Culinary Crossings

On 20 August 1899, U.S. Brigadier General John C. Bates signed an agreement with Sultan Jamalul Kiram II that the United States described as a recognition of Sulu sovereignty under American protection. American internal correspondence treated it from the outset as a temporary expedient. It was abrogated by the U.S. seven years later. What it actually established, what it concealed, and what it bequeathed to the Carpenter Agreement that followed.

On 22 March 1915, Frank W. Carpenter and Sultan Jamalul Kiram II signed a memorandum agreement that ended the political sovereignty of the Sulu Sultanate after 465 years. The Sultan retained religious and customary authority. The Sulu peoples retained their lived sovereignty regardless of any document. A close reading of what the Memorandum did, what it did not do, and what it could not do.

When Spanish, then American, then early-Republican Filipino sources call Sulu maritime activity 'piracy,' they are not describing — they are categorizing. Under the European law of nations, piracy meant statelessness, and statelessness meant no protection. Calling Sulu fleets pirates was a legal move that justified responses outside inter-state law. The move worked. Its rhetorical residue is still active. A close reading of the category, its origins, and its modern afterlife.

On 22 January 1878, Sultan Jamalul Alam of Sulu and the agents of Baron von Overbeck signed a single document concerning North Borneo. The English text uses the language of cession. The Malay-Arabic text uses the word pajak. The dispute over what was actually transferred has not been resolved in the 148 years since.

The bridging of modern state law with traditional ancestral domain logic bases.

Institutionalizing strict checks and balances and decentralized governance frameworks.

The consolidation of executive power and single-node state architecture.

Establishing the framework for a sovereign republic and automated independence.

The shift from communal land use to strict private property rights under American colonial law.

The framing of Asia’s first republican constitution and the formalization of civil rights.

The subjugation of customary law to Spanish codified law and the architecture of colonial bureaucracy.

Unwritten customary laws (adat), kinship-based dispute resolution, and the decentralized architecture of justice.