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

Description

hardbound, coloured pictorial covers, 275 pp, with texts and numerous coloured illustrations.
ISBN 978-971-97-0702-8. published by Vibal Foundation, Inc., Quezon City. 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 Southeas
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. [from the cover]