Abstract
Ubaldo Iaccarino’s book resulted from a dissertation the author defended at the Universidat Pompeo Fabra (Barcelona, Spain) in 2013. It emerges as the thirteenth volume in Angela Schottenheimer’s series on East Asian Maritime History and it is, as the title suggests, entirely written in Castilian. The work is comprised of nine chapters, a brief introduction and conclusion, as well as an extensive appendix that brings together selected primary sources, maps and time lines, among other relevant items supporting the book.
Iaccarino’s volume can be read in two, quite distinctive, ways. The first reading, as the author probably intended, appeals to experts who focus on early Asian-European interactions in South China and East China seas. In this rendition, Iaccarino’s book presents a wealth of information departing from easily identifiable historical players and their real and imagined intentions to more nuanced and multiple perspectives that highlight not only actors defined by national borders, but also differing Spanish perspectives emanating from the Iberian Peninsula, Mexico, and the Philippines. Similar distinctions can also be seen among the intro-Japanese players as well as Chinese and Portuguese actors. Iaccarino is also aware of the beginning of the British and Dutch incursions in this area. In short, the author provides multiple contexts within which to understand the Japanese interaction with Spanish controlled Manila over the twenty years specified in the title. Although the title specifies a rather limited time frame, in his introductory and concluding parts, Iaccarino augments the timespan to 45 years (from 1580 to 1624), which comprises the increasing European arrival in the Far East, but also chronicles the slow decline of the Ming Dynasty as well as the increasing assertion of the Japanese Shogunate, which ultimately leads to the imposition of restrictions on Europeans. The author argues that the Portuguese and Spanish actors, who following 1581 were operating under a single Austrian crown, misunderstood the Japanese willingness to entertain both trade and evangelisation as a ‘parity among states’, not as an extension of the Ming tributary system that the Japanese Bakufu attempted to usurp. Interfaith squabbles among the different missionary orders did not help matters and by 1624, all Spaniards and Portuguese were officially evicted from Japan.
A second and more global reading would place Iaccarino’s work in the context of a larger audience of scholars and students that are increasingly interested in a wider contextualisation of European maritime expansion in the Pacific. Such global reading is not necessarily served by the detail provided in the author’s chapters, although the introductory and the concluding section do an adequate job in providing a wider 45-year context. The promised longue durée (p. 1) of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century expansion in the Far East, however, is unfortunately buried in detail, which, as useful as it may be to the regional expert, does not easily lend itself to a wider audience. This is partially due to the fact that the bibliography nicely captures the Mediterranean research on China and Japan, but does only slightly engage the ballooning English-language literature. To mention but a few prominent recent examples, one wonders how Iaccarino’s work would have benefited from incorporating Adam Clulow’s new understanding of the Dutch East India Company in Japan or Tonio Andrade’s innovative rethinking of European actors in the South China Sea. Although some experts might have little trouble in accessing the Castilian language of Iaccarino’s work, one can easily surmise that an English translation may have enabled a wider reading of the current book under review. One should also note the absence of an index, which makes searching for a particular aspect of Iaccarino’s book difficult. An overall comparison between the original dissertation (which can be found online at: http://www.tesisenred.net/bitstream/handle/10803/130789/tui.pdf?sequence=1) and the published book reveals few changes, although the publication of this work in an important book series will ensure a wider readership.
Such comments, however, should not detract from the fact that Iaccarino’s careful archival research in institutions mostly located in Spain and Portugal provides a compelling, detailed and nuanced interpretation of encounters between the Spanish controlled Philippines and the re-emergent Japanese islands. As such his work provides an important contribution to the increasing number of works on this area of the Pacific Ocean.