Moro Rebellion | |||||||
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Part of Philippine–American War | |||||||
American soldiers battling with Moro fighters. |
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Belligerents | |||||||
Moro Remnants of the Sulu Sultanate |
United States | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Jikiri Panglima Hassan |
John J. Pershing Leonard Wood |
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Strength | |||||||
unknown | 25,000 | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
Heavy, official casualties are unknown |
United States: 130 killed 270 wounded Philippine Scouts: 111 killed 109 wounded Philippine Constabulary: 1,706 casualties |
The Moro Rebellion (1899–1913) was an armed conflict between the Moro people and the United States military.
The word "Moro" is a term for ethnic Muslims who lived in the Southern Philippines, an area that includes Mindanao, Jolo and the neighboring Sulu Archipelago.
The Moros have a 400-year history of resisting foreign rule. The violent armed struggle against the Filipinos, Americans, Japanese and Spanish is considered by current Moro Muslim leaders as part of the four centuries long "national liberation movement" of the Bangsamoro (Moro Nation). The 400-year-long resistance against the Japanese, Americans, and Spanish by the Moro Muslims persisted and morphed into their current war for independence against the Philippine state. A "culture of jihad" emerged among the Moros due to the centuries long war against the Spanish invaders.
The United States claimed the territories of the Philippines after the Spanish–American War. The ethnic Moro Muslim population of the southern Philippines resisted both Spanish and United States colonization. The Spaniards were restricted to a handful of coastal garrisons or Forts and they made occasional punitive expeditions into the vast interior regions. After a series of unsuccessful attempts during the centuries of Spanish rule in the Philippines, Spanish forces occupied the abandoned city of Jolo, Sulu, the seat of the Sultan of Sulu, in 1876. The Spaniards and the Sultan of Sulu signed the Spanish Treaty of Peace on July 22, 1878. Control of the Sulu archipelago outside of the Spanish garrisons was handed to the Sultan. The treaty had translation errors: According to the Spanish-language version, Spain had complete sovereignty over the Sulu archipelago, while the Tausug version described a protectorate instead of an outright dependency. Despite the very nominal claim to the Moro territories, Spain ceded them to the United States in the Treaty of Paris which signaled the end of the Spanish–American War.