Tagalog people

The Tagalog people ( tl, Mga Tagalog; Baybayin: ᜋᜅ ᜆᜄᜎᜓᜄ᜔) are the largest ethnolinguistic group in the Philippines, numbering at around 30 million. An Austronesian people, the Tagalog have a well developed society due to their cultural heartland, Manila, being the capital city of the Philippines. They are native to the Metro Manila and Calabarzon regions of southern Luzon, and comprise the majority in the provinces of Bulacan, Bataan, Nueva Ecija and Aurora in Central Luzon and in the islands of Marinduque and Mindoro in Mimaropa.

Etymology

The commonly perpetuated origin for the endonym "Tagalog" is the term ''tagá-ilog'', which means "people from longthe river" (the prefix ''tagá-'' meaning "coming from" or "native of"). However, this explanation is a mistranslation of the correct term ''tagá-álog'', which means "people from the ford".

Historical usage

Before the colonial period, the term "Tagalog" was originally used to differentiate river dwellers (''taga-ilog'') from mountain dwellers (''taga-bundok'', less common ''tingues'') between Nagcarlan and Lamon Bay, despite speaking the same language. Further exceptions include the present-day Batangas Tagalogs, who referred to themselves as people of Kumintang - a distinction formally maintained throughout the colonial period.

Allegiance to a bayan differentiated between its natives called ''tawo'' and foreigners, who either also spoke Tagalog or other languages - the latter called ''samot'' or ''samok''.

Beginning in the Spanish colonial period, documented foreign spellings of the term ranged from ''Tagalos'' to ''Tagalor''.

History

Prehistory and origins

Like the majority of Filipinos, the Tagalog people primarily descend from seafaring Austronesians who migrated southwards to the Philippine islands from the island of Taiwan some 4,000 years ago. Contact with the much earlier Negritos resulted in a gradually developed scenario seen throughout the Philippine archipelago of coastal, lowland, predominantly Austronesian-speaking seafaring settlements and land-based Negrito hunter-gatherers confined to forested and mountainous inlands, along with inland Austronesians oriented towards rivers. Both groups variably mixed with each other from millennia of general coexistence, yet even up to Spanish advent social distinctions between them still remained.

As Filipinos, the Tagalogs are related to the Austronesian-speaking peoples of present-day Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia, and the more distant Micronesians, Polynesians, and Malagasy.

Specific origin narratives of the Tagalog people contend among several theories:

* Eastern Visayas - Research on the Philippine languages hypothesize a Greater Central Philippine subfamily that includes, among others, the Bisayan languages and Tagalog, the latter vaguely assumed to have originated somewhere in the eastern Visayas.

* Borneo via Panay - The controversial Maragtas dates events from around the early 13th century, which tells of a great migration of ten datus and their followers somewhere from Borneo northwards and subsequent settlements in Panay, escaping the tyranny of their Bornean overlord, Rajah Makatunaw. Sometime later, three datus Kalengsusu, Puti, and Dumaksol sailed back from Panay to Borneo, then intended to make return for Panay before blowing off course further north to the Taal river area in present-day Batangas. Datu Puti continued to Panay, while Kalengsusu and Dumaksol decided to settle there with their barangay followings, thus the story says is the origin of the Tagalogs.
* Sumatra or Java - A twin migration of Tagalog and Kapampangan peoples from either somewhere in Sumatra or Java in present-day Indonesia. Dates unknown, but this theory holds the least credibility regardless for basing these migrations from the outdated out-of-Sundaland model of the Austronesian expansion.

Barangay period

Tagalog and other Philippine histories in general are highly speculative before the 10th century, primarily due to lack of written sources. Most information on precolonial Tagalog culture is documented by observational writings by early Spanish explorers in the mid-16th century, alongside few precedents from indirect Portuguese accounts and archaeological finds.

The maritime oriented barangays of pre-Hispanic Tagalogs is shared with other coastal peoples throughout the Philippine archipelago. The roughly three-tiered Tagalog social structure of '' maginoo'' (royalty), '' timawa''/'' maharlika'' (freemen usually of lower nobility), and '' alipin'' (bondsmen, slaves, debt peons) have almost identical cognates in Visayan, Sulu, and Mindanawon societies. Most barangays were networked almost exclusively by sea traffic, while smaller scale inland trade was typified as lowlander-highlander affairs. Barangays, like other Philippine settlements elsewhere, practiced seasonal sea raiding for vengeance, slaves, and valuables alongside headhunting, except for the relatively larger suprabarangay ''bayan'' of the Pasig River delta that served as a hub for slave trading. Such specialization also applied to other large towns like Cebu, Butuan, Jolo, and Cotabato.

Tagalog barangays, especially around Manila Bay, were typically larger than most Philippine polities due to a largely flat geography of their environment hosting extensive irrigated rice agriculture (then a prestigious commodity) and particularly close trade relations with Brunei, Malacca, China ( ''sangley''), Siam, Champa, and Japan, from direct proximity to the South China Sea tradewinds. Such characteristics gave early Spanish impressions of Tagalogs as "more traders than warriors," although raids were practiced. Neighboring Kapampangan barangays also shared these characteristics.

10th-13th centuries

Although at the periphery of the larger Maritime Silk Road like much of Borneo, Sulawesi and eastern Indonesia, notable influences from Hinduism and Buddhism were brought to southwest Luzon and other parts of the Philippine archipelago by largely intermediate Bornean, Malay, Cham, and Javanese traders by this time period, likely much earlier. The earliest document in Tagalog and general Philippine history is the Laguna Copperplate Inscription (LCI), bearing several place names speculated to be analogous to several towns and barangays in predominantly Tagalog areas ranging from present-day Bulacan to coastal Mindoro.

The text is primarily in Old Malay and shows several cultural and societal insights into the Tagalogs during time period. The earliest recognized Tagalog polity is Tondo, mentioned as Tundun, while several other place names are theorized to be present-day Pila or Paila, Bulacan (Pailah), Pulilan (Puliran), and Binuangan. Sanskrit, Malay, and Tagalog honorifics, names, accounting, and timekeeping were used. Chiefs were referred as either ''pamagat'' or ''tuhan'', while ''dayang'' was likely female royalty. All aforementioned polities seem to have close relations elswhere with the polities of Dewata and Mdang, theorized to be present-day area of Butuan in Mindanao and the Mataram Kingdom in Java.

Additonally, several records from Song China and Brunei mention a particular polity called Ma-i, the earliest in 971. Several places within Tagalog-speaking areas contend for its location: Bulalacao (formerly ''Mait''), Bay, and Malolos. Ma-i had close trade relations with the Song, directly importing manufactured wares, iron, and jewelry and retailing to "other islands," evident of earlier possible Tagalog predominance of resaling Chinese goods throughout the rest of the Philippine islands before its expicit role by Maynila in the 16th century.

15th-16th centuries: Malacca and Brunei affairs

The growth of the Malacca as the largest Southeast Asian entrepôt in the Maritime Silk Road led to a gradual spread of its cultural influence eastward throughout insular Southeast Asia. Malay became the regional lingua franca of trade and many polities enculturated Islamic Malay customs and governance to varying degrees, including Tagalogs and other coastal Philippine peoples. According to Bruneian folklore, at around 1500 Sultan Bolkiah launched a successful northward expedition to break Tondo’s monopoly as a regional entrepot of the Chinese trade and established Maynila (Selurong?) across the Pasig delta, ruled by his heirs as a satellite. Subsequently Bruneian influence spread elsewhere around Manila Bay, present-day Batangas, and coastal Mindoro through closer trade and political relations, with a growing Tagalog-Kapampangan diaspora based in Brunei and beyond in Malacca in various professions as traders, sailors, shipbuilders, mercenaries, governors, and slaves.

File:Naturales 4.png, '' Maginoo'' couple
File:Naturales 3.png, '' Timawa'' or '' maharlika'' couple
File:Naturales 1.png, '' Alipin''
The Pasig delta bayan of Tondo-Maynila was the largest entrepot within the Philippine archipelago primarily from retailing Chinese and Japanese manufactured goods and wares throughout Luzon, the Visayan islands (where Bisaya would mistakenly called Tagalog and Bornean traders alike as ''Sina''), Palawan, Sulu, and Maguindanao. Tagalog (or Kapampangan) traders also worked elsewhere as far as Timor and Canton. Bruneian, Malay, Chinese, Japanese, Siamese, Khmer, Cham, and traders from the rest of the Philippine archipelago alike all conducted business in Maynila, and to a lesser extent along the Batangas and Mindoro coasts. However, in a broader scope of Southeast Asian trade the bayan served a niche regional market comparable to smaller trade towns in Borneo, Sualwesi, and Maluku.

Spanish colonial period

1565-1815: Galleon era

On May 19, 1571, Miguel López de Legazpi gave the title "city" to the colony of Manila. The title was certified on June 19, 1572. Under Spain, Manila became the colonial entrepot in the Far East. The Philippines was a Spanish colony administered under the Viceroyalty of New Spain and the Governor-General of the Philippines who ruled from Manila was sub-ordinate to the Viceroy in Mexico City. Throughout the 333 years of Spanish rule, various grammars and dictionaries were written by Spanish clergymen, including '' Vocabulario de la lengua tagala'' by Pedro de San Buenaventura ( Pila, Laguna, 1613), Pablo Clain's ''Vocabulario de la lengua tagala'' (beginning of the 18th century), ''Vocabulario de la lengua tagala'' (1835), and ''Arte de la lengua tagala y manual tagalog para la administración de los Santos Sacramentos'' (1850) in addition to early studies of the language. The first substantial dictionary of Tagalog language was written by the Czech Jesuit missionary Pablo Clain in the beginning of the 18th century. Further compilation of his substantial work was prepared by P. Juan de Noceda and P. Pedro de Sanlucar and published as '' Vocabulario de la lengua tagala'' in Manila in 1754 and then repeatedly re-edited, with the last edition being in 2013 in Manila. The indigenous poet Francisco Baltazar (1788–1862) is regarded as the foremost Tagalog writer, his most notable work being the early 19th-century epic '' Florante at Laura''.

Prior to Spanish arrival and Catholic seeding, the ancient Tagalog people used to cover the following: present-day Calabarzon region except the Polillo Islands, northern Quezon, Alabat island, the Bondoc Peninsula, and easternmost Quezon; Marinduque; Bulacan except for its eastern part; and southwest Nueva Ecija, as much of Nueva Ecija used to be a vast rainforest where numerous nomadic ethnic groups stayed and left. When the polities of Tondo and Maynila fell due to the Spanish, the Tagalog-majority areas grew through Tagalog migrations in portions of Central Luzon and north Mimaropa as a Tagalog migration policy was implemented by Spain. This was continued by the Americans when they defeated Spain in a war.

The first documented Asian-origin people to arrive in North America after the beginning of European colonization were a group of Filipinos known as "Luzonians" or Luzon Indians who were part of the crew and landing party of the Spanish galleon ''Nuestra Señora de la Buena Esperanza''. The ship set sail from Macau and landed in Morro Bay in what is now the California coast on October 17, 1587, as part of the Galleon Trade between the Spanish East Indies (the colonial name for what would become the Philippines) and New Spain (Spain's Viceroyalty in North America). More Filipino sailors arrived along the California coast when both places were part of the Spanish Empire. By 1763, "Manila men" or "Tagalas" had established a settlement called St. Malo on the outskirts of New Orleans, Louisiana