First Asians in the Americas: A Transpacific History
First Asians in the Americas: A Transpacific History
First Asians in the Americas: A Transpacific History
Member Benefits
30% Off All Books - Savings that support storytellers, not stock prices.
Fight Book Bans - Every membership sends a book to LGBTQ+ youth in affected states.
Member Book Price
$56.25
$39.38
Couldn't load pickup availability
Description
Description
The definitive account of transpacific Asian movement through the Spanish empire--from Manila to Acapulco and beyond--and its implications for the history of race and colonization in the Americas.
Between 1565 and 1815, the so-called Manila galleons enjoyed a near-complete monopoly on transpacific trade between Spain's Asian and American colonies. Sailing from the Philippines to Mexico and back, these Spanish trading ships also facilitated the earliest migrations and displacements of Asian peoples to the Americas. Hailing from Gujarat, Nagasaki, and many places in between, both free and enslaved Asians boarded the galleons and made the treacherous transpacific journey each year. Once in Mexico, they became "chinos" within the New Spanish caste system. Diego Javier Luis chronicles this first sustained wave of Asian mobility to the early Americas. Uncovering how and why Asian peoples crossed the Pacific, he sheds new light on the daily lives of those who disembarked at Acapulco. There, the term "chino" officially racialized diverse ethnolinguistic populations into a single caste, vulnerable to New Spanish policies of colonial control. Yet Asians resisted these strictures, often by forging new connections across ethnic groups. Social adaptation and cultural convergence, Luis argues, defined Asian experiences in the Spanish Americas from the colonial invasions of the sixteenth century to the first cries for Mexican independence in the nineteenth. The First Asians in the Americas speaks to an important era in the construction of race, vividly unfolding what it meant to be "chino" in the early modern Spanish empire. In so doing, it demonstrates the significance of colonial Latin America to Asian diasporic history and reveals the fundamental role of transpacific connections to the development of colonial societies in the Americas.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
Diego Javier Luis has given us the first of its kind: a study of the transpacific Asian migration to the Americas under Spanish imperial rule. This book radically revolutionizes our understanding of race-making and mestizaje in the Spanish Americas and the Spanish transpacific.--Christina H. Lee, author of Saints of Resistance
No clue is too small for this modern-day detective-historian. Diego Javier Luis has pieced together the most comprehensive and fascinating history to date of Asians in colonial Mexico.--Andrés Reséndez, author of Conquering the Pacific
A groundbreaking study of Asian diasporic experiences in the Spanish Empire. The decks of the Manila galleons, the coastal Acapulco-to-Colima corridor, and much of Pacific Mexico emerge here as spaces of Asian adaptability and social, cultural, and linguistic exchanges. Through the lens of global microhistory, Luis recovers and humanizes the history of colonial 'chino' populations in all their complexity.--Pablo Miguel Sierra Silva, author of Urban Slavery in Colonial Mexico
Fascinating...While expertly summarizing and engaging existing historical studies, the author also indicates new avenues of research...[This] book thus stands as a bellwether for shifting trajectories of analysis that invite micro-historical follow-up.--Rainer Buschmann "H-Net Reviews" (10/1/2024 12:00:00 AM)
The First Asians in the Americas is essential reading for anybody interested in the histories of global migration, race, and colonization in the Americas. Through painstaking archival research in Spain, Mexico, the United States, and the Philippines, Diego Javier Luis offers a bold reconceptualization of Asian migration to the Americas and restores heretofore little-known people and communities to their rightful places in history.--Erika Lee, author of The Making of Asian America: A History
A broadly thought-provoking book. ...Although the modern Western use of 'Asian' is perhaps better (and arguably more benign) than the colonial use of 'chino' as an identifier, it suffers from much the same problem of 'collapsing' various 'diverse ethnolinguistic groups' to the benefit of some, perhaps, but the detriment of others. Luis's book is a salutary reminder that all this started long ago.--Peter Gordon "Asian Review of Books" (1/3/2024 12:00:00 AM)
This book is a brilliant exercise of global microhistory and essential reading for anyone hoping to get a full picture of colonial Spanish America, Asian diaspora studies, or protoglobalization. The author never ceases to show empathy toward the people whose history he is carefully reconstructing from widely scattered fragments of evidence. Luis successfully conveys an emotional underpinning to the experience of the first Asians in the Americas in a way that any historian can appreciate and that, importantly, undergraduate and graduate history students should constantly be exposed to.--Rubén Carillo Martín "Hispanic American Historical Review" (9/25/2024 12:00:00 AM)
Through rigorous archival use, historical and cultural analysis, and an approach through critical race theory, [this book] offers an invaluable perspective... [it] not only intellectually satisfies the reader with a necessary and innovative view on these issues but also makes us want to learn more about this essential and still insufficiently explored topic...will become a fundamental pillar within the discipline.--Javier Zapata Clavería "Colonial Latin American Review" (7/2/2024 12:00:00 AM)
Challenges [the] dominant framework to offer the most comprehensive analysis to date about the transnational migrations of approximately one hundred thousand Asians who traveled to the Americas from the late sixteenth century through the eighteenth century...essential reading for scholars of Asians
in the Americas, Afro-Asian studies, and colonial Latin American history.
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
Harvard University Press
Pub date:
2024-01-09
Length:
368 pages
The Allstora Membership
Membership Perks:
- Save 30% on all online store purchases
- Exclusive access to author's content
- You pay less, but authors still earn double
Membership Terms:
First Month:
$0.00
Monthly price:
$5.00
- To access membership discount simply log in and add to cart, discount applied automatically.
- One month free trial, cancel anytime. Membership renews on the 15th of each month.