Much has already been written about the Manila Galleon, the system of annual commercial sailings between Manila and Acapulco that dominated trans-Pacific trade for two and a half centuries from the latter part of the 16th-century until the early 19th, a development which is often taken to mark the beginning of “globalization”. Juan José Rivas Moreno reviews much of that as background, but unlike perhaps any other book on the subject to date, he turns his gaze to what was going on in Manila itself.
Spain
Podcast with Diego Javier Luis, author of “The First Asians in the Americas: A Transpacific History”
There’s a popular folk hero in Puebla, Mexico—Catarina de San Juan, who Mexicans hailed as a devoted religious figure after her death in 1688. She’s credited with creating the china poblana dress, a connection of dubious historical veracity made several centuries after her death. But Catarina is one of Mexico’s most famous “chinos”—despite the fact that she was likely from India, not China. In fact, any Asian that disembarked in Mexico, whether from China, Japan, the Philippines, India, or even further away, was called “chino”. It was not a particularly beneficial classification: “chinos”, under Spanish law, could be enslaved; “indios”, or indigenous populations, could not.
Diego Javier Luis hardly bothers explaining to his readers that of course there were Asians in the Americas centuries before the California Gold Rush and the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. But given the common and almost automatic conflation of the United States with “America”, it can nevertheless come as a surprise that Mexico had entire Asian communities before the Pilgrims even set foot on Plymouth Rock.
Since the English edition of this book first came into my possession, it seemed obvious to me that it should be published in Spanish. Fortunately, after some frustrated attempts, the ever-ready publisher Siruela saw fit to take it on. It is a small book and, therefore, doubly interesting, and not only because of what Baltasar Gracián summed up with the sparkling phrase: “Lo bueno, si breve, dos veces bueno” (“what is good, if brief, is good twice over”). There is another factor, or perhaps two, to take into account. The first is that La Plata y el Pacífico illuminates an essential chapter of universal history, that is, the first stage of economic globalization along the axis of the Pacific via the Manila Galleon or Nao de China, an episode largely unknown to the wider public, whether of English-, Spanish- or Chinese-speaking backgrounds.
2019 marked the five-hundred year anniversary of the launch of Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage around the world–a milestone marked by commemorative sailings, museum exhibitions, and a joint submission from Spain and Portugal to UNESCO. Two years later, the Philippines marked their own commemoration of Magellan’s voyage: the 500th anniversary of his death at the hands of local leader Lapu-Lapu.
Felipe Fernández-Armesto doesn’t think much of Ferdinand Magellan. Particularly galling is that the famous explorer’s “renown seems impregnable” despite the fact that “his failure was total”.
Back in the day, whenever one was in a waiting room or vestibule, one would likely come across a copy of “Reader’s Digest”, which would include a diverse selection of pieces, often abridged, often extracts from elsewhere: easy reading, something to interest anyone and everyone, thought-provoking but not enough to require too much mental exertion.