(Video message of Maria Karina Africa Bolasco, Director of the Ateneo de Manila University Press during the launch of Datu Michael Ong Mastura’s book, The Rulers of Magindanao in Modern History 1515-1903: Continuity and Change in a Traditional Realm in the Southern Philippines, at the Grand Pagana Hall in Cotabato City on 13 April 2023. The University Press published the book. Its Manila launch is on May 4 at the Ateneo de Manila University)
The Ateneo de Manila University Press is privileged and honored to present to you today a new book: The Rulers of Magindanao in Modern History 1515-1903: Continuity and Change in a Traditional Realm in the Southern Philippines.
In his Foreword, Dr. Abinales refers to it as a “Magindanao treasure,” almost lost to us and left unpublished. It started as a research grant from the Modern Philippine History Program of the Philippine Social Science Council to Datu Michael Ong Mastura in 1974, about fifty years ago. It narrates and documents the succession of Magindanoan leadership and their legacies as they dealt with local and colonial powers across generations, covering close to four centuries, 388 years to be exact, from the arrival of Sharif Mohammad Kabungsuwan in 1515 to the establishment of the Moro Province in 1903.
Simultaneously, it is a commentary on Magindanao socio-political formation and Islamic history. It pieces together the narrative, close to cinematic, from solid archival and oral sources, and from extensive interviews on Datu Mastura’s various trips and from his informed conjectures.
It helps us understand the dynamics of leadership and succession, power and coercive force, social cohesion and social good, and even of the cracks and divisions. It offers a fresher, nuanced, and insightful assessment of the Magindanao political history within the broader historiography of colonialism. Datu Mastura, himself a descendant of Sultan Kudarat, and therefore knows from whereof he speaks, contributes to the often least examined aspects of colonial hegemony.
Not only does this book roll out an expansive and in-depth dynastic history, it sets it against the broader Southeast Asian maritime trade and political transitions resulting from colonial geopolitical power struggles and economic competition in the region.
To quote from the peer review:
“Materials presented in this work certainly contribute, not only to the expansion of local, regional, or national historiography, but also provide other salient insights tangentially useful to the telling of the Southeast Asian story. “
He concludes his review with:
“The depth and expanse of this work enrich the historiography of Magindanao and the broader modern sociopolitical formations in Mindanao and across the country and beyond.”
At the Ateneo University Press, we believe that centuries-old prejudices against, and apathy toward, Mindanao are borne out of ignorance more than anything else. This is why we strive to build an arsenal of knowledge, a constellation of books that will rally us round the issues and concerns of people in Mindanao.
This is the 15th book on Mindanao we have published in the last two years. We tried to cover not just socio-political topics but also economic and historical studies of the Abaca and Banana, as well as literature and ethnomusicology. May our effort inspire greater study and research on all aspects of Mindanaon life.
It is really the only way to go— as they say, “Iron sharpens iron, scholar, the scholar.” Scholarship and research build on each other to progress onward. For research, in our common understanding of this often painstaking and thankless task, is to see what everybody else has seen, but to think about it in a way nobody else has thought about it. To poke and pry with a purpose.
On behalf of Ateneo de Manila University Press, congratulations Datu Mastura on this most consequential book. Thank you for trusting us with it.
