Book Description Page

Tumalo Creek Press

Released October 1, 2007

Cover Photograph – Datu Amir Hussin of Lugus Island and party, on board the USS Manila, August 1, 1899

W.W. Dinwiddie Photograph Collection, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, PA.

ISBN 978-0-9795173-0-3

Library of Congress Control Number : 2007903098

Subject Headings:

1. History –United States—20^th Century. 2. Muslims—Philippines—Mindanao & Sulu.

3. History—United States—Military. 4. Philippines—History—1899-1906.

5. Pershing, John—1860-1948. 6. Wood, Leonard—1860-1927.

$26.95 retail list price

Book Description:

Moroland is the lost history of the once-famed struggle between the United States Army and the “wild” Moros, the Muslims of the southern Philippine islands. Lasting over two decades, it was this country’s first sustained encounter with a volatile mixture of nation-building, insurgency, counterinsurgency, and militant Islamism.

An unanticipated byproduct of the Spanish-American War, the task of subduing and then “civilizing” the “Land of the Moros” was delegated to the U.S. Army. Working through the traditional ruling hierarchy and respecting an ancient system of laws based on the Qur’an, “Moro Province” became an autonomous, military-governed Islamic colony within a much larger, overwhelmingly Christian territory, the Philippine Islands. An initially successful occupation, it transitioned to a grand experiment: an audacious plan to transform and remake Moro society, values, and culture in an American image; placing the Moros on an uncertain and ill-defined path towards eventual Western-style democracy. But the Moros reacted with obstinate and unyielding resistance to what they perceived as a deliberate attack on the religion of Islam and a way of life ordained by God. The constant stream of battles and expeditions over the next ten years is known in U.S. Army history as the “Moro Campaigns”. In violence and ferocity they may have equaled, if not surpassed, the more famous late-19th Century Indian Wars of the Great Plains.

The backdrop is a bustling, raucous, newly-prosperous nation finding its way as a world and imperial power. But with this new-found status came a near-religious belief that the active spread of America’s institutions, values, and form of government, even when achieved through coercion or force, would create a better world. A subplot is a deep and bitter rivalry between two of its most prominent players, Capt. John J. Pershing and General Leonard Wood, born only one month apart, each championing markedly opposed military philosophies. Eventually they would compete to lead one-million American “doughboys” into the cauldron of the world’s first Great War.

Few Americans are aware that a century later the U.S. military has quietly returned to Moroland, to battle “radical Islamist terrorism”; using Army Green Berets, Navy Seals, and other elite forces. It is the smallest of the fronts of the “global war on terror” and the least-covered or critically examined. It leads the reader to an obvious question: are we avoiding or are we repeating our own past?

Excerpt:

FROM CHAPTER 7 – THE BATTLE OF BAYAN

In 2002, the 100th anniversary of the now obscure “Battle of Bayan” was remembered on both sides of the Pacific on a number of internet websites. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, what was commemorated was the mythology of the battle, not necessarily the facts, and that mythology was a direct product of the official reports and oral histories of the battle. No different than today, what we now term “spin” was put out by both sides, in official reports and newspaper articles for the Americans and in folktales for the Moros. Despite the obligatory congratulatory telegram from Theodore Roosevelt and the newspaper accounts of claiming a “whipping they would not soon forget,” no one in the American chain of command had been fooled into thinking this had been handled anything but poorly, even though the Americans had “won.” But given the torrents of bad press received on Samar and Batangas, and the legendary status of Colonel Baldwin, the War Department made certain this would be made out to be a heroic and notable achievement. Roosevelt had already made up his mind to declare victory in the Philippines in a few weeks’ time and focus the nation’s attention in other directions. He may have originally supported taking the Philippines, but he certainly did not at all enjoy inheriting its results.

Only forty-three rifles (many old single-shots), seventeen small lantacas, three iron muzzle-loading cannons, and one beat-up howitzer had been found among the dead at Binadayan and Pandapatan. A post-battle intelligence report from interviews with captured Moros indicated the defending force at Pandapatan had no more than 100 total rifles and forty lantacas and cannon. With a force roughly equal in size but outgunned in modern firepower almost five to one, relying on eighteenth-century bladed weapons and tactics against a twentieth-century army, the Maranaos of Lake Lanao had inflicted serious damage. They had surrendered only because their leadership had been killed, eighty percent of their force lost, and they were completely surrounded. Even then, most of those captured escaped the next morning.

The Imams quickly spread a story among the Maranao that, following the death of the principal war leader, the Sultan of Pandapatan, four angels appeared amidst a blinding flash of lightning and bore his body up to heaven on a chair, followed by a punishing deluge from the heavens that forced the Americans to withdraw from the cotta and spend a night in misery. The next morning a bright rainbow was said to have appeared, a message signifying that the people of Bayan, by so aggressively defending their part of Dar ul Islam (the realm of Islam), had greatly pleased God and emulated the martyrdom of Imam Hussein (grandson of the Prophet Mohammed) at far distant Karbala some twelve centuries before.

And here lay the rub. Americans defined “winning” as killing more than the enemy did and securing control over the battlefield. This is how the Civil War was won, as well as the more recent war in Cuba and the war in the battles in the north against the Christian Filipinos. The opponents in these conflicts shared these same definitions and accepted an outcome based on the same rules and scoring. Not so the Moros. What was important to them was the struggle and how one conducted oneself, personally and as a people, not necessarily the measurable outcome. They knew from the beginning that they were no match for American firepower. It was a one-sided match, what today is termed “asymmetric warfare,” but so what? Their final measure was how well one did against the odds, the more overwhelmingly they were against one, the greater the glory. And, being that life is transitory anyway, what mattered most was how well did you died? The Americans and the Moros were using different score cards for the same game. (© Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.)

Read Table of Contents, Introduction, and first Chapter (requires Adobe® Reader®)

About the Author:

In the 1960’s Robert A. Fulton was a young foreign service officer with the U.S. Information Agency stationed in the Philippines. It was here he first came into close personal contact with the Moros of the islands of Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago and witnessed first-hand the beginnings of the modern-day Moro separatist movements. He never forgot hearing many tales of the long ago battles between the Moros and the Americans. Following retirement from a long career in international business and as a successful entrepreneur, he has spent 4 ½ years researching this book and a second one which will soon follow to narrate the remaining period from 1907 to 1920.

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