Trade, raid, slave : the socio-economic patterns of the Sulu zone, 1770-1898

Abstract

TWO perspectives have dominated the historiography of the Sulu zone and have tended to obscure the complex but integrated patterns of trade, raiding and slavery. On the one hand the 'decay theory' has presented Muslim marauding as a symptom of the decline of trade and the deterioration of the Malayo-Muslim state. On the other, raiding is interpreted within the framework of the 'Moro Wars' as retaliation against Spanish colonialism and religious incursion. Both theories have underestimated the relationship of slavery and raiding activity to the economy of the Sulu Sultanate and the dynamic system which enabled it to hold out against the appetites of competing European interests as the last of the autonomous maritime states. This study has concentrated on the social forces generated within the Sulu Sultanate by the China trade, a trade which dominated so much of the economic life of Southeast Asia - namely, the advent of organized, long-distance slave raiding and the incorporation of foreign peoples on a large scale into Taosug society. It has also been concerned with reconstructing the social, economic and political relationships of various groups in a multi-ethnic zone of which Sulu was the centre. The study demonstrates that it was the resilient structure of a segmentary state patterned on a mosaic principle of ethnic segmentation and economic interdependence, rather than the 'classic' stratified Indonesian harbour principality that was best able to withstand the test of the 'forward movement' of the European powers in the 19th century. Show more