Introduction: Transpacific Confrontation/Confrontación transpacífica

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

¹I borrowed this term from the title of the book by German-Mexican historian Lothar Knauth, Confrontación transpacífica. El Japón y el Nuevo Mundo Hispánico, 1542–1639. (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1972).

²For an overview of Asian migration and communities in Latin America and the Caribbean, see: Roshni Rustomji-Kerns, ed., Encounters: People of Asian Descent in the Americas (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999); Akemi Kikamura-Yano, Encyclopedia of Japanese Descendants in the Americas (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2002); Cuando Oriente llegó a América. Contribuciones de inmigrantes chinos, japoneses y coreanos (Washington, D.C.: Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, 2004); Lynn Pan, general editor, The Encyclopedia of Chinese Overseas (Singapore: Archipelago Press, 1998).

³Gavin Menzies, 1421: The Year China Discovered America (New York: Perennial Harper Collins, 2003).

⁴Two thorough and hard-hitting responses to Menzies are: Geoff Wade, “The Zheng He Voyages: A Reassessment,” Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 78, Part 1 (June 2005): 37–58; P.J. Rivers, 1421 Voyages: Fact and Fiction (Ipoh: Perak Academy, 2004). For a more measured account of the Zheng He voyages, see Louise Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405–1433 (New York: Oxford UP, 1994). Among respected Asian scholars who have weighed in on Zheng He is Leo Suryadinata, “Zheng He, Semerang, and the Islamization of Java: Between History and Legend,” Asian Culture 29 (June 2005): 75–85. The latest prominent Chinese to make the claim that Zheng He discovered America is Beijing lawyer and collector of ancient maps, Liu Gang; see Joseph Kahn, “Who Discovered America? Zheng Who?” New York Times, January 17, 2006, p. A6.

⁵C.R. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415–1825 (Lisbon: Carcanet in association with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 1991).

⁶William Lytle Schurz, The Manila Galleon. The Romantic History of the Spanish Galleons Trading Between Manila and Acapulco (New York: Dutton, 1939), 50. Although published over half a century ago, this is still widely acknowledged to be the best single volume study of the Manila-Acapulco trade.

⁷Schurz, 362–63.

⁸Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., The Colombian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1972). Although this classical study focuses on cultural and biological exchanges between Europe and Latin America, some attention is paid to Asia.

⁹Homer H. Dubs and Robert S. Smith, “Chinese in Mexico City in 1635,” Far Eastern Quarterly 1 (1942): 387–89.

¹⁰Henry E. Dobyns and Paul L. Doughty, Peru. A Cultural History (New York: Oxford UP, 1976), 117–18.

¹¹Virginia González Chaverán, “Un documento colonial sobre esclavos asiáticos,” Historia Mexicana 38.3 (l989): 523–32.

¹²Dubs and Smith, “Chinese in Mexico City in 1635.”

¹³Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Art of Colonial Latin America (London: Phaidon, 2005); Margarita Estella, “Tráfico artístico entre Filipinas y España via Acapulco,” in Francisco Solano, et al, eds., Extremo Oriente Ibérico (Madrid, 1989), 593–604.

¹⁴Thomas Calvo, “Japoneses en Guadalajara: ‘Blancos de Honor’ durante el seiscientos Mexicano,” Revista de Indias 43.172 (July–Dec. 1983): 533–47.

¹⁵Traci Helen Abraham and Dan Serradilla-Avery, “The Samurai and the Cross: An Ethnohistory of the Japón Lineage in Spain,” Pan-Japan 2.1-2 (Spring-Fall 2001): 100–36.

¹⁶Roshni Rustomji-Kerns, “Mirrha/Catarina de San Juan: From India to New Spain,” Amerasia Journal 28.2 (2002): 29–36; Katherine Ann Meyers, “La China Poblana: Catarina de San Juan (ca. 1607–1688)—Hagiography and the Inquisition,” in Neither Saints Nor Sinners: Writing the Lives of Women in Spanish America (New York: Oxford UP, 2003), 44–68; Jeanne L. Gillespie, “Gender, Ethnicity, and Piety: The Case of the China Poblana,” in Eva P. Bueno and Terry Caesar, eds., Imagination Beyond Nation: Latin American Popular Culture (Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1998), 19–37.

¹⁷Gutierre Tibón, “Las dos chinas: Catarina de San Juan y la atractiva mestiza,” Artes de México, Special issue on “La China poblana” 66 (2003): 8–16 (English translation, 66–69).

¹⁸Ricardo Pérez Monfort, “La China poblana como emblema nacional,” Artes de México, Special issue on “La China poblana” 66 (2003): 40–49 (English translation, 74–77).

¹⁹See note 2 above for sources that provide good overviews of the 19^th and 20^th century migrations and experiences of Asians in Latin America and the Caribbean.