Maynila: Map & History

History

According to Mariano A. Henson's genealogical research (later brought up by Majul in 1973, and by Santiago in 1990) a settlement in the Maynila area already existed by the year 1258. This settlement was ruled by "Rajah Avirjirkaya" whom Henson described as a "Majapahit Suzerain".

According to Henson, this settlement was attacked by a Bruneian commander named Rajah Ahmad, who defeated Avirjirkaya and established Maynila as a "Muslim principality".

Maynila, along with Tondo, was a prosperous trading settlement by the 16th century, ruled by Bruneian aristocrats intermarried with the Tagalog elite. The ruling class were fluent in both Malay and Tagalog, and many of the people in Maynila were literate, compared to those of the Visayas.

Government and politics

In popular literature and in history texts from the first few decades after Philippine independence, precolonial Maynila is often referred to as the "Kingdom of Maynila", and its Rajas portrayed as "kings", even if they did not exercise sovereignty in the technical sense of achieving a "monopoly on the legitimate use of force". Instead, limited population sizes, the ready availability of land, and seasonally migratory agricultural practices meant that their authority was based on interpersonal loyalty structures and social obligations vis a vis clearly defined territorial dominion.

Economy

Historians widely agree that the larger coastal polities which flourished throughout the Philippine archipelago in the period immediately prior to the arrival of the Spanish colonizers (including Tondo and Maynila) were "organizationally complex", demonstrating both economic specialization and a level of social stratification which would have led to a local demand for "prestige goods".

were already using gunpowder weapons the more famous people of the Shogunate of Japan were still using Samurai swords and Bow and Arrows.

Junker notes that significant work still needs to be done in analyzing the internal/local supply and demand dynamics in pre-Spanish era polities, because much of the prior research has tended to focus on their external trading activities.

Culture and society

Early Spanish accounts describe the Tagalogs as using local plants to dye their cotton clothing. This included tayum or tagum, which produced a blue dye, and dilao, which produced a yellow dye.

Unlike the Bicolanos and Visayans to the east and south and the peoples of the northern Luzon highlands, the Tagalogs did not practice tattooing. In fact, Rajah Sulayman used tattooedness as a pejorative description when the Spanish forces first met him; Sulayman said that Tagalogs were unlike the "painted" Visayans, and thus would not allow themselves to be taken advantage of as easily.