Timawa

Timawa were members of the pre-colonial feudal Tagalog society on the island of Luzon, Philippines called. They had the same rights and obligations as the social standing among them the class of Maharlika and formed the second class in the social system of the pre-colonial Tagalog Society. They were followers of a free Datus, Rajah Lakan or. The class of Timawas was from today's perspective, an equivalent of the European landed nobility of the early Middle Ages.

They were free common members of society and did not need a tribute to the aristocratic class of Maginoo payable. The Timawa owned their own land and were able to voluntarily from time to time, till the fields of aristocratic Datus or become otherwise shared in the community useful. You were free to change the master or leader. The Timawas stood in the hierarchically structured society over the Maharlikas and the unfree Alipin, the latter provided the social basis however Represents the social model of Tagalog society was in contrast to comparable European societies permeable, so that the Timawas the possibility was open to the rise in the class of the aristocracy.

Since the beginning of the 17th century Timawas disappeared from the Tagalog society, as the company was flattened during the colonization of the Philippines by Spain, to a pure dependent peasant society, were asked to pay only a tribute to the Spanish monastic orders and the colonial officials.

In the Visayas region also existed a class of Timawas, but these were unlike the Tagalog society a kind of dependent warrior caste.