DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/25 May 2026)— What if Mindanao was the center all along?

For Mindanawon historian and scholar Dr. Patricio “Jojo” N. Abinales, this question becomes the starting point to a new way of reading Philippine history — one that sees Mindanao, not as peripheral, but as a historical and economic node that sits at the center of a larger “Nusantara” world, with longstanding connections to China, Indonesia, Singapore, and beyond.

“Mindanao was already a center of trade before the Spanish,” Abinales said on Thursday, May 21, challenging long-held Manila-centric narratives of Philippine history. “Even during the Spanish era.”

On day one of the 3rd Mindanao Book Festival, Abinales delivered a lecture titled “Mindanao as Historical Center,” where he argued that Philippine history has pushed Mindanao to the margins despite its deep connections to maritime Southeast Asia, global trade, migration, political transformation under colonialism, and insurgency.

Nusantara is an Indonesian term meaning “outer islands.” Abinales uses this concept to construct a framework that positions Mindanao within wider maritime Southeast Asia, rather than merely in relation to Manila.

Mindanao was the center

Abinales opened the lecture by pointing out how in mainstream textbooks and historical accounts, Mindanao barely appears. He offered a survey of Reader’s Digest’s Kasaysayan: History of the Filipino People and Renato Constantino’s The Philippines: A Past Revisited, manually counting the number of times Mindanao appears in each volume.

The survey, Abinales argued, illustrated how Philippine history has long been narrated through a largely Manila-centered lens, with entire sections proceeding with little to no mention of Mindanao.

In both Kasaysayan and A Past Revisited, Abinales noted that Mindanao occupies only around 34 pages in total. And Constantino’s sequel, The Philippines: A Continuing Past, contains no mention of Mindanao at all.

By contrast, Abinales said, “if you just consider the Sultan of Sulu’s reign,” one would find that the Sultanates of Sulu and Maguindanao were major trade powers. “But more interestingly,” he continued, “kung pangutanaon nimo unsa’y world sa taga-Mindanao (if you ask what the Mindanawon’s world was) before Spanish era, or even up to now, kani (it’s this).”

“We belong to a wider world,” he said.

“Naay burial ground ang Sultan of Sulu in Southern China,” Abinales shared. “What the hell was he doing there? If you think, may taga-Sulu diri (there are people from Sulu here).”

“What is the most popular last name in Jolo?” he asked. “Tan. Where did Tan come from?”

During what Abinales described as the “Nusantara era,” trade networks linked Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago to China and the wider maritime world. According to him, Chinese traders traveling to Tawi-Tawi and Jolo would leave behind their “pinakagwapo nga crewman” as collateral while conducting trade involving birds’ nests, pearls, beeswax, and sandalwood among others.

Over time, he said, these crewmen often married into local communities, with their children growing up fluent in both Chinese and Tausug and eventually becoming traders themselves.

“Sila na ang (They are the) next businessmen,” Abinales said. “So, Tans come from here.”

Further, what are often described in colonial histories as “slave raids,” he argued, were in fact military and economic offensives carried out by Moro Sultanates to acquire resources and manpower.

“It was not Spain attacking Mindanao,” he said, pointing out that the Spanish only established astable presence in parts of Mindanao “in 1872, after 200 years or so,” after centuries of failed incursions.

Returning to Constantino’s description of Muslim communities as a “beleaguered fortress” that “tenaciously resisted” Spanish rule, Abinales questioned the direction of that framing.

He further argued that many histories overlook how Spanish forts in Luzon and the Visayas were themselves defensive structures built in response to Moro offensives rather than the other way around.

Maps shown during Abinales’ lecture compare Moro raid routes with the locations of Spanish presidios(“military forts”) in the Philippines, challenging narratives that portray Moro communities as “beleaguered.”

Reframing colonialism

Abinales argued that American — and, later, Filipino — rule narrowed down Mindanao’s older Nusantara connections. He said the arrival of European and American colonial powers transformed Southeast Asia from a fluid maritime region into one divided by borders imposed from outside.

“Southeast Asia ceased to be just without borders,” he said. “Gibutangan na’g borders determined by Europe (Borders determined by Europe were put in place).”

He pointed in particular to the creation of the Moro Province under American rule, which consolidated vast territories in Mindanao and Sulu into one of the largest provinces in the Philippines.

He argued, however, that later nationalist narratives often misrepresented Moro resistance to American occupation as part of a unified Filipino nationalist struggle. “Ang gina-portray sa (Whatis being portrayed in) Manila is that the Moro resistance was part of the nationalist resistance for the Pilipinas,” he said.

But according to the historical sources he cited, the revolts in Sulu and Maguindanao were driven by economic and political disruption brought about by American colonial rule.

Presenting a timeline of Moro uprisings from 1900 to 1913, Abinales pointed to conflicts in Jolo, Lanao, Cotabato, and Basilan linked to “U.S. militarism,” “Filipino abuses,” forced labor, anti-slavery campaigns, taxation, and disarmament policies, rather than nationalist organizing.

“Ang sources mismo kung nganong ga-rebelde ang mga Moros… is this,” he gestured. “Walay Philippine nationalism (According to the sources themselves, this is why the Moros rebelled … There was no [mention of] Philippine nationalism).”

Instead, he said, Moro communities resisted because American authorities disrupted longstanding systems of trade and power in the region: “Ginakuha sa mga Amerikano ang sources of their income — slaves, trade with Singapore,” he said, adding that many communities also experienced abuses under both American and Filipino forces.

Incidents such as Bud Dajo in 1906 and Bud Bagsak in 1913, which left hundreds of Muslim casualties, reflected these tensions and the violent consolidation of colonial rule in Mindanao.

“So there is nothing nationalistic here,” Abinales argued.

Abinales also examined how American colonial rule transformed political structures in Mindanao through a combination of military force, education, and cooptation. He noted that for roughly a decade, the Moro Province was governed directly by the U.S. military, whose stated mission was not only to suppress Moro resistance but also to “civilize” and educate Muslim communities.

Recalling his fieldwork in the 1990s, Abinales shared that one elderly interviewee spoke with what sounded like a “New Jersey” accent because his teachers — or his teachers’ teachers — had been American soldiers. “The first generation of Cordillerans and Moros who were educated, they speak like Americans,” he said.

According to Abinales, American rule weakened the old Nusantara world by dismantling systems tied to slavery, regional trade, and the political authority of the Sultanates while simultaneously incorporating local elites into the colonial state. “After fighting them, they educated them,” he said. “After fighting them, they weakened the Datus.”

Rather than completely abolishing existing power structures, the Americans shared authority with selected local leaders such as Datu Piang, offering them new positions within the colonial bureaucracy.

Over time, Abinales argued, sultans and datus who had once operated within wider Southeast Asian networks — the Maguindanao, Tausug, Meranaw — became redefined as “local leaders” under the Philippine colonial framework.

He said these arrangements were later continued under the Commonwealth government of Manuel Quezon, which maintained alliances with collaborating datu elites rather than dismantling them.

Yet Abinales noted that some American officials themselves questioned whether Muslim Mindanao truly belonged within the emerging Philippine nation-state.

By 1908, he said, some U.S. military officials had begun proposing the separation of Mindanao from the Philippines altogether, with plans to administratively link the region instead to Guam.

“Itong mga sundalo na ‘to (These soldiers here) realized that the Muslims were not Filipinos,” he said, illustrating how contested the political future and identity of Mindanao remained even during the early years of American rule.

Cosmopolitan Davao

Abinales later turned to Davao as an example of Mindanao’s longstanding global connections, describing it as once “the most backward” part of the Moro Province before becoming deeply integrated into international trade networks through the hemp industry.

He said early Spanish attempts to establish abaca plantations in the region failed, but the industry was later revived by around 18,000 Okinawan migrants who arrived in Davao during the American colonial period.

Citing Patricia Irene Dacudao’s Abaca Frontier: The Socioeconomic and Cultural Transformation of Davao, 1898–1941, Abinales argued that by the 1910s and 1920s, Davao had already become an economically connected “cosmopolitan world.”

“Davao did not connect to Manila,” he said, “[but] connected to Japan because of hemp, to England and the U.S. because of hemp.”

He added that these economic links also shaped the origins of other industries in southern Mindanao — particularly, tuna.

Drawing from the work of environmental historian Anthony D. Medrano, Abinales explained that the growth of the tuna industry emerged from the need to feed the large Japanese population working in Davao’s hemp plantations.

But because southern Mindanao lacked large-scale cattle and livestock infrastructure, tuna became the practical and abundant source of protein.

According to Abinales, this demand eventually helped transform southern Mindanao into a center of tuna production and export. “Tuna went to Japan,” he said, while “hemp went to England and the U.S.” These overlapping trade routes, he argued, further demonstrated that Davao and Mindanao historically developed through connections to wider Southeast Asian and global economies.

“And Davao, actually, was the center,” he said. Abinales also used language to illustrate the breadth of Mindanao’s historical and cultural connections.

He cited former UP president Dr. Francisco Nemenzo, who once said that “Davao Tagalog” may be closer to a national language because of the ease with which many Dabawenyos shift between English, Filipino, and Cebuano in everyday speech.

Before World War II, he said, Davao even had its own hybrid “Davao Spanish,” a multilingual mix of Japanese, Spanish, English, Cebuano, and Tagalog shaped by migration, trade, and colonial encounters. “Wala nay source ana,” he lamented. “It disappeared.”

Towards the end of the lecture, Abinales contrasted the linguistic worlds of Manila and Mindanao to challenge notions of modernity and cosmopolitanism. He asked the audience how many languages an ordinary Manila resident might know — English, Filipino, perhaps a family mother tongue — before comparing this to a smuggler from Sulu, who might speak English,

Filipino, Chinese, Tausug, Bahasa, and more because of years spent navigating regional trade routes.

“Which world is wider?” he asked at one point, comparing the multilingual lives of traders and migrants in Mindanao to the more Manila-centered imagination of the nation-state.

Conflict, insurgency, and global connections

Abinales also argued that despite colonial borders and state control, Mindanao’s international connections never fully disappeared. During the Marcos dictatorship and the rise of the Moro insurgency, these links resurfaced in new political and ideological forms. He noted that while some future Moro leaders studied in universities such as UP, University of Mindanao (UM), Xavier University, and Ateneo de Zamboanga, others — including Nur Misuari — traveled abroad to Egypt and other parts of the Muslim world, where they encountered Arab nationalism and anti-colonial movements.

“These were scholars who didn’t just go to Manila,” Abinales said. “They went to Egypt and got exposed to Egyptian nationalism,” reconnecting them to a broader Moro and Muslim political world extending as far as Libya, Egypt, Malaysia, and the wider Nusantara region.

According to Abinales, these global networks later shaped both the ideological and military dimensions of the Moro struggle.

Abinales recalled interviewing a former activist from General Santos City who had been among a second batch of Moro fighters sent to Libya for military training during the 1970s. The man, Abinales said, had been brought from his village to Libya and trained by an East German anti-tank specialist.

The lecture also pointed to how Libya and Malaysia became key international backers of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), particularly during peace negotiations brokered through the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

He situated these movements within a larger pattern of cross-border flows that continued to define Mindanao even after the closing of colonial frontiers. He pointed to barter trade,

smuggling routes, labor migration, and informal economies linking Mindanao to Sabah, Malaysia, and the wider Southeast Asian region.

These porous borders, he suggested, complicated attempts by Manila to fully integrate or contain the region. Even insurgencies in Mindanao, whether Moro or communist, developed through overlapping local and international networks involving migration, ideology, arms flows, and foreign patronage.

In this sense, Abinales argued, the Nusantara world never vanished entirely but continued to survive beneath the political borders imposed by colonial and national states.

The lecture repeatedly returned to the idea of fundamentally changing the perspective from which the nation imagines itself. Instead of viewing Mindanao only through the lenses of conflict, insurgency, or underdevelopment, Abinales urged participants to think of the region as historically connected to wider Southeast Asian worlds through trade, migration, language, religion, and political struggle.

At the same time, the lecture’s sweeping reframing of Mindanao also revealed its own tensions and absences. While Abinales extensively discussed Moro Sultanates, colonialism, migration, insurgency, and global trade networks, Lumad communities appeared far less centrally in the narrative, echoing one of the broader questions raised by the lecture itself: Who remains visible or invisible when histories are rewritten, and whose stories continue to sit at the margins even within attempts to challenge Manila-centered histories?

In this sense, Nusantara — from a proposal for reimagining Philippine history through Mindanao— became an invitation to listen for the voices history keeps pushing to the edges, and to ask whose worlds are allowed to become the center of the narrative. (Bea Gatmaytan/MindaNews)