page_title: Moro people
section_title: Spanish conquest
hierarchical_section_title: Moro people / History / Colonial period / Spanish conquest
caption_attribution_description: English: Philippine helmet, from the Moro's of Mindanao, showing European influence, possibly by the Spanish or Portuguese-style morion, with domed skull and pronounced comb and pierced scroll work, brass or bronze, 18th to 19th century.
context_page_description: The collective term Moro people or Bangsamoro people refers to the 13 Islamized ethnolinguistic groups of Mindanao, Sulu, and Palawan, native to the region known as the Bangsamoro. As Muslim-majority ethnic groups, they form the largest non-Christian majority population in the Philippines, and comprise about 5% of the country's total population, or 5 million people.
  Most Moros are followers of Sunni Islam of the Shafi'i madh'hab. The Moros were once independent under a variety of local states, including the Sulu Sultanate, the Maguindnao Sultanate, and the Confederation of Lanao; withstanding repeated Spanish invasions, the Moro states remained de facto independent up until the Moro conflict of the early 20th century. Upon Philippine independence in 1946, the Moros continued their struggle for self-determination against a predominantly–Christian Philippines, culminating in a decades-long insurgency of armed rebel groups, chief among them the Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, against the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
context_section_description: In 1519, the Spanish expedition to the East Indies began in search for a westward route to the Maluku Islands (the "Spice Islands"), led by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. The fleet reached the Philippine archipelago in March 1521 where Magellan was to die during the Battle of Mactan and before the expedition's successful circumnavigation and return. Several subsequent expeditions to the islands were sent until the 1564 Miguel Lopez de Legazpi was successful, marking the start of Spanish colonization of what is now the Philippines in 1565.
  The sultanates, however, actively resisted the Spaniards. With intentions of pacifying the islands, the Spaniards made incursions into Moro territory. They also began erecting military stations and garrisons with Catholic missions, which attracted Christianised natives of civilian settlements. The most notable of these are Zamboanga and Cotabato. Spain was in the midst of the Inquisition which required Jews and Muslims to convert to Roman Catholicism or leave or face the death penalty; thus Spaniards tried to ban and suppress Islam in areas they conquered. Feeling threatened by these actions, the Moros decided to challenge the Spanish government. They began conducting raids on Catholic coastal towns. These Moro raids reached a fevered pitched during the reign of Datu Bantilan in 1754.
  The Spanish–Moro Conflict started at the phase of Castille War (Spanish-Bruneian War) of 1578, which created the war between Spaniards and Moros in areas held by Sultanate of Brunei, lasted several hundred years, while the Castille War itself lasted only two months. The string of coastal fortifications, military garrisons and forts built by the Spaniards ensured that these raids, although destructive to the Philippine economies of the coastal settlements, were eventually stifled. The advent of steam-powered naval ships in the 1800s finally drove the antiquated Moro navy of colorful proas and vintas to their bases. It took at least two decades of the presence of the Spanish in the Philippines for them to launch an extensive conquest of Mindanao. The Sultanate of Sulu, one of the last Sultanates existing, itself soon fell under a concerted naval and ground attack from Spanish forces. In the last quarter of the 19th century Moros in the Sultanate of Sulu allowed the Spanish to build forts, but these areas remained loosely controlled by the Spanish as their sovereignty was limited to military stations and garrisons and pockets of civilian resettlements in Zamboanga and Cotabato (the latter under the Sultanate of Maguindanao), until the Spanish had to abandon the region as a consequence of their defeat in the Spanish–American War. Before that, in order to retain independence, the Sultanate of Sulu had given up its rule over Palawan to Spain in 1705 and Basilan to Spain in 1762; the areas that the Sulu Sultanate gave partial rule to Spain are Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.
  In 1876, the Spaniards launched a campaign to placate Jolo and made a final bid to establish a government in the southern islands. On 21 February of that year, the Spaniards assembled the largest contingent in Jolo, consisting of 9,000 soldiers in 11 transports, 11 gunboats and 11 steamboats. José Malcampo occupied Jolo and established a Spanish settlement with Pascual Cervera appointed to set up a garrison and serve as military governor. He served from March 1876 to December 1876 and was followed by José Paulin (December 1876 – April 1877), Carlos Martínez (September 1877 – February 1880), Rafael de Rivera (1880–1881), Isidro G. Soto (1881–1882), Eduardo Bremon, (1882), Julian Parrrado (1882–1884), Francisco Castilla (1884–1886), Juan Arolas (1886–1893), Caésar Mattos (1893), Venancio Hernández (1893–1896) and Luis Huerta (1896–1899).
  The Chinese sold small arms like Enfield and Spencer Rifles to the Buayan Sultanate of Datu Uto. They were used to battle the Spanish invasion of the Sultanate of Buayan. The Datu paid for the weapons in slaves.
  The population of Chinese in Mindanao in the 1880s was 1,000. The Chinese ran guns across a Spanish blo
caption: The Moros later adopted European armor and firearms during their wars with Spain and rebellion (Embadir), like this of an 18th or 19th-century brass morion helmet.[22]
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