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Concept
Precolonial barangay
Summary
In early Philippine history, barangay is the term historically used by scholars to describe the complex sociopolitical units which were the dominant organizational pattern among the various peoples of the Philippine archipelago in the period immediately before the arrival of European colonizers. Academics refer to these settlements using the technical term "polity", but they are usually simply called "barangays."
Some barangays were well-organized independent villages, consisting of thirty to a hundred households. Other barangays — most notably those in Maynila, Tondo, Panay, Pangasinan, Cebu, Bohol, Butuan, Cotabato, and Sulu — were large cosmopolitan polities.
The term originally referred to both a house on land and a boat on water, containing families, friends and dependents.
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. 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.
However, every information regarding pre-colonial barangay leads to a single source, Juan de Plascencia's 1589 report Las costumbres de los indios Tagalos de Filipinas. Historian Damon Woods challenges the concept of barangay as an indigenous political organization and considers it as a myth primarily due to lack of linguistic evidence.
Based on indigenous language documents, Tagalogs did not use the word barangay to describe themselves or their communities. Instead, barangay is argued as a Spanish invention from an attempt by the Spaniards in reconstructing pre-conquest Tagalog society.
The term has since been adapted as the name of the basic political unit of the Philippines. 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.
Official source
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