Blue Seals and the Sulu World

Smuggling in the southern Philippines between the 1950s and the 1960s was not simply the exchange of goods between the Sulu Archipelago and Borneo. Patterns of government interdiction show a far more extensive network that linked Japan, Hong Kong, North Borneo, Sulu, and the various parts of the Philippines. The Sulu Archipelago was far from being a mere backwater where contraband goods were dumped. Its island provinces and towns were an important hub that ensured the smooth flow of the trade facilitated by a multiethnic partnership on the Philippine end. It was also a trade that a weak Philippine state could not eradicate.