The World of the Manila-Acapulco Galleons. The Global and Human Context

Description

softbound, coloured pictorial covers, 275 pp, with texts and numerous coloured illustrations. Like New. ISBN 978-971-97-0703-8.

This illustrated scholarly book provides a concise overview of the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade, which served as an impetus to early-modern globalization. It presents this epoch from a comparative and global perspective and draws on interdiciplinary research from an international roster of scholars. Their trailblazing and original research has been skillfully integrated with the foundational studies of William Schurz, Charles R. Boxer, Lourdes Diaz-Trechuelo, Pierre Chaunu, Nicolas Cushner, William Henry Scott, John Leddy Phelan, Luis Alonso Alvarez, Leslie Bauzon, and Benito J. Legarda Jr, among others. Much care is given to widen the galleons’ scope from the usual Spanish or Sinocentric emphasis by focusing on the daily lives of Filipinos, Mexicans, Peruvians, Japanese, and other Southeast Asian communities that participated in intercontinental exchanges. The book also eludes the usually reductive and standardized narratives of silk-for-silver or Filipino slaves-for-Spanish friars exchanges by focusing on multidimensional aspects of cultural dynamics, mestizaje (hybridity), cuisine, gender, sexuality, and shipbuilding technologies. The authors adopt a fresh approach by emphasizing the agency of the galleon trade’s ordinary participants through the surfacing of many of their haunting stories, which have been traditionally marginalized, ignored, or suppressed. The book is the inaugural publication of the Museo del Galeón and marks the fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2017. It also represents the third volume of Vibal Foundation’s Seryeng Kinsentenaryo (Quincentennial Series) that commemorates five hundred years of Filipino and Spanish encounters from 1521 to 2021. Through the innovative and renewed study of Spanish expansion the led to the unleashing of the historical process of colonization, imperialism, and globalization, the shared past is presented in delightful and unorthodox ways.