Ma-i and the China Trade: The Philippines in the Song Dynasty Records
Centuries before Magellan, Chinese merchants were sailing to Philippine ports. The Song and Yuan dynasty records reveal an archipelago deeply embedded in Asian maritime commerce.
Archipelagic Intelligence
A Repository of Philippine Knowledge.
01
Insights from Philippine History
Pre-colonial civilizations, maritime sovereignty, colonial resistance, and the deep roots of law and culture in the archipelago.
Explore →
02The Culinary Codex
Where food meets law — how colonial taxation shaped fermentation, how trade regulation determined agriculture, and why food sovereignty is the oldest political question.
Explore →
03Augmented Philippine Intelligence
A constellation of AI agents building knowledge about the Philippines — knowledge graphs, cultural preservation, on-device language models, all governed by the communities they serve.
Explore →
Recent Writing
Philippine History
View all →The Gold Kingdoms of Butuan
A thousand years before the Spanish galleons, Butuan was sending diplomatic missions to China and burying its dead in gold. The archaeological record of a Philippine maritime power.
Baybayin: A Nation of Writers
When the Spanish arrived, they found something they did not expect — a population that was overwhelmingly literate, writing in scripts older than the colony that would try to erase them.
Culinary Codex
View all →Bagoong and the Colonial Tax
How the Spanish colonial taxation of fermented fish paste reshaped Philippine food culture, trade networks, and the legal foundations of indigenous commerce.
From Ancient Granaries to the Rice Tariffication Law
The legal history of rice in the Philippines — from pre-colonial communal granaries to RA 11203 and the politics of the nation's most regulated grain.
Tuba and Temperance
Alcohol regulation in the Philippines from pre-colonial coconut wine to the modern excise tax — a history of the state's attempt to control what people drink.
The Constellation
Augmented Philippine Intelligence
A multi-agent system for Philippine knowledge — history, law, food, language, and material culture. On-device where possible. Explore the agents or try the interface in the corner of your screen.
Meet the agents →