemnation or even death. One who expresses his opinion, especially if in protest against any despotic act of the ruling tyrant usually brings death upon the hapless one and slavery to his family. In extreme cases the offending subject may be publicly executed to give an example to the whole people. If however, he is a member of the ruling family or the 'barabangsa' class, he may only be banished from the kingdom."^[39]

All ruling datus maintained core groups of armed retainers. At least two paramount officeholders in precolonial Cotabato (Forrest 1969; Ileto 1971) possessed personal retinues of thirty or more armed warriors composed entirely of banyaga slaves. These troops—the Southeast Asian equivalent of Ottoman janissaries—were fed, clothed, and provided with wives by the officeholders.^[40] They formed a force of trusted and privileged soldiers whose reliability derived from their status as outsiders with no rights or relatives within Magindanaon society.

There was an additional social factor, noted by Beckett (1982), that may have significantly promoted compliance to datu rule. That was the fact that, in general, the most exploited groups in precolonial Cotabato lived, or originated from, outside Magindanaon society. These were the upland client groups such as the Tiruray and the banyaga slaves acquired from Christian settlements and the more distant highlands. Beckett (1982, 398) implies that the existence of exploitable external groups functioned as an indirect form of remuneration, whereby the commoner followers of a powerful datu were able to share in the tribute, plunder, or captives taken from outsiders. Followers undoubtedly gained some direct or indirect material benefits from the exploitation of outsiders, but the way in which that exploitation functioned to foster the compliance of commoners may have been as much psychological as material.

The evidence for the material benefits to commoners from tribute and captives seized abroad is lacking. Although commoners were legally able to own slaves there are no historical records to indicate what percentage of them actually did. Neither is it known to what extent commoners shared in plunder or tribute (although in the case of

tribute it is highly unlikely that they partook at all). Furthermore, it is important to remember that the boundary that separated commoners from chattel slaves was a status divide and not one of class. Multiple commentators on the Philippine sultanates have pointed out that the material conditions of life for banyaga slaves were not appreciably worse, and were in some cases better (the banyaga bodyguards of the sultan are a case in point), than for the average commoner (Ileto 1971; Mednick 1974; Warren 1981). The presence of disdained aliens may have worked to sustain the stratification system largely through its psychological effect on subordinates, who were inclined to draw the most meaningful social dividing line below rather than above themselves and identify with insider Muslims as opposed to outsider pagans and Christians.