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Asia-Pacific in the Making of the Americas: Toward a Global History

Map depicting the bay of Acapulco in 1632, detailing Japanese ship

Spanish captain Nicolás de Cardona sailed to Acapulco in 1614, the same year as Hasekura. He draws his then surroundings on the map and supplies a legend in his 1632 book, "Descripciones geográphicas e hydrográphicas de muchas tierras y mares del Norte y Sur en las Indias, en especial del descubrimiento del Reino de la California,"or "Geographic and hydrographic descriptions of many northern and southern lands and seas in the Indies, specifically the discovery of the kingdom of California.” The book is written in 1632, but the drawings on the map represent Cardona's catalogue of his surroundings during his 1614 expedition. He depicts a Japanese ship on the bay of Acapulco, believed to be the San Juan Bautista. Takashi Gonoi explains this likeliness in page 53 of "Hasekura Tsunenaga" 支倉常長, Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2003.

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2. Hennepin's Nouvelle France, 1783 Louis Hennepin, 1783. Map of North America and the northern part of South America from New France to New Spain. Cartographic elements include Indian settlements, the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River, part of the Mississippi River, locations of missions and forts, sea banks or shoals, and lines of latitude and longitude. Decorative cartouche includes allegorical figures. An angel holding a shield with a cross smites a fallen man who holds snakes. At right, a redeemed man and woman rise up toward cross and the triumph of Louisiana. One female figure holds the royal French coat of arms, another holds a banner with "Louis." John Carter Brown Library
3. Merchants Eating In a Boat
4. Indias Ocidentales, 1601 (1575) "Descripcion de las Yndias del occidentals." Madrid, 1601, in Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas i Tierra Firme del Mar Oceano escrita por Antonio de Herrera coronista mayor de Su Md: de las Indias y su coronista de Castilla ... Decada primera" Map of the western hemisphere with the northwestern part of North America unfinished and showing part of western Iberian pennisula and Africa, part of China, Japan, part of New Guinea, and some of the Solomon islands. Includes the Line of Demarkation. Only four known surviving examples.
6. Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica de las Yslas Filipinas — Sangley Details Detail of Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica de las Yslas Filipinas (1734), by Pedro Murillo Velarde. The Philippines was a vital part of the Spanish Empire, and the map shows the maritime routes from Manila to Spain and to New Spain. There are twelve engravings on the sides depicting different ethnic groups living in the archipelago and cartographic descriptions of particular cities or islands. From the National Library of Spain.
8. The Life of St. Francis Xavier : Apostle of the Indies and Japan by Daniello Bartoli, 1608-1685. Bartoli, a 17th century Italian Jesuit writer, zealously describes St. Francis Xavier's travels to the Indies and Japan on galleons on a mission to convert foreigners to Catholicism. A description of St.Francis Xavier's 1549 voyage to Japan begins on page 326, Book the Third. Here, Bartoli refers to letters sent by St.Francis while in Japan and his ultimately successful efforts to spread Catholicism there. Bartoli writes on the saint's humility, skill with learning foreign languages (a skill he attributes to God) and the positive responses he received while preaching christianity. Translation of his Vita di S. Francesco Saverio della Compagnia di Gesù apostolo delle Indie.
9. 1634 Japanese Red Seal Ship As the Japanese increasingly ventured on voyages for trading purposes nearing the seventeenth century, Red Seal ships became more common. Red Seal ships were military merchant sailing ships that were armed and carried red-sealed permits from Tokugawa Ieyasu, the Japanese ruler of the time. The seals allowed for a controlled system of foreign trade as well as protection against pirates. Tokyo Naval Science Museum.
11. Sangley Rebellion "Rare first edition of an important relation describing the 1639-40 revolt of ethnic Chinese Filipinos (Sangleyes) against Spanish colonial powers at the port of Calamba, located some 55 kilometers south of Manila. This organized conspiracy, sometimes called the Second Chinese Insurrection (the first Sangley rebellion occurred in 1603), had been coordinated to begin on Christmas Eve of 1639: Sangley insurgents (some 45,000 Sangleys lived in and around Manila at the time) corresponded with a Chinese pirate named Yquan Sanglus, agreeing that he should surprise the Spanish colonists and capture their galleons arriving from New Spain. Governor Sebastián Hurtado de Corcuera’s (d. 1660) soldiers, supported by two companies of Sangley mestizos, one company of Japanese troops and additional fighters from among the indigenous and free black population, easily put down the revolt during January and February of 1640. The present document is rich with details and records that 5 million pesos worth of damage had been done in the rebellion, that the Spanish sank 11 of 20 Sangley ships, killed 650 Sangley sailors in the initial skirmish and several thousand infantrymen in the weeks that followed. Sangley prisoners questioned by the Spaniards confessed that their leader had offered large rewards, including a Spanish woman as a wife, to any who should bring him a Spanish head. A total of 7783 Sangley fighters surrendered to colonial authorities on 24 February 1640, the peace largely brokered by Jesuits and Augustinians, some of whom had themselves participated in the battle. "
15. Francisco Felipe Faxicura Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga was baptized as Francisco Felipe Faxicura on February 17, 1615 in Spain by King Philip III's personal chaplain. Shown in the top right is Hasekura's coat of arms: a crowned shield depicting a Buddhist swastika overlapping two intersecting arrows on an orange background. His coat of arms is seen in various places, including on his ship, San Juan Bautista. This image found in a German translation of: Historia del regno di Voxu del Giapone, first published Rome, 1615, found in the John Carter Brown Library or online at https://archive.org/details/relationvndgrndt00amat .
19. The Parían Market, from Itinerario
20. Linschoten's Map of the World
21. The Pacific Ocean with Flying Fish
22. Descripcion de las Yndias del Ocidentales by Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas
23. Chinese Merchants
24. Manila Bay, 1685
25. Historia general, 1601
26. Planta de las Islas Filipinas, 1699
28. Signature of Luis de Encio
29. 1618 Chinese Map of the Philippines Dong Xi yang kao 東西洋考 (On the eastern and western oceans), 1618, by Zhang Xie 張燮, 1574-1640. "...is the most comprehensive Ming description of the countries of Southeast Asia." ( Wilkinson, Chinese History, a Manual, p. 747. "...a maritime geography of south Asia...deals with the history, topography, products, and trade of the lands of southeast Asia, including the Philippines, the Moluccas, Brunei (on the north coast of Borneo), ...Indo-China, Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, southwest coast of Borneo, a total of thirty-eight countries; discusses China's relations with Japan and the Dutch 紅毛番 ...revenue, navigation (with compass directions and distances and rhymed rules for weather prediction), and to a certain eunuch revenue collector Gao Cai, who exacted tribute from merchants...until his recall to Peking in 1615....documents and official communications between the Chinese court and various countries including Japan" -- Cf. Dictionary of Ming Biography: 77-78 (courtesy of The Ricci Institute Library). Nineteenth-century Chinese facsimile of the first edition from Brown University Libraries, The Gardner Collection.
31. Large Map of Asia "This... map embraces all of Asia. The Middle East is very well formed, although the Caspian Sea has the egg-like form it maintained on maps until the 1730s. The Arabian Peninsula is well defined, based on Portuguese sources, and India takes its form after the maps of the Dutch adventurer, Jan Hugyen van Linschoten (1596), which, in turn, borrowed from Portuguese sources. Southeast Asia and the Indonesian Archipelago are derived from charts made for the Dutch East India Company (the VOC), while China is derived from Jesuit sources, although Korea is an oddly elongated peninsula. The geography of the region would remain an enigma to Europeans until the early 18th Century. Japan's Honshu and Kyushu are recognizable, although the area further to the northeast remains a vast mystery. True to the ‘Carte à Figures’ style, which was the hallmark of the great contemporary period of Dutch Baroque cartography, the map is surrounded on three sides by registers of fine vignettes. Along the top of the map are views of Farmagusta (Cyprus), Rhodes (Greece), Damascus, Jerusalem, Aden and Hormuz (Persia). Along the left side of the map are depictions of people in local costume including Syrians, Arabs, Armenians & Persians, Indians, and Sumatrans. On the left side are depictions that include Javanese, Moluccans & Bandans, Chinese, Russians and Tartars. The map is further embellished by a fine title cartouche and ships and sea monsters in the seas. The map was originally conceived by Jodocus Hondius the Younger, as a part of an exceedingly rare Appendix to the Hondius-Mercator Atlas (1630), of which this edition included an extra panel of text at the bottom. The present edition was issued by Hondius’s brother-in-law, Jan Jansson, as part of Atlas Novus (1638). The Jansson edition is distinguishable by the appearance of Jansson’s imprint, within a cartouche, to the upper right, and the removal of the bottom text panel, which was considered to be too cumbersome for inclusion in a folio atlas. The map was originally conceived by Jodocus Hondius the Younger (1594-1629), whose eponymous father played a large part in the rise of Amsterdam as the dominant cartographic production center in the 17th Century. The present edition of the map is by Jan Jansson (1588-1664), who married Jodocus the Younger’s sister Elizabeth. He transformed the Hondius firm into a powerhouse of geographical publications. Jansson most notably published the Atlas Novus (1638), and the Atlas Major (1660), the 11 volumes of which included a town atlas, a hydrographic atlas, an atlas of the ancient world, and Andreas Cellarius’s incomparable celestial atlas. Jansson’s works were rivaled only by those of his arch-nemesis Joan Blaeu. The present map is one of the finest depictions of Asia from the apogee of Dutch cartography. It is also scarce, appearing on the market infrequently." From The Barry Ruderman Antique Maps, co.
33. Ships Near Port
34. Image of a Port
38. Chinese Merchants
41. Image of Ships on the Pacific Ocean
42. Port in Acapulco "The beautiful " birds- eye- view" of Mexico City by Juan Gómez de Trasmonte is extremely well -known as almost the only surviving representation of the city in the seventeenth -century . The origin , intentions and history of esta map are , however , less well- known. In fact , classical texts on the subject are inaccurate or incomplete mostly . Incorporating new cartobibliographic evidence , this article reinterprets Trasmonte 's plan from the point of view of four methodological statements : i ) The map is the territory . ii ) The map is not the territory . iii ) Territories are maps and iv ) The maps is the map . Hopefully , This analysis Contributes some innovative methodological principles for studying historical urban cartography ." From "The map is the City?. A new look at the bird's eye view of Mexico City in 1628 by Juan Gómez de Trasmonte"
43. Parían Market " Market Manila, called the Parian . Juan Francisco de Ravenet and Bunel . Collection of drawings and prints of the Malaspina Expedition 1789-1794 . MN This is the only known drawing of Chinatown Manila, shortly before its demolition was ordered . Many of the characters depicted were the subject of a portrait by the same artist. " Known Drawing, 1521 1898 , Little Manila , Philippines 1521 , Single Drawing, Drawings , Spanish Philippines , Manila , Manila Call
47. Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica de las Yslas Filipinas — Mestizo Details Detail of Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica de las Yslas Filipinas (1734), by Pedro Murillo Velarde. The Philippines was a vital part of the Spanish Empire, and the map shows the maritime routes from Manila to Spain and to New Spain. There are twelve engravings on the sides depicting different ethnic groups living in the archipelago and cartographic descriptions of particular cities or islands. From the National Library of Spain
48. The San Juan Bautista Originally owned by Date Masamune, an influential feudal lord in the Tokugawa court, the San Juan Bautista carried Hasekura Tsunenaga Rokuyemon, a samurai who led Masamune’s embassy to Spain and Italy, and Sebastián Vizcaíno, a Mexican diplomat. Vizcaíno was demoted to a simple passenger on the San Juan Bautista as Haskeura’s embassy sailed the ocean. A replica of the ship is shown here and found in Ishinomaki, Japan.
49. Schurman Commission Document, 1900 The Schurman Commission, also known as the First Philippine Commission, was formed by President William McKinley on January 20, 1899. The commission was tasked with studying the political climate of the country and make policy recommendations. While the report acknowledged Filipino aspirations for independence, the commission reported that the country was not ready for self-governance. From the University of Michigan Library.
50. Conquest of the Philippines, 1698
52. Map depicting the bay of Acapulco in 1632, detailing Japanese ship Spanish captain Nicolás de Cardona sailed to Acapulco in 1614, the same year as Hasekura. He draws his then surroundings on the map and supplies a legend in his 1632 book, "Descripciones geográphicas e hydrográphicas de muchas tierras y mares del Norte y Sur en las Indias, en especial del descubrimiento del Reino de la California,"or "Geographic and hydrographic descriptions of many northern and southern lands and seas in the Indies, specifically the discovery of the kingdom of California.” The book is written in 1632, but the drawings on the map represent Cardona's catalogue of his surroundings during his 1614 expedition. He depicts a Japanese ship on the bay of Acapulco, believed to be the San Juan Bautista. Takashi Gonoi explains this likeliness in page 53 of "Hasekura Tsunenaga" 支倉常長, Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2003.
53. Wong Kim Ark’s Departure Statement, 1894
54. Potosi Forma de los ingenios enquese muelen los metales de plata en la Ribera de Potosi el vno de dos Cabeças yelostro de una. Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela, Bartolomé, 1676-1736 (creator); leaf 91 from Historia de la villa imperial de Potosí by Bartholome Arzans de Orzua y Vela. This is a detailed manuscript account, published by Brown University in 1965, of “that mining center where the wealth and poverty, avarice and generosity, religiosity and bitter hatreds, cruelty and intrigues all flourished” (John Phelan, The Hispanic Historical Review 47:4, Nov. 1967).
56. Ships Near Port
59. Juan Correa, "St. Francis Xavier Baptizing" c. 1700
60. Guadalajara Cathedral

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How Did the Japanese Arrive in Guadalajara?
While Spaniards from Mexico established their political base in Manila and carried on their transpacific trade of Chinese and other Asian luxury goods for silver from Mexico and Peru, an intense power struggle broke out with Emperor Hideyoshi’s death in 1598 between his heirs and the challenger Tokugawa Ieyasu, a feudal lord with a lot of political, military and economic clout. In 1600, a victorious Tokugawa in the Battle of Sekigahara seized imperial power and closed Japan to the outside world while his clan ruled for two hundred years.
We know that our two Japanese migrants were born around those years and in these unstable times: Luis de Encío, probably around the year 1595, and Juan de Páez, in 1608. On the basis of this information, we speculate that Encío and Páez might have come to Mexico in one of the following voyages: Rodrigo de Vivero y Velasco’s return trip from Japan in 1609; Sebastián Vizcaíno’s return trip from Japan which accompanied the aforementioned Hasekura mission; Friar Diego de Santa Catalina’s return trip from Japan on the annual voyage of the galleon from Manila to Acapulco. Let’s take a closer look at these possibilities.
Rodrigo de Vivero y Velasco had been the interim governor of Las Filipinas in 1608. On his return voyage to New Spain in 1609, sailing from Manila with three galleons—the Santa Ana, the Santiago and the San Francisco, they ran into bad weather, with Vivero traveling aboard the San Francisco that was shipwrecked off the Japanese coast near Chiba. Rescued by fishermen and taken on land, Rodrigo de Vivero in an opportunistic gamble introduced himself to Tokugawa as the Spanish ambassador to his kingdom. In August 1610, after some appropriate diplomatic gestures, Vivero sailed from Uraga harbor in Tokyo Bay towards New Spain on board the San Buenaventura, a Spanish ship built at the behest of the Japanese government. Scholars who have researched and studied this episode agree that twenty-three Japanese from Osaka were also on board, traders who were under the command of Tanaka Shôsuke.[7] Their arrival in Mexico took place at the end of October of that same year when they stopped at Matanchén (in the present-day state of Nayarit).[8] From there, Vivero sent a letter to the King of Spain in which he presented the results of his embassy to Japan, and extolled the virtues of trade with Japan, preceded, of course, by the all-important work of missionaries.
Sebastián Vizcaíno in turn, was appointed by the Mexican authorities to carry out a new diplomatic embassy in Japan, as a follow-up to actions already undertaken by Vivero. In particular, he was charged with returning the twenty-three Japanese from Osaka who had sailed to Mexico with Vivero, and with demarcating the Japanese coastline in order to update their charts, while also looking for two islands reportedly rich in gold (Rica de Oro) and silver (Rica de Plata) just east of Japan. Leaving Acapulco in March of 1611, Vizcaino’s party arrived in the Japanese port of Uraga two-and-a-half months later. A few days after his arrival, he had an interview with the highest Japanese authorities. During his exploratory voyages, he took the opportunity to stop and visit several feudal lords from the coastal villages near which he was passing; his visit to Date Masamune, the Sendai daimyô, was one of the most important. This feudal lord was a highly influential figure in the Tokugawa court, due to some familial relationships with Ieyasu’s children. Date Masamune was very interested in having Catholic missions set up in his territory, prelude to attracting European traders. He held an audience with Friar Luis Sotelo, a Franciscan who had already been in Japan for a while and had joined Sebastián Vizcaíno’s delegation.
Vizcaíno stayed in Japan for two years, during which time he witnessed an increase in Christian persecution. To top it all off, his ship broke down in his quest for the mythical Rica de Oro and Rica de Plata islands. Thus, in 1613, Vizcaíno accepted Date Masamune’s offer to join the embassy led by Hasekura Tsunenaga Rokuyemon, a samurai at Date’s service whose mission was to introduce himself to the Spanish court in Madrid and the Pope in Rome. Vizcaíno and his men, along with Friar Luis Sotelo, Hasekura and some one hundred and fifty or one hundred and eighty additional Japanese, sailed for Acapulco at the end of October of 1613 aboard Masamune’s ship, christened the San Juan Bautista. Once on the open sea, Luis Sotelo, with the support of the Japanese, commandeered the ship and confined Vizcaíno to his cabin as a simple passenger. Three months later, they landed on the Mexican coast of Colima, and a few days later (end of January 1614) they reached Acapulco, with a very sick Vizcaino.
Hasekura and Sotelo headed for Mexico City with approximately eighty Japanese, the rest staying behind in Acapulco to await their return. While in Mexico City for several months, the Japanese were all baptized except for Hasekura, who wanted to wait until Madrid. With a small group of thirty countrymen, Hasekura left Mexico for Spain from the Atlantic port of Veracruz in June 1614, with orders to the rest of his delegation to return to Acapulco on the Pacific coast. Once in Europe, he went through Seville to Madrid, where he was finally baptized. In November 1615, he was received by the Pope Paul V, and he returned to Mexico in 1617. There, in Acapulco, Hasekura found out that many, if not the majority, of the Japanese had already returned to Asia, others had married and had children in the port city, while still others had moved into the interior of Mexico in search of a new life, perhaps because they had been converted and because they heard how difficult the situation was for Christians from passengers on the galleons arriving from Manila. It appeared that approximately a dozen Japanese stayed in Spain.[9] In April 1618, Hasekura and a few Japanese set sail for Manila. They had to wait in that city until 1620 to return to a Japan in the heat of anti-Christian persecution. Of course, Hasekura had to renounce his Christian faith in order to be able to enter Japan again.
As to Friar Diego de Santa Catalina’s embassy, it was sent by the Spanish King and the Council of the Indies to answer a letter that Ieyasu Tokugawa had sent to the King with Alonso Muñoz, who had traveled in 1610 with Vivero on his return voyage to New Spain. In that letter, Ieyasu requested expert miners to be sent to Japan, as well as access to transpacific navigation, which was practically controlled by Spaniards. Diego de Santa Catalina sailed from Acapulco in 1615. As for Diego, unfortunately he had to convey the bad news of the Spanish King’s refusal to grant the Japanese the transpacific route. In addition, he was accompanied by an embassy of Franciscan missionaries, who were not welcomed in Japan, and hence sent back to Mexico under Japanese custody. The missionaries took the opportunity to load their vessel with goods to trade in Acapulco and Mexico City.
Friar Diego de Santa Catalina actually had orders not to bring any more Japanese traders on his return to Mexico, but he ignored them. To top it all off, the return voyage aboard the San Juan Bautista met with natural calamities. While making an intermediate stopover on the Colima coast at the end of February, 1617, Diego de Santa Catalina sent a report on what had happened his mission. This letter went first through the Guadalajara Real Audiencia (the Royal Court), to reach Marqués de Guadalcázar, the viceroy in Mexico City, who finally remitted the information to the King. No doubt that was the end of relations between Japan and Spain, which would have to wait to resume until better times much later on.
Finally, the last option the Japanese could have had to travel to Mexico was offered by the Nao de China, that is, the Manila Galleon, given the presence of a considerable Japanese colony in Manila. Let us remember that the galleons made yearly round-trip voyages from Manila to Acapulco. We must also keep in mind that before the galleon arrived in Acapulco, it made a stopover on the coast covered by the present-day states of Nayarit, Jalisco and Colima, which we find important to point out due to its proximity to Guadalajara. Moreover, between 1612 and 1623, a large number of Christian Japanese who fled their country ended up in Manila. Further bolstering this argument are data showing the number of licensed vessels that made the voyage from Japan to Manila, all of them crowded with Japanese, mostly Christians fleeing anti-Christian persecution: in 1615 there were five ships, in 1617 one, in 1618 three more and in 1619, one again. [10] This number does not include those that sailed without permission from the Japanese government.
If the above case were to apply to our Japanese gentlemen, it means that they first traveled from Japan to Manila, and once there, embarked on the Manila Galleon on their way to Mexico; furthermore, we can speculate that they arrived specifically in Nueva Galicia, on a possible intermediate stopover on the coast of the present-day State of Nayarit.

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^{[7] MATHES, W. Michel; “A Quarter Century of Trans-Pacific Diplomacy: New Spain and Japan, 1592-1617”; in Japan and the Pacific, 1540-1920; Mark Caprio and Matsuda Koichiro (ed.); Aldershot, GB: Ashgate, Variorum; 2006. P. 11. Y, MATHES, W. Michel; Sebastián Vizcaíno y la expansión hispánica en el Océano Pacífico; México, DF: Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, UNAM; 1973. P. 96. Also: KNAUTH, Lothar; Confrontación transpacífica: El Japón y el nuevo mundo hispánico: 1542-1639; México, DF: Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, UNAM; 1972. P. 198.
[8] About their arrival in Matanchen: it was common practice for the galleons to make this stopover, it was usually at the Puerto de Navidad or on the coasts of Colima, anyhow, we could generalize a geographic area between the coasts of present-day Nayarit and Colima. The reason why they made these stopovers on the way to Acapulco, was that they dispatched an officer with news and correspondence for the viceroy and on some occasions for the King as well. See: Francisco R. Calderón; op. cit; p. 574. Y, OLVEDA, Jaime; “El Puerto de La Navidad: Perlas, comercio y filipinos”; in: III Coloquio La Cuenca Hispana del Pacífico: Pasado y Futuro; Jaime Olveda (coord.); Guadalajara: Sociedad de Geografía y Estadística del Estado de Jalisco; 1995. pp. 70-72.
[9] VALENCIA JAPÓN, Víctor; De Japón a Roma pasando por Coria, 1614-1620; Coria del Río, España: Official Web site of the Coria del Río Townhall; [no year]; http://www.coriadelrio.es/apelljap.htm
[10] BORAO, José Eugenio; op. cit; p. 16.}