Romanisches Seminar Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Alemania), 5 de diciembre de 2019.
Abstract of the talk:
The early seventeenth century saw the appearance of a landmark chronicle concerning the Spanish expansion in Southeast Asia: Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola’s Conquista de las islas Malucas [Conquest of the Spice Islands] (1609). The portrayal of China and Chinese immigration offered by this book had an enduring impact in the Spanish Philippines, where certain Sinophobic topoi remained almost unaltered from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. The paper will analyse key events of early modern Sino-Hispanic relations as recounted by Argensola. It will argue that his text and contemporary Iberian chronicles (Barros, Cruz, Escalante, González de Mendoza) show a remarkable degree of essentialism when describing the Chinese, an aspect that explains their relevance for later racist discourses. In this respect, three sections of the Conquista will be relevant: Argensola’s account of China (book IV), the 1593 Sangley mutiny en route to the Spice Islands (book VI) and the 1603 insurrection in Manila (book IX). The conclusion of the paper will examine the uses to which the Conquista was put in nineteenth-century Spanish publications against Chinese immigration in the Philippines. My goal is to bridge the gap between early modern and modern historians of racism with a diachronic exploration of Sinophobia in the Spanish Philippines that examines change, but especially consistency, over time.