Trade, raid, slave : the socio-economic patterns of the Sulu zone, 1770-1898
Date
1975
Authors
Warren, James Francis
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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.
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