The books

2026Out of print

Institute of Bangsamoro Studies

Institute of Bangsamoro Studies

A collection of personal stories from inside the Bangsamoro revolution, launched in Cotabato City on 17 June 2026. Its premise is to tell stories that had to stay hidden while the movement was clandestine.

2024Free to read

Abhoud Syed M. Lingga

Institute of Bangsamoro Studies

Writings by the founder of the Institute of Bangsamoro Studies on the Bangsamoro’s road to self-determination: its history, the law and politics of the peace process, and what it means for peacebuilding elsewhere. Published for the 10th anniversary of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro.

2022In print

Thomas M. McKenna

Armin Lear Press

The Moro guerrillas of Cotabato and Lanao in the Second World War, led by Edward Kuder’s foster son Mohammad Adil and the American schoolteacher himself, pieced together from their papers and the memories of those who fought.

2020In print

Ronald K. Edgerton

University Press of Kentucky

Pershing’s years among the Maranao and in Sulu, as a captain at Lake Lanao and as governor of the Moro Province, and the mix of diplomacy and force he learned there.

2020In print

Oliver Charbonneau

Cornell University Press

The American project in the Moro South set against the other colonial empires of its day, and the Moros’ own uses of it, from the archives of three continents.

2018In print

Rey Luis Adeva Montesclaros

New Day Publishers

The Spanish campaigns against the Maranao in the 1890s, set against the revolution that broke out in Luzon at the same time.

2015Out of print

Moro Islamic Liberation Front

Moro Islamic Liberation Front

A 3-volume history of the GPH–MILF peace negotiations from the MILF side, with copies of every signed agreement between the 2 parties. Volume 1 covers the domestic phase of the talks from 1997 to 2000.

2013In print

Michael C. Hawkins

Northern Illinois University Press

How the American officers who ruled the Moro Province wrote its people into a story of savagery and progress, and used that story to govern.

2012Out of print

Michael O. Mastura

Research and Education for Peace, Universiti Sains Malaysia

The government–MILF talks from February 1997 to June 2010, told by a Maguindanaon historian and lawyer who sat on the Front’s peace panel.

2011In print

James R. Arnold

Bloomsbury Publishing

The American campaigns against the Moros under Wood, Bliss and Pershing, from Bud Dajo to Bud Bagsak, as a military history for the general reader.

2011Out of print

Lualhati M. Abreu

Center for People Empowerment in Governance

The Bangsamoro struggle explained in Filipino for a national readership, from the sultanates to the MILF talks.

2011Out of print

Patricio P. Diaz

MindaNews

A long account of the talks between the government and the MILF, by a veteran Cotabato journalist who followed them from the start.

2010In print

Patricio N. Abinales

Ateneo de Manila University Press

Essays questioning the received story of the Moro struggle, the unbroken resistance from Spain to the present, and asking what the record shows instead.

2010In print

Samuel K. Tan

University of the Philippines Press

Tan’s later essays on the history and historiography of the Muslim South, collected at the end of his career.

2008In print

Ronald K. Edgerton

Ateneo de Manila University Press

A hundred years in the Bukidnon–Lanao borderlands, where Maranao, Lumad, settlers and the state met and sometimes made terms.

2008Out of print

Asreemoro

Saba Islamic Media

The Tausug and their sultanate seen from Sabah, where many Tausug now live, by a Malaysian writer of Tausug descent; first published in Malay in 2007.

2008Out of print

ed. Bobby M. Tuazon

Center for People Empowerment in Governance

Essays by Moro and Filipino scholars on the Bangsamoro’s history, the right to self-determination and the peace talks, from the Center for People Empowerment in Governance.

2007In print

Shinzo Hayase

Ateneo de Manila University Press

Maguindanao, Sangir and Bagobo as peoples of one sea rather than of two countries, in a history that crosses the border with Indonesia the way they did.

2007In print

Robert A. Fulton

Tumalo Creek Press

The first years of the American occupation of the Moro country, from Bates’s treaty with the Sultan of Sulu to Bud Dajo, told campaign by campaign from the army’s records.

2006Out of print

Abraham Iribani

Philippine Council for Islam and Democracy

An account of the peace talks between the Philippine government and the MNLF, based on the author's master's thesis at the National Defense College of the Philippines. It follows the negotiations that led to the 1996 Final Peace Agreement and public opinion around them.

2005Out of print

Samuel K. Tan

National Historical Commission of the Philippines

The Sulu Sultanate’s own correspondence in Jawi, transcribed and translated in two volumes: letters to Spain, Britain and its own datus from the last century of its independence.

2004In print

Miguel A. Bernad

Ateneo de Manila University Press

Essays on the exploration of Mindanao and the Christian missions there from the sixteenth century on, by a Jesuit historian who spent his later life in Cagayan de Oro.

2004Out of print

Erlinda M. Burton, Cecilia Macabuac and Lourdes A. Wong

Research Institute for Mindanao Culture

A comparison of 3 communities in the ARMM and how their history, autonomy and social conditions differ. It was published with Action Against Hunger and the European Commission.

2003Out of print

B. R. (Rudy) Rodil

Mindanao Coalition of Development NGO Networks

Mindanao’s history for the general reader, in questions and short answers: who was here first, how the settlers came, where the conflict began.

2003Self-published

Clemencio M. Bascar

Published by the author

A Zamboanga writer’s history of the Sulu Sultanate as a state that was never conquered, printed by the author.

2002In print

James Francis Warren

NUS Press

The Iranun and Balangingi raiders of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the world economy that called their raiding into being, and how a way of life became an ethnic name.

2002Self-published

Ben J. Kadil

Published by the author

A Moro teacher’s history of the peoples of Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan, written as a textbook and printed by the author.

2002In print

Moshe Yegar

Lexington Books

The Moros set beside the Malays of Patani and the Rohingya of Arakan: three Muslim minorities on the edges of Buddhist and Christian states, and the roads each took.

2002Out of print

Federico V. Magdalena

Mindanao State University

Essays on the history of the Moro South, the title essay on the 1902 battle in which American troops stormed the Maranao forts at Bayang, Lanao.

2002Out of print

Karl M. Gaspar, Elpidio A. Lapad and Ailynne J. Maravillas

Alternate Forum for Research in Mindanao

A reader for peace workers on Mindanao's history, ethnic relations and Muslim–Christian relations. It was written for Mindanao peace advocates and co-published with Catholic Relief Services.

2001Out of print

Salamat Hashim

Moro Islamic Liberation Front

Writings by the founding chairman of the MILF on the Bangsamoro struggle against oppression and colonial rule. It sets out the MILF's case for Bangsamoro self-determination.

2000In print

Patricio N. Abinales

Ateneo de Manila University Press

How Cotabato and Davao were drawn into the Philippine state in the first half of the twentieth century, through the datus and settler elites who learned to work it, and what that made of Mindanao politics.

2000Out of print

B. R. (Rudy) Rodil

Alternate Forum for Research in Mindanao

The twenty-one years of talks between the government and the Moro National Liberation Front, from Jeddah to the 1996 Final Peace Agreement, by a historian who sat on the government panel.

1999Out of print

Jamail A. Kamlian

MSU–Iligan Institute of Technology

Readings on the Moro peoples’ history, society and culture assembled for the peace studies programme at MSU-Iligan.

1999Free to read

ed. Mara Stankovitch

Conciliation Resources

An issue of the Accord series on the negotiations between the Philippine government and the MNLF that led to the 1996 'Final Peace Agreement'. Published with MSU General Santos and Notre Dame University, it carries essays, interviews, profiles and the key texts of the agreements.

1997Self-published

Ernesto M. Espaldon

Published by the author

The Tausug guerrillas who fought the Japanese in Sulu, told by a physician who was the youngest commander in the Sulu Area Command in 1945.

1995Self-published

Nasser A. Marohomsalic

Published by the author

A history of the Moro peoples written from within, from the sultanates to the MNLF, by a Maranao lawyer; printed by the author and much cited in the region. Revised 2001.

1994Out of print

B. R. (Rudy) Rodil

Alternate Forum for Research in Mindanao

How the Moro and Lumad peoples became minorities in their own homeland: the land laws, the resettlement programmes and the migration from Luzon and the Visayas, with the figures.

1991Out of print

Ghislaine Loyré

Historical Conservation Society

The sultanate, the datus, the law and the ranks of Maguindanao society, set out from Spanish sources and the author’s ethnographic fieldwork.

1989Out of print

Ruurdje Laarhoven

New Day Publishers

Sultan Kudarat’s Maguindanao as the Dutch and Spanish records show it: a sultanate that held its own between two empires by diplomacy as much as by war.

1989Out of print

Samuel K. Tan

University of the Philippines Press

What decolonisation meant for a people who did not see the republic as their own, and how a Filipino Muslim identity was argued over in the decades after independence.

1988Out of print

Juan R. Francisco

Mindanao State University

Essays on the Indian and Islamic strands in Mindanao’s arts and epics, by a scholar of Sanskrit in the Philippines.

1986Out of print

Mamitua Saber

Mindanao State University

The Spanish assault on the Maranao kotas at Marawi in 1895, from Spanish accounts and Maranao memory, by the Maranao sociologist who founded the university’s research centre.

1984Out of print

Salah Jubair (Mohagher Iqbal)

IQ Marin

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s own history of the Bangsamoro, from the sultanates through colonial rule to the MNLF and the MILF, written by its chief negotiator under a pen name. The third edition of 1999 is the one usually cited.

1984Out of print

Michael O. Mastura

Ministry of Muslim Affairs

Early essays by Mastura on Moro history, law and politics, from the years before he entered Congress.

1981In print

James Francis Warren

NUS Press

The Sulu Sultanate at its height as a trading state: the China trade in sea produce, the slave raiding that fed it, and the peoples it drew in, from Spanish, British and Dutch archives. The book that made the Sulu Zone a field of study. Second edition 2007.

1981Out of print

ed. Nagasura T. Madale

Alemar-Phoenix Publishing House

A reader of essays on the history, faiths and cultures of the Muslim peoples of the Philippines, edited by the Maranao anthropologist.

1979Out of print

Peter G. Gowing

New Day Publishers

A general introduction to the Muslim peoples of the Philippines, their history, faith and institutions and their place in the republic, written for Filipino readers from the Dansalan Research Center in Marawi.

1977Out of print

Peter G. Gowing

Philippine Center for Advanced Studies, University of the Philippines

How the United States ruled the Moro Province and the Department of Mindanao and Sulu, from the Bates Treaty to the start of Filipinization, from the records of the men who governed. Reprinted by New Day in 1983.

1977Out of print

Samuel K. Tan

Filipinas Foundation

The Moro revolts from the American conquest to the eve of martial law, by the historian who would lead the National Historical Institute.

1973In print

Cesar Adib Majul

University of the Philippines Press

The standard history of the Muslim peoples of the Philippines: the coming of Islam, the sultanates of Sulu and Maguindanao, and three centuries of Spanish wars against them, told from the Moro side of the record. Reissued by the University of the Philippines Press in 1999.

1973Out of print

Alexander Spoehr

University of Pittsburgh, Department of Anthropology

Excavations and surveys in Zamboanga and Sulu read for what they say of how the region’s peoples came to differ.

1971Out of print

Reynaldo C. Ileto

Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications

Datu Uto, who ruled the upper Pulangi against the Spaniards in the last decades of their rule, and what his rise and fall show of Maguindanao politics. Ileto’s first book, reissued by Anvil in 2007.

1936In print

Vic Hurley

E. P. Dutton

A popular history of the Moros and their wars with Spain and the United States, by an American who had lived in Zamboanga; vivid, partisan and long the only book of its kind in English.

1908Free to read

Najeeb M. Saleeby

Bureau of Public Printing, Manila

Sulu from its earliest written genealogies to the American arrival, drawn from the sultanate’s own documents, Spanish records and the author’s years in Jolo. Out of copyright and free to read.

1905Free to read

Najeeb M. Saleeby

Bureau of Public Printing, Manila

The first English account of Maguindanao’s genealogies and of the law codes and Islam of Maguindanao and Sulu, translated by an American colonial official who read the originals. Out of copyright and free to read.