The Bates Agreement: How the U.S. Bought Moro Neutrality to Crush a Republic
The Bates Agreement: How the U.S. Bought Moro Neutrality to Crush a Republic
On August 20, 1899, an American general and the Sultan of Sulu signed a treaty that kept the Moro south out of the war in the north — and set the terms for a century of broken promises.
I grew up in Marikina reading about Rizal and Bonifacio before I ever left the Philippines. The Katipunan's story was the first anti-colonial history I ever knew, and it stayed with me through Chicago, through Vallejo, through everything since. What nobody handed me — not in Marikina, not in an American classroom — was Jolo. Was Sulu. Was the treaty that let Washington finish off the First Philippine Republic in the north by paying the Moro south to stay out of the fight.
That treaty turns 127 this week. It deserves to be as familiar to Filipino-Americans as Balintawak or Aguinaldo's surrender, because it shaped — more directly than either — the marginalization the Bangsamoro region still lives with today.
The Bates Agreement predates the fall of the First Philippine Republic by nearly two years — it was signed while Aguinaldo was still fighting in Luzon. Its broken promise is a direct ancestor of the fight that finally produced real Bangsamoro autonomy in 2019.
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Kasunduan — kah-soon-DOO-ahn
Agreement, or pact — something entered into by two parties as equals. The word itself is the irony at the center of this story: Sulu and Washington were never equals, and the kasunduan proved it the moment it stopped being useful to one side.
The War in the North, and the Deal Nobody Talks About
By the summer of 1899, the Philippine-American War was five months old. Emilio Aguinaldo's First Philippine Republic was fighting American forces across Luzon, and U.S. commanders had a problem they couldn't afford: a second front. The Sultanate of Sulu was armed, organized, and had never been conquered by three centuries of Spanish rule. If the Moro south joined Aguinaldo's resistance, or simply took advantage of the chaos to reclaim full sovereignty, the war Washington was already struggling to win could become unwinnable.
So the U.S. did not send an invasion force to Jolo. It sent Brigadier General John C. Bates to negotiate.
What Bates Actually Offered
General Elwell Otis, who dispatched Bates, mistakenly believed the Sultan governed all Moros and could deliver their neutrality with a signature. He was wrong about the scope of the Sultan's authority — but the miscalculation didn't stop the deal. Bates arrived with a proposal: the Sultanate would recognize U.S. sovereignty in place of Spain's old, unequal 1878 treaty. In exchange, the U.S. would leave Moro religion, customs, and internal governance alone, and pay the Sultan and his ruling datus monthly stipends.
| Recipient | Monthly Stipend (Mexican dollars) |
|---|---|
| Sultan Jamalul Kiram II | $250.00 |
| Datu Rajah Muda | $75.00 |
| Datu Kalbi | $75.00 |
| Datu Joakanain | $75.00 |
| Datu Attik | $60.00 |
| Datu Amin Hussin | $60.00 |
| Datu Puyo | $60.00 |
| Hadji Butu | $50.00 |
Figures are the treaty's own terms — 19th-century Sulu Sultanate stipends, not modern currency. Source: full treaty text, Wikisource.
The military-administrative territory the U.S. imposed over Mindanao and Sulu once the Bates Agreement was torn up. Created in 1903 and formalized after the 1904 abrogation, it replaced negotiated autonomy with direct American military rule — the opposite of what Bates had promised five years earlier.
Why the Sultan Said Yes
Jamalul Kiram II did not sign quickly. He resisted the American offer for months, unable to secure unanimous support from his ruma bichara, the ruling council. It was internal pressure — led by his own prime minister, Hadji Butu, and two of his senior datus — that finally moved him. Hadji Butu reportedly judged armed resistance a losing proposition and pushed the council toward acceptance. On August 20, 1899, the Sultan conceded, and the agreement was signed in triplicate, in English and Sulu.
The Promise America Broke
The Bates Agreement did exactly what it was designed to do: it kept Sulu out of the war while the U.S. broke the First Philippine Republic in the north. And once that job was finished, the treaty stopped being useful. On March 2, 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt declared it null and void. The "non-interference" Bates had promised gave way to direct military occupation, and the years that followed — the Moro Wars, fought from 1904 to 1913 — were the price the Sulu Sultanate paid for a treaty Washington never intended to honor once it no longer needed to.
The Line From Jolo to the Bangsamoro Today
This is the part that doesn't make it into most American classrooms, and didn't make it into mine growing up in the Philippines either: the abrogation of the Bates Agreement is not a closed chapter. It is the opening move in a dispossession that ran through the American colonial period, through Commonwealth neglect, through Marcos-era militarization, and into the armed conflicts that shaped Mindanao for most of the twentieth century. The political fight that eventually produced the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao — ratified by plebiscite in 2019 — is, in a real sense, still answering the question the Bates Agreement asked and then refused to honor: does the Moro south get to govern itself, or does a distant power get to decide when that promise is convenient?
Why This Belongs on This Site
PinoyBuilt exists to hold two things at once: gratitude for the country that received my family, and clear eyes about what that same country did — and does — when its power goes unchecked. The Bates Agreement is exactly that kind of story. It restores agency to a part of Filipino history too often flattened into "the Moro problem" instead of told as what it was: a sovereign Sultanate negotiating, resisting, and ultimately being betrayed by a power that only kept its word for as long as the war in the north required it. That belongs in the same breath as Rizal and Bonifacio in every Fil-Am family's understanding of where we come from — mine included.
- Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines — "Brief Memorandum on the Government of the Sultanate of Sulu and Powers of the Sultan During the 19th Century"
- Wikisource — Full text of the Kiram-Bates Treaty (August 20, 1899)
- Sulu Online Library — "The Bates Treaty," by Madge Kho
- Wikipedia — "Kiram–Bates Treaty" (context on the 1904 abrogation and the Moro Province)
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Founder & Editor
J.F.R. Perseveranda
J.F. (Jonjo) left the Philippines at age nine, spending a lifetime bridging the gap between his Marikina roots and his Chicago/Vallejo upbringing. A proud Hogan Spartan from East Vallejo and resident of LA/SF, he founded PinoyBuilt not just as a digital archive, but as a cultural compass for his three children to navigate their heritage, language, and identity with Pinoy Pride.
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