Ricardo Padrón's new monograph explores sixteenth-century Spanish conceptualizations of global space after entering the Pacific region. Padrón introduces multiple backdrops shaped by the period's specific historical settings, including shifting internal political dialogues of Iberian Peninsula politics, beginning with the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, then 1529 Treaty of Zaragoza, and finally the 1580 Union of the Crowns. These are combined simultaneously with the invention of the Americas, shifts from Ptolemic and Polo imagined spaces to geographic spaces comprised of increasingly less land and more water, as well as the creation of the transatlantic system and following transpacific system with resulting conflicts of interest between Habsburg Spain and the Vice-Royalty of New Spain.
Habsburg Spain desired entry into the existing complex trade systems founded upon networks of port cities spread throughout the Pacific region, like those of Ming tribute, Fujianese, Japanese, and Muslim, that had moved goods, people, ideas, and beliefs for centuries. Driven by the search for East Asia's fabulous wealth as vividly described by Polo and the potential riches of Southeast Asian spices, Portugal established themselves first in the port cities of Macao, China, and Hirado, Japan while the Spanish eventually chose Manila, which rapidly became a major player supplying the silver needed to supply China's new tax system and created what is termed the Hispano-Sino-Japanese Manila system. Although Padrón begins with Columbus sailing along the coast of Cuba trying to determine if it was in Zipangu (Japan) or Cathay (China), perhaps even finding Polo's fabulous city of Quinsay (today's Hangzhou), it is made clear that the Habsburg Atlantic and Manila systems themselves are not the focus of this volume.
Padrón intertwines two types of original source material—visual and textual—in maps and narratives, using a tripartite approach involving an intricate blending of the work of explorers, mapmakers, and chroniclers. The work of explorers includes Magellan, Da Gama, Legazpi, and Villabos, whose discoveries engaged mapmakers that Padrón juxtaposes, comparing Spanish with Portuguese and other European mapmakers including Ribeiro, Velasco, Waldseemüller, Ortelius, Vespucci, Reinai, Finé, Ruysch, Gastaldi, and Ramusio. Padrón then overlays the chroniclers whose narratives shaped the metageographic pluralities of a richly textured Spanish Pacific, including Pigafetta, Seveborgen, Martyr, Oviedo, Gómara, Velasco, and finishing with Herrara and Argensola.
Throughout the eight chapters, and through all these agents, we see Spain grappling with questions of how to engage in a geo-political-religious discourse, ultimately driven by commerce, in the Pacific region. Was the Pacific to be a military, evangelical, diplomatic, or commercial enterprise for Spain? Or a combination of these things? Padrón enriches his arguments through theoretical narratives of climate zones versus geographic analysis, horizontal versus vertical spatial methodologies, abstractions of political geographies bounded by a moving antemeridian—all while juggling the framing of the New World of New Spain versus the Old World of Asia—and questions of whether Spain should be Sinophobe or Sinophile. Padrón's analysis examines the shaping of Spanish imperial ideologies through mapping and imagining that betray the anxieties of the Habsburg monarchy and reminds us to consider what maps and narratives do versus what they say, what was the truth they told at the time of creation, and how their legacy informs us today.
Much has been written about early European participation, particularly Jesuit and Dutch, in the Pacific region contact zones as well as the Portuguese presence in Macao and Japan. Padrón's examination of an early modern Spanish Pacific, in which he engaged the work of specialists of East and Southeast Asia, makes this work an important bridge between the typically separate fields of Asian and Latin studies, and enriches the studies of East and Southeast Asia by shedding new light on another essential, but lesser-known, perspective as Habsburg Spain became an active agent in the Pacific region. Padrón's study is a welcome and essential addition to anyone interested in better understanding maritime trade, cartographic practice, colonial expansion, evangelical practice, and historical narration in the sixteenth century.
