ASIANS TO NEW SPAIN ASIAN CULTURAL AND MIGRATORY FLOWS IN MEXICO IN THE EARLY STAGES OF “GLOBALIZATION” (1565-1816) Rubén Carrillo Martín, PhD candidate 2015 Thesis Committee: David Martínez Robles, PhD (Supervisor) Manel Ollé Rodríguez, PhD (Committee Member) Jaume Claret Miranda, PhD (Committee Member) Information and Knowledge Society Doctoral Program Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) ii iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am very grateful for the support I have received over the last four years from advisors, professors, colleagues, friends, and family. First and foremost I owe a debt of gratitude to my thesis supervisor David Martínez-Robles. Thanks to him I was able to find the IN3, a place where I could thrive and develop my research effectively. Thanks to his invitation to Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, I enjoyed the privilege of being part of Grup ALTER and discuss research in a professional, stimulating, and encouraging atmosphere. David’s critical but kind guidance gave me enough resources to carry on my research, making me feel confident and cautious of my work at the same time and pushing me to work ever-harder. It was a privilege to have had the support of Jaume Claret and Manel Ollé as members of the thesis committee. I am grateful for their careful evaluation of earlier drafts of this project, and for sharing with me their resources and advice. I owe the inspiration and the initial impetus for this project to Dolors Folch, who supervised the MA dissertation at Universitat Pompeu Fabra from which this thesis sprouted. I thank Josep María Delgado and once again Manel Ollé for their suggestions as part of the evaluating committee of that original project. For their pioneering and guiding scholarship I thank Déborah Oropeza, Tatiana Seijas, and, especially, Edward Slack, who kindly shared valuable ideas with me. I was also able to learn from the members of Grup ALTER, Carles Prado, Carles Brasó, Montserrat Crespín, and Xavier Ortells all of whom gave me useful feedback and ideas. I must also thank the members of the PhD Committee of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute for investing in this project in the form of a generous grant that made this thesis possible. It did not escape me that this project was a deviation from the norm to a certain extent. I am grateful they decided to back a history thesis for the Information and Knowledge Society, with the conviction that historical processes affect current developments profoundly. In particular I would like to thank Josep Lladós, Natàlia Cantó, and Eduard Aibar. I would also like to thank the IN3, Grup ALTER, and the World History Association for their generous iv funding of my travels to multiple conferences and research trips to faraway archives. I was very fortunate to live through this experience alongside with my fellow doctoral students at IN3. It is hard to imagine an alternative atmosphere to conduct research. I would specially like to thank my peers from the class of 2012, especially Débora Lanzeni, Greti Ivana, Pedro Jacobetty, Alexandra Skorupinska, Nikolay Zherdev, Marc Esteve, and Arnau Monterde. I was also lucky enough to encounter people outside the IN3 who shared with me their thoughts, provided me with useful insights, comments, and suggestions. First and foremost I thank Heather Streets-Salter and Peer Vries for their valuable critique and advice in the course of the 2012 Summer Dissertation Workshop in World History, at Northeastern University, Boston. I am grateful for the feedback I received from my peers in that course: Alexander Marris, Carmen Gruber, Elizabeth Lehr, Mathew Williamson, Shuang Wen, and Malcolm Puriton. I also extend my gratitude to Patrick Manning for first imagining such meetings and for encouraging me to participate. Neus Millán was always ready and able to kindly help me locate books and articles that were proving hard to find. I thank the staffs at Archivo General de la Nación— especially Richard in Genealogía—, Archivo Histórico del Distrito Federal, Archivo General de Indias, and Archivo de la Provincia Agustiniana Santísimo Nombre de Jesús de Filipinas. I thank Arturo Córdova Durana for kindly guiding me through the archives of Puebla, as well as the staff of the Archivo General Municipal de Puebla. He saved me invaluable time with his suggestions. I also owe a debt of gratitude to my friends and colleagues Gennadi Kneper, Walter Arias, Alfonso Colorado, Sarah Hamilton, and Nicholas Russell for their help and support. I thank my friends Pau, Marco, and Mateo for welcoming me into their home while researching in Seville. v I will never be able to repay my family for their support. Thank you, Núria and Ferran for your time and your map. Thanks Ignasi, Conxa, and Ber. I would like to thank my brother Ismael for taking photos at the archives a couple of times, for listening and making suggestions about the yellow fever hypothesis, and for being his wonderful self. My father readily picked up his camera on commissions to get me graphic material for the thesis and for countless Power Point presentations I have prepared in the past four years. He also went to the archives to locate a missing document or two. My mother Pilar helped me scour through the archives in Mexico, both when I was able to physically work there, and when I was not. She became a very accomplished paleographer out of her love for me. Thanks mom, I could not have done it without you! I also have to thank my parents for raising me and encouraging me to follow my dreams, and teaching me everything I know that is worth anything. Thank you Jorge, Bárbara, Rebe, Carles, Jorge, Sandra, Ana, Alex, Sonia, Karla, Tomás, Eliza, Ale, Andrea, Mariana, Asun, Montse, and Pepita. Finally I thank Mariona. Thank you for proofreading pages and pages of my clumsy writing. Thank you for your suggestions, your feedback, your ideas, and for sharing useful sources and concepts, for pushing me to improve… and for putting up with me. You are the culmination of my good fortune. I cannot imagine my life without you. I hope to repay you when you write your own thesis… very, very soon. This one is for you. Barcelona, May 2015. vi ABSTRACT This thesis discusses early modern Asian migration to the Americas on the Manila Galleon. Its main focus is to bring forth the experience of individuals that crossed, or were forced to cross the Pacific to settle in mainland New Spain between 1565 and 1815. The aim is to highlight long-lasting effects of the early stages of globalization on the lives of these individuals and the society they migrated into. This research contributes to the growing literature on the subject by including analysis of ritual kinship relations, a comprehensive case study of the Asian population of the city of Puebla de los Ángeles, and an epidemiological hypothesis for the disappearance of Asian migration from historical records. The thesis also broadens the scope of research about the wider cultural implications of the Manila Galleon by presenting a study of the manifestations of the transpacific trade route in New Spanish literature. The growing interconnectedness of a global economic network manifested itself in New Spain as the first enduring demographic and cultural links between Asia and the Americas developed and consolidated. Between 10.000 and 20.000 Asians settled in New Spain, mostly in the area along the Pacific coast, in the towns and villages along the route inland from the American terminus of the Manila Galleon, Acapulco, in Mexico City, and in Puebla de los Ángeles. Many of them were slaves, primarily employed in domestic service, textile manufacture, and, in the coastal region, in coconut plantations. The rest were free individuals who made a living in a wide range of occupations, from militia soldiers, to bakers, to street vendors, to muleteers, to barbers. A few chinos managed to overcome ethnic restrictions to their aspirations and etched for themselves a place in New Spanish society, amassing considerable wealth and achieving a relatively preeminent position in racially stratified social spectrum. Others rose to social notoriety by other means, most famously, Catarina de San Juan, a slave girl from India who eventually became an important religious figures in the city of Puebla. vii The thesis explains why people with noticeable Asian heritage eventually disappeared from historical record. Transpacific slave trade ended as a 1672-73 prohibition of Asian slavery was gradually enforced. Partially as a result of this phenomenon the number of recognizably Asian people in central New Spain diminished. Asian migration was also affected during the eighteenth century by political and economic shifts, in particular growing British and French power and influence in Asia and the Pacific, and Spain’s effort’s, to link the Philippines directly to the Iberian peninsula, bypassing New Spain, which caused a decrease in the volume of Manila Galleon trade and, consequently, in the number of new arrivals of Asians to New Spain. Another factor was miscegenation as, throughout the entire period, their small numbers forced Asians to intermarry with people of other ethnicities. Asymmetrical resistance to epidemics may have also influenced this process. Overall, the thesis explores how global processes influenced this understudied group of people. It also examines the ways by which an enduring connection between Asia and the Americas shaped New Spanish society. As the two continents were directly linked, the social stratification system of the viceroyalty changed. The correlated emergence of Asia and Asians in New Spanish literature shows that the influx of the Manila Galleon went beyond the realm of material culture. viii NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY Throughout this thesis I employ a variety of terms used in the sources to describe the provenance and, in some cases, the physical features of individuals.