Interrupted histories: Arab migrations to pre-colonial philippines

Abstract

Philippine migration studies have tended to emphasize the drawing power of the global labor market and the Philippine response to these labor demands. While these studies have obvious value to systematic investigations of global processes, there is a definite merit to explore migration within the context of an “earlier globalization ” which occured roughly in the late thirteenth century until the arrival of the Spanish colonial powers toward the latter half of the sixteenth century. What emerges is a movement of migrants from the Arabian Peninsula toward many parts of Southeast Asia including the Philippines, establishing settlements and laying the foundation for institutions that have been entrenched and sustained even during the colonial period. Drawing from secondary sources as well as archival research, this paper seeks to investigate more deeply the waves of Arab (and other Middle Eastern) migrations to pre-colonial Philippines. A historical approach to the study of migration is an effort to offer a counter-narrative to the more dominant Spanish-Christian-American account of Philippine history. It also attempts to reveal the forces that have shaped a pluralistic Philippine culture despite the insistence of Christian hegemony. Finally, the paper promotes a historical perspective to migration studies that foreground transnational connections through local and regional connections, which, in the Philippine case, illustrates the enduring transnational connections between the Hadramawt region in Yemen and the southern sultanates in the Philippine archipelago.