Moro Wars

Spanish possessions in the Philippines came down to only a few small settlements. The territorial boundaries of the lands controlled by the Spanish authorities included the northern and central regions, while the southern islands inhabited by the Moro retained independence. (in the literature on the Philippines, such a collective name of these territories as Moroland is sometimes used, in the old Russian sources the name Moroland was found ). The largest Islamic states of the Philippines were the Sultanates of Sulu and Magindanao . Muslims raided the coastal Christianized areas of Visayas and South Luzon, and the Spaniards retaliated on expeditions to Mindanao and Sulu. Military actions were interspersed with diplomatic ones, culminating in the conclusion of fragile and short peace treaties and agreements.

Sultan Kudrat, who ruled in Magindanao, managed to unite the entire island of Mindanao under his authority in the 1630s and 1640s, banned the activities of Catholic missionaries in Muslim territories, and in 1646 signed a peace treaty with the Spaniards, which for a long time provided a relatively calm situation in the border Muslim and Christian areas of the archipelago.

The world was disrupted with the restoration by the Spaniards in 1718 of a fort in Zamboanga in northern Mindanao. The Moro military operations regularly carried out in the 1720-1760s, which tried to oust the Spaniards from Zamboanga, were generally unsuccessful, but the Spaniards' attempts to gain a foothold in the inner regions of Mindanao and to capture Sula also ended to no avail.

A new complication of the situation in the Muslim south was caused by English penetration into this region. In 1761, A. Dalrymple, Secretary of the Madras Council of the British East India Company , arrived in Holo and signed a friendship and trade agreement with the Sultan of Sulu. In 1762, he secured the transfer to the British of the island of Balabangan, which became the backbone of English trade with China. After the capture of Manila, the British supported the Suluan Sultan Alimuddin I, who was there as a hostage, organizing his return to his homeland in 1764 in response to his approval of all the agreements signed earlier by the rulers of Sulu with the East India Company. In the 1830s, British agents began to create in the capital of Sulu a strong pro-English group of local feudal lords.

In 1843, French agents entered into a trade agreement with the Sultan of Sulu. The following year, the Samalis from Basilan Island attacked a French ship, killed an officer and captured the sailors as hostages. Ignoring the protests of the Spanish governor of Zamboanga, the French military squadron blocked the island of Basilan. In 1845, the representative of France in China obtained the consent of the Sultan Sultan to sell Basilan to the French, but this deal was not approved by the French government, which avoided being drawn into an open confrontation with Spain.

This episode seriously alarmed the Spaniards and served as an impetus to the beginning of an active policy to conquer the Muslim south. In 1846-1848, the Spaniards organized an expedition to conquer the Balanginga Islands. After the arrival in 1848 of three steam ships from the mother country that blocked the central island of this island group, the resistance of the warlike samalas was broken. Samalis were almost completely destroyed, their fortresses and villages were destroyed, several thousand coconut palms were cut down.

The defeat of Samalov worsened the relations of the Spaniards with Sulu, where the pro-English group intensified. In 1849, Raja Sarawak and the British consul James Brooke signed an agreement with the Sultan of Sulu, according to which the British received the right of free entry, settlement, acquisition of property in the Sultanate and the privileges of the most favored nation in trade. In order to prevent the escalation of the conflict with Spain, the treaty was not ratified by London.

Accusing the Sultan of supporting pirate raids of Samal, the Spaniards sent an expedition to Sulu. Moreau put up fierce resistance and forced the Spaniards to retreat to Zamboanga. Having strengthened the fleet with steam vessels, the Spaniards again approached the capital of the sulnatanate, winning this time a victory in a naval battle. Under the peace treaty of 1851, Sulu came under the protectorate of Spain. The British refused to recognize the treaty, and defiantly continued contacts with the Sultan as the head of an independent state.

In the 1850s, the Spaniards, having promised the Sultan of Magindanao assistance in the fight against Buyan and his own feudal lords, received a number of territories in the center of the island of Mindanao, and in 1861 they occupied one of the main cities of the sultanate - Cotabato . In the early 1860s, the Spaniards divided the occupied Muslim territories into six districts (five in Mindanao and one in Basilan), putting them under the control of the military administration.

In the late 1860s, the Suluan Sultan Jamal-ul-Azam raised a rebellion and publicly burned the Spanish flag, proclaiming the independence of the Sultanate of Sulu. The conquest of the sultanate required great efforts from Spain, and only in 1878, as a result of the concentration of great forces and tactics of merciless extermination of the population, the Spaniards managed to sign an agreement with the Sultan on the surrender and recognition of Spain’s sovereignty. In 1885, this suzerainty was recognized by Great Britain and Germany.

During the conquest of the Muslim regions of Mindanao, the Spaniards in the 1870s encountered a strong adversary in the form of the Buyan feudal lord Utto, who united the Sultanates of Buyan and Magindanao under their rule. As a result of the war of 1886-1887, Utto was forced to sign a peace treaty with the Spaniards, but retained significant independence: his possessions remained closed to colonial officials and Catholic missionaries.

In 1888-1891, Governor-General Valeriano Weiler organized an expedition against the Maranao living on the west coast of Mindanao, but the Spaniards managed to gain a foothold only in the port of Malabang . The campaign of 1894-1896 against Maranao was even less successful. With the beginning of the Philippine Revolution in 1896, the Spaniards had to transfer troops from Mindanao to Manila, without completing the conquest of the island.

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