The Philippines is an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean consisting of over seven thousand islands. It sits on a subduction zone in the Ring of Fire, the geologic belt that surrounds the Pacific, and is the source of a great deal of the seismic activity experienced from Japan to Alaska to California. This geologic history has made the islands mineral-rich but also means the inhabitants must deal with the destructive potential of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Of the 7000 islands, only about 1000 have human habitation, and most of those are around one square mile in size. The archipelago is split into three island groups: Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao. Mindanao is the southernmost group, the Visayas are the central set, and Luzon is the northernmost, named for the largest island in the group and in the Philippines as a whole. The island of Luzon is the most populated and includes the capital of Manila. The earliest trace of Homo sapiens sapiens, the modern human, is approximately 47,000 years ago. They were preceded by earlier hominids: Homo luzonensis, named for where it was found near Luzon, is dated to approximately 134,000 years ago, and there is evidence that places Homo erectus on the islands as far back as 700,000 years ago. The ancestors of the modern native population had established themselves by around 3000 BCE, having migrated from Taiwan, other nearby islands, and the Asian mainland. They were Austronesian, meaning they belonged to a sociocultural and language group spread across Maritime Southeast Asia and reached as far west as Madagascar. Austronesian is the parent language of Malay/Indonesian, Taiwanese, Tagalog, and others spoken throughout islands in the South Pacific. Early settlements in the Philippines tended to stay along rivers and tended to be somewhat isolated by geography. Because of this, they did not develop an overarching political connection, instead maintaining communities via intermarriage and other kinship relationships. Trade between and amongst the islands and the mainland was well-established by 2000 BCE, evidenced by Philippine Jade artifacts found throughout the local area as well as metal goods produced using techniques common to India in the Philippines. These objects, along with ideas and the people who carried them, traveled via the Maritime Jade Road, a massively extensive trade network that existed for approximately three thousand years, until 1000 CE. The last fifteen hundred years of this era appear to be a time of extended peace throughout the Philippine islands and the nearby area. This is evidenced in part by the trade itself, but it is also supported by a lack of archaeological finds of human bones that show evidence of a violent death. Such evidence, however, may simply have not yet been found. Written Philippine history begins around 900 CE. The earliest document is the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, which is a record of the forgiveness of a debt. By this time, the people of the archipelago had begun to organize themselves into sociopolitical units called barangays. These are akin to a city-state and could be as small as thirty people or as large as five hundred. Some of these came together in confederacies ruled by a Paramount Leader chosen from among the rulers of the allied polities, called Datus. In areas that had greater contact with the Indian subcontinent, they called the rulers rajah; later, in areas that had adopted Islam, they were called sultans. Society within these barangays was organized by class, with the highest being the Maginoo, the ruling class, next the freemen, the Maharlika, then finally the enslaved, the Alipin, all with subcategories to specify a person’s status. The early cultures of the Philippines practiced a polytheistic animism, in which all things have a spirit that must be attended in order to maintain good fortune and avoid bad. Ancestor worship was also included in this, with the ancestors sometimes taking on the aspect of animals and vice versa. Magic and witchcraft were widely believed to have influence, and those who practiced these could be highly respected and/or greatly feared. Filipinos were introduced to Buddhism and Hinduism sometime before the ninth century CE. The archaeological record and documents found in China and India show that some Philippine barangays and islands owed tribute to the Srivijaya Empire, a powerful Indonesian Buddhist state that controlled the maritime trade in the area between the sixth and thirteenth centuries. Their influence was followed by that of the Majapahit, a Hindu-Buddhist state centered on the island of Java. Both Buddhism and Hinduism influenced the existing belief systems and culture, and influence was made easier by the language connections that seem to exist between Philippines and Indian Sanskrit. Islam first arrived in the Philippines via a missionary, Makhdum Karim, in 1380. He accompanied merchants and preached Sunni Islam to people in the Sulu Archipelago. He is also credited with building the first mosque in the Philippines. He was followed a decade later by the Indonesian Minagkabu Prince Rajah Baguinda, who also set up the Sulu sultanate. In the early fifteenth century, the Chinese Mariner Zheng He founded Chinese Muslim communities in the Philippines... This history of the Philippines is generally organized as pre- and post-colonial. Most of the information we have on the centuries leading up to the Spanish arrival is provided through the chronicles and histories of other countries, notably China. Some of these are in passing, or only noted in trade records, others stand out and a bit more of their story can be told. The oldest documented barangay is Tondo, a large polity located on the Pasig River delta in the modern Manila Bay. They were associated with the nearby Maynila, which was an independent barangay with whom they shared monopolies on trade across Southeast Asia. This trade was sufficiently important to the Chinese that under the Yongle Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, a governor was appointed to oversee it. In fact, most of the documented information we have about the Philippines in the pre-colonial era comes from records of other countries with whom the various barangay interacted. China provides the most extensive of these, but there is corroborating information from Japan, Champa, India, and others. This kingdom had declined by the early 16th century and had been overtaken by the Luzon. The Luzon were the local peoples around Tondo, who took the opportunity of the conquest by Brunei to assert themselves. They were a militaristic culture who were involved in wars all over the Philippines, Indonesia, and mainland Asia, sometimes under the auspices of their state and sometimes as individuals and groups acting as mercenaries. Another largely documented state is the Sultanate of Sulu, so called even though the society pre-existed the introduction of Islam and its political terminology. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, people from the Visayas area moved into the Sulu archipelago in the Mindanao section of the Philippines islands. They established their state and were known to trade throughout the area, including with the people of Champa, on the Indonesian peninsula, some of whom moved to Sulu. There was a short war between the Sulu and the Champa in the twelfth century, after which trade was normalized again, shortly before they were overtaken by an outside power. In the thirteenth century, according to Chinese records, the area was under the control of the Bruneian Sultanate, along with Ma-i and Maynila. Little else is said except that they regained their independence at some later date. They had certainly done so by the early fifteenth century, when its leader, Rajah Baguinda, converted to Islam and was independently ruling the now-Sultanate. Sometime before the eleventh century, the Rajahnate of Butuan emerged on the island of Mindanao. It was a mixed kingdom, with the majority of people practicing Hinduism but the leadership practicing Buddhism. They were known for their expertise with gold and had extensive trade ties with China as well as the various kingdoms of the Indochina Peninsula. There were other major independent polities of whom less is known. They had separate agreements for trade with surrounding states and different cultural influences from them. The Caboloan barangay was greatly influenced by China and Japan: their clothing reflected the styles of both, as did cultural norms like blackened teeth. Other polities, like Mar-i and Pulilu, were trade partners with China. There is also evidence of conflict between the people of the Visayan section of the archipelago and towns on the Chinese coastline, instigated by the Filipinos. In the decades prior to European contact, the Bruneian Sultanate again pushed into the Philippines. They started with Tondo and Manila Bay with the idea of breaking their monopoly on the Chinese trade of certain goods. They were successful, establishing Selurong, also known as the Kingdom of Maynila, as a vassal state in 1500. Their leader, Sultan Bolkiah married into the ruling family of the Sultanate of Sulu, thereby connecting those two powers. The first contact between the people of the Philippines and Europeans was in 1521, when the Spanish expedition to circumnavigate the globe, led by the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, stopped there. They anchored off Suluan Island, in the central part of the archipelago on 14 March 1521. Magellan planted the Spanish flag, calling the islands the Islas de San Lázaro. The next day, they landed at nearby Homonhon Island, where Magellan met with the leaders of the Cebu and Limasawa peoples. Their leader, the Raja Humabon, spoke at length with Magellan, and then decided to convert to Catholicism. Spanish priests in the expedition baptized him, his wife, and many of their household. In the tradition of taking a new or additional name at one’s baptism, the Raja became Carlos, in honor of King Charles I of Spain; his wife took the name Juana, in honor of the king’s mother, Joanna, daughter of the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella. The Raja then ordered the people of the nearby islands to welcome Magellan and his men, provide them with supplies, and convert to Catholicism. His level of influence is shown by the fact most of these people followed his lead into the Church. However, Datu Lapulapu, one of the chiefs on the island of Mactan, refused. Very little is known about him prior to these events, except he was Humabon’s rival for influence in the area. He rejected the idea of conversion and also prevented his neighboring leader, Datu Zula, from sending gifts to Magellan. This prompted Humabon and Zula to suggest that Magellan force the issue with a personal visit, which Magellan saw as an opportunity to both show strength to, and a willingness to work in alliance with, the local peoples. On 27 April 1521, Magellan and his force landed on Mactan and were immediately barraged with spears, rocks, and arrows. This initial attack was more demoralizing than deadly to the Spanish. Offshore, the Spanish saw this attack and shot with both muskets and crossbows, but were too far away to have an effect. Magellan’s next move was to push toward the native village and set fire to some of the houses. This gave even more force behind the Mactan defense; Magellan was immobilized by a poisoned arrow to the leg, and many of his people were quickly killed. By the account of his chronicler, Antonio Pigafetta, they focused on Magellan himself, which allowed a few of the Spanish to escape. Lapulapu also made a point of killing all of the natives who aided the Spanish in their attack. This did not include Raja Humabon and Datu Zula; despite their promise to fight alongside the Spanish, they stayed away. The Raja did try to ransom the body of the Portuguese navigator, but Lapulapu refused any of his offers. Seeing the attitudes of his fellows, Humabon seems to have repudiated his conversion, going so far as to kill some of the Spanish soldiers who escaped the battle. The expedition continued on its way, returning to Spain the next year, having finished the first circumnavigation of the Earth. It was four decades before the Spanish or Portuguese again tried to take any Philippine territory…