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In early Philippine history, barangay is the term historically used by scholars[1] to describe the complex sociopolitical units[2]: 4–6 that were the dominant organizational pattern among the various peoples of the Philippine archipelago[3] in the period immediately before the arrival of European colonizers.[4] Academics refer to these settlements using the technical term "polity",[3][5] but they are usually simply called "barangays".[4][2][page needed]
Some barangays were well-organized independent villages, consisting of thirty to a hundred households.[4][page needed][6][7] Other barangays — most notably those in Maynila, Tondo, Panay,[8] Pangasinan, Cebu, Bohol, Butuan, Cotabato, and Sulu[5][9] — were large cosmopolitan polities.[2][page needed]
The term originally referred to both a house on land and a boat on water, containing families, friends and dependents.[10][11]
Anthropologist F. Landa Jocano defines this period of the barangay states' dominance — approximately the 14th to the 16th centuries — as the "Barangic Phase" of early Philippine history.[4] The Barangic Phase of Philippine history can be noted for its highly mobile nature, with barangays transforming from being settlements and turning into fleets and vice versa, with the wood constantly re-purposed according to the situation.[12]
Some scholars such as Damon Woods, however, have recently challenged the use of the term barangay to describe the Philippines' various indigenous polities, citing a lack of linguistic evidence and the fact that all of the primary references suggesting that use of the term can be traced to just a single source - Juan de Plascencia's 1589 report Las costumbres de los indios Tagalos de Filipinas. Instead, Woods argues that this use of the term barangay reflected what was merely an attempt by the Spanish to reconstructing pre-conquest Tagalog society.[13]
The term has since been adapted as the name of the basic political unit of the Philippines.[10] So historical barangays should not be confused with present-day Philippine barrios, which were officially renamed barangays by the Philippine Local Government Code of 1991 as a reference to historical barangays.
^Quezon, Manolo (October 2, 2017). "The Explainer: Bamboozled by the barangay". ABS-CBN News. Archived from the original on October 2, 2017. Retrieved October 4, 2017.
^ abcCite error: The named reference Scott1994 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ abJunker, Laura Lee (2000). Raiding, Trading, and Feasting: The Political Economy of Philippine Chiefdoms. Ateneo de Manila University Press. pp. 74, 130. ISBN 9789715503471. ISBN 971-550-347-0, ISBN 978-971-550-347-1.
^ abcdJocano, F. Landa (1998). Filipino Prehistory: Rediscovering Precolonial Heritage (2001 ed.). Quezon City: Punlad Research House, Inc. ISBN 971-622-006-5.
^ abJunker, Laura Lee (1990). "The Organization of IntraRegional and LongDistance Trade in PreHispanic Philippine Complex Societies". Asian Perspectives. 29 (2): 167–209.
^"Pre-colonial Manila". Malacañang Presidential Museum and Library. Malacañang Presidential Museum and Library Araw ng Maynila Briefers. Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office. June 23, 2015. Archived from the original on March 9, 2016. Retrieved April 27, 2017.
^Carley, Michael; Smith, Harry (November 5, 2013). Urban Development and Civil Society: The Role of Communities in Sustainable Cities. Routledge. ISBN 9781134200504.
^"También fundó convento el Padre Fray Martin de Rada en Araut – que ahora se llama el convento de Dumangas – con la advocación de nuestro Padre San Agustín...Está fundado este pueblo casi a los fines del río de Halaur, que naciendo en unos altos montes en el centro de esta isla (Panay)...Es el pueblo muy hermoso, ameno y muy lleno de palmares de cocos. Antiguamente era el emporio y corte de la más lucida nobleza de toda aquella isla."de SAN AGUSTIN OSA (1650–1724), Fr Gaspár; DIAZ OSA, Fr Casimiro (1698). Conquistas de las Islas Philipinas. Parte primera : la temporal, por las armas del señor don Phelipe Segundo el Prudente, y la espiritual, por los religiosos del Orden de Nuestro Padre San Augustin; fundacion y progreso de su Provincia del Santissimo Nombre de Jesus (in Spanish). Madrid: Imprenta de Manuel Ruiz de Murga. ISBN 978-8400040727. OCLC 79696350. "The second part of the work, compiled by Casimiro Díaz Toledano from the manuscript left by Gaspár de San Agustín, was not published until 1890 under the title: Conquistas de las Islas Filipinas, Parte segunda", pp. 374-376.
^Junker, Laura Lee (1998). "Integrating History and Archaeology in the Study of Contact Period Philippine Chiefdoms". International Journal of Historical Archaeology. 2 (4): 291–320. doi:10.1023/A:1022611908759. S2CID 141415414.
^ ab"barangay". Oxford Dictionaries. June 25, 2015. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved November 5, 2015.
^During the early part of the Spanish colonization of the Philippines the Spanish Augustinian Friar, Gaspar de San Agustín, O.S.A., describes Iloilo and Panay as one of the most populated islands in the archipelago and the most fertile of all the islands of the Philippines. He also talks about Iloilo, particularly the ancient settlement of Halaur, as site of a progressive trading post and a court of illustrious nobilities. The friar says: Es la isla de Panay muy parecida a la de Sicilia, así por su forma triangular come por su fertilidad y abundancia de bastimentos... Es la isla más poblada, después de Manila y Mindanao, y una de las mayores, por bojear más de cien leguas. En fertilidad y abundancia es en todas la primera... El otro corre al oeste con el nombre de Alaguer [Halaur], desembocando en el mar a dos leguas de distancia de Dumangas...Es el pueblo muy hermoso, ameno y muy lleno de palmares de cocos. Antiguamente era el emporio y corte de la más lucida nobleza de toda aquella isla...Mamuel Merino, O.S.A., ed., Conquistas de las Islas Filipinas (1565-1615), Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1975, pp. 374-376.
^["Barangay Sixteenth Century Philippine Culture And Society" By: William Henry Scott. ATENEO DE MANILA UNIVERSITY PRESS]
^Woods, Damon (2017). The Myth of the Barangay and Other Silenced Histories. E. de los Santos St., UP Campus, Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. pp. 117–153. ISBN 978-971-542-821-7.
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