Enalisan, Chloe Jo S.

Bachelor of Arts in English

Kasaysayan 1

Professor Emmanuel S. Nabayra

SPANISH- MORO CONFLICT

Photo: Maguindanao datu, Rio Grande de Mindanao, 1900

The Europeans are eager to gain steps in the Southeast Asia, for the supply of

spices and the will to spread Christianity all over the area which was the dominant faith/

belief in Europe. Because Muslims occupied most of the land of Spain for 800 years,

the Spaniards wanted to get rid of Muslims whom they call Moros out the land they

conquer, because they hate the Moros. This hatred resulted to a war, greater demand

of power and greed of lands and status which resulted to the Spanish- Moro conflict.
The Spanish have driven out the Muslim conquerors across Gibaltar strait to Morroco in

North Africa on 1490’s. They wanted to convert the Muslims to Christianity and to shove

to the faces of the Muslims that Spain is on the top; that’s why they lasted in the

Philippines for 300 years with not much achievement; they gave the name “Moro” to the

Muslim inhabitants in the the Southern Pilippines (Nabayra, 2019).

The hatred to Moros were carried out unto the Pilippines by the Spanish which

was rooted in the Crusades. The army officer Luis de la torre wrote the Governor

General “ “The Moro race is completely antithetic to the Spanish … and will ever be our

eternal enemy. … They should know that we are stronger, that our friendship suits their

interests because we are backed by force—which is the only argument they can

understand … [and] that the instant they antagonize us, they will be promptly and

severely punished.” This tells that the Spanish are eager to conquer the Moro’s to raise

their power and status and if the Moro’s won’t do as they please, they will be punished

or worse, killed (Peter Gowing, 1979)

“We have no scruple in affirming … that the principal obstacle in the way

of the reduction and civilization of Mindanao and Jolo is the Moro.” ( Rev. Pio Pi, 1903)

written in an article which appeared in Gen. George W. Davis’ 1903 annual report on

the Philippines. Pi describes the Moro as ungrateful, treacherous, and boastfu l

although they are "miserable, poor and needy." They were seen as cruel and violent

savages that dwells in land and sea.

ignorance of the Philippine Moro extended to their own religion. “[The Moro] have … a

blind and ever-living hatred of all things Christian, whether Catholic, schismatical, or

Protestant; and this one thing they know for certain: that Mohammed commanded a

holy war without tract or termination upon Christians who, according to their idea, are

infidels (or capir); and they believe that it is a meritorious thing to rob, and that to gain

heaven it is sufficient to kill the Christians.”

Although he claimed that “the Moros have been the only but constant and

tenacious enemies of the civilization brought here by Spain,” the Jesuit priest argued

against exterminating the Muslim people, as he saw this to be unjust, difficult, and

expensive. However, he urged the American colonial government to do all that it could

to subjugate the Moro, free other “infidels” from Moro slavery, and ensure the Catholic

evangelization of “Moroland.”

The scholar Thomas McKenna, however, contests the notion that this sense of

“Morohood” did drive a long and broad-based armed resistance, or that this “self-

conscious oppositional identity as Philippine Muslims is ancient, deep, and broadly

a cold war consisting of extended periods of mostly peaceful coexistence with the

Spanish colonial intruders in the North coinciding with intersultanate rivalry in the

South.” As shown by, among others, the 1719 peace agreement between Spain and

Maguindanao, sultans did ask the Spaniards for help in their wars with other sultanates.

Nor was Mindanao truly isolated from the nation: for most of the period of Spanish

colonization, Cotabato enjoyed trading beeswax and Chinese goods with imperial

Manila.

The Spanish Expedition to Borneo, also known locally as the Castillian War was

a military conflict between Brunei and Spain in 1578. It is a war between the Christian

Spaniards and the newly Christianized Non-Muslim Visayans of the Kedatuan of Madja-

as and Rajahnate of Cebu, plus the Rajahnnate of Butuan who were from northern

Mindanao with the remnants of the Kedatuan of Dapitan which had beforehand waged

war against the Sultanate of Sulu and the Kingdom of Maynila who were Muslim

Bruneians united with the force against the Moros and for their own benefits. The

Spanish and Visayan allies attacked the capital of Brunei, Kota Balu. During 1598 of

March, the expedition commanded by De Sande with his Spanish Fleet was involved by

400 Spaniards, Filipino Natives which counts to 1500, and Borneans which counts to

300 people. Furthermore, the war was single of many, which additionally incorporated

action in Mindanao along with Sulu (Nabayra, 2019).

Sultan Saiful Rijal to ask permission to spread the Christianity on Brunei yet wants to

end Islam in the Philippines. The sultan opposes this thus the Spanish wants to rage

war. Both Pengiran Seri Lena and Pengiran Seri Rana joined the plan against the

Sultan of Brunei and made a deal with the Spanish that if they win conquering Brunei,

Seri Lena would be the Sultan and Seri Ratna will be the new Bendahara which later in

1978 on March, the expedition started. (Nabayra, 2019).

The Spanish suceeded that made the Sultan of Brunei flee to Jerudong where

they planed to get rid of the Spanish army out of Brunei. However, the spanish fled

when an epedemic build up- cholera or dysentery which killed most of the armies. This

made them flee to Manila on June 26, 1578, 72 days after. However, before that, they

burned the mosque which had a 5 tier roof, a high structured building. Seri Lena died of

sickness in 1578 and her daughter went with the Spanish and married a Christian man

of Tondo named Agustin de Legaspi which later on, had children in the Philippines.

(Nabayra, 2019).

This event proved that the Philippines already encounters a problem between the

classification of men and their beliefs and religions. Before the Spanish came, no

dominations or other invasion that happened with the use of violence. It was them that

first showed the violence to these diverse types of people.

the Spanish warriors have conquered the Northern Taiwan and the Ternate in

Indonesia. The Moros of the Sultanates of Maguindanao, Lanao, Sulu wage several

wars with the Spanish over a hundred of years ago in the Spanish- Moro conflict. Not

until the 19th century succeed in defeating the Sulu Sultanate and to take under nominal

suzerainty the Mindanao (Nabayra, 2019).

The war of the Spanish with the Muslims in Southeast Asia was considered by

the Spanish as an extension of their Reconquista. Reconquista is

in medieval Spain and Portugal, a series of campaigns by Christian states to recapture

territory from the Muslims (Moors) of the Umayyad Caliphate, who had occupied most of

the Iberian Peninsula in the early 8th century. (Nabayra, 2019).The Moros(Muslims)

were a people with a tradition of fighting called “juramentados” by the Spanish, battling

Spanish invaders to the death. The expeditions of the Spanish into the Philippines were

also a part of a larger Ibero-Islamic world conflict that consisted a rivalry with the

Ottoman Caliphate which had a center of operations at the Sultanate of Aceh, its nearby

vassal (Nabayra, 2019).