It is claimed that in the sixteenth century,European colonial powers such as Portugal and Spain

wanted to conquer Southeast Asia in order to,first,control the spice trade which was then
driving the world economy;and second,in the words of the Portuguese Viceroy,to[cast] the
Moors out of this country [Malacca],and [quench] the fire of this sect of (Muhammad) so that it
may never burst out again hereafter.
Among the Spanish missions was the 1578 military expedition in Mindanao,which aimed to:1)
have the Moro acknowledge Spanish dominion;2) establish trade with the Moro,and explore
and exploit the natural resources of the land;3) Armed encounters with the Muslims and
military expeditions to Mindanao and Bomeo occurred almost as soon as the Spaniards settled
in the Islands;historian Cesar Adib Majul charted six stages of so-called Moro Wars that took
place from mid-1500s to the late 1800s. In 1893,the army officer Luis de la Torre wrote the
Govemor General:"The Moro race is completely antithetic to the Spanish and will ever be our
etemal enemy. The head of the expedition was instructed to quash the “[preaching] of the
doctrine of Mahoma,since it is evil and false,and that of the Christians alone is good.
Photo:Maguindanao Datu,Rio Grande de Mindanao,1900
They should know that we are stronger,that our friendship suits their interests because we are
backed by force-which is the only argument they can understand... end Moro piracy and raids
against Spanish ships and Christianized settlements;and 4) convert the Moro like the other
Philippine groups.
"[The Moro] have a blind and ever-living hatred of all things Christian,whether
Catholic,schismatical,or Protestant;and this one thing they know for certain: that Mohammed
commanded a holy war without tract or termination upon Christians who,according to their
idea, are infidels (or capir): and they believe that it is a meritorious thing to rob,and that to gain
heaven it is sufficient to kill the Christians."
Although he claimed that "the Moros have been the only but constant and tenacious enemies
of the civilization brought here by Spain,"the Jesuit priest argued against exterminating the
Muslim people,as he saw this to be unjust,difficult,and expensive.
A comprehensive representation of the Spanish colonial view of Muslim Filipinos lies in the
vitriolic article written in 1901 by the Rev.Pio Pi which appeared in Gen.George W.Davis'1903
annual report on the Philippines. Pi described the Moro as arrogant,ungrateful,and treacherous
despite being "poor, miserable,and needy." Ruled by notoriously cruel datu,they were seen as
savages or ladrones who plundered land and sea. declared:"We have no scruple in
affirming...that the principal obstacle in the way of the reduction and civilization of Mindanao
and Jolo is the Moro." Pi believed that,owing to their poor comprehension of the Quran,the
ignorance of the Philippine Moro extended to their own religion.
The scholar Thomas McKenna,however,contests the notion that this sense of "Morohood" did
drive a long and broad-based armed resistance,or that this "self-conscious oppositional identity
as Philippine Muslims is ancient,deep,and broadly shared. However,because Spain did manage
to acculturate most of the rest of the Philippines,it can be said that Spanish views of the Moro
in history contribute a lot not only to the contemporary Muslim Filipinos' identity formation as
individuals and as a community,but to the shaping of national memory as well.
Philippine history in the tradition of Majul (and Gowing) proposes that Spanish colonial
oppression nurtured among the Muslims an Islamic consciousness that sustained their wars and
raids throughout the centuries,as well as their separatist movement later on. The scholar
Hannbal Bara avers:"Just like other Muslim nations in Southeast Asia,[the] national identity of
Philippine Muslims was shaped by lslam and further developed in the course of their heroic
struggle against westem colonialism. "According to McKenna,the three-century Spanish-Moro
conflict "was primanily a cold war consisting of extended periods of mostly peaceful
coexistence with the Spanish colonial intruders in the North coinciding with intersultanate
rivalry in the South." The fact that Spain never got to conquer Mindanao,except for a few small
port cities, is not due only to Moro resistance;other historical and political factors must also be
taken into account. As shown by,among others,the 1719 peace agreement between Spain and
Maguindanao,sultans did ask the Spaniards for help in their wars with other sultanates.