The Sultanate of Sulu, a country that still gives Malaysia a headache after a century of subjugation.
In 1565, a group of Spanish colonists from Mexico occupied the island of Cebu in the Philippine archipelago and began Spanish colonial rule over the Philippines for 300 years. During the 500-year colonial rule of Spain, the Philippine Islands were not completely unified, and the southern Sulu state existed and paid tribute to the Qing Dynasty until the capital Hele was occupied in 1851, which completely severed ties with the Qing Dynasty, but the Sulu State did not perish.
With Spain's defeat in the Spanish-American War of 1898, it was forced to sell the Philippines to the United States for $20 million, becoming an American colony. The American colonists were not as "benevolent" as Spain, and the year after buying the Philippines, they forced the Sultan of Sulu to sign the Butters Agreement, which recognized the suzerainty of the United States over the Sulu State, and in 1903, the Sulu State became the "Moro Province" and imposed military control. After 12 years, the Sultan of Sulu was forced to renounce his secular power in Sulu, retaining only the status of nominal religious leader, and the Sulu State collapsed, and it was only then that the Sulu State officially became part of the Philippines.
The Philippines became a Colony of the United States, Malaysia is a British colony, and it seems that well water does not violate the river water, but the Philippines strongly protested against the establishment of the Federation of Malaysia on September 16, 1963, because the Philippines believed that this Federation contained its own territory "Sabah" and should be returned to itself.
Because of the "Sabah sovereignty issue", Malaysia and the Philippines have been at loggerheads for a long time, and even armed conflict has occurred. On March 3, 2013, the Malaysian government said Sabah had been invaded by Filipino tribal militants. The tribal forces said that Sabah was the ancestral land and that the act was to "reclaim the land", and expressed support for such an act by the Sultan Gilam III of Sulu in Manila. To this end, Malaysia had to send reinforcements to Sabah to protect territorial sovereignty.
The Malaysian government still pays 5,300 yuan (about $1,600) a year to the descendants of the Sultan of Sulu because Sabah was rented by the British that year.
Today we will take a look at why the Sultan of Sulu insists on claiming sovereignty over Sabah and why Malaysia pays a rent of 5,300 yuan per year.
The United States and Spain are in contention, and Sulu changes hands:
After 400 years of colonial rule by Spain and the United States, Catholicism became the religion of more than 85 percent of filipino nationals, but there is an area southwest of the Philippine archipelago that is a big fan of Islam because of the emergence of a powerful commercial state in the history of the Philippines, the Sultanate of Sulu.
In the 7th century, after the rise of Islam in the Middle East, Arab merchants gradually spread Islam to the East through trade. In 1405, with the support of local Muslim merchants and nobles, the Sultanate of Sulu was formally established as an Islamic political system. Before the arrival of the Spaniards, the Philippine archipelago had never been unified, and had always been a scattered sand, which gave the Sulu state the opportunity to rise, from Palawan in the west to Mindanao in the east. In 1417, a visiting mission of up to 340 people was also organized to Daming for a "state visit".
Until this time, the Sulu state had little to do with Sabah, but the "Bohai State" (i.e., Brunei) in Borneo had a rebellion in 1662, and in order to compete for the throne, one of the parties adopted the strategy of "borrowing teachers to help suppress", requested military assistance from the Sultan of Sulu, and finally ascended the throne.
In 1704, the Bolu State ceded the eastern and northern parts of Sabah to the Sultan of Sulu, making the Sulu Empire a "Sulu Empire". But at this time, the Philippine islands were no longer the islands of the Filipinos, because the Spaniards had come.
Although Magellan forcibly intervened in the local tribal conflict in the Philippines because of his own arrogance, he ended up dead. But the Spaniards were not intimidated because the Philippine archipelago was worth so much. So 20 years later, in 1542, Spanish colonists set sail from Mexico to the Philippine Archipelago again and named it after the King's son, Prince Philip, the "Philippines."
Catholic Spain brought the "gospel" to the Philippines, but it could not shake the status of Islam in Mindanao and Sulu, so it had to eat away at it step by step.
More than 300 years have passed, Spain has long lost its colonies in the Americas, no longer the young and handsome and rich emerging European nobles, and the Sultanate of Sulu has only a small piece of land left in the Sulu Archipelago, but the Spaniards have never been able to destroy it.
At the end of the 19th century, the United States has become the world's largest industrial output value, at this time the world is still in the era of colonial 2.0, and various colonial empires are wantonly seizing colonies to obtain raw material production and sales markets. As a rising star, the United States is obviously lagging behind a lot, even Belgium, a small European country with only 30,000 square kilometers, can occupy a colony with an area of more than 2.3 million square kilometers in Africa, and there is not a single big country, and the American consortium is anxious to see the products piled up in the warehouse.
According to the "Thucydides Trap" in the West, the rise of a new country will inevitably contradict the old powers, war is inevitable, and adhering to this set of perverse reasoning, the United States has targeted Spain. After all, persimmons have to be picked up in a soft pinch.
With the outbreak of the Cuban War of Independence, Spanish colonial rule was in jeopardy, and by 1898, two-thirds of the island had been liberated by rebels, and Cuba would become independent without doing anything. It is too disgraceful for people to declare independence and then pick peaches, after all, Western countries are countries that "want faces" on the table.
So in 1898, the Armored Cruiser Maine, which was on a "goodwill visit" by the United States in Havana, Cuba, suddenly exploded, killing 266 soldiers, and then the American media published a big poster, blaming Spain for the explosion of the Maine, calling it the Spaniards' "worst act of perfidy" and "a war" to solve. As for what the truth is, does it matter? After all, taking out a bottle of washing powder can say that Iraq has chemical weapons, but this time it is a capital ship, and war can be avoided?
The war was really not a bright spot, the battle was first fought in the Philippines, the U.S. army took Manila at the cost of 8 wounded, and also took Guam by hand on the way. The fiercest battle was the Battle of Santiago, in which the U.S. army launched a continuous attack on Santiago with the cooperation of the Cuban insurgents, and finally attacked the city at the cost of 1700 casualties, but the Cuban insurgents were directly abandoned by the American army like the Philippine insurgents.
The islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico were ceded to the United States, islands such as the Philippines and Guam were sold to the United States for $20 million, and sovereignty over the Sulu Islands was transferred to the United States.
Cedation or concession? A one-word difference sparks controversy:
In 1824, Britain and the Netherlands signed a treaty stipulating the colonial boundaries of the two countries in the Strait of Malacca, which became an important basis for Malaysia and Indonesia to demarcate the boundary line in the future, but this treaty did not stipulate the demarcation of the border between the two countries in Borneo.
As trade with China expanded, both britain and the Netherlands wanted to build a permanent coal and water service station on the way to China, which set both countries on Borneo. The entire island of Borneo was once the territory of Brunei, and Brunei became a barrier that britain and the Netherlands could not pass.
In 1841, James Brooke was made Governor of Sarawak by helping Brunei suppress the sarawak uprising, and the following year the Englishman established himself as king and established the Brooke Dynasty, which remains sarawak's "first district" to this day. The Sultan of Brunei was not in a hurry, and the Dutch were angry first, knowing how to make the British "sleep" on the side of their bed. Although the Dutch protested with the 1824 treaty, the British said that the treaty did not include Borneo.
In the face of the frenzied Expansion of the British in Borneo, the Sultan of Brunei whimsically believed that it was possible to "use rent to offset the invasion", so in 1850, he proposed a lease plan to the American consul, leasing North Borneo (Sabah) to the United States for a period of 10 years. As a result, this was not only strongly opposed by the British, but also did not earn money for several years, so the lease was sold, and finally fell into the hands of the British.
The British were obviously not satisfied with such a time-bound treaty, but he went directly to the Sultan of Sulu to amend it, after all, Brunei had transferred Sabah to the Sultan of Sulu as early as 1704. In 1878, Britain signed the Treaty of Cession of North Borneo with the Sultan of Sulu.
But is it "ceded" or "concession"? This has become an important cause of the dispute between Malaysia and the Philippines.
The original text of the Treaty was written in the Taj script, a Malay script written in the Arabic alphabet, after all, Islam was transmitted from Arabia.
Later, anthropologists, linguists, historians and other major experts carried out archaeological translations of the original text, and the English translation was: "In this way, we have permanently authorized and ceded all the rights and powers of all the territories to those from Hong Kong..."
The Sulu translation reads: "In this way we lease all our territories, as well as the permanent right and power to possess all our lands, to those from Hong Kong..."
The difference in translations caused controversy between the two parties, the only thing that was not controversial was the stipulation that a fee of 5,000 yuan per year would be paid to the Sultan of Sulu.
For the Sulu State, Spain has always regarded it as a bag, but britain is the big brother after all, and Spain had to sign the Madrid Protocol with the United Kingdom in exchange for the British recognition of the sovereignty of the Sulu Islands to Spain.
In 1903, Britain again signed a treaty with the Sultan of Sulu, the Treaty of Affirmation, ceding the islands adjacent to Sabah to Britain at the cost of an additional $300 a year. So far, every year, the Malaysian Embassy in the Philippines will pay a fee of 5300 yuan to the Sultan of Sulu and his descendants as a "land transfer fee" for Sabah, but in the eyes of the descendants of the Sultan of Sulu, this is the "rent", otherwise how can it be paid every year?
With the Spanish-American War, Spain was defeated, the Philippines and its surrounding islands were sold to the United States, and the Sulu problem was also in the hands of the United States. As a "civilized country", the United States has always flaunted "keeping the treaty", the "Madrid Protocol" of 1885 recognized the sovereignty of Sulu to Spain, and the Treaty of Paris sold the Philippines to the United States, then Sulu sovereignty is naturally the United States, but Spain has not been able to control here, so the United States signed the "Bates Treaty" with the Sultan of Sulu, confirming the United States' ownership of Sulu sovereignty.
As for the sabah issue, as early as 1906, the United States proposed to the British that Sabah should not belong to the property of the British royal family, but that the British North Borneo Company was "leased" from Sulu.
For such an idea, it was naturally protested by britain, and in the face of Britain, which was the world's superpower at that time, the United States did not dare to say much.
In 1936, the sultan of Sulu, Chamaru Hiram, died, and because there was no successor, it also sparked a dispute over the sultan's inheritance rights and property division, and the sultan's younger brother and son-in-law claimed to inherit the sultan. In the end, the North Borneo court ruled that they all had the right to inherit Sabah's compensation, but also ruled that the Cession Treaty of that year was a "cede" rather than a "concession", which was also an important basis for Sabah's transformation into a British dependency in 1946.
Of course, this judgment does not have legal effect, because it is always impossible for a "courtier" to judge the master, right?
From toughness to symbolic claims, it is difficult to return to the "ancestral heritage":
The Second World War brought a "big bloodletting" to the two major colonial empires of Britain and France, and after the war, the blood-soaked Britain and France could no longer afford to maintain a huge overseas colony, and even the Indians who were the easiest to colonize in the world began a "national awakening".
In 1946, the British abolished the East India Company's rule over Sabah and established the North Borneo Colony, but this did not calm the British colony.
On 16 September 1963, the Federation of Malaysia was established and Sabah joined Malaysia as a member of the "State", and the issue of Sabah's sovereignty became a dispute between the Philippines and Malaysia.
On the issue of Sabah, the Philippines issued a diplomatic protest when the British changed Sabah from the British East India Company to the British Royal Territory. On April 28, 1950, the Philippine House of Representatives passed a bill that "the Philippine Parliament considers Sabah to belong to the successor of the Sultan of Sulu and ultimately to the Republic of the Philippines" and authorizes the President to negotiate with Great Britain.
In 1957, Sultan Hiram I of Sulu announced the termination of the Cession Treaty and the revocation of Sabah.
As a descendant of the powerless and powerless, the Sultan of Sulu knew that he wanted to return to Sabah on his own, and if he gave it to the Philippine government, there was still a chance. Therefore, in April 1962, the Sultan of Sulu announced the transfer of sovereignty over Sabah to the Philippine government, and from this moment on, the Philippines immediately hardened and claimed that it deserved the sovereignty of Sabah. If Britain did not return it to itself, it appealed to the International Court of Justice, and in 1962 Sabah was still a British colony, and in response to the Note from the Philippines, Britain stated that Sabah's sovereignty belonged to itself without any dispute.
Britain's withdrawal from Southeast Asia was irreversible in the 1960s, but what about British colonies in Southeast Asia?
In May 1961, The Prime Minister of the Union of Malaya, Tongo, proposed a plan for the Federation of Malaysia, including Malaya, Singapore, Sabah, Sarawak and Brunei.
Singapore joined Malaysia through a referendum under the operation of Lee Kuan Yew, but Sabah did not hold a referendum, only a survey conducted by the "Kobold Commission" set up by the United Kingdom and the UN 8-member team each found a report that a majority of the local population supported the establishment and joined Malaysia.
Sabah then joined Malaysia as a state.
After Malaysia's establishment, the angry Philippines even recalled its ambassador to Malaya and did not announce its recognition of Malaysia until 2 years later, but said it "reserves the right to claim sovereignty over Sabah in the future".
In 1967, the President of the Philippines strongly stated that Sabah's sovereignty belonged to the Philippines, and trained Moro Muslim armed men on Koregidor Island to infiltrate and sabotage Sabah.
In September 1968, the Philippines passed the Republic Act No. 5446, which clearly declared that the sovereignty of Sabah belonged to the Philippines, and even caused the severance of diplomatic relations between Malaysia and the Philippines.
The dispute between the two countries over Sabah reached its peak.
Although the Philippines has always claimed that Sabah is the territory of the Philippines, the Philippines also knows that it is impossible to return to the territory, and the tough attitude is nothing more than a symbolic claim for the Filipino people to see.
After decades of dispute, in 1987, the Philippines revised its constitution and deleted sabah's "historical or legal belonging to the Philippines" clause, which made the descendants of the Sultan of Sulu dissatisfied, and transferred sovereignty to the government in the hope that the state would help it regain its lost land, and as a result, the Philippines not only amended the constitution, but also sent its foreign minister to persuade itself to unify its position and settle the Sabah issue peacefully. After all, as soon as we enter the 21st century, promoting economic development is the right way, because sabah's sovereignty issue has caused a lot of trouble for the Philippine government. In 1989, In an outrage, Jamalur Kiram III announced that he would rescind his 1962 decision to transfer sovereignty from Sabah to the Government of the Philippines and continue his claim to sovereignty.
In fact, the attitude of the Sultanates of Sulu to the Sabah issue is not the same, and in 1996 a "Sulu Princess" wrote to Mahathir asking Malaysia to raise the rent in Sabah to US$1 million per year, so that she was willing to give up its claim to Sabah.
Even if Malaysia had agreed to this condition, the Sultanate would not have agreed, and a tribal leader of the Sulu region would have proclaimed himself the 35th Sultan of Sulu and continued to support the reconquest of Sabah.
On February 11, 2013, a small group of about 180 armed men landed in Sabah with weapons, claiming to have been sent by Kiram III to retake the "ancestral land," causing dozens of casualties on both sides. However, this almost affected Kiram III, who threatened to take legal action against Kiram III.
As mentioned above, the Philippines is a country with Catholicism as the mainstay, but there has always been serious Islamist separatism and terrorism among the Moro ethnic groups in the southern region, and their living space in history includes Sabah.
Therefore, on the issue of Sabah's sovereignty, the Philippine government either remains silent or declares sovereignty in a high-profile manner, for example, the 2018 constitutional amendment adds the expression "historical or legal power" to ensure stability and unity in the Philippines.
So how should the Sabah problem be solved?
Malaysia not only has the sovereignty issue of Sabah with the Philippines, but also has a territorial dispute with Singapore over Branca Trastever and Sipadan with Indonesia, which was finally submitted to the International Court of Justice in The Hague for disposal and resolved. So can the issue of Sabah be referred to the International Court of Justice? The Philippines is naturally willing, but taking its territory to the court for others to decide on its ownership is obviously not good for Malaysia, after all, the world now recognizes the sovereignty of Sabah as its own. Covering an area of more than 70,000 square kilometers, Sabah is one of Malaysia's major oil producers, how could it be abandoned?
No amount of chanting from the descendants of the Sultan of Sulu can change the fact that Sabah belongs to Malaysia.