They Need Nothing: Hispanic-Asian Encounters of the colonial Period 9781442662933

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THEY NEED NOTHING: HISPANIC-ASIAN ENCOUNTERS IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD

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ROBERT RICHMOND ELLIS

They Need Nothing Hispanic-Asian Encounters of the Colonial Period

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press 2012 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-1-4426-4511-0 (cloth)

Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetablebased inks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Ellis, Robert Richmond They need nothing : Hispanic-Asian encounters of the colonial period / Robert Richmond Ellis. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4426-4511-0 1. Spanish literature – Classical period, 1500–1700 – History and criticism. 2. Spanish literature – 19th century – History and criticism. 3. Asians in literature. 4. Ethnicity in literature. 5. Ethnic groups in literature. 6. Ethnic relations in literature. I. Title. PQ6066.E45 2012

860.9'352995

C2012-901613-6

This book has been published with the help of a subvention from the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and United States universities. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing activities.

Contents

Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction

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1 Japanese and Spaniards in the Christian Century 2 The Middle Kingdom through Spanish Eyes 3 The Quest for Cambodia

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4 Constructing the Philippines and Contesting the Legacy 129 Conclusion Notes

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Works Cited 210 Index

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Illustrations

1.1 ‘Screens of Europeans in Japan.’ To-sho-dai-ji, Nara 56 1.2 ‘Four Great Cities of the West’ (Seville). Kobe City Museum, Kobe 60 2.1 Banquet and performance of a Chinese play during the Ming period. In Colin Mackerras, The Chinese Theatre in Modern Times: From 1840 to the Present Day 77 2.2 ‘Missionary Martyr.’ The Orient Museum, Lisbon 92 2.3 ‘Missionary Martyr.’ The Orient Museum, Lisbon 93 4.1 ‘Descripcion de las Yndias Ocidentales.’ In Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas i tierra firme del mar océano 132 4.2 ‘Descripcion de las Indias del Poniente.’ In Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas i tierra firme del mar océano 133

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Acknowledgments

There are many people and institutions whose support over the years has helped make this book possible. I am first of all grateful to Occidental College for funding my research abroad through a Faculty Enrichment Grant and for generously providing financial assistance for the publication of the book. I have been especially fortunate to have as my primary editor at the University of Toronto Press someone as helpful, encouraging, goodnatured, and wise as Richard Ratzlaff. I thank him and all the people at the Press for bringing this project to fruition. I am also appreciative of the good advice of the anonymous readers of the manuscript. I am indebted to many of my colleagues at Occidental College, including Sarah Wei-ming Chen and Fanxi Xu, for their insights into Chinese history, literature, and culture; Motoko Ezaki, for going the extra mile to help me interpret difficult Japanese passages and secure permission to reproduce the works of Japanese art; Felisa Guillén, for tracking down that one, last crucial source in the Biblioteca Nacional of Madrid; Michael Shelton, for helping me decipher the subtleties of José Rizal’s German-language correspondence and for sharing his technical expertise with me throughout the various stages of the project; and finally Salvador Fernández, Adelaida López, Alicia González, Susanna Robertson, Carolyn Adams, Jorge González, and many others, for their unflagging support and encouragement. I am likewise grateful to my colleagues from the Southern California Association of Peninsularistas, including Roberta Johnson as well as Jill Robbins and Arturo Arias, for the intellectual stimulation that they have provided over the years.

x Acknowledgments

I want to thank my friend Jean-Louis Duvivier for first taking me to the Orient Museum in Lisbon and helping me secure permission to reproduce works of art from that collection. I am grateful to the late Father Albert Chan for having shared his work with me during an early phase of the project. And as always, I am indebted to my friends Librada Hernández, Mario Rivera, and Jean-Luc Trouvat, and my sister and nephew Jean and Benjamin Hand. My deepest gratitude goes to my partner, José Horacio Ortez, for his support of this and all my academic endeavours, and for our shared encounters through travel with so many of the lands and peoples that form the subject of this study, from Europe to Latin America to Asia. Finally, I dedicate the book to my late mother, for her careful reading of an early version of the China chapter, and for her having read to me once long ago of Golden Kanbalu.

THEY NEED NOTHING: HISPANIC-ASIAN ENCOUNTERS IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD

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Introduction

In the mid-1580s the recently established colonial administration of the Philippines proposed to King Philip II of Spain a plan for conquering China. The primary advocate of conquest was a Jesuit clergyman, Alonso Sánchez, who carried a document outlining the plan to Spain to present to the Crown and the Council of the Indies.1 The Spanish government, however, rejected the Philippine scheme, perhaps, as Manuel Ollé speculates, because of the defeat of the Spanish Armada by England, which occurred just as Sánchez was about to make his case (La empresa 7). Although the Spanish never attempted to invade China, during most of the seventeenth century they remained deeply involved in Chinese affairs through the Catholic missionary project. With hindsight, the notion of a Spanish conquest of China might seem incredible. But more startling is the argument that Sánchez invokes to justify conquest. According to Sánchez, Spain should conquer China because of the exemplary nature of the Chinese people, who differ in every way from those heretofore conquered by the Spanish: [P]or ser la gente tan ladina y de tanto entendimiento blanca, vistosa, y de linda disposicion y tan noble y tan rica y que no tiene cosa de indios sino que salva la Fe y valentia en todo lo demas nos hacen ventaja. (Colín 443) [Because the people are so clever and so wise, white, attractive, and pleasant, and are so noble and rich, and nothing like Indians, they have the advantage over us in everything except for the faith that saves and courage.]2

According to Sánchez, not only should Spain conquer China, but the Spanish and the Chinese should intermarry. Although in his view

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miscegenation between Spaniards and indigenous peoples has resulted in the degradation of the former, he recommends intermarriage between Spaniards and Chinese as if in this way Spain might achieve its ideal destiny as a nation: [S]era muy llano y ordinario honesto y honroso . . . el casarse los españoles capitanes y soldados mercaderes y de todas suertes aunque sean ilustres con ellas y asentar y arraigar en la China y con esto mezclarse propagarse multiplicarse, unirse y hermanarse y cristianarse todo en breve, lo cual nunca ha habido ni se ha hecho en ninguna parte de las Indias que se han descubierto y poblado que por ser la gente bárbara y vil pobre y fea nunca ha habido nudo ni union de casamientos o han sido pocos y afrentosos y tenidos ellos y sus hijos y descendientes por genero de infamia y deshonra. (Colín 443) [It will be very natural and normal, and honourable and proper for Spanish captains, soldiers, merchants, and men of all classes, including the most illustrious, to marry them (Chinese women) and settle and become established in China. In this way they will mix, propagate, multiply, and in short (the two peoples) will unite and become brothers and Christians. This is something that has never occurred or been accomplished in any part of the Indies thus far discovered and settled, since the people there are so barbarous, vile, poor, and ugly that there have never been bonds or unions of marriage. In the few cases of such marriages, they have been considered ignominious, and the parties, with their children and descendents, have incurred a sort of infamy and disgrace.]

From Sánchez’s point of view the Chinese are endowed with what is most positive in human nature. They are, first and foremost, wise. They are further characterized as white, beautiful, temperate, and noble. What is more, they possess material bounty. In all of these ways they differ from indios [Indians], whom Sánchez thoroughly deprecates. Except for their lack of Christian faith and Spanish valour, the Chinese in fact exceed the Spanish as models of humanity. At first glance this passage suggests that Sánchez had a clear idea of what is and is not of value in human nature and culture. But it also reveals a fundamental problem with which early modern Europeans struggled as they increasingly interacted with non-European peoples – not that some, like indios, were in their view inferior to Europeans but that others, like the Chinese, were seemingly superior. As Domingo Fernández Navarrete, a seventeenth-century Spanish missionary in

Introduction 5

China, would ask, how was it possible that God had chosen to shower his greatest blessings on a people who were not Christian? Although this conundrum would not shake the faith of the missionaries, it would lead certain Spanish writers of the early modern period to question profoundly their personal identities and cultural assumptions. Contemporary readers might nevertheless be struck by the fact that one of the positive characteristics Sánchez attributes to the Chinese is skin colour and specifically whiteness. In sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury Spanish representations of non-Europeans both the Chinese and Japanese are typically described as white peoples, in contradistinction to Southeast and South Asians, Africans, and Amerindians. Given that the Chinese and Japanese were also considered more highly civilized than other non-Europeans, whiteness might seem to be, if not a determinant, at least a condition of cultural superiority. In European writings of the period, however, references to skin colour tend to reflect classical and medieval conceptions of the effects of climate and geography on human beings and not a biologistic view that some people are inherently superior to others. In fact, skin colour as a marker of human value remains fluid in early modern European writings on Asia, and only gradually do Europeans categorize East Asians as non-white. As Michael Keevak demonstrates in his groundbreaking work, Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking, the notion of a yellow race as different from and inferior to a white race is a product of European race theories of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.3 Most sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish writers on China and Japan also remark on what they perceive to be a greater frequency and toleration of male-male sex in East Asia than in Europe. Though the Chinese and Japanese of the period did not conceive of male-male sex in terms of sin (and though in certain social contexts, such as that of the samurai, male-male sexual relations were actually fostered), male-male sex in Ming-dynasty China was technically illegal (Spence, Memory 226). Nonetheless, early modern Europeans often cite the practice of sodomy among East Asians as a justification for Christian evangelization.4 In the early Spanish-imperial period, writers such as Francisco López de Gómara, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés increasingly attribute male effeminacy and/or sodomy to non-European groups targeted for conquest. This practice is orientalist insofar as it conflates non-Europeans and, by extension Europeans themselves, irrespective of their particular histories and cultures, and leads to an essentialized vision of the Western and non-Western worlds.

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The tendency to create a reified East/West duality is clearly present in much Asian-focused, Spanish-language discourse, especially in texts with an explicitly religious or imperialist agenda. But as John MacKenzie remarks in his discussion of orientalist art, ‘the artistic record of imperial culture has in fact been one of constant change, instability, heterogeneity and sheer porousness’ (327). Such characteristics are also present in Hispanic writings on East and Southeast Asia from the Spanish imperial period. In reality, these are often hybrid works that meld Hispanic-European and Asian world views. They thus, despite the Iberian origin of most of the writers, differ from putatively autochthonous Spanish writings. Moreover, the Hispanic-Asian encounters that occurred in the wake of European overseas expansion are represented not solely by Spaniards but also by Asian writers and artists from late sixteenth-century Japan and China to the late nineteenth-century Philippines. Together, these texts demonstrate the reciprocal tensions of cultural interchange during the early modern and colonial periods and the pivotal role of Spain not only in the production of Western images of Asia but also in the continual making and remaking of what it means to be Western and ultimately human. Conceptions of Selfhood and Alterity In his magisterial study of the relationship between place and identity in Europe’s world view at the dawn of European overseas expansion, The Tropics of Empire: Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies, Nicolás Wey Gómez shows how Europeans regarded latitude, and more specifically climate, as a primary condition of human nature and, by extension, human societies. Wey Gómez focuses his study on Columbus’s understanding of geography, which, he argues, motivated his decision to sail southward and west rather than directly west, since his veritable aim was not China but lands identified as ‘India,’ ‘the parts of India,’ or ‘the Indies’ (4). As Wey Gómez explains, Columbus shared the view of many classical and medieval geographers that places with similar climates produced similar kinds of peoples and cultures. According to this deeply engrained vision of the world, the temperate climate of the Mediterranean region was conducive to civilization whereas the colder climates of the north and the hotter climates of the south thwarted civility and led to barbarism. Nations thus ‘owed their unique physiologies, characters, and mores (customs) to their natural locations’ (69). The effects of climate were further related to skin colour. Wey Gómez cites the Roman writer Pliny, who maintained that cold climates produced

Introduction 7

fair-skinned people and hot climates produced dark-skinned people, both of whom were unable to govern properly; ‘[i]n contrast, the earth’s temperate region fostered people of medium complexion whose “moderate customs, keen senses, [and] fertile intellects” enabled them to wield the political authority that eluded their neighbors in the earth’s cold and hot regions’ (70). Extremes in climate, according to the scholastic philosopher Albertus Magnus, negatively affected the body, which in turn hindered the soul’s ability to cultivate ‘the moral virtues necessary for building a proper polity’ (Wey Gómez 285). In this ‘pre-history of race,’ as Ruth Hill describes the early modern period (‘Between’ 271), climate, rather than any specific body characteristic such as skin colour, was considered the most decisive influence on human nature. For Wey Gómez, moreover, the tripartite division of the world into cold, temperate, and hot zones, which early modern Europe inherited from antiquity and the Middle Ages, informed not only early European colonialism but also the politics of present-day distinctions ‘between the “developed” nations of the north and the “developing” nations of the south’ (57). In his analysis of the writings of Columbus, Wey Gómez further argues that classical and medieval notions of tripartite geography and the effects of climate on human nature influenced early modern Spaniards’ perceptions of East Asians. He highlights one particular portolan from the late fourteenth century, known as the Libro del cognosçimiento de todos los rregnos e tierras et señoríos que son por el mundo, in which ‘[t]he author emphatically teaches his readers “that Catayo [Cathay] is the end of the face of the earth in the line of Spain” ’ (345). In describing the peoples of Tibet, situated in the text directly between China and India, the author writes that they ‘were “of good understanding and healthy memory,” “learned,” “lawful,” and “pious” because they stood on the easternmost part of the inhabited world, and this kingdom was rooted “in the middle clime, where natures are temperate” ’ (345). Wey Gómez argues that these words reflected a widespread European view, based on a belief in the effects of climate, that China (like MediterraneanEurope) was temperate and civilized and that the Asian lands to the south (India, and for Columbus the ‘Indies’ of the Caribbean) were hot and barbarous. This distinction between a civilized Asia and a barbarous Asia would affect the ways Spaniards in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries regarded the Chinese, Japanese, Cambodians, and Filipinos, and would be reiterated in the Spanish histories and ethnographies of these peoples throughout the colonial period.

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Though early modern Spanish writers, like their classical and medieval predecessors, highlight skin colour in their descriptions of the peoples of the world, and though they implicitly associate different skin colours with different levels of civility, the primary category of social identity in colonial Spanish society was caste, not race. As Hill reminds us in ‘Between Black and White: A Critical Race Theory Approach to Caste Poetry in the Spanish New World,’ Spanish colonial societies ‘were not racial societies; they were caste societies’ (271). She argues, nevertheless, that contemporary critical race theory, albeit formulated in response to nineteenth- and twentieth-century biological notions of race, can be used to understand Spanish colonial hierarchies provided we remember that these hierarchies were basically social and political. She highlights the theory of the ‘racial project’ advanced by Michael Omi and Howard Winant. According to Omi and Winant, racial projects link racial representations, which form part of the superstructure of the Marxist paradigm, with the material base: ‘A racial project is simultaneously an interpretation, representation, or explanation of racial dynamics, and an effort to reorganize and redistribute resources along particular racial lines’ (56). Hill recontextualizes the theory of the ‘racial project’ and undertakes a reading of colonial caste poems as examples of ‘caste projects.’ These poems, she argues, ‘link representation to social structure . . . [and] seek to legitimate the social hierarchy rooted in caste (casta), religious and professional purity (limpieza de sangre y de oficio), and estate (estamento or condición)’ (‘Between’ 271). Such ‘caste projects’ are also clearly present in Spanish colonial writings from the Philippines. Hill’s work on caste marks a paradigmatic shift in the study of Spanish colonial identities. In ‘Casta as Culture and the sociedad de castas as Literature’ she warns against ‘presentism’ and in particular the all-toofrequent effort to filter colonial societies ‘through postcolonial ideologies and theories of race, class and gender’ (259). Rather than seek modern notions of identity in Spanish colonial discourse, she urges us to recognize the ‘contradictions and ambiguities’ that arose when Old World categories of origin, religion, and estate were applied to New World realities (245). As she demonstrates, concepts eventually understood as purely racial, such as mestizo or mulato (persons of mixed Spanish and indigenous or African origin), initially ‘related to religion as much as biology’ (237). As a telling example of pre-Conquest mestizaje she cites the medieval metis (a Latinate version of the word mestizos), who were Christian in name but Muslim in belief (234–5). If from the contempo-

Introduction 9

rary vantage point identities in the early Spanish-colonial world seem contradictory and ambiguous, this is because early Spanish-colonial society was neither medieval nor fully modern (nor grounded solely in ideologies of religion or science) but rather a site wherein conflicting meanings of the human were in a state of continuous flux. Yet these meanings are of significance not only to Spanish colonial culture. What they ultimately reveal is that the cultures from which they derived and those to which they led were themselves never static or fixed but always in a process of change. Whereas some scholars, such as George M. Frederickson and James H. Sweet, highlight what they regard as the proto-racist aspects of preConquest Iberia, others, such as Sylvia Wynter, contend that the ‘new symbolic construct’ that emerged in the Spanish empire was in fact ‘that of “race” ’ (34).5 In Spanish colonial societies, however, race only supersedes caste in the late colonial period, as revealed in the colonialist diatribes of the nineteenth-century Philippines. In the early colonial period, as Irene Silverblatt explains in her study of caste and race in colonial Peru, [t]he caste system was patently a device of political order; and even though descent played a part, even though colour . . . was singled out as one constituent, caste is understood to be a legal or social (as opposed to biological) construct at heart . . . Unlike caste, race is understood to be principally a question of ancestry and phenotype, a biological phenomenon (or so goes the ideology), and, consequently, to be independent of social or political regimes. (17)

According to Silverblatt, the categories of caste and race are both produced through concrete political and economic relations, although they are ultimately perceived as independent material realities. What is more, they do not exist independently of each other, as if Spanishness or whiteness could be conceived of separately from Indianness or brownness or blackness (115). Despite the hierarchies of caste in Spanish colonial society, Spaniards, at least in the early centuries of colonialism, believed in the universality of social and cultural norms, and when they described non-Europeans, they tended to highlight what they saw as similar to themselves. As Anthony Pagden argues in The Fall of Natural Man, early modern European observers thus differed from modern ethnologists, who seek to describe the difference, or ‘ “otherness” of the “other” ’ (5). According

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to Michel Foucault, by the beginning of the seventeenth century European writings on non-Europeans began to focus on difference rather than resemblance. But Pagden maintains that ‘[m]ost men, and in particular theologians and historians (with whom Foucault is, of course, largely unconcerned) went on searching in human behaviour for “the restrictive figures of similitude” ’ (5). Though Pagden centres his study on Native Americans, his comments also apply to early modern Spanish descriptions of the Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos, which were penned largely by clerics. If these texts depict the Chinese and Japanese as equally, if not more, civilized than Europeans themselves, they tend to portray Filipinos (whom they label indios) as less civilized. They nevertheless implicitly posit a commonality of human beings since all humans, they believed, were endowed with natural reason and whether Christian or pagan, were able ‘to “see” the world as it is, to distinguish between good and evil and to act accordingly’ (61). According to early Jesuit writings on China, the ancient Confucians, through the exercise of natural reason, came close to intuiting the essential truths of Christianity. From the Jesuit perspective, this was possible because they lived in a civilized society and were thus capable of directing their inherent natural reason to higher ends. Early modern Spanish thinkers, however, tended to depict those living outside what they considered civilized society, or so-called natural man (Native Americans and, by extension, Filipinos), as ‘something less than human, for they had cut themselves off from the meaning which God had granted to every man that he might achieve his end, his telos’ (Pagden, Fall 9). Whereas for Rousseau, ‘natural man’ was free from the shackles of society that inhibited the exercise of natural reason, sixteenth-century Spaniards believed that ‘natural man’ was deprived of the means through which natural reason might properly function. As Pagden notes, ‘the Indian,’ in the writing of Francisco de Vitoria, is like ‘a fully grown child whose rational faculties are complete but still potential rather than actual. Indians have to be trained to perceive what other men perceive without effort, to accept what other men regard as axiomatic without prior reflection’ (104). This logic, although articulated by a thinker sensitive to the brutalities of the Conquest, justified the subjugation of those peoples precisely unable to repel Spanish military incursions, that is, Native Americans and Filipinos. In their portrayals of East and Southeast Asians early modern Spanish writers not only reveal the caste concerns of origin and descent and how these relate to levels of civilization; they also highlight char-

Introduction 11

acteristics now typically associated with gender and sexuality. In his theorization of orientalism, Edward W. Said declares that the West has historically represented the Orient as feminine and thus predisposed to Western domination: ‘he [the Westerner] could penetrate, he could wrestle with, he could give shape and meaning to the great Asiatic mystery, as Disraeli once called it’ (Orientalism 44). Although the body feminized in orientalist discourse is typically female, as Richard C. Trexler and others have demonstrated through their analyses of Hispanic representations of Native Americans, it is also often male. José Piedra argues that in early Hispanic writing the feminization of Native American men at times entailed a process of prior masculinization that functioned to enhance the stature of the conqueror. In his rumination on the conquest of the Caribbean he indicates that indigenous men were imagined as ‘aggressive young males ready to capitulate’ to bigger, more powerful European males (248). Myths of ‘Indian femininity,’ nevertheless, persisted long after Native Americans had been Christianized and inducted into European sexual mores. Various colonial writers interpreted such physical characteristics as the ‘lack’ of facial hair in certain Native American men as a sign of femininity (Bleys 45). Male femininity, moreover, was often related to the effects of climatic heat, which, as Wey Gómez has argued, early modern Europeans regarded as a hindrance to the exercise of right reason and the formation of rationally ordered societies. Despite the tendency of some European writers to represent Asia and Asians as feminine, early Spanish commentators of East and Southeast Asia do not typically depict Asian men as either more or less masculine than their European counterparts.6 Indeed, they often highlight instances of masculine bravery and valour, especially in the case of the samurai. Several note that Chinese women are kept more secluded than European women, but in keeping with their own European views of gender they interpret this as a positive sign of male dominance. What early Spanish writers disparage in East Asian societies (albeit not in the pre-Hispanic Philippines) is a toleration of male-male sexual expression. In so doing they echo long-held Christian-European perceptions of the non-Christian world. As far back as the Crusades and throughout the early modern period, Europeans often levelled charges of sodomy against entire populations (including both Muslims and Native Americans), especially when they sought to conquer these populations. López de Gómara, for instance, states in his history of the conquest of Mexico that the indigenous men ‘se dan muchísimo a la carnalidad,

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así con hombres como con mujeres, sin pena ni vergüenza’ (450) [are much given to carnality, with men as well as women, without embarrassment or shame]. Sepúlveda invoked the ‘pecado nefando’ [nefarious sin (of sodomy)] as a reason for war against the Indians (Book 1, 57). And Oviedo y Valdés denounced them all as sodomites and for this reason beyond the pale of conversion, an accusation that the Indian apologist Bartolomé de las Casas emphatically denied (Historia 326). Though such denials in the short run advanced the cause of the Native Americans, they did little to check the rise of what Rudi C. Bleys has intriguingly described as ‘the geography of perversion.’ Yet given that the modern ‘science’ of homosexual deviance, like that of racial inferiority, was not elucidated until the nineteenth century, what these early Spanish writings on Asia delineate might more properly be labelled a ‘geography of sin.’ Early modern Spanish writings on Asia, however, are not solely of interest for the ways they represent Asians. They also provide a site through which Spanishness and, perhaps more important, Europeanness is constructed. Silverblatt notes that in the seventeenth century, although Spain existed less as a nation than as an assemblage of kingdoms and principalities under Hapsburg rule, ‘there was a sense of “Spanishness,” and that sense emerged as early modern colonialism took form’ (219). But in early modern Spanish writings on Asia, there also appears a notion of Europeanness (independent of Christianity, since by this time large numbers of non-Europeans were Christian), associated with certain aspects of the body, a particular geographic space, and the amorphous but increasingly deeply imagined identity of ‘Western.’ Fernando Coronil reminds us that the terms ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ and even ‘Europe’ and ‘European’ are in fact problematic, since the external referents to which they correspond always were and continue to be ambiguous and shifting – despite whatever illusion of fixed reality they might create (52). In reflecting on the genesis of the East-West dichotomy he cites Raymond Williams, who traces the distinction between East and West to the Roman Empire and the subsequent separation of the Christian and Muslim regions of the world (Coronil 53, Williams 333). But he recognizes the error of ‘reading history backward, extending the existence of present-day Europe into the past beyond a time when one could reasonably recognize its presence’ (53). Early modern Spanish writers, nevertheless, do invoke the term ‘Europe’ (and in the case of Diego de Pantoja, ‘nuestra Europa’ [our Europe])

Introduction 13

to distinguish Asia from what they consider to be their culture of origin. Yet as their texts reveal, ‘their Europe’ is actually drawn into discourse precisely as they write their accounts of Asia. What is more, its contours are never fully delimited, either geographically or culturally. In theorizing the discursive structures of East-West relations, Coronil seeks to reorient critical focus from ‘Western representations of “Otherness” to the implicit constructions of “Selfhood” that underwrite them’ (56). In so doing he responds to the challenge of Said in ‘Orientalism Reconsidered’ to examine not only orientalism but also the role of the orientalist in the creation of the Orient as a conceptual category (55–6). Coronil, however, chooses to call the orientalist an ‘occidentalist’ since he is particularly interested in the way orientalism presupposes and in fact produces certain notions of the West. His aim is not simply to turn from representations of the ‘eastern other’ to representations of the ‘western self’ but rather to reveal the relational nature of the terms ‘Occident’ and ‘Orient’ and ‘self’ and ‘other,’ bringing ‘out into the open their genesis in asymmetrical relations of power, including the power to obscure their genesis in inequality’ (56). For Coronil, ‘Occidentalism . . . is thus not the reverse of Orientalism but its condition of possibility’ (56). More specifically, although ethnic hierarchization is not strictly a Western phenomenon, occidentalism, according to Coronil, differs from other similar instances of asymmetrical social relationships in that it is exercised in conjunction with a ‘deployment of global power’ and in the context of ‘global capitalism’ (56–7). Early modern Spanish representations of East and Southeast Asians are produced precisely as Spain advances as a global power, albeit still in the initial phase of world capitalism. Moreover, representations of Spaniards and Filipinos in the colonial Philippines clearly depict a hierarchical relationship, even in texts sympathetic to the Filipino people under Spanish rule. Concomitant representations of the Chinese and Japanese, however, are not necessarily asymmetrical precisely because the military power of Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was not greater than that of China and Japan. Furthermore, the Spanish missionaries of the period, while convinced they were the bearers of the true religion, were less certain of the superiority of European cultural accomplishments, although the Chinese and Japanese valued European astronomy, cartography, and ship-building technology. Some Spaniards, such as Navarrete, were in fact adamant in their conviction that Chinese civilization surpassed European civilization in every area

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except religion, whereas others, such as Pantoja, subtly affirmed the pre-eminence of Europe over China. The recent volume of innovative essays, titled Sinographies: Writing China, provides useful guidance on how to read European depictions of China (and by extension East and Southeast Asia in general) as well as the Western writing subject. The editors of the collection distinguish between sinology, a discipline (however contested) that seeks to know China, and sinography, a reflection on how such an epistemological enterprise is carried out. If sinology focuses on China as a discrete object of inquiry, sinography aims to understand the process through which China is written. Sinography is thus interested ‘in a China of meanings rather than a China of facts,’ since ‘the road to the China of fact passes through, not around, the China of meaning’ (Hayot, Saussy, and Yao xix). In the case of Western representations of China, what matters is not the degree to which they approximate or deviate from the reality of China, but how they affect and indeed participate in the production of that reality and make possible the experience of it. Of equal importance is how the expression and production of China are ‘also a form of selfexpression and self-production’ (xi). As the editors of Sinographies make clear in a reference to Ian Hacking’s work, the problems of representation (of the self and the Other) are nevertheless ultimately political and ethical, because ‘[r]epresenting, in a human context, is always intervening’ (xv). These questions of representation are particularly germane to my study since the texts I discuss are, if not instances of ‘sinography,’ what might more broadly be described as ‘Hispanic Asianography.’ Hispanic Asianography Spain and Portugal were the leading European powers present in East and Southeast Asia during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and Spanish and Portuguese writers were the first to represent these regions of the world to Europe during the initial phase of European overseas expansion. The Japan, China, Cambodia, and Philippines known and experienced by early modern Europeans, both within Asia and Europe, were therefore mediated by Iberia and its particular histories and traditions. One Spanish chronicler, Juan González de Mendoza, authored the most widely read European treatise on China of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Although he never reached China on his own voyages, he had access to the writings of the first official Spanish visitors to the Chinese mainland in the mid-1570s. His text, however,

Introduction 15

and the China he produced for European readers, actually formed part of a discursive continuum that through the sources he incorporated traced back to medieval and ancient Iberian and European writings. Mendoza’s ‘road to China’ was thus always and only a ‘road of meanings.’ Early modern Spanish observers typically represent Japan and China in positive terms even if, from their perspective, the Japanese and Chinese lacked Christianity. Whereas Pantoja attempts to depict European cultural accomplishments as superior to those of China, Navarrete exalts Chinese civilization and holds it up as a model through which he attacks European institutions and practices. Francisco Xavier describes the Japanese as the best people thus far ‘discovered’ by Europeans, and at times regards the Chinese even more highly.7 Yet overall, the images of Japan and China that early modern Spanish writers make available to the West are varied and nuanced. Rarely do they form generalizations about Asian culture or people as a whole, and for the most part they seem keenly aware of differences between Asian societies. Although with hindsight one might detect certain orientalist tendencies in their writings, they do not represent Asia or the Orient as a culturally and geographically unified and homogeneous space. In fact, it would not be until the nineteenth century that the all-encompassing and reductive term ‘Extremo Oriente,’ or ‘Far East,’ appeared regularly in European writings on East and Southeast Asia.8 Whereas early modern Spanish writers participate in the production of meanings that Europeans will come to know and experience as Japan, China, Cambodia, and the Philippines, they do so not solely from a Hispanic or European perspective but from a vantage point that mediates their European and Asian experiences. From the moment they leave Europe (and indeed from the moment Mendoza first reads Chinarelated texts), they no longer envision the world with what might be imagined as purely or authentically European eyes. Thus, while Xavier rails against the Japanese toleration of the ‘nefarious sin’ of sodomy, Navarrete makes light of European conceptions of carnality and wonders whether Spanish bullfighting is not as barbaric as the Japanese practice of ritual suicide that Europeans routinely abhor. By looking at Europe from Asian perspectives these writers begin to question the cultural assumptions of Europe. But in so doing they also come to regard themselves in a new and different light. Their discursive production of Asian societies therefore also entails a concomitant production (or reproduction) of the self.

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Spanish observers of East and Southeast Asia from the colonial period develop modern historiographies to the extent that they represent Asian societies from a secular perspective – although given that most early writers were clerics, they at times place secular history within a larger, sacred context. But like modern travel writers, they also occasionally express their own personal reactions to what they see, and reflect on their subjective experiences of what for them are profoundly foreign cultures. After a riverboat crossing in China, Navarrete recalls feeling as if he had crossed over into another world, not only because the Chinese seem to him so different but because he suddenly finds himself the object of an alien gaze. Gradually, he internalizes this gaze and begins to recreate his own persona in Chinese terms. If for him the experience of cultural self-transformation is exhilarating, for Pantoja it is subtly but profoundly disconcerting, as he discovers when the Chinese paint his portrait and depict him not as European but Chinese. Xavier, at the end of his sojourn in Japan, declares that only when he saw himself reflected in the Japanese did he understand himself for the first time in his life. In his case self-discovery is ultimately a realization and an acceptance of his own sinful nature. Diego Aduarte, in contrast, attempts to avoid the self-reflection that typically results from encounters with other cultures. After an ambiguous experience in a Buddhist temple in Cambodia, he reports rushing back to the boat where his comrades await him and telling them of his adventure, as if through the act of telling he might distance himself from the incident and create an illusion of safety – from the Other and from the person he might become. As these examples suggest, early Spanish writings on East and Southeast Asia are not only histories but also, to a certain degree, autobiographies, since the authors narrate the lives both of others and themselves and in the process grapple with their own sense of self. Although these texts reveal the impact of the early European-Asian encounter on the lives of the authors and the Asians with whom they interacted, they exerted their greatest influence on the development of European images of Asians and Asian history, and ultimately on the generations of Asians themselves who have been compelled to negotiate, both individually and collectively, the meanings and consequences of these images. Spanish representations of Asians are always, as the authors of Sinographies would argue, interventions in Asian lives. Yet they are not, ipso facto, always unethical interventions even if, from the contemporary perspective, colonialism is regarded as inherently unethical. Some Spanish writers of the colonial Philippines, such as

Introduction 17

Domingo de Salazar and Juan José Delgado, write with the precise intention of intervening in the Spanish colonial system, denouncing its abuses, and ameliorating the lives of the Filipino people. But to the extent that they do so, this is because the meaning of the Filipino people and their history had already been formulated in conformance with the Spanish colonial enterprise. The ‘true’ Filipino past (or the ‘Philippines of fact’) could only, as José Rizal recognized as he read Antonio de Morga’s early seventeenth-century history of the Philippines, be discerned through an understanding and contestation of Spanish readings of this past. In his extensive written corpus Rizal not only reappropriates and reformulates Spanish colonial images of Filipinos but also reimagines Spaniards and their history and culture. On occasion, he turns colonialist stereotypes against the historical colonial oppressors of the Filipino people, and portrays Spain as a backward and underdeveloped nation in comparison to the dominant European powers of the late nineteenth century. In so doing, he reveals the degree to which he himself has internalized European notions of progress and civilization. When Asians of earlier periods respond to Spanish interventions in their cultures, they often invoke their own distinctive cultural heritages. For instance, when Confucian sages criticize Pantoja’s theological writings, they do so in a way that not only reasserts Confucianism but actually absorbs Christianity into the Confucian tradition, rendering it peripheral and inconsequential. And when early seventeenth-century Japanese artists satirize the Spanish and Portuguese missionaries, they ultimately reaffirm their historical perception of the Other and their ancient sense of ethnic and cultural superiority. When writing about Asia, early modern Spanish writers tend not to depict a unified geographical and cultural space but rather nations, which Europeans of the period regarded as ‘political entities’ occupying ‘spatially discrete territories’ (Wey Gómez 69).9 They thus present Japan, China, Cambodia, and the Philippines as clearly distinct societies – although in the case of Japan and China they also recognize certain cultural commonalities. Within Spanish experience and discourse, however, all of these regions were united through the Philippines, the base of Spanish operations in the entire western Pacific. With the exception of Xavier and Pantoja, who as Jesuits travelled eastward from Europe to Asia under the auspices of the Portuguese (and Mendoza, who never reached China), the early modern Spanish writers I discuss all travelled westward to Asia, passing through

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Mexico and stopping in Manila, even when the Philippines was not their final Asian destination. Both administratively as well as conceptually, Spain regarded the Philippines as the westernmost extension of its vast American empire rather than a discrete Asian colony.10 Manila, moreover, functioned as the nexus of Asia and the Spanish-American empire since it was the entrepôt linking the commerce of the East (and in particular China) with the Americas and ultimately Spain. Although both Spain and Portugal were the dominant European forces in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century East and Southeast Asia, I have chosen for the most part to highlight European writers who identify as Spanish and write in the Spanish language precisely because their views of Asia tend to reflect the distinctive history of Spain and the Spanish empire as well as the particular viewpoint of the missionary orders most prominent in the Spanish evangelization of Asia.11 My aim in this book is to read Spanish writings on East and Southeast Asia as examples of colonial discourse. In contrast, most recent studies of early modern European-Asian encounters have tended to highlight the impact of these interactions on the construction of European identities. Several, including those of Keevak and David E. Mungello, have emphasized the influence of Chinese politics and philosophy on the period of the European Enlightenment.12 In the Hispanic context A. Owen Aldridge analyses the writings and translations of Benito Jerónimo Feijóo, Juan Pablo Forner, Tomás de Iriarte, and Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro, whom he characterizes ‘as the outstanding Spanish Sinophile of the eighteenth century’ (404). Some recent scholars, such as Ricardo Padrón and Thomas Suárez, have drawn attention to early modern European mappings of Asia, whereas others, such as Liam Matthew Brockey, Mungello, and Jonathan Spence, have highlighted the specific techniques developed by the missionaries to gain access to the elite societies of East Asia.13 In The Far East and the English Imagination, 1600–1730, Robert Markley demonstrates the effect that Asian-English encounters had in the shaping of English culture. In my book I look primarily at representations of Asia and Asians by Spanish authors. Yet I also point out key literary, artistic, theological, historiographical, and journalistic responses by Asians to the Spanish presence in Asia and to Spanish depictions of Asian peoples and cultures. Works written in Spanish by native Filipinos in the nineteenth century are clearly examples of Hispanic Asianography since they employ the Spanish language. But in the case of Japan and China I also comment briefly on several non-Spanish-language texts, in English

Introduction 19

translation, and pieces of art that relate directly to the Spanish texts I analyse and that provide a perspective different from the Spanish subject. These works do not constitute a significant portion of my study, but when taken into account they make possible a more nuanced and balanced appraisal of early Hispanic-Asian encounters. My hope is that they will become sites of future studies of these encounters from the perspective of Asian traditions. In structuring the book I have organized the material by region, primarily because the texts I examine are themselves regionally focused. Both in the order of the chapters ( Japan, China, Cambodia, and the Philippines) and within the chapters themselves, I follow a chronological sequence. The early modern, Japanese-Iberian encounter occurred between the mid-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries, while the corresponding Sino-Spanish period dates from the late sixteenth to the late seventeenth centuries. The Hispanic-Cambodian interchange, in contrast, was limited largely to the 1590s, whereas the Spanish colonial occupation of the Philippines extended from the mid-sixteenth until the late nineteenth centuries. In arranging the chapters I have also juxtaposed those on Japan and China and those on Cambodia and the Philippines in part because many early Spanish writers, given prevailing notions of the effects of climate on human nature, regarded the peoples and cultures of these areas as somewhat similar. I begin the chapter on Japan with the writings of Xavier, one of the earliest Europeans to comment extensively on the country. In letters to his fellow Jesuits in India and Europe (penned in both Spanish and Portuguese), Xavier expresses attitudes typical of early modern Spanish observers of Japan and China, including a profound respect for the culture coupled with apprehension in the face of powerful but alien religious traditions. He also makes remarks about the physical characteristics and sexual mores of the Japanese that will reappear throughout Spanish writings of the period. Although Xavier wrote partially in Spanish,14 he was himself of Basque origin and as a Jesuit travelled to Asia under the Portuguese flag. Spaniards, in fact, did not arrive in Japan in significant numbers until the end of the sixteenth century, when the Franciscan order began its missionary activity in the country. One of the primary Spanish Franciscan writers of the period, Marcelo de Ribadeneira, authored a history of the early Franciscan mission in Japan and the notorious Christian martyrdoms of the late 1590s. Another noted Spanish Franciscan, Luis Sotelo, accompanied one of the first Japanese embassies to Europe, headed by the samurai Hasekura

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Rokuemon Tsunenaga. Sotelo’s descriptions of the embassy are unique in the canon of early Hispanic-Asian texts insofar as he narrates the European-Asian encounter within a European rather than Asian context. During the period of the early Japanese-Spanish encounter, however, Japanese writers and artists often depicted Iberians, not only through negative stereotypes (resulting from unease over the Iberian presence in Japan and fear of a possible Spanish invasion from the Philippines) but also through images that at times transcend facile Japanese-European dichotomizations. As in Japan, the majority of Spanish missionaries in China were not Jesuits but members of the friar orders. A notable exception was Pantoja, who accompanied Matteo Ricci to Beijing at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Pantoja was one of the few Europeans of the early modern period to publish a text in China, written in Chinese with the help of sympathetic Christian converts, and one of the few whose work was commented on by the Chinese themselves. He also wrote a chronicle of his Chinese sojourn in which he expresses Jesuit accommodationism, a policy that sought to adapt Christianity to non-Christian religious practices. In keeping with the Jesuit missionary approach, Pantoja validates the early Confucian tradition. Yet he typically privileges European cultural accomplishments over those of the Chinese, and is in fact one of the first European commentators to establish, albeit implicitly, a European/Chinese cultural hierarchy. The friars, in contrast, while dismissive of Confucianism and indeed of all Asian religions, are often lavish in their praise of Chinese culture and society. As a friar, Navarrete denounced Jesuit accommodationism, but he represented China in such an ideal light that his work was invoked by European writers of the Enlightenment, including Voltaire, in their attempts to reform European social institutions. Although all of these writers were members of the religious orders, not all early modern Spanish treatises on China were written by clergymen. One of the first, which formed the basis for much of Mendoza’s history, was penned by a soldier, Miguel de Luarca. Luarca’s narrative is distinctive among Hispanic writings on China precisely because it does not highlight religious or theological matters, but rather focuses almost exclusively on secular culture and on the material and social conditions of the country. Spanish intervention in the Southeast Asian mainland was limited primarily to the 1590s, when the Spanish in the Philippines sought to expand Spain’s hegemony in the region. Their efforts are recorded in several early histories, including that of Aduarte, who narrates his own

Introduction 21

role in the first Spanish incursion into Cambodia. Gabriel Quiroga de San Antonio also recounts this expedition as well as a second failed attempt by the Spanish to conquer the country. Both Aduarte and San Antonio maintain that war and ultimately conquest are justified, but their arguments run counter to the tradition of just-war theory propounded by Thomas Aquinas and subsequently by Vitoria in the context of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Whereas Aduarte writes a narrative of the events of the Spanish-Cambodian conflict, San Antonio further remarks on Cambodian history and culture. In describing Cambodian society he echoes both the positive attitudes of early Spanish writers towards Japan and China and the negative (or at best patronizing) attitudes of many early-Spanish writers towards the pre-Hispanic Philippines. Like clerical observers of Japan and China, he cites the toleration of sodomy as a reason for Christian intervention in Cambodian society. He further comments on the physical characteristics of Cambodians and the organization of Cambodian society. Whereas Aduarte and San Antonio attempt to validate war as a means of advancing Spanish interests and propagating Christianity, the late sixteenth-century churchmen of the Philippines under the leadership of Salazar questioned the legitimacy of conquest and the process through which the Philippine archipelago had been subjugated to Spain. Ultimately, however, they determined that Spanish rule was justified because the pre-Hispanic Philippines had not achieved the level of civilization necessary for Christian life to flourish. In articulating this premise, they hearkened back to classical and medieval conceptions of what constituted civilized and non-civilized societies. In the late seventeenth century, in contrast, Gaspar de San Agustín emphasized in almost vitriolic terms what he regarded as the debased state of native Filipinos even under Spanish rule. Delgado later challenged San Agustín’s stance as inherently un-Christian and Spanish colonialism as unethical except in its Christian enterprise. In their quarrel, San Agustín and Delgado echoed the arguments of Sepúlveda, Las Casas, and Juan de Palafox y Mendoza regarding Native Americans. Like Vitoria, Delgado also regarded Filipinos paternalistically and for the short run in need of the guiding hand of Spain even if, as he declared, the Spanish in the Philippines had failed to embody Christian values of love and charity and had systematically exploited the Filipino people. Not until the latter half of the nineteenth century would these colonialist views be challenged and overturned by Rizal and his nationalist contemporaries.

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Rizal is in fact the towering figure of the early Filipino nationalist movement and the most prolific Spanish-language Filipino writer of all time. In my final chapter on the Philippines I limit my discussion of his writing to his assessment of Morga’s early history of the Philippines since this work relates most closely to the other texts I examine, both from the colonial Philippines as well as from Japan, China, and Cambodia. I also discuss the descriptions of Spain that he penned during his student days in Madrid, thereby providing an Asian-informed vision of Spaniards within Spain itself. Together, Rizal’s writing on Morga and his letters from Spain provide insight into his overall understanding of Spanish colonialism and the centuries-long Hispanic-Filipino encounter. Yet as Adam Lifshey argues in his recent groundbreaking study of Rizal’s novel El filibusterismo [The filibustering], Rizal’s writing is hybridic, and Rizal himself, given that his world view was mediated by Asian, European, and Latin American cultures, ‘falls outside traditional binaries: his voice is pro- and anticolonial, hegemonic and subaltern’ (1438). He therefore ‘merits attention as one of the first truly globalized authors of the modern era’ (1439). Most of the texts I highlight in my book, including even those of Rizal, have received little attention from scholars of Spanish and Spanish American writing. This is in part due to the fact that, unlike comparable texts from colonial Spanish America, they relate to regions of the world that did not become Spanish-speaking. Yet they are significant insofar as they provide a key to understanding the European-Asian encounter of the early modern and colonial periods and to conceiving of Spanish and Spanish American history and culture in the broadest terms possible. In recent years both Peninsularists and Latin Americanists have emphasized the importance of Transatlantic Studies and in particular the need to explore not only the interconnectedness of Iberia and Latin America but Europe, the Americas, and Africa. Just as Lifshey has done in his study of Rizal’s novel, I hope to move the study of Spanish-language writing beyond the confines of transatlantic interchange and place it in an even larger, world context. I recognize, however, that the images of Asia that I present in this book are multiply mediated. I myself am a twenty-first-century, American-born, native speaker of English, reading texts penned largely in Spanish by Iberian authors some three, four, and even five hundred years ago. These authors, in turn, were reflecting on peoples, places, and cultures vastly different from anything they could ever have imagined before encountering Asia through their own readings, travels, and

Introduction 23

living experiences. In keeping with Sinographies, the ‘Asias’ I elucidate are clearly ‘Asias’ of meaning far removed from any imagined Japan, China, Cambodia, or Philippines of fixed and essential fact. But they are, nevertheless, ‘Asias’ whose meanings continue to reverberate in the present day through discourses that always were but only recently have been recognized as truly global.

Chapter One

Japanese and Spaniards in the Christian Century

In early modern Spanish writings on East Asia the Japanese and Chinese are not described in terms of fixed categories of identity, and despite the particularities of Japanese and Chinese cultures they are not regarded as fundamentally different from Europeans. Although sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish writers make references to their physical characteristics, they do so only infrequently and usually in an effort to point out their commonalities with Europeans. Moreover, they never call into question the intellectual or moral capabilities of the Japanese and Chinese, as they do in their depictions of Native Americans and Filipinos. Yet precisely because the Spanish viewed the Japanese and Chinese as inherently similar to Europeans, they experienced their cultural and religious differences as subtly unsettling. It was in fact in Japan and China that early modern Europeans, through the Iberian missionaries and merchants, were most pressed to recognize not only that there are many ways of being human, but perhaps – though they were not fully prepared at the time to verbalize it – that no single way is absolutely right. From the outset they thus expressed excitement coupled with unease in the face of what they perceived as both familiar and foreign. This is clearly apparent in the writings of the first major European observer of Japan, Francisco Xavier. Xavier set foot in Japan on 15 August 1549. Accompanied by two Spanish Jesuits, three Japanese converts, and two servants, he docked in the harbour of Kagoshima, on the island of Ky ush¯ ¯ u. His arrival marked the beginning of the so-called Christian Century in Japanese history, a brief but intense period of missionary activity that climaxed in 1597 with the crucifixion of six Spanish Franciscans and twenty Japanese

Japanese and Spaniards in the Christian Century 25

Christians and ended in 1639 with the virtual eradication of Japanese Christianity and the closure of Japan to the West. Xavier, however, was not the earliest European observer of Japan. Marco Polo, who never visited the country, was the first European to mention Japan (Zipangu) in his writings. The initial contact between Japanese and Europeans possibly occurred in 1511 (Boxer, The Christian 14–15), and the first Europeans to reach Japan’s shores were Portuguese traders, who arrived in either 1542 or 1543 (15–18). One of these was Jorge Alvares. Xavier subsequently had Alvares record his observations of Japanese geography and society and sent them to Europe for publication. This was the earliest account of Japan to gain wide circulation in the West. The Jesuits, whose ranks in sixteenth-century East Asia were filled primarily by the Portuguese, dominated the Japanese mission until 1593, when Spanish Franciscans from the Philippines began to enter Japan. The Japanese leader Oda Nobunaga, who sought to break the power of the Buddhists, initially supported the Jesuits and allowed them to establish themselves in the Japanese imperial capital of Ky¯oto. In 1570 the Portuguese secured permission to make Nagasaki the base of their trading operations in the country, thus linking Japan to Macau, their commercial enclave in China, and ultimately to an overseas trading empire that stretched as far as Europe and Brazil. In keeping with the Treaty of Tordesillas, the Portuguese considered Japan a part of their rightful sphere of influence, both for commerce as well as evangelization. The Spanish, however, following their establishment in the Philippines, likewise wanted to trade with Japan and hoped to include Japanese ports on their transpacific trading route. Nobunaga’s successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, was initially interested in fomenting commercial relations with the Spanish in order to break the Portuguese trade monopoly. He also entertained the notion of making the Philippines a vassal state of Japan. If supposedly he welcomed the Franciscans, as the Spanish Franciscan chronicler Marcelo de Ribadeneira maintains, he nevertheless came to regard them as a subversive force, orchestrating the crucifixions of 1597 in an effort to curb European proselytizing and warn his Japanese subjects of the dire consequences of conversion. Despite this setback in the Japanese mission, the Spanish Franciscans temporarily reasserted themselves in Japan. When Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate, succeeded Hideyoshi in 1603, he showed more tolerance for Christianity, and during the early years of his reign the Spanish Franciscan, Luis Sotelo, attempted to develop

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the Franciscan presence in Edo, present-day T¯okyo¯ , and the northern region of Honshu. ¯ To do so, he enlisted the support of a local daimy¯o, Date Masamune, and arranged for the latter to send an embassy to Europe to promote trade between Japan and Spanish America and enhance the role of the Spanish Franciscans in the country. Sotelo’s expedition, as detailed in his writings, failed to achieve its aims, in part because of Jesuit influence in Europe and in part because after 1613 Ieyasu changed policy and began a campaign to expel all foreign missionaries and suppress Japanese Christianity. To a certain extent the anti-Christian policy of the shogunate, and ultimately the expurgation of Christianity and the closure of Japan to the West, resulted from a fear that the Europeans, and in particular the Spanish, intended to conquer the country. But as Richard Henry Drummond has pointed out, it was primarily a response to the power of the Japanese Christian nobility, which threatened the supremacy of the shogunate and the unity of the Japanese nation.1 Throughout most of the Christian Century the Japanese mission was under siege. But it was also riven by conflicts between the Jesuits and the Franciscans. Whereas the Jesuits in East Asia aimed first to convert the ruling elites, and through them the larger population, the Franciscans directed their efforts to society at large. What is more, the Jesuits attempted to adapt Christianity to Asian customs (when in public in Japan they wore the garb of Buddhist priests) and, to the extent possible, mould Christianity into existing Asian religions. The Franciscans, in contrast, insisted on the distinctiveness of Christian revelation and Catholic religious practice. They were thus more likely than the Jesuits to run afoul of the Japanese authorities, who saw them as bent on undermining the established social order. From the Jesuit perspective, the Franciscans, and by extension the Spanish, were to a significant degree responsible for the failure of the Catholic enterprise in Japan and the final disintegration of Japanese-European relations. This view is echoed in later generations of Catholic and non-Catholic historians alike. The influential midtwentieth-century historian Charles Ralph Boxer, for instance, while recognizing the long-standing Jesuit-Portuguese bias in historical writings on the Christian Century (a term that Boxer himself advanced with his watershed book by the same title), reiterates it in his own depictions of the Spanish Franciscans. When attempting to explain the Franciscan position, he also replicates cultural biases perpetrated by the early missionaries themselves:

Japanese and Spaniards in the Christian Century 27 The methods they [the Franciscans] employed were merely those which had met with such success in Mexico, Peru, and the Philippines, or for that matter in Portuguese Brazil, where the comparatively backward native cultures could be largely ignored, and a clean sweep made of all existing beliefs and prejudices, in order to sow the Gospel seed. Such drastic methods were doomed to failure when applied to the inhabitants of Japan, China, and Hindustan, the culture of which was in all cases older, and in many ways superior, to that of the West. (The Christian 162)

This traditional view, which Boxer draws from an unnamed, modern Jesuit historian, is both ideologically and factually problematic. Not only does it reflect a Eurocentric bias (despite the validation of Japan, China, and India, Europe remains the standard by which the cultures of the world are measured), but it is also misleading, since the reason the Spanish managed to conquer certain peoples more easily than others had less to do with their overall cultural accomplishments than their weapons, armies, and (perhaps most important of all) resistance to disease. The Spanish in fact lacked the military wherewithal necessary to conquer Japan and China (although Spaniards in the late sixteenthcentury Philippines clearly entertained the possibility of doing so) and for this reason were unable to make ‘a clean sweep’ of their existing cultures – something indeed impossible to achieve even in the most radical, imperialist undertakings. As evidenced by the writings of Xavier, Ribadeneira, and Sotelo, early modern Spanish observers held widely different views of Japan and the missionary project.2 They also wrote very different kinds of texts. As Samuel Hugh Moffett explains, Xavier laid the foundations for the early Catholic missions in Asia and established the three cornerstones of Jesuit missionary practice: adaptation to local cultures, fidelity to Catholic orthodoxy, and discipline (70). Xavier’s written corpus consists primarily of letters. Unlike many of his subsequent co-religionists, he does not write a history or ethnography of the countries he visited. Rather, his observations are based on events that he recounts, if not in the moment, at least not long after they occurred. Although his writing is imbued with the ethos of an Iberian-Catholic churchman of the midsixteenth-century, it is not subjected to an a posteriori act of synthesis. To a certain degree, therefore, the meaning of his Japanese experience is articulated as it is lived. Xavier had tremendous respect for Japanese culture even if, as Moffett points out, he was aghast by what he considered its ‘three crippling blemishes’: idolatry, abortion, and homosexu-

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ality (71). His admonition of the latter ‘vice’ is typical of early modern observers of non-Western cultures, who regarded sexual difference as a decisive marker of alterity that justified the intervention of Christian Europe. Xavier’s writing nevertheless differs from that of many of his contemporaries insofar as he reveals his own excitement as well as unease in what for him were profoundly foreign environments. Ribadeneira’s history of Japan focuses primarily on the period of the early Japanese-Franciscan mission of the mid-1590s, much of which he witnessed, including the crucifixions of 1597, commonly known as the Twenty-Six Martyrs Incident. In contrast to Xavier, whose writing reveals a sense of immediacy, Ribadeneira composed his treatise with hindsight, and though he comments on various aspects of Japanese religion and society, he wrote primarily with the intent of justifying the Franciscan missionary approach disparaged by the Jesuits. Through his depictions of the martyrs as well as the other Japanese and Spaniards he encountered in Japan, he provides valuable biographical information that at times borders on hagiography but nevertheless distinguishes him from those writers who describe Asians in general terms but fail to represent the lives of individual Asians or discrete Asian-European encounters. Ribadeneira’s writing is also of value insofar as it conveys a more mainstream, Spanish interpretation of Hispanic-Japanese relations, since the majority of Spanish clerical writers of the period were not Jesuits but members of the friar orders. In contrast to Ribadeneira, Sotelo aims to advance not only the general cause of the Franciscans but also the goals of the Japanese embassy he shepherded to Europe and perhaps even his own personal, ecclesiastical aspirations. What is more, he produces a secular discourse, eschewing the hagiographical flourishes that characterize Ribadeneira’s writing and for the most part explaining historical events in terms of human rather than divine agency. Like Xavier, Sotelo tends to compose his texts as the events he narrates unfold. His work is significant precisely because he depicts Japanese people and Japanese-European relations within a European context, showing how early modern Europeans who had not travelled outside of Europe (including the king of Spain and the pope) regarded Asians. What he does not represent is a Japanese reaction to Europe, since the Japanese in his delegation are represented solely from his perspective. For Japanese representations of Europeans, one must look to late sixteenth- and early seventeenthcentury Namban art, which focuses on Westerners, and to the antiChristian narratives of writers like Fabian Fucan, which appeared at the end of the Christian Century.

Japanese and Spaniards in the Christian Century 29

‘The Best Thus Far Discovered’ Francisco Xavier (1506–52), revered in Western Christendom as the ‘Apostle of the Indies and Japan,’ was one of the first European observers of Japanese life. In a series of letters to his co-religionists in India and Europe he recounts his journey to Japan, providing the early modern West with a window onto Marco Polo’s fabled Zipangu, while documenting for posterity the process through which Europe began to assert itself over the non-European world. In fact, these letters reveal as much about mid-sixteenth-century Europe, in the throes of religious reformation and imperialist expansion, as about Japan itself. Yet they are also a kind of autobiography in which Xavier not only chronicles his extraordinary experiences but attempts to fashion a personal identity through and in opposition to what in subsequent Western discourse would become the very limit – both geographically and conceptually – of the Orient. In his letters Xavier balances his discussion of Christianity by presenting the theological questions and doubts raised by his Japanese audiences. However, he denounces Buddhist monasticism with a zealousness exceptional even in a churchman of the Counter-Reformation. In his judgment the bonzes (Buddhist monks) are avaricious, parasitical, and hypocritical. What is more, they are sexually profligate: some have relations with nuns, who regularly induce abortions, and most are practising sodomites. Yet even though Xavier inveighs against Japanese religion and morality, he expresses great admiration for the Japanese people as a whole, enthusiastically declaring that they are ‘la mejor que hasta aguora está descubierta’ [the best thus far discovered].3 Xavier claims the Japanese exceed all non-Europeans through their goodness, honour, and politeness. They are, moreover, naturally predisposed to Christian conversion. By defining the Japanese as inherently superior, he implicitly establishes himself, and by extension Europe, as the ultimate arbiter of human worth. But in so doing he also validates indigenous Japanese culture, which for the most part remained intact, despite his dreams of conversion and the economic and military designs of the West, until well into the nineteenth century. Xavier was a prodigious traveller, even for his age, but not a prolific writer. Born in 1506 in what was then a Basque-speaking region of Navarre,4 he journeyed across Europe to Paris, where he studied theology with Iñigo de Loyola, then to Rome to participate in the foundation of the Jesuit order, and finally to Lisbon, to spearhead the Portuguese evangelization of the East Indies. From there, he made his way as a

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missionary to Africa, India, the Spice Islands, and Japan, reaching the easternmost point of his peregrinations at the Japanese imperial capital of Ky¯oto. While in Japan, he wrote five letters in which he details his experiences and comments on Japanese life. Although the letters were addressed to the Portuguese mission in Goa, India, they were written mostly in Spanish, probably because Xavier’s secretary at the time knew only that language.5 Several more letters dating from before and after Xavier’s Japanese sojourn also contain important information about Japan. They were written in either Spanish or Portuguese.6 A total of 137 letters still remain from Xavier’s entire correspondence. This constitutes his literary legacy, though according to Ignacio Elizalde, Xavier possibly composed several poems and dramas.7 As Elizalde further demonstrates, Xavier wrote a plain, unadorned Spanish, comparable in its simplicity to the spontaneous style of Teresa de Jesús, albeit even more imperfect than hers because of his long absence from Spain and his constant exposure to other languages (47–8).8 In contrast to Teresa and other writers within Spain, Xavier influenced Spanish literature not through his own writing but through the example he set by his life, which became the subject of much Golden Age drama and poetry. Moreover, he may also have influenced traditional Japanese storytelling by having native Japanese minstrels incorporate Christian narratives into their ballads to help in the propagation of Christianity. As Leandro Tormo Sanz and Catalina Villanueva Bilar remark, after the Jesuits arrived in Japan, European elements began appearing in Japanese folklore, most likely as a result of what they regard as a cultural mestizaje of native Japanese bards (567–8). Xavier was assisted in his missionary activities in Japan by a Japanese convert, Angiro¯ (baptized Paulo de Santa Fe), whom he first met in Malacca in December 1547. Angir o¯ had killed a man in Japan and fled with the Portuguese trader Jorge Alvares for the express purpose of joining Xavier and converting to Christianity. Angiro¯ recalls his initial encounter with Xavier in a subsequent letter to Loyola (itself the earliest known text written by a Japanese in a European language):9 ‘de la primera vista quedé muy edeficado y deseié de amor de le servir y nunqua dél me apartar’ (Izawa 318) [from first glance I was greatly edified and I wished to serve him with love and never part from him]. Xavier, however, was also edified by Angiro¯ , whose tales of his homeland, coupled with his own personal qualities (Xavier was most impressed by Angir o¯ ’s intellectual curiosity), instilled in him a yearning to visit Japan. Once there, Angir o¯ was Xavier’s linguistic and cultural

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mediator.10 Angiro¯ ’s ability to translate Christian doctrine from Portuguese into Japanese was nevertheless limited. He had only a rudimentary knowledge of Portuguese and, as a member of the samurai class, was unfamiliar with Japanese religious vocabulary and unable to read the Chinese script in which Japanese Buddhist theology was written. His translation of the Catholic catechism was thus flawed, and consequently Xavier often found himself unable to present a coherent Christian message to the Japanese people. In fact, the Japanese may have regarded him as the representative of another Buddhist sect rather than an entirely new religion. Not only did he hail most recently from India but, as Moffett explains, he initially followed the advice of Angir¯o and used the Shingon Buddhist term Dainichi, ‘the cosmic Vairocana Buddha and lord of light,’ to indicate the Christian God (72). Eventually, Xavier recognized the confusion caused by this name and began referring to God by the Latin word Deus (72). As Urs App summarizes, Angiro¯ depicted Buddhism to Xavier in Christian terms, leading him to wonder if at some earlier time Christianity had reached Japan. He likewise portrayed Christianity to the Japanese in Buddhist terms, thereby creating an illusion of religious similarity, even though a conflict of religious ideologies was ultimately inevitable.11 Angir¯o’s family and friends quickly converted to Christianity, but during Xavier’s nearly two-and-a-half-year stay in Ky ush ¯ u¯ and western Honshu, ¯ the number of converts remained relatively small, and Christian teachings were continually contested. As Xavier explains, many Japanese had difficulty with the concept of God as universal creator, since this led inevitably to the vexed question of evil in the world. Even if God, as Xavier insists, did not create evil, he created beings capable of evil, and from the Japanese perspective was at least indirectly responsible not only for sin itself but also for its end result: hell. For many of Xavier’s potential converts, the notion of an eternal hell undermined the image of a beneficent God. But more important, it threatened to subvert their cultural identity. Through the prayers of the bonzes, the Japanese traditionally believed that the souls of their ancestors could be rescued from hell. In affirming Christian doctrine (and most certainly in an effort to break the power of the bonzes), Xavier, like Virgil in Dante’s Inferno, imparts the bitter lesson that the damned are in hell as a consequence of their own free choices and hence, despite our inclination to pity them, must be irrevocably left behind: ‘Muytos chorão os mortos . . . Eu lhes digo que nenhum remedio tem’ (letter 96, 276) [Many weep for the dead . . . I tell them that there is no remedy]. As a

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matter of fact, Xavier wavers on the question of the fate of the dead and elsewhere attempts to assuage the anguish of his Japanese converts by telling them that God’s law is inscribed in the hearts of all humans (letter 96, 267). But he does not, as claimed by subsequent Catholic apologists (e.g., Brodrick 263 and Schurhammer 235–6 n.101), ever explicitly affirm that their pagan ancestors might be saved. According to Xavier, the living must forget the dead and focus on their freedom to do good in the here and now. What they will gain (in addition to salvation) is a heightened sense of individual worth. But they will also lose something of the past that binds them together as a people. In fact, to be ‘born again’ a Christian in sixteenth-century Japan, with its ancient cult of the ancestors, meant to be reborn less Japanese, and as such primed for even greater Western incursions than Xavier himself ever imagined. In attempting to justify Christianity, Xavier does not challenge Buddhism on theological grounds; nor does he distinguish between Buddhist and Shintoist aspects of Japanese religious practice. As Hugues Didier argues, he was in fact disconcerted by the diversity of Japanese Buddhist sects and blind to Shint o¯ , since in his own native culture (Counter-Reformation Europe and post-Reconquest Spain) differing religious traditions could not coexist (18). In Xavier’s view, all Japanese Buddhists profess five fundamental commandments prohibiting murder, robbery, fornication, lying, and drinking alcohol. The bonzes, however, claim that most people are unable to uphold these precepts on a regular basis. They therefore offer to obey them on behalf of the people and through prayer and religious observance expiate their sins (as well as those of the damned in hell), provided, Xavier caustically notes, they receive material and monetary remuneration. Xavier is actually less judgmental about the native religion itself than what he ostensibly perceives as an economic exploitation of the people by the bonzes: Eles numqua fazem esmola, mas querem que todos lhas fação a eles. Tem abitos, modos e maneiras pera tirar dinheiro das gentes, os quaes deixo de sprever por evitar proluxidade. (letter 96, 258) [They never give alms, but want everyone to give alms to them. They have customs, methods, and ways of squeezing money out of the people, which I shall not enumerate in order to avoid prolixity.]

Xavier implies that the bonzes regard hell as if it were purgatory. His charge that they extort money for the remittance of the souls of the

Japanese and Spaniards in the Christian Century 33

damned is nevertheless striking insofar as it echoes, at times almost verbatim, the diatribes of sixteenth-century Protestants against the sale of indulgences.12 Xavier in fact seems to use contemporary attacks against Catholicism as a means of discrediting Buddhism and validating his own religion in the eyes of the Japanese. Xavier deplores the bonzes even more for what he deems their moral laxity. Whereas Alvares remarks merely in passing and without judgment that they engage in sodomy,13 Xavier takes their ‘sin against nature’ as a decisive reason that traditional Japanese religion must be discarded.14 During the early period of imperialist expansion, Spaniards often imputed the practice of sodomy to alien peoples in an attempt to justify conquest on moral grounds.15 Xavier, whose aim is conversion rather than conquest, limits the charge to his religious rivals, unaware that they too had a tradition of condemning clerical carnality (Faure 209). He thus declares: ‘Tienen estos bonzos en sus monesterios muchos mininos, hijos de hidalgos, a los quales enseñan a leer y escribir, y con éstos cometen sus maldades’ (letter 90, 188) [These bonzes have in their monasteries many boys, sons of noblemen, whom they teach to read and write, and with these they commit their evil deeds]. Xavier does not denounce these relationships specifically as pederastic since from his perspective all acts of sodomy are mortal sins and as such equally evil regardless of the age of the participants. Yet as he reveals, homoerotic relations in pre-modern Japan typically crossed generational lines, and Buddhist monasteries were a locus of homoerotic activity. In fact, a whole genre of love tales of monks and their young charges (known as chigo monogatari [acolyte stories]) flourished during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Male homoeroticism was present not only in Japanese monastic life but also in the social organization of the samurai.16 Xavier clearly admires the samurai, whom he calls hidalgos, perhaps because of their ostensible similarity to the low-ranking members of the Castilian nobility, and perhaps also because Angir o¯ was of the samurai class. Didier claims that on account of the samurai, Xavier felt completely at home in Japan (19), although in his correspondences he never explicitly compares Japan and Spain. According to Xavier, both hidalgos and samurai maintain a rigorous code of honour despite the fact they are often poor. As he observes, the samurai never marry below their social class, even if in so doing they might raise their economic status: ‘de manera que más estiman la honra que las riquezas’ (letter 90, 186) [they thus esteem honour more than riches]. What Xavier does not notice, or ignores as

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irrelevant to his specific goal of conversion, is that the kind of sexual relations the samurai allow between their sons and the bonzes are integral to their own military ethos. During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, male homoeroticism, which came to be designated in popular Japanese discourse as shudo¯ [the way of youths],17 was increasingly identified with samurai rather than Buddhist monks. As Gregory M. Pflugfelder argues, shud¯o bonds between samurai were thought to foster the skills and values of honourable warriors. Through them, younger samurai developed military prowess and acquired the demeanour and attitude befitting their role, whereas older samurai continually endeavoured to prove themselves worthy of emulation. According to Pflugfelder, shud¯o was therefore ‘believed to have a mutually ennobling effect’ (71). Xavier, in opposition to Japanese custom, uses the Christian conception of sodomy to create a distinction between a good people (including samurai) and a pernicious clergy. He alleges that the Japanese despise the sexual life of the bonzes but through force of habit have come to tolerate it: ‘aunque a todos paresca mal, no lo estrañan’ (letter 90, 188) [although it seems evil to everyone, they are not surprised by it]. The bonzes themselves are unmoved by the moral reprobation of the Jesuits: ‘todo lo que [les] dezimos les cae en gracia . . . se ríen y no tienen ninguna vergüença de oyr reprehensiones de pecado tan feo’ (letter 90, 188) [everything we tell them seems funny to them . . . they laugh and have no shame when hearing admonitions of such an ugly sin]. But the people respond more strongly: quamdo hiamos pelas ruas, herão os meninos e outra gemte que nos perseguia, fazemdo escarneo de nós, dizemdo: . . . ‘Estes são os que deffemdem o pecado da sodomia,’ por ser muito geral amtre eles. (letter 96, 261) [When we went through the streets, children and other people would pursue us, ridiculing us and saying, ‘these are the ones who prohibit the sin of sodomy,’ because it is very common among them.]

Sodomy, Xavier insists, is a common practice precisely because of the influence of the bonzes: Ho povo asy ho faz tomando deles exemplo, dizemdo que, se os bomzos ho fazem tambem ho farão eles. (letter 96, 268)

Japanese and Spaniards in the Christian Century 35 [The people thus do it, taking from them example, saying that if the bonzes do it, they will do it as well.]

Xavier’s comments are thus clearly contradictory, unless we are to understand that the ‘people’ (and here he seems actually to overstate the case) regularly engage in practices they simultaneously accept and abhor. What he refuses to acknowledge is that the sexual life of the bonzes might mirror, rather than dictate, the mores of the society at large.18 This emphasis on sexual irregularity is crucial to Xavier’s overall project. When the old religion is replaced by the new, not only will the sin of sodomy disappear but a natural order will be restored in consonance with the Christian doctrine of creation. Sodomy in the theological context of Xavier’s writing is sinful because it is a gratuitous act breaking a natural chain of cause and effect that derives from God. In this rigid framework, the notion of God as First Cause is incompatible with any sexual act not specifically intended for reproduction. The Japanese conception of sexuality differs from the European in part, Xavier implies, because they do not believe in a Creator. In their world view, nature and human beings in fact have no ultimate origin: Os japões nas lemdas de suas ceitas não tem nenhum conhecimento . . . da criação do mundo, do sol, lua, estrelas, ceo, terra e mar, e asy de todas as outras coussas. Parece-lhes a eles que aquilo nam teve primcipio. (letter 96, 264) [The Japanese, in the doctrines of their sects, have no knowledge . . . of the creation of the world, of the sun, moon, stars, sky, earth, and sea, and of all other things. It seems to them that all that has no beginning.]

Xavier regards this perspective as gravely dangerous: with no grounding in a First Cause, the world would collapse into sexual bedlam and chaos. Yet the open-ended vision of reality that provokes in him such anxiety also allows for a greater expression of sexual diversity, even if in pre-modern Japanese society the conditions of sexual life were clearly delimited.19 By witnessing what he perceived to be the evils of Japan, Xavier was transformed both personally and spiritually. In a letter to Loyola he writes:

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Though Xavier makes clear what he most abominates in the Japanese (religious doubt, clerical corruption, and concupiscence), he does not specify the evils he comes to acknowledge in himself. But he does shed light on the nature of his relationship to the Japanese. Japan, according to this passage, represents the Other through whom he discovers his own inner self. He confronts this self not when alone or in a state of introspection but when he stands outside of himself and his culture in a foreign land. At first he identifies with the Japanese he encounters since they seem to possess many of the attributes he most values as a European. But when they reveal to him other ways of being human, he recognizes his own potential difference as well. Rather than accept this difference, he chooses to distance himself from it. This entails a withdrawal not simply from an external Other but from the Other already within him. The culminating moment of Xavier’s visit to Japan occurred in Kyo¯to, at the residence of the emperor. His ultimate aim, like that of subsequent Jesuit missionaries, was to convert the leader of the nation and through him make possible the conversion of the entire population. He also hoped to receive permission to preach throughout Japan. But he and his companions failed even to gain an audience with the emperor (‘Nom pudemos falar com ele’ [letter 96, 262] [We were unable to speak with him]), and were turned away from the palace gate. As a matter of fact this was of little consequence, since at this point in Japanese history the emperor held no real power, and afterwards Xavier petitioned the support of powerful feudal lords. As James Brodrick further explains, when Xavier realized that the Japanese emperor was powerless and the country had no supreme authority figure, he began to turn his attention away from Japan towards China in the hope of converting the Chinese emperor and through him spreading Christianity in East Asia (219).

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Nevertheless, the image of Xavier standing at the entrance of the imperial household empty-handed (a gift was normally required for admission, and he had nothing to offer), reveals not only a temporary setback but the beginning of the end of his long odyssey. According to his testimony, Kyo¯ to, the historical and cultural centre of Japan, was a place of waste and destruction after years of civil war, and the emperor, the quintessence of the Japanese nation, was silent and invisible. If Japan, as Xavier has suggested, is a mirror through which he discerns his inner self, then the truth it imparts to him at this moment is his existential emptiness. As he left Kyo¯ to, he reportedly uttered the words of the 113th Psalm, ‘In exitu Israel de Aegypto’ (Schurhammer 213) [When Israel went out of Egypt], as if it were his own salvation he now sought rather than that of the Japanese people. Though his promised land was not of this earth, his geographic course would henceforth lead westward, away from a country ‘aparejada para todo género de pecados’ (letter 97, 290) [primed for all manner of sins] and unordered by God, and ultimately away from a world that threatened to undermine his whole way of being. The letters of Xavier nonetheless reveal a tension between a process of identification and differentiation. In keeping with Pagden’s characterization of early modern clerical writers, Xavier initially discerns in the Japanese, beginning with Angiro¯ in Malacca,20 a similarity with Europeans, and in many passages of his letters he seems eager to highlight cultural commonalities. He also establishes a physical bond with the Japanese by describing them as ‘gemte bramqua’ (letter 96, 277) [white people].21 Xavier largely disregards eye shape, the primary physical feature that subsequent Europeans would use to establish Asian difference,22 and cites skin colour as a sign of similarity between Japanese and Europeans. In keeping with prevailing European notions regarding the effects of climate on human temperament, he implicitly compares the Japanese to the Flemish and Germans: Yo abya pensado que seryan buenos para Japón flamencos ho alemanes que supyessen castellano o portugués, porque son para muchos trabajos corporales, y tanbyén para sufryr los grandes fryos de Bando. (letter 97, 290)23 [I had thought that the Flemish or Germans who knew Spanish or Portuguese would be good for Japan, because they are fit for many physical tasks, and also for enduring the great cold of Bando.]

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Overall, Xavier is so convinced of the pre-eminence of the Japanese over all other non-Christians that he confidently reports that ‘entre todas las tyerras descubyertas destas partes, sola la gente de Japón está para en ella se perpetuar la chrystyandad’ (letter 97, 291) [in all the lands discovered in these parts, the Japanese people alone have the wherewithal to perpetuate Christianity]. Ironically, of course, Christianity in the long run made fewer inroads in Japan than in any East Asian country. Yet even if the Japanese are like him (from the Christian perspective they too, after all, are endowed with immortal souls), they are also profoundly different, or rather must continually be posited as such if he is to maintain his ideal self. In ontological terms, this self remains ungrounded, appearing only insofar as it is differentiated from the non-Christian in the initial phases of proselytization. When the nonChristian accepts conversion, difference is erased and new converts are sought in an endless cycle of identity formation. If, however, the nonChristian refuses conversion and remains obstinately different, then the act of self-affirmation that informs the missionary project (despite all the apparent self-sacrifice) short-circuits. This is the plight of Xavier. Virtually alone in an alien milieu, he must either assume as his own the Other’s difference or retreat, as he eventually does, and resume his project elsewhere. Japan in his letters is thus not a site of Christian or Western self-fashioning but instead a sign of the impossibility of any permanent self-identification, whether as Christian, Western, or merely human.24 Needless to say, Japan’s reaction to Xavier and the West was motivated by more concrete concerns than these. Japanese rulers became increasingly hostile to Christian missionary activity in the late sixteenth century, especially after the arrival of the Franciscan friars, whose presence they regarded as a prelude to conquest by Spanish forces poised menacingly in the Philippines. Fear of the Spanish in part prompted the Japanese to close their doors to the West in the seventeenth century. But Xavier himself never favoured military conquest and discouraged the Spanish from even approaching Japan. In one passage of his correspondence (letter 108, 356–7), he ostensibly attempts to alert the Spanish to potential disaster. Yet in so doing he not only prevents a clash between the Spanish and the Portuguese but also surreptitiously safeguards Japan from onslaught by Spain. The Spanish, who at the time referred to the Japanese archipelago as the Islas Platarias,25 dreamed of finding silver deposits exceeding in wealth even the riches of the Andes. As Agostinho de Azevedo wrote of Japan: ‘Estas são as Platárias por que

Japanese and Spaniards in the Christian Century 39

os Castelhanos sempre sospirão’ (Schurhammer 549 n.15) [these are the Silver Isles, which the Spanish have always craved]. But as Xavier cunningly remarks, the seas surrounding them are treacherous, the people are vicious and warlike, and the land is sterile and barren. He exhorts his fellow Jesuit, Simón Rodríguez, to communicate these warnings to the rulers of Castile and the Emperor Charles V himself and to dissuade them from sending an armada of ‘discovery’ to Japan’s shores. Xavier’s writing, despite his own dreams of spiritual conquest, thus belies the facile efforts of many later historians to subsume Christian missionary activity within larger imperialist schemes even if, in the final analysis, the cross often did render non-Europeans more vulnerable to the sword. The Twenty-Six Martyrs Incident Xavier is somewhat anomalous in the canon of Hispanic Asianography because he wrote in both Spanish and Portuguese. As a forerunner of the Jesuit policy of accommodation (which only came to full fruition at the end of the sixteenth century under Matteo Ricci in China), Xavier also differed from the vast majority of Spanish clerics in East Asia, who adhered to the friar orders. Most Spanish friars in Japan were in fact Franciscans, and the most widely read in Spain during the period of the Christian Century was Ribadeneira. Born in Palencia, Spain, of Galician descent, Ribadeneira (dates unknown) entered the Franciscan order in Salamanca and travelled from Seville to the Philippines in 1593, arriving in 1594. He is the author of the first lengthy account of Japan not written by a Jesuit, published in 1601 under the title Historia de las Islas del Archipielago, y reynos de la gran China, tartaria, Cochinchina, Malaca, Sian, Camboxa y Jappon [History of the islands of the (Philippine) archipelago, and kingdoms of the great China, Tartary, Cochin China, Malacca, Siam, Cambodia and Japan].26 As the title indicates, Ribadeneira comments on several Asian countries, but he in fact devotes more than half of the text to Japan, focusing on the early Franciscan mission of the 1590s and the Twenty-Six Martyrs Incident that culminated in Nagasaki in 1597.27 Manuel de Castro applauds the style of Ribadeneira, who, he argues, reports solely what he saw during his three-year stint in Japan from 1594 to 1597 or what trustworthy eyewitnesses related to him (182). In his opinion, Ribadeneira’s only shortcoming as a writer is that he does not fully narrate his own story, preferring instead to remain concealed behind a third-

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person voice (182). Ribadeneira, however, does occasionally include himself in his narration while portraying the various Spaniards and Japanese he encountered in Japan. What is more, he provides biographical sketches of the twenty-six martyrs, which at times verge on hagiography but nevertheless personalize the narrative and grant human faces and voices to the past. Whereas Castro emphasizes Ribadeneira’s impartiality as a historian, Donald F. Lach regards the Historia as biased in favour of the Franciscans. Lach points out that Ribadeneira was among three Franciscan friars present in Japan in 1597 who subsequently signed an oath in Manila charging that the Jesuits were in part to blame for the tragedy that befell the Japanese mission that year. In a somewhat sarcastic tone, he adds that ‘Christian charity’ moved them to recognize that the Jesuits did not actually anticipate the violent reaction of the Japanese authorities to their Franciscan confrères (717). His comments echo the long-held view that the Jesuits were more skilled at diplomacy than the friars and that the Franciscans were largely responsible for the failure of the Japanese mission. Lach thus describes the Historia as a ‘polemical piece’ (718). He further notes that the Spanish Jesuit, Luis de Guzmán, made reference in his history of Japan to two contemporary works that wrongly disparaged the Jesuits. Were one of these Ribadeneira’s, then according to Lach ‘some of what he said in his history must certainly be taken as false’ (718). Ribadeneira’s Historia is nevertheless of importance precisely insofar as it makes available a Spanish Franciscan perspective on Japan. Ribadeneira details the events that preceded the first Franciscan mission to Japan. He cites a letter from the Japanese ‘king,’ Taicosama (Toyotomi Hideyoshi), to the Spanish governor general of the Philippines, Pedro Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas, requesting that Spanish ambassadors be sent to Japan. Dasmariñas dispatched the priest, Juan Cobo, who had an unsuccessful meeting with Hideyoshi and was subsequently lost at sea during his return to Manila. The Japanese then delivered a second message to Dasmariñas indicating more explicitly their intention to make the Philippines a vassal state of Japan. In response Dasmariñas and the Philippine religious and secular authorities decided to send a small delegation of Franciscans to Japan under the leadership of Pedro Bautista. This decision contravened contemporary missionary practice, since up until the 1590s only the Jesuits were allowed to proselytize in Japan. But Ribadeneira explains that it was justified for six reasons:

Japanese and Spaniards in the Christian Century 41

first, some sort of response was necessary and the governor general of the Philippines was authorized to act on behalf of the king of Spain; second, the Japanese requested that Franciscans be sent to Japan; third, the Jesuits had already been exiled by Hideyoshi; fourth, in keeping with the Treaty of Tordesillas Japan belonged to Spain; fifth, Pope Sixtus V had granted the Franciscans the right to preach throughout the world; and sixth, the Franciscans were free from episcopal control to preach in countries close to the Philippines. In fact, the governor general of the Philippines did have the power to act in the name of the king of Spain, and the pope did ultimately acquiesce to sending non-Jesuit missionaries to Japan. Also, the Jesuits in Japan faced discrimination, if not occasional persecution. However, the notion that Japan was one of the lands conceded to Spain by the Treaty of Tordesillas clearly challenged Portuguese hegemony in South and East Asia, although the Spanish occupation of the Philippines had already set a precedent for considering the Asian-Pacific islands as the westernmost extension of the Spanish sphere of influence. What is more, if Hideyoshi welcomed a Franciscan presence in his realm, his ultimate aim in fomenting relations with the Spanish was to weaken the Portuguese control of Japanese trade and acquire Chinese silks and precious metals from the Americas at more favourable prices (Boxer, The Christian 161). The Franciscan delegates, who included the friars Pedro Bautista and Bartolomé Ruiz, left the Philippines in May 1594 and arrived in Japan in August. According to Ribadeneira, when Hideyoshi met them, he insisted that they recognize Japanese sovereignty over the Philippines. But the Franciscan ambassadors affirmed the autonomy of the archipelago, and though Hideyoshi was angered, he eventually relented and allowed them to remain in Japan as missionaries. Ribadeneira himself arrived in Japan soon after the Bautista contingent, and thus not only witnessed but also participated in the work of the early Franciscan mission. Throughout the Historia Ribadeneira praises the devotion of the Japanese Christians to the church, while commenting on the delicate process of winning converts: Con este modo de enseñar que guardaban los prudentes mártires, juzgando que habían de ser para aquellos nuevos fieles como madres, que con dulce leche crían a sus tiernos hijuelos, era notable el provecho espiritual que hacían. (351)

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In contrast to the Jesuits, who tended to interact with Asian elites, the Franciscans sought to convert the masses and were hence less likely to encounter the cultural sophistication that so impressed early Jesuit observers of Japan and China. Ribadeneira, therefore, describes the relationship between the Spanish Franciscans and their Japanese converts as a mother-child relationship. Though ostensibly benign, the motherchild metaphor is patronizing, establishing a vertical hierarchy of Europeans and non-Europeans typical of European colonialist discourse but as a matter of fact uncommon in early Hispanic writings on Japan and China. The Franciscans, as Ribadeneira portrays them, aimed explicitly to succour the afflicted and dispossessed. They were attacked, however, by the leaders of rival Japanese sects, who supposedly disparaged their charitable actions and encouraged parents to spy on their sons and daughters in order to prevent them from becoming or remaining Christians. También tomaban algunos motivos para persuadir a sus hijos a que no fuesen cristianos, de ver que adoraban a un crucificado y que los predicadores de la ley de Dios eran pobres, y curaban leprosos, y vivían vida áspera, andando pobremente vestidos y descalzos, juzgando, según su parecer, esto por infamia. (361) [They also took steps to persuade their children that they not become Christians, seeing that they (the Christians) adored someone crucified and that the preachers of the law of God were poor, and that they cured lepers and lived a harsh life, going about poorly dressed and without shoes, and they (rival Japanese leaders) judged all this, from their perspective, as a disgrace.]

For Ribadeneira, the life denigrated by the Japanese elders is in fact not shameful but an ideal to be maintained. This emphasis on the Christian virtues of poverty and service to others is a further feature of Franciscan writing that sets it apart from texts penned by the Jesuits of the

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period, which more often than not validate Christianity through theological argument rather than pastoral example. Ribadeneira depicts an almost generational conflict between Japanese Christians and non-Christians, and in the process reveals aspects of his own relations with Japanese youth, whom he occasionally treats like sons: [U]n muchacho de catorce años, diciendo a su padre que quería ser cristiano, y no queriendo ir con él a visitar un bonzo, no sólo fue azotado y afligido, pero del todo le echó su padre de casa, desheredándole y desconociéndole por hijo. El mozo, viéndose así desamparado, se vino al santo comisario y le dijo lo que pasaba, y él con gran contentamiento le admitió por hijo y le recibió en casa, y servía con tanto amor, que olvidado de su padre y parientes se vino conmigo desde Japón hasta la China y Filipinas. (362) [A fourteen-year-old boy, who told his father that he wanted to be a Christian and did not want to go with him to visit a bonze, not only was whipped and abused, but his father actually threw him out of the house, disinheriting him and denying he even knew him. The young man, seeing himself thus abandoned, came to the holy superior and told him what had happened, and the latter happily accepted him as a son and took him into the house, where he served with such love that he forgot his father and relatives and came with me from Japan to China and the Philippines.]

Ribadeneira speaks of another young man of eighteen, whose father and master both threatened to kill. This youth gave up a life of privilege, cut off his hair (‘que le estiman los mozos tanto como las más galanas mujeres’ [362] [which the young men value as much as do the most elegant women]), donned the garb of the poor, and joined Ribadeneira on his return to the Philippines, where he remained after Ribadeneira went back to Spain. Ribadeneira indicates that the Franciscans initially intended to follow the lead of the Jesuits in Japan (‘el modo que guardaban los padres de la Compañía’ [398] [the method of the fathers of the Company]). But he concludes that they could not ‘sin notable detrimento de la fe seguir el recato con que los padres de la Compañía vivían, porque entonces andaban temerosos del rey, y con cuidado, escondidos y vestidos como japones’ (398) [without great detriment to the faith maintain the reserve

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with which the fathers of the Company lived, going about fearful of the king, carefully concealed, and dressed like Japanese]. Rather, the Franciscans preached openly and wore their own distinctive habits in public.28 Ribadeneira argues that the wrath of the Japanese authorities fell on them precisely because until their arrival they had never witnessed a clear example of the life of Christ – which they abhorred because it entailed a rejection of wealth and status. Ribadeneira fails to recognize how such a life might also be regarded as a rejection of the deeply held Confucian value of respect for the social order. But by depicting Christianity not merely as other-worldly in its orientation but specifically as a threat to class privilege, he reveals a potentially radical strain in the religion, cultivated in later centuries (e.g., in the Latin American context of liberation theology) not by the Franciscans but, ironically, by their Jesuit rivals in the early East Asian missions. Historians typically cite the events surrounding the wreck of the San Felipe, a Spanish galleon that foundered off the coast of Shikoku in 1596, as a prelude to the anti-Christian campaign of the following year. In disputes that broke out between Japanese authorities over the ship’s cargo, the Spanish pilot-major, Francisco de Oliandia, supposedly remarked that the Franciscans were typically the forerunners of the Spanish conquistadors, forming, in the words of Boxer, a sort of ‘fifth column’ in countries slated for conquest (The Christian 166). In his Historia Ribadeneira notes that during the San Felipe episode someone accused the friars of being spies (422), but he does not mention Oliandia by name. According to Boxer, however, Oliandia’s remark either provided Hideyoshi with a justification for persecuting the Franciscans or, more likely, convinced him that his anti-Christian advisers were correct in their negative assessment of the friars (166). Hideyoshi thought initially of pursuing all Christian groups, but eventually decided to spare the Jesuits since he regarded them as essential to trade relations with Portugal (166). Of the twenty-six individuals crucified in 1597, three were in fact Japanese Jesuit lay brothers, included in the group by error (166). Of the remaining twenty-three, six were Spanish Franciscans and seventeen were Japanese novices. Ribadeneira depicts the martyrdoms of 1597 in reverential, if not almost hagiographical terms. Throughout the incident, he himself was kept prisoner on a Portuguese ship, where he managed to receive news but was spared execution. In the Historia he draws attention to the fact that the martyrs were accused of no crime other than preaching the gospels and that they regarded their fate as a blessing. Obviously, he

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decries the anti-Christian assault on his fellow missionaries, but he also invokes secular arguments in an effort to denounce the death warrant issued against them. Hideyoshi’s action, he contends, although inevitably part of God’s providential plan for the Christianization and salvation of the Japanese people, transgresses ‘la ley natural, que obliga a no tratar mal a los embajadores’ (463) [natural law, which prohibits the mistreatment of ambassadors]. It also contravenes ‘la [ley] de razón, que dicta no ser dignos de castigos los que viven sin pecado y ocupados en buenas obras’ (463) [the law of reason, which holds that those who live without sin and engaged in good works do not merit punishment]. As might be expected, Ribadeneira does not recognize any possible motive of the Japanese ruler other than sheer malice. As Ribadeneira succinctly reports, ‘los santos mártires . . . conforme a la cuenta de Japón, fueron crucificados el año 1597, miércoles, a 5 de febrero, a las diez del día, pero según la de Europa, a 4’ (482) [the holy martyrs . . . according to the Japanese calendar, were crucified in the year 1597, on Wednesday, the 5th of February, at ten o’clock in the morning, but according to the European calendar, on the 4th]. The prisoners were tied to the crosses and raised up, with the five Spaniards flanked on each side by the Japanese. For a time they continued to exhort the crowd of onlookers to maintain their faith, but eventually four executioners began stabbing them with swords and spears. As the martyrs perished, Christian witnesses exclaimed that they were fortunate to die a holy death and declared the blood-stained earth of Nagasaki a sacred site. Ribadeneira concludes the Historia with brief biographies of the twenty-six martyrs, including Pedro Bautista and Francisco de la Parrilla from Castile, Martín de la Ascensión from Vizcaya, Francisco Blanco from Galicia, Felipe de Jesús from Mexico, and Gonzalo García, who was born in India of a Portuguese father and an Indian mother. The Japanese victims included men of different ages and occupations. Three were still boys, including a twelve-year-old named Luis, who would have been spared death had he recanted. As Ribadeneira writes, when Luis saw the crosses, ‘preguntó con varonil ánimo: “¿Cuál de éstas es mi cruz?” Y sabiéndolo, fue corriendo y se abrazó con ella’ (613) [he asked in a manly way, ‘Which of these is my cross?’ And after finding out, he ran to it and hugged it]. During his crucifixion another child, a thirteen-year-old named Antonio (the son of a Chinese father and a Japanese mother), began to sing the hymm ‘Laudate pueri, Dominum’ (611) [Praise the Lord, ye children]. When he finished, he asked Pedro

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Bautista, who was hanging at his side, what song he would like to hear next, but before the father superior could reply, the boy was stabbed in the side and killed. Not surprisingly, accounts such as these aroused tremendous compassion as well as indignation among European readers, and Peninsular writers responded with texts of their own, including Lope de Vega, who published the Triunfo de la fee en los reynos de Japón [The triumph of faith in the kingdoms of Japan] in 1618.29 After the Twenty-Six Martyrs Incident took place, the Spanish governor general of the Philippines sent an ambassador to Japan to resolve the matter of the San Felipe cargo and to demand an explanation for the execution of the Franciscans. Boxer cites the reply of Hideyoshi: ‘And if perchance, either religious or secular Japanese proceeded to your kingdoms and preached the law of Shint o¯ therein, disquieting and disturbing the public peace and tranquility thereby, would you, as lord of the soil, be pleased thereat? Certainly not; and therefore by this you can judge what I have done’ (The Christian 169). This comment, as Boxer rightly (albeit sarcastically) points out, did not likely convince ‘a Roman Catholic conquistador, who naturally considered that the activities of the Franciscans were inspired by God’ (169). It does, however, reveal a rationale for Hideyoshi’s actions not present in Ribadeneira’s Historia. As Hideyoshi remarks, European rulers of the period would have been equally resistant to the imposition of a foreign religion in their lands. What is more, though his treatment of the twenty-six martyrs is clearly heinous by modern standards, early modern Europeans were just as brutal in their persecution of religious minorities, as evidenced by the history of the Inquisition and the wars of religion. Ribadeneira’s Historia, though providing a logical and coherent account of the Japanese-Franciscan mission of the 1590s, might ultimately be regarded as a providential or sacred history insofar as the author continually invokes divine agency in order to explain human events. The text, nonetheless, is of value to contemporary, secular readers not only because it makes available a Franciscan and Spanish perspective on Japan and the Japanese-European encounter of the early modern period, but because it does so through portrayals of concrete, individual Japanese and Spaniards. In fact, Ribadeneira’s Historia is less ethnographic and more personal than many sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury Spanish writings on East and Southeast Asia, and while it evokes the ‘lives of the saints’ of the past, it also stands as a forerunner of modern biography.

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Bella cosa Ribadeneira provides a first-hand account of the Spanish Catholic mission in Japan at the end of the sixteenth century. Sotelo, in contrast, writes during the first decades of the seventeenth century. Like Xavier and Ribadeneira, he too describes and interprets Japanese society and culture for Spanish and European audiences. But he also situates the early Japanese-European encounter in a European setting, thus revealing not only early European reactions to East Asia but also, at least implicitly, the early Japanese experience of Europe. Taken as a whole, his written corpus is an example of both Hispanic Asianography as well as a new kind of writing about Europe. This is because he depicts Europe (and in particular two primary institutions of European power and identity – the Spanish monarchy and the papacy) in relation to a group of Japanese ambassadors to Spain and Italy and thereby in the context of Japanese cultural assumptions and aspirations. Sotelo was born into a noble family in Seville in 1574. After joining the Franciscan order in Salamanca, he made his way to the Philippines in 1600 and worked as a missionary in the Japanese settlement of Manila. In 1603 he travelled to Japan, where he remained for ten years. When anti-Christian hostility began to increase in the second decade of the seventeenth century, he fled from Edo, his primary site of operation, to the province of Mutsu (often spelled Bojú in Spanish texts) in the northeastern region of T¯ohoku, where Date Masamune (1567– 1636) held sway as daimy¯o. Date Masamune tolerated Christianity, and though it is uncertain whether he himself ever converted, he accepted Christian proselytizing in his realm. Sotelo thus saw him as a potential ally who could help him further his ecclesiastical and religious goals. Sotelo garnered the support of Date Masamune, and the two arranged to send a delegation to Spain.30 Sotelo guided the group (known subsequently as the Keich o¯ Embassy for the period in Japanese history [1596–1615] during which it was undertaken), and Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga (1571–1622), a samurai retainer of Date Masamune, served as ambassador.31 Whereas Date Masamune’s goal was to develop direct trading relations between To¯ hoku and New Spain, Sotelo sought the creation of a diocese in northern Japan independent of the Jesuit-dominated diocese of Nagasaki. Sotelo and Hasekura, along with some 140 Japanese and 40 Spaniards, departed Japan in late 1613 on the ship Date Maru (known in Spanish as the San Juan Bautista), which Date Masamune had commissioned according to European

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navigational standards and the Spanish explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno commanded. The embassy passed through Mexico, arriving in Sanlucar de Barrameda, Spain, in the fall of 1614 and in Madrid the following January. Sotelo wrote several brief texts chronicling his activities in Japan and Europe.32 In describing the reception of the embassy in Spain and Italy, he draws attention to the honours bestowed on Hasekura and the group, as if hoping to render the expedition more successful than it actually was. Though the shogun Ieyasu had allowed the embassy to leave Japan, the civil and religious authorities in Spain and Rome knew early on that it represented the leader of only one region of Japan and not the entire country. What is more, they were keenly aware of the increasing persecutions of Christians, especially after Tokugawa Hidetada succeeded Ieyasu as shogun in 1616. Thus, while Pope Paul V agreed to send more Franciscans to Japan, King Philip III did not respond to Hasekura’s request that Spain foment trading relations with Japan specifically through Date Masamune. After docking in Sanlucar de Barrameda, the Duke of Medina Sidonia sent carriages to receive the group, and as they entered Seville, huge crowds gathered along the Triana Bridge to greet them. Hasekura carried with him a letter, translated into Spanish most likely by Sotelo, who, according to Marcos Fernández Gómez, was completely fluent in Japanese (273). Hasekura presented the original Japanese letter and Spanish translation to the city of Seville on 27 October 1614.33 For nearly two hundred and fifty years afterwards the letter was considered lost, until José Velázquez y Sánchez discovered it in the mid-nineteenth century. In the letter Hasekura identifies Date Masamune as ‘Rey de Bojú’ [King of Bojú], though as daimyo¯ his position was more similar to that of a European nobleman. He further conveys Date Masamune’s admiration for the king of Spain and the pope and his desire that his entire realm convert to Christianity: ‘aviendo oydolas cosas de la Santa Ley de Dios, y juzgadolas por santas, y buenas, mandó en su Reyno se publicasse, que todos sus vassallos fuessen Cristianos’ [having heard the tidings of the holy law of God, and judging them holy and good, he ordered that in his kingdom it be published that all his vassals should be Christians]. It was purportedly in order to achieve this goal (the Christianization of his subjects) that Date Masamune sent Hasekura to Europe: ‘para esso . . . me mandó viniesse con el padre fray Luys Sotelo’ [for this reason he ordered me to come with father Fray Luis Sotelo]. Hasekura concludes the letter by indicating that Sotelo will provide

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the other details of the embassy – presumably Date Masamune’s commercial proposals as well as the manner in which the Christianization of Bojú will be carried out. He signs the document as ‘Faxecura Recuremon.’ After visiting Seville, the embassy travelled north to Madrid, where Hasekura was baptized on 17 February 1615. Sotelo relates the episode in a text directed to his brother in 1615: Relación verdadera que embio el padre Fray Luis Sotelo de la Orden de san Francisco, a su ermano don Diego Cauallero de Cabrera beintiquatro de Seuilla, en que se da quenta del Bautismo que se hizo a el Embajador Iapon [True account that the father Fray Luis Sotelo of the Order of St Francis sent to his brother, don Diego Caballero de Cabrera XXIV of Seville, in which is related the baptism of the Japanese ambassador].34 According to Sotelo, the Duke of Lerma and the Countess of Barajas stood as Hasekura’s godparents, and in attendance were the king and queen and other members of the royal household. The ceremony took place in the chapel of the Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales, with the king’s chaplain, Diego de Guzmán, officiating. Sotelo explains that afterwards, el Duque de Lerma nos tomo a el Embajador y a mi de las manos, diziendo que su Magestad nos llamaua, y nos metio a dentro al quarto Real, a donde salio su Magestad acompañado de la Reyna de Francia y demas hijas, y de la Infanta monja, hechamonos a sus pies, su Magestad mandandole leuantar le abrazo con grande amor y contento dandole el parabien, y pidiendole encomendase a Dios, el Embajador le dixo que se tenia por el mas dichoso hombre del mundo assi por verse ya Christiano y cumplidos sus deseos, como por quedar tan honrado y enoblezido, en auer sido esto por orden de su Magestad y en su Real presencia, y mucho mas por auerle mandado poner su nombre, cosa que aun imaginarla no se atreuiera . . . y assi le suplicaua que para que en España Ytalia y Iapon fuesse conoscido por su criado y vassallo le hiziesse merced de honrarle con la Cruz de Santiago, con que señala y honra a sus vassallos nobles. [the Duke of Lerma took the ambassador and me by the hands, saying that his Majesty was calling us, and led us into the royal chamber, where the king came out, accompanied by the Queen of France and other daughters, and the Princess-Nun, and we threw ourselves at their feet, and his Majesty ordered him [Hasekura] to stand up and hugged him with great love and pleasure, and congratulated him, and the ambassador begged him to commend him to God, and told him that he was the most fortunate

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According to this passage, Hasekura is treated as an equal to the highest-ranking members of the Castilian nobility, the Duke of Lerma (the king’s chief minister) and the Countess of Barajas, and embraced by King Philip III himself. Hasekura asks the king to grant him the Cross of Santiago and thereby entry into the most esteemed Iberian order of medieval Catholic knighthood.36 The form of the Cross of Santiago, whose vertical beam terminates in a sword and thus evokes the militant Christianity of the Reconquest, might seem a desirable emblem to a samurai turned Roman Catholic. Yet insofar as the ethos of the Reconquest informs the subsequent Spanish conquest and Christianization of peoples beyond the Iberian Peninsula (which the early seventeenthcentury Japanese shoguns feared might extend to Japan itself ), Hasekura’s request of the Cross of Santiago might reveal a desire not merely to endow his embassy with legitimacy and prestige but to place Japan on equal footing with Spain as a potential Catholic nation. It is, however, impossible ever to know Hasekura’s intentions because he left little writing of his own. Although in the writings of Xavier and Ribadeneira (as in all such texts in which Asian peoples are described by Europeans), the Japanese can be known only indirectly through the mediation of the Spanish observer, the Japanese subject of Sotelo’s Relación seems more elusive precisely because he is an individual, rather than an entire people, yet never really individualized. In the previous passage he perhaps evinces qualities of humility and respect, or, conversely, ambition and cunning. But throughout most of the Relación he remains an empty cipher, ostensibly voicing the intentions of Date Masamune but in a discourse scripted by Sotelo that makes even the intentions of the distant daimy¯o seem irrelevant. Indeed, in those passages of the Relación when Hasekura should be most visible – for instance, when crowds of fascinated Spaniards and Italians turn out to see him pass – he is in fact almost absent, as if what mattered most to Sotelo were the reactions of his fellow Europeans. For Sotelo, their en-

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thusiasm would not only corroborate the success of the spectacle he has orchestrated but, more important, validate the mission of the embassy, which is his primary concern. The Hasekura contingent departed Spain in the summer of 1615 and arrived in Rome that October. Sotelo recounts the exuberant greeting they received in a text written to a Roman confrère in 1616: Relacion verdadera del recibimiento que la santidad del Papa Paulo Quinto, y los mas Cardenales hizieron en Roma al Embaxador de los Iapones, que desta Ciudad de Seuilla partio el año passado [True account of the reception that His Holiness Pope Paul V and the other cardinals gave in Rome to the Japanese ambassador, who departed from the city of Seville last year].37 He begins by commenting on the dress of the Japanese envoys as they made their way through the streets of the city, referring the reader back to his narration of their arrival in Seville. He states that they (now with the Christian names of Don Pedro, Don Tomás, and Don Francisco [Hasekura]) were dressed as before, and that, while Don Pedro wore the two-pointed hat of a bonze, none of them bore arms or led a horse in the manner of soldiers. He continues with a vivid depiction of the scene: En passando cerca de San Pedro, tocaron los atabales, y flautas, haziendo musica sobre las almenas, y passando San Pedro tiraron veynte y ocho pieças grosissimas. Luego llegamos a casa de un Cardenal, a cuyas ventanas se assomo el mismo y otros Prelados de la Yglesia, cosa que jamas an hecho los Cardenales en semejantes ocasiones, como lo hizieron aqui este, y otros, assomandose en publico a sus ventanas. Estauan todas las demas calles, estremada, y curiosamente calgadas, quajados los terrados y ventanas de Caualleros, y Damas, Perlados, y Religiosos, y por las calles y plaças infinitos coches, porque son los que ay en Roma muchos, mas que en la Corte de Madrid. Dixeron algunos, que el Papa viera este passeo dende sus ventanas por debaxo una vidriera, y que dando muchas muestras de alegria repitiera algunas vezes bella cosa, bella cosa, y leuantando los ojos al cielo, dio gracias a Dios, que auia traydo de tan lexos aquellos Idolatras, al conocimiento del verdadero Dios. [As we neared St Peter’s, they played kettle drums and flutes, making music on the battlements, and as we passed St Peter’s, they shook twentyeight big banners. Then we arrived at the house of a cardinal, at whose windows appeared the cardinal himself and other prelates of the Church, something that the cardinals have never done on similar occasions, as he and others did here, appearing in public at their windows. The rest of

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What stands out in this passage is not the Japanese delegation itself but the throngs of Romans and the figure of the pope, who welcomes the entry of the Japanese into Christendom and ultimately the faith. Sotelo does not actually hear his words but confidently reports them to the reader. In so doing he attempts to verify the success of the embassy and his work as a missionary. The ‘bella cosa’ that the pope so praises is in fact the conversion of the Japanese. Yet what is affirmed is not only Christianity but also Rome and, by extension, Europe, since it is against the backdrop of the non-European members of the embassy that Rome is portrayed. Even if Sotelo’s greatest concern in life is the salvation of the Japanese, what his writing primarily makes visible are European peoples and places and his own role as mediator between Europe and Japan. The pope formally received the Keicho¯ Embassy on 3 November 1615, and afterwards Hasekura was granted honorary Roman citizenship by the Roman senate. But despite the positive European reception depicted by Sotelo in his Relaciones, the embassy failed to achieve its basic aims, in part because they ran counter to the established policies of the Catholic Church and Spanish state. Although the pope initially approved of an increased Franciscan presence in Japan and even for Sotelo to become bishop of Mutsu (an appointment that the Spanish nuncio did not carry out [Fernández Gómez 289]), Sotelo’s attempt to establish a Franciscan mission in Japan independent of the Franciscan province of the Philippines was regarded as an act of insubordination by the Franciscans and, from the perspective of the Jesuits, a threat to the entire Japanese missionary enterprise.38 With regard to secular matters, the goal of Date Masamune to have independent trade relations with New Spain, which Sotelo endorsed, challenged the monopoly that Manila held over all commerce between Spanish America and East Asia. What is more, even if there had been genuine European support

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for the embassy, conditions in Japan made its aspirations untenable. In 1614 Ieyasu issued an edict expelling all foreign missionaries, after which the situation of the Christians in the country progressively deteriorated, and in 1615 he forbade local lords from building ships and engaging in overseas trade. After two years in Europe, the Keich¯o Embassy returned to Asia, arriving in Manila in 1618. In 1622, a full nine years after the launch of the mission, Sotelo secretly went back to Japan. In 1624 he fell victim to the anti-Christian crusade of Hidetada and was burned at the stake.39 In his writings on the Japanese church, Sotelo remarks that Hasekura returned to Japan with great honour. But the final years of Hasekura, who died in 1622, are shrouded in mystery, though he likely remained Christian despite the shogunate’s increasing efforts to eradicate Christianity from Japan.40 Hasekura was virtually forgotten in Japan until after the opening of the country in the nineteenth century, and in the twentieth century he is known largely in fictionalized form through the novel of End¯o Sh¯usaku, The Samurai (1980).41 Kirishitan Bateren and the King of South Barbary42 Although End¯o’s writing is one of the few significant, contemporary Japanese representations of the Japanese-Iberian encounter of the early modern period, there exist numerous late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Japanese representations, especially in the Namban art of the Momoyama period (1573–1615) as well as the writings of the Japanese Christian apostate Fabian Fucan (ca 1565–1621) and the anti-Christian diatribes known as Kirishitan monogatari [Christian stories] (1639). The word ‘namban’ is usually translated as ‘southern barbarian,’ the Japanese designation for the early Europeans who reached the shores of Japan from the south. But its more literal meaning is ‘fierce,’ ‘savage,’ ‘uncivilized,’ and also simply ‘foreign.’ As Ronald P. Toby notes, when the Japanese first laid eyes on the sixteenth-century Iberian traders and priests, they regarded them as Tenjikujin, or ‘men of Inde’ (327). In so doing, they ‘inscribed them in a sacred text, the land of the Buddha, and hence sacralized and exalted this Other’ (338–9). But they also discerned in them characteristics that they historically associated with uncivilized peoples: ‘When the Portuguese stepped off their ships onto Japanese soil, they were dressed to role: dark skin (sunburnt from months at sea; naturally dark), curly hair, heavy beards and general hirsuteness, and other observable bodily characteristics of the

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Namban were already heavily signed as markers of alienness and barbarianness’ (331). Much Namban art reiterates these images in an effort to satirize Europeans, though not all of it is explicitly polemical. Namban art reflects not only Japanese perceptions of Europeans but also the influence of the European art that the Jesuit missionaries introduced to Japan. As Fernando G. Gutiérrez explains, Namban art can be divided into two categories: the first consists of religious iconography whereas the second includes secular representations, usually on by¯obu (folding screens), of European customs and dress, as well as maps of European cities and depictions of the arrival of the Namban ship, or Portuguese trading vessel, at Nagasaki harbour (149–50).43 Although Western influence is present in Namban art, the painting techniques are largely traditional (Gutiérrez 175), and even when scenes are copied from Western models, they are often highly original, especially in their treatment of non-religious subjects (171). What is more, Namban works are typically unsigned, thus revealing the general aesthetics of the late sixteenth-century Kan¯o school of art (175). Because most Europeans in Japan during the Namban period were Portuguese, most examples of Namban art focus on Portuguese rather than Spaniards and specifically Spanish themes. There are, nevertheless, several intriguing exceptions, including images of Spanish Franciscans and maps of Spanish cities. One of the most decorative and colourful examples of Namban art are the screens illustrating the arrival of the Namban ship. As Gutiérrez explains, these screens typically place the ship on the left-hand side of the painting and the European missionaries and Japanese on the right. They tend to highlight the products the Portuguese traders carried to Japan, and they often display a map of the world indicating the route of the ship from Lisbon to Nagasaki (176). According to Gutiérrez, ‘[t]he central object of interest in most of the Namban screens is undoubtedly the Portuguese ship,’ which often occupies a large portion of the work (176). Yet they are also of interest because, apart from Western-stream portrayals of Spanish religious figures (the most notable of which is a portrait of Francisco Xavier located in the Kobe City Museum), they contain, through their depiction of the Franciscans, the few early Japanese pictorial representations of Spaniards. In one such piece, Screens of Europeans in Japan, a six-panelled painting located in the T¯osho¯ dai-ji in Nara (see figure 1.1), the Franciscans actually outnumber the Jesuits and are rendered in respectful and indeed deeply human terms.

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In this work the Namban ship is filled with travellers, including both Franciscans and Jesuits. From the mast, African sailors perform acrobatic feats. On the ground in front of and to the right of the ship are groups of people, some with animals from the ship, including a reindeer, a dog, a goat, a sheep, and several creatures in cages. The people, all seemingly men, have either white skin (including both the Europeans and Japanese) or black skin – though at least one of the figures (the third from the left) appears brown. Most of the black figures are barefoot. On the extreme right, several figures are clearly identifiable as Japanese because of their dress. But others clad in Western garb might also be Japanese. As Gutiérrez notes, Namban screens ‘demonstrate the European influence on Japanese costume, for some of the Nagasaki citizens are depicted wearing an adapted form of bombacha, or baggy trousers tied tightly at the waist and ankles’ (201). The ostensibly Western throngs portrayed in these screens are hence actually a mixed assembly of Europeans and Japanese. As in other Namban screens, some of the clerical figures in the T¯osh¯odai-ji piece stand alone. But in three instances, the Jesuits and Franciscans are shown interacting. At the top of the second panel from the right, several Jesuits and Franciscans converse in a house, and on the shore two stand together to greet the ship and two others form part of a group of four European and Japanese laymen. The most distinctive figures, however, are the Franciscans. In a church at the upper right, an elderly friar, bent over with a cane, is followed by a Japanese man into the sanctuary, where another figure in Japanese dress prays. In the lower part of the same panel a Franciscan seems to bless two figures in Namban dress, who point in the direction of the ship. Yet the most striking image – if one bears in mind the invective directed at the Franciscans from both the Jesuits and the Japanese authorities – is of a Franciscan and a man in Namban dress embracing. The expression on the Franciscan’s face is exceedingly tender, even though it is rendered with little detail. The Namban figure might of course be a European acquaintance that the Franciscan is welcoming – though this is unlikely since the ship is Portuguese and not Spanish. In fact, he possesses Japanese features and is thus maybe a Japanese friend of the Franciscan. Like the figures in the house and the church, these two men are not tied to the ship and simply form part of the larger social setting. As the Japanese painter of the work perhaps meant to convey, the social interaction of Japanese and Spaniards was at times highly positive.

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Figure 1.1 ‘Screens of Europeans in Japan.’ Tosh ¯ odai-ji, ¯ Nara. Used with permission.

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Another example of Namban art indicative of the early HispanicJapanese encounter is the Four Great Cities of the West, an eight-panelled painting located in the Kobe City Museum.44 Okamoto Yoshitomo identifies the four cities depicted in these screens as Lisbon, Madrid, Rome, and Constantinople, although according to Shirahara Yukiko’s discussion of the history of the work, the Spanish city (depicted in the third and fourth panels from the left) is certainly Seville (see figure 1.2).45 As Okamoto explains, when the Tensh¯o Embassy visited Italy in the mid1580s, the Japanese envoys were given a book with copperplate prints illustrating the most important cities of Europe. This book, which they took back to Japan, provided the model for the Four Cities screens (136–7). Shirahara clarifies that the book in question was the Civitates Orbis Terrarum, first published in Cologne in 1572 by Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg (65). The Flemish artist Joris Hoefnagel made the original drawing of Seville as well as the copperplate for the Civitates Orbis Terrarum.46 He drew the city during an excursion to Spain in the mid-1560s. Okamoto maintains that although the original images of the Four Cities were probably copied numerous times, the work in the Kobe museum dates from the early 1590s.47 As Okamoto notes, the colour of the Four Cities screens is vibrant and rich, as opposed to the subdued, brownish hue of the prints in the Civitates Orbis Terrarum. He interprets this to mean that the artist sought to endow the cities with a quality of permanence (137). What he does not mention is that while the Japanese versions of Lisbon, Rome, and Constantinople largely replicate the images in the European book, the Japanese version of Seville differs significantly from the original. In Hoefnagel’s piece most of the frame is taken up by human figures and Seville is relegated to the background. As Richard L. Kagan explains, Hoefnagel often added genre scenes to his city views, and in this work he illustrates the public humiliation of a husband and wife: ‘The man wears the horns indicating that he has been cuckolded, while the woman, an adultress, is surrounded by bees, a sign of her “sweetness” ’ (Urban 16). The vantage point of the scene is a hill, as in ‘equestrian’ or ‘cavalier’ city views (Urban 2), but the image is also a ‘typus’ since it represents a well-known architectural landmark of Seville, the Girlada tower of the cathedral. Although Hoefnagel based his illustrations on direct observation, according to Kagan they are ‘pictorial’ rather than ‘precise replicas of the city represented’ (Urban 14) and thus different from simple chorography, which, in the words of Ptolemy, aims ‘to describe the smallest details of places’ and ‘to paint a true likeness of the

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Figure 1.2 ‘Four Great Cities of the West’ (Seville). Kobe City Museum, Kobe. Used with permission.

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places it describes’ (Urban 11). Instead, as Kagan points out, Hoefnagel was interested in the social and cultural aspects of Spanish life, and his depictions of Spanish cities belong ‘to sixteenth-century Europe’s “curiosity movement,” a concern for any unusual social and natural phenomena’ (Urbs 81). In the Japanese representation of Seville, the human scene painted by Hoefnagel has been eliminated, and the city itself occupies over half the frame. It seems massive and solid, albeit closed in on itself by walls, unlike Lisbon and Constantinople, which remain open to the sea, and Rome, which is traversed by the Tiber. What is more, although the city is dominated by its cathedral, the tower looks no different from the conical towers of the other buildings. Indeed, there is little that clearly marks the city as Seville – in contrast to the pictures of Lisbon, Rome, and Constantinople, which highlight easily recognizable geographic features and architectural structures. Unlike Hoefnagel’s painting, the Japanese cityscape does not portray Seville as a site of tradition but rather a locus of the power that the city in fact wielded as the linchpin of Spain and its world empire. Spanish power is implied by both the city itself as well as the figures that adorn the two quadrants above it. Over each of the four cities are two smaller images of men on horses and men and women in local dress. The horses linked to Lisbon and Rome are at rest, but those linked to Constantinople and Seville are galloping. What is more, the Spanish rider is brandishing a sword. Thus, while Spain and Turkey are portrayed literally as empires on the move, Spain is also depicted as explicitly bellicose. This might reveal the view of the Japanese painter of the Four Cities screens or even the perspective of the Jesuit artists who influenced the development of Namban painting, since the two benign sites of the Western world are precisely Rome, the seat of the church, and Lisbon, the capital of the nation that sponsored the Jesuit evangelization of East Asia. If Namban art expressed mixed views of Spain and the Spanish, Japanese writing from the latter period of the Christian Century is decidedly anti-Spanish and anti-European in general. Of the Japanese written responses to early modern Christian incursions into Japan, the most important is that of Fabian Fucan, a Japanese Jesuit who reverted to Buddhism.48 While a practising Jesuit, he wrote a defence of Christianity titled My¯otei mond¯o [My¯otei dialogue] (1605), in which two Christian women discuss the virtues of Christianity in opposition to Shint¯o, Buddhism, and Confucianism. His second major work, composed after his apostasy, is titled Ha Daiusu [Deus destroyed] (1620), in which he

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refutes the major theological tenets of Christianity. As George Elison, the author of the most exhaustive study of Fucan’s writing remarks, ‘[t]he sum of his two major treatises makes the author into a disputator against himself’ (142). Whereas Fucan focuses on theology, more popular writers of the period satirize the appearance and customs of Europeans while warning readers of their hostile intentions. Among the most noted examples are the Kirishitan monogatari, stories printed in chapbooks for popular consumption, which often sensationalize Christian practices and denigrate significant events in Japanese-Christian history, such as the Twenty-Six Martyrs Incident. Elison, who has made the Kirishitan monogatari available in English translation, argues that because of their differences in style they were not composed by a single author but instead represent an ‘anonymous collective’ (7). They are particularly significant in that they are among the earliest non-European writings about Europeans and, given their decidedly negative stereotypes of westerners, stand as a counterpart not only to early modern European ethnographies of Asians but also to a crudely reductionist kind of Western orientalism. If Spanish and European writers of the early modern period seem intent on categorizing non-Europeans according to skin colour, eye shape, and body structure, the authors of the Kirishitan monogatari likewise highlight the physical differences of Europeans – albeit for the explicit purpose of degrading and ultimately expelling them from Japan. In the narrative, ‘How the Kirishitans First Crossed Over to Japan,’ the author details the features of one early Jesuit missionary, Organtino Gnecchi-Soldo, who arrived in Japan in 1570: The length of his nose was the first thing which attracted attention: it was like a conch shell (though without its surface warts) attached by suction to his face. His eyes were as large as spectacles, and their insides were yellow. His head was small. On his hands and feet he had long claws. His height exceeded seven feet, and he was black all over; only his nose was red. His teeth were longer than the teeth of a horse. His hair was mousegrey in color, and over his brow was a shaved spot in the outline of a winebowl turned over. What he said could not be understood at all: his voice was like the screech of an owl. (Elison 321)

These metaphors tend to conflate the human figure with an animal, with clawed fingers, equine teeth, and a birdlike voice. What is more, the European is almost entirely black (as Toby has remarked, a condition

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likely resulting from the long sea voyage), but his yellow eyes and red nose endow him with a demonic air. If the resulting image is evocative of Japanese folklore,49 this, as Toby explains, is because both Europeans and Japanese ‘tried at first to incorporate the new Other into [their] existing cosmolog[ies]’ (329). As he further argues, ‘[i]n this, the Europeans may have had the upper hand, for they had already learnt of universes beyond the galaxy their mothers and fathers knew’ (329). But the author also perhaps portrays the European through folk imagery precisely because the story is directed to a popular readership. Moreover, the author does not possess the indigenous perspective of the mid-sixteenth-century Japanese who first encountered Europeans, not merely because he lived and wrote in the seventeenth century, but also because his own world view had already been imbued with European elements – including such devices as spectacles, which were introduced to Japan by the Europeans, and most likely by Francisco Xavier himself. The goal of the Kirishitan monogatari was to turn the general population against Christianity and Europe. As Elison remarks of the anti-Christian propaganda that characterized Japan at the outset of the Sakoku, or ‘Locked-Country’ period: The Kirishitan Bateren with his flapping bat wings, cunning red eyes, and grasping bear claws became the principal scare symbol of the Sakoku. Close behind him was the seduced Christian believer, who lashed himself in his religious blindness and besmirched himself with blood. Blood, brocade, and gold are the constant images of the popular anti-Christian literature. The Bateren dazzle with their exotic finery, and they buy allegiance. But the end result is death. (213)

In the Kirishitan monogatari, however, those most likely to meet a bad end are in fact the European priests and friars. One story, for instance, details the crucifixions of 1597, but from a perspective diametrically opposed to Ribadeneira’s compassionate telling of the event. Titled ‘How the Kirishitans Were Dragged through the Land in Carts during the Reign of the Taik¯o Hideyoshi,’ the narrative specifically attacks the furaten for proselytizing among the poor, the sick, and the homeless, since this was regarded as an insidious attempt on their part to foment social unrest. Having been informed of their subversive activities, Hideyoshi decides to resolve the Christian problem once and for all, expelling the majority of foreign Christians

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and executing the actual ‘criminals.’ According to the text, twenty-five, not twenty-six are condemned to death: six bateren, eight iruman, and eleven lay persons. The group is rounded up, thrown in wagons, with their noses and ears cut, and paraded from Edo to Nagasaki. Along the way they were constantly looking for a miracle from Deus, gazing up at the sky, peering across the mountains – but there wasn’t even a dewdrop of a miracle, and their faces became drawn with fright and disappointment. They were crucified at Nagasaki. For a while a guard was posted at the site; but then the bodies rotted on the crosses. Their bones and skulls were stolen by other believers, and afterwards the crosses, too, were whittled down to toothpicks. These relics were used as amulets, and what is more (so report has it), were later bartered at high prices. (Elison 334)

This story does not actually mock the martyrs, though the Christian belief in miracles and the efficacy of relics is implicitly disparaged, as is the commercial traffic in religious artefacts. In fact, the stark depiction of the scene might be read as a warning to Japanese Christians or Christian sympathizers, but it also seems intended to reveal the promises of Christianity as utterly empty. If Ribadeneira ultimately depicts Christian martyrdom from the perspective of faith, the author of this passage of the Kirishitan monogatari simply highlights the finality of death. Some of the Kirishitan monogatari make specific references to Spain through place names as well as the figure of the king of South Barbary. Often, South Barbary refers to Europe as a whole. But in the narrative titled ‘How a Man Appeared to Accuse the Kirishitans of Desiring to Subject Japan to South Barbary,’ the king of South Barbary is depicted as the king of Spain: The King of South Barbary plans to subjugate Japan. His means is the diffusion of his brand of Buddhism. To this end he has sent a great many Bateren over here, and has diverted the income of five or ten provinces of his country toward the needs of his Japanese undertaking. Under the pretext of annual trading vessels he ships over all sort and manner of articles to entangle Japan in his web . . . This is a plot to take over the country without even a battle fought with bow and arrow. Right before our eyes, in Luzon and Nova Hispania, the King of South Barbary has installed his

Japanese and Spaniards in the Christian Century 65 own governors, and has new officials sent over every three years. In sum, the plot consists of the design to spread religion. (Elison 355)

In this tale the king of South Barbary has sent his bateren to Japan in order to spread his particular version of Buddhism. The comment is surprising, not only because by the seventeenth century the Japanese were aware that Christianity was a religion distinct from Buddhism but also because the administration of the Christian missions was not the business of the secular authorities – although this latter point might well have been irrelevant to the author. The mention of the annual trading vessels, which were Portuguese, suggests that the king in question was the ruler of Portugal. Yet from 1580 to 1640 the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal were united under the Spanish crown. The king of South Barbary would thus be the king of Spain. This is ultimately corroborated by the references to Luzon in the Philippines and the American viceroyalty of New Spain. According to the author, the goal of the king of Spain was the conquest of Japan, even if, in this narrative, conquest would be achieved not through war but rather the imposition of Western religion. In the Ha Daiusu, Fucan declares that the Spanish desired to conquer Japan not for its material riches but because of the inherent qualities of the Japanese people. In his view what sets the Japanese apart from those already under Spanish rule is their valour: They [the Spanish] have sent troops and taken over such countries as Luzon and Nova Hisapnia, lands of barbarians close to animals in nature. But our empire surpasses other lands by far in its fierce bravery. For that reason the ambition to usurp this country by diffusing their doctrine, even if it takes a thousand years, has penetrated the very marrow of their bones. (De Bary, Gluck, and Tiedemann 181)

In this passage Fucan implicitly places the Japanese at the top of a cultural hierarchy, followed by the Spanish, who aspire to conquer Japan but lack the wherewithal necessary for success. At the bottom are the native inhabitants of the Philippines and the Americas, whom he denigrates as less than human. Although his ostensible aim in the Ha Daiusu is to refute Christianity, his comments thus parallel those of early modern Spanish writers that exalt the cultural superiority of East Asians (e.g., Navarrete in China) as well as those that deem Filipinos

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and Native Americans to be inferior to Europeans (e.g., San Agustín in the Philippines and Sepúlveda in the context of the Americas). As Fucan predicted, the early Catholic mission in Japan failed, as did any ambitions Spain might have harboured to exert commercial or political influence over the country. From 1639 until the arrival of Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1853, Japan remained closed to the West, except for extremely limited trade with the Dutch at Nagasaki. When Spain and Japan finally re-established diplomatic relations in the modern period, one of the first gestures of Spain was to give back to Japan certain objects related to the Hasekura embassy. Spain, however, did not play a significant role in the reintroduction of Christianity into Japan. When Catholic missionaries, under the auspices of the French, returned to Japan in the mid-nineteenth century, they discovered that despite over two hundred years of repression, some crypto Christians remained – in certain instances like the modern, Spanish descendants of conversos, who maintained Jewish practices in secret. As Moffett explains, the sempuku kirishitan [hidden Christians], although officially Buddhist, continued to celebrate a communal meal and venerate religious objects associated with Catholic practice (504).50 In 1865, after the opening of the first Catholic church in Nagasaki since the early seventeenth century, the French priest Bernard Petitjohn supposedly noticed a group of people gathered in front of the chapel, and as he went inside, they followed him. A woman then approached him and whispered in his ear: ‘All of us have the same heart as you’ (Moffett 503). When they learned that Petitjohn fulfilled what they considered the three conditions of the priesthood (celibacy, the celebration of Christmas, and the veneration of the Virgin Mary), they welcomed him. Nevertheless, most ‘hidden Christians’ did not become Catholics, and in the modern period Protestant missionaries had far greater success than Catholics in gaining Christian converts in Japan.

Chapter Two

The Middle Kingdom through Spanish Eyes

In 1574 the Cantonese pirate Limahon (or Lin Feng) attacked the recently established Spanish settlement of Manila, but was held at bay by Juan de Salcedo, whose exploits as conquistador eventually won for him the dubious title of ‘Cortés of the Philippines.’ The Chinese, who had long sought to rid the South China coast of pirates, rewarded the Spanish for their efforts by allowing them to send envoys to China, and in 1575 four Spaniards – the Augustinian friars Martín de Rada and Jerónimo Marín and the soldiers Miguel de Luarca and Pedro Sarmiento – arrived in the province of Fujian.1 Their ostensible goals, which they failed to achieve, were to secure permission for Spain to trade with China and preach Christianity throughout the Chinese empire. They additionally sought to observe and record as much as possible about Chinese life. In this endeavour they were successful, launching a tradition of Spanish writing on China that preceded northern European sinology and profoundly influenced the West’s understanding of East Asia.2 In the late sixteenth century the Spanish in the Philippines clearly hoped to conquer China. As early as 1569 Rada himself remarked that ‘mediante Dios, fácilmente y no con mucha gente [China] será sujetada’ (Borges Morán 311) [God willing, China will easily and not with many men be subjugated]. As Rafael Valladares explains, the fact that the Spanish typically travelled west rather than east to reach their Asian colony in the Philippines has led to an underestimation of the interest in East Asia present in Castile since the late Middle Ages (73). John M. Headley, in turn, comments on the conviction ‘evinced by so many leading minds among the religious, from Zumárraga to Acosta, that America was only preliminary to the real, and indeed original goal – China’ (636). According to Headley, the Spanish in fact regarded

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their establishment in the Philippines as the beginning of the culmination of the dream of Columbus to reach the riches of the East (634). The most representative Spanish writings on China from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are Luarca’s Verdadera relación de la grandeza del Reino de China (1575) [True account of the greatness of the Kingdom of China]; Juan González de Mendoza’s Historia de las cosas mas notables, ritos y costumbres del gran Reyno de la China (1585) [History of the most notable aspects, rites, and customs of the great kingdom of China]; Diego de Pantoja’s Relación de la entrada de algunos padres de la compañía de Iesús en la China (1604) [Account of the entry of some fathers of the Company of Jesus in China]; and Domingo Fernández Navarrete’s Tratados historicos, politicos, ethicos, y religiosos de la monarchia de China (1676) [Historical, political, ethical, and religious treatises on the monarchy of China]. Luarca’s Verdadera relación is the only major Spanish commentary of the period authored by a layman. Mendoza’s Historia, based in part on Luarca’s work, is the first European account of China since Marco Polo’s excursion to reach a wide European audience. As Colin Mackerras notes, it marks ‘the beginning of the first great age of Western sinology’ (Sinophiles 16), when Catholic Europe and in particular Spain and Portugal were in the ascendancy in East Asia; and according to Lach it was ‘the point of departure and the basis of comparison for all subsequent European works on China written before the eighteenth century’ (744). Pantoja’s Relación is the only comprehensive seventeenth-century treatise on China penned by a Spanish Jesuit and thus offers not only a distinct Spanish perspective on Chinese civilization but also one of the clearest examples of the Jesuit missionary approach of religious accommodation.3 Navarrete’s Tratados, in contrast, stands as the definitive denunciation of the Jesuit approach. It also marks the end of the period of Spanish influence on the Chinese mainland.4 Whereas Luarca, Mendoza, and Pantoja wrote at the beginning of the Christian missionary period in China, Navarrete wrote at the height of the Chinese Rites Controversy, which began in the 1630s and lasted until the mid-eighteenth century. During this period Christian missionaries in China quarrelled over the fact that Chinese Catholic converts continued to practise traditional Confucian rites, chief of which was the veneration of ancestors. According to the Jesuits, or Riccistas (a term derived from the name of the Jesuit founder of the Chinese mission, Matteo Ricci), such rites were fundamentally civil rather than religious in nature and functioned to reinforce family bonds across generations

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(Minamiki 18). In contrast, the friars (a group composed of Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans, as well as dissident Jesuits) declared that they were superstitious, if not idolatrous.5 At issue was a differing understanding not only of the process of conversion but also of the very nature of traditional Chinese culture. The Jesuits maintained that Chinese culture, and especially early Confucianism, was inherently predisposed to Christianity and therefore required only minor modification in order to conform to Christian revelation.6 They thus favoured accommodating essential Catholic doctrines and practices, such as the celebration of the Mass, to Chinese customs. The friars, however, insisted that Confucianism was fundamentally atheistic. In their view Chinese religious traditions had to be discarded if proper Christianization was to take place. In the end, the Church endorsed the position of the friars. The Rites Controversy culminated in 1725, when Pope Clement XI issued a papal bull, Ex illa die, officially prohibiting Chinese Catholics from practising Confucian rites. In 1742 Pope Benedict XIV reiterated the ban in Ex quo singulari. Although the papacy reasserted the exclusiveness of Christian doctrines and practices, the resolution of the Rites Controversy functioned to weaken the role of the Chinese Catholic Church. In 1721 the Emperor Kangxi outlawed the practice of Christianity except in the form advocated by Ricci and the Jesuits. As Erik Zürcher explains, Even in the improbable case that the Chinese authorities would some day change their anti-Christian policy, it would henceforward be impossible to make converts among the members of the scholar-official class. No official could become a Christian if that would prevent him from taking part in the official rites that formed an integral part of his duty; no member of the gentry could afford to embrace a religion that forbade him to participate in the ancestral cult and thereby ostracized him within his own family and lineage. (‘Jesuit Accommodation’ 31)7

Ultimately, the conflicting clerical views of Chinese rites and traditions not only undermined the early missionary project in China but also affected the way Spanish writers depicted Chinese history and culture in general. Although Mendoza preceded the Rites Controversy, his position was somewhat similar to that of the Jesuits. In fact, he did not understand Confucian rationalism and often attributed Christian beliefs and

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practices to the Chinese (Mackerras, Western 26), but like the Jesuits he considered Chinese culture in many ways compatible with Christianity. Pantoja, in keeping with Ricci, maintained that early Confucians had an intuition of the Christian God and therefore that Christianity could be built on the Confucian tradition. These views set him apart from the friars and also his fellow countrymen, since most friars in the early Chinese mission were Spaniards. In subsequent centuries the initial failures of the Chinese Catholic Church have been blamed on the antiaccommodationist stance of the friars and what some have perceived as their cultural intransigence.8 But the writing of Pantoja disallows any such unitary assessment of the Spanish role in early Sino-European relations. Moreover, though Navarrete attacks accommodationism, he is without doubt one of the least intransigent early European commentators of Chinese civilization. Luarca, Mendoza, Pantoja, and Navarrete all express enthusiasm about China and respect for the Chinese people. Mendoza, however, at times subordinates the Chinese to Europeans through subtle representations of Chinese culture. Whereas Pantoja affirms the inherent merit of Chinese religious tradition and its compatibility with Christianity, he tends to privilege European culture over Chinese. Navarrete, in contrast, shows much greater appreciation for China as a whole and in the Tratados seems actually to internalize the viewpoint of the Chinese. In so doing he turns against Europe and condemns Western society – a move that would endear him to reform-minded writers of the European Enlightenment. Though the four authors play decisive roles in shaping the West’s perceptions of East Asia and in constructing a ‘China of meaning,’ Navarrete further reveals how the representation of cultural others can lead to a refashioning of one’s own identity and by extension a subversion of one’s culture of origin. As a secular author, Luarca has little to say about religious matters, but Mendoza, Pantoja, and Navarrete express an unambiguous missionary zeal. They are, nevertheless, generally considered modern historians. Though they praise China and cite its cultural accomplishments (which for Navarrete are more often than not superior to those of Europe), they also view Chinese civilization as intrinsically deficient and in need of mediation by the Christian West. This tension, between images of a civilization in ways both superior and inferior to the West, is typical of Western writings on China (as well as Japan) during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and sets them apart from the kind of essentialist orientalism conceived of by Said as ‘the ineradicable

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distinction between Western superiority and Oriental inferiority’ (Orientalism 42). Mendoza, Pantoja, and Navarrete do elucidate a protoorientalism, not simply, as Said has noted of the Catholic missionaries of the period, for having ‘opened up the new study of China’ and with it the field of sinology (51), but also by reading and at times even fabricating Chinese discourses in ways that privilege the West over China. Yet the China they portray is of worth in and of itself. First Spanish Ambassador to China Luarca is the author of two main texts, the Verdadera relación de la grandeza del Reino de China (1575) and the Relación de las Yslas Filipinas (1582) [Account of the Philippine Islands].9 Whereas the second document is a description of the Philippine islands and their inhabitants and customs, the Verdadera relación both describes China and narrates the expedition of the Rada party. Two manuscript versions of the text are located in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid. They are written in different hands, and are thus not both Luarca’s. MSS 3042 contains other texts, all written in different hands, which relate to the Indies. MSS 2902 contains only Luarca’s text. Luarca’s China narrative remained unprinted until 2002, when Santiago García-Castañón published a modernized version along with a comprehensive introduction and notes.10 The Verdadera relación is divided into two parts, each of which is subdivided into chapters. In the first part Luarca narrates his journey to China, and in the second part he comments briefly on Chinese geography, government, history, religion, society, and culture. According to García-Castañón, the text suffers from stylistic carelessness, perhaps, as he speculates, because Luarca wrote it quickly for his superiors after his return from China to the Philippines (Luarca 2002, xxxvii). In fact, many of Luarca’s observations seem tacked together, and though the narrative depicts the chronological order of the journey, it lacks an overall thematic scheme.11 This stylistic roughness, less apparent in other Asia-related Spanish writings of the period, the majority of which were penned by clerics, is at least in part attributable to the fact that Luarca was a soldier and as such less formally educated than members of the clergy. As a soldier and layperson, however, he at times highlights aspects of Chinese society of less interest to his clerical compatriots. The Verdadera relación is thus not only one of the earliest full-length Spanish accounts of China but also distinct within the canon of Sino-Hispanic writings.

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García-Castañón argues that in the Verdadera relación Luarca blurs the line separating history from literature. He writes: ‘Luarca “literaturiza” la historia en la misma medida en que “historiza” la literatura. Los límites entre las disciplinas se difuminan hasta llegar a desaparecer’ (Luarca 2002, xxxvi–xxxvii) [Luarca ‘literaturizes’ history to the same degree that he ‘historicizes’ literature. The limits between the disciplines dissolve until they finally disappear]. Luarca uses the word ‘verdadera’ [true] in his title as if to distinguish his text from fantasy narratives. Nevertheless, he wrote at a time when the putative difference between literature (as imaginary) and history (as factual) had not been fully established and indeed before the modern academic disciplines of literary and historical studies existed. In fact, he writes like a modern historian to the extent that his viewpoint is completely secular. Yet like many other European observers of the period, he does meld a description of external reality with a description of his own reactions to it. In this way the Verdadera relación anticipates a kind of modern travel writing that is in part subjective, or autobiographical, but not fictional. Luarca was born in the late 1530s or early 1540s.12 He travelled first to Florida, with the expedition of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, who founded San Agustín. He then made his way to Mexico and from there to the Philippines, where he arrived in 1566. Luarca participated in the conquest and exploration of the Philippines, for which he was awarded an encomienda (a grant of persons from the native population who were forced to work or pay tribute) that spread across several islands. When in the early 1580s members of the clergy denounced the system of encomiendas, Luarca sided with them against his fellow encomenderos, or encomienda holders, thereby helping to bring an end to the most egregious Spanish abuse of Filipinos. In 1591 his property passed to a Lucía de Luarca, whom Pablo and Carlos Rico-Avello speculate might have been his daughter, presumably by a Filipino wife (375 n.17). He thus died sometime shortly before this date. Luarca’s excursion to China in 1575 occurred after his participation in the conquest of the Philippines but prior to his main activities as encomendero.13 Perhaps because he was still a soldier at the time, he focuses much of the Verdadera relación on the conflict between the Spanish and Limahon. When, after routing Limahon from Manila, the Spanish were granted permission to send an embassy to China, Luarca carried the letters from the Spanish governor of the Philippines, Guido de Lavazares, thus making him, according to Pablo and Carlos Rico-Avello, the first

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Spanish ambassador to China (383). Luarca and his companions Rada, Marín, and Sarmiento sailed from Manila on 26 June 1575 and reached China on 3 July, landing at Xiamen (formerly Amoy) in Fujian province two days later.14 According to the Verdadera relación, what strikes Luarca most about China is its exhilarating abundance – of people (‘Fue cosa maravillosa la multitud de gente’ [47] [It was a marvellous thing the multitude of people]); of streets (‘tiene cada calle como tres de las buenas de España’ [47] [each street is as big as three of the best in Spain]); and of merchandise (‘causónos admiración una calle por donde entramos que era cerca de media legua, toda llena de pescados de todas suertes, fresco y salado, carnicería de puerco y vaca, mucha verdura y fruta y muchas tiendas de mercaderías’ [42] [we were amazed by one street we entered that was nearly half a league in length, filled with all sorts of fish, fresh and salted, butchers’ stalls with pork and beef, many vegetables and fruits, and many shops with dry goods]).15 Motivated by what Pablo and Carlos Rico-Avello describe as his ‘inquietud cultural’ (394) [cultural restlessness], Luarca also marvels at the number of books for sale, and even describes and purchases some, though without revealing precisely how he knows what they are about. He further provides detailed descriptions of the military fortifications and barracks he sees, which leads García-Castañón to speculate about the intentions of the Spanish embassy (Luarca 2002, 43 n.89). Luarca and his fellow Spaniards arouse the interest of the Chinese they pass on the streets, and like subsequent writers such as Navarrete, he is keenly aware of being observed. In one way he feels thrilled that so many people care to see him, but he finds the throngs that continually approach his group daunting. He highlights one episode when several upper-class women arrange to look at them: Pasando por la calle nos salió un chino a detener, rogándonos que parásemos en la calle y era porque unas mujeres principales nos estaban mirando por entre las puertas de unas casas grandes que allí estaban. Después que nos hubieran visto, nos enviaron a rogar que entrásemos en la casa, y en el patio nos pusieron sillas y nos enviaron colación, y ellas estaban desviadas mirándonos. (43) [While walking down the street, a Chinese man came out and stopped us, begging us to stay where we were on the street, and this was because some noble women were looking at us through the doors of several big houses

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This passage is intriguing because of the gender dynamics. According to the description, the Spanish men are the objects of the gaze of Chinese women. But because high-born Chinese women of the time are kept secluded, they are unable actually to appear in the presence of the Spaniards. In fact, they occupy a position of inferiority because they are confined to the private sphere, and even within that sphere must remain concealed from outside men. Yet their invisibility also subtly empowers them insofar as the Spaniards are unable to look back at them and thereby objectify them. In depicting the scene, Luarca represents himself and his men as subjects, although they are aware, both on this occasion and throughout their sojourn in China, that they are continually being watched, and that there are human intentions over which they have no control. In the Verdadera relación Luarca comments on both gender and sexuality. Like Francisco Xavier in Japan, he expresses disapproval of what he perceives to be an East Asian tolerance of sex between men, which, in keeping with contemporary Spanish parlance, he labels ‘pecado nefando.’ Todos generalmente usan el pecado nefando, y mucho más los mayores, que cada uno tiene dos o tres muchachos bardajas y no se castiga a nadie por ello, porque nosotros vimos en la ciudad de Ucheo venir un muchacho a quejarse a la justicia que un chino grande había cometido aquel pecado con él y que porque le pedía la paga le había dado de mojicones; el alcalde mandó dar al chino grande ocho azotes por los mojicones que había dado al muchacho, y que le pagase, y no hubo más. (97) [Everyone generally engages in the nefarious sin, and much more the older men, who each has two or three berdache boys, and no one is punished for this, because we saw in the city of Ucheo [Fuzhou] a boy come forward to complain to the justices that an older Chinese man had committed that sin with him and that because he [the boy] had asked for his pay the man had slapped him; the mayor ordered that the older Chinese man be given eight lashes for the slaps he had given the boy, and that he pay him, and that was the end of it.]16

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In this passage Luarca implicitly censures the tolerance of same-sex practice in China – though it might also be said that he subtly registers bemused surprise at the Chinese acceptance not only of sodomy but also prostitution. Yet unlike Xavier, he does not invoke sodomy as a justification for Christian intervention in East Asian societies, perhaps because he is not a cleric and is hence less immediately concerned with advancing the missionary project. In fact, his reference to the nefarious sin is rather benign (even if he clearly exaggerates the extent of same-sex practice in Chinese society), and stands in sharp contrast to the diatribes of some clerical writers of the early Spanish-imperial period. Indeed, although Luarca’s observations of China are inevitably filtered through the cultural tradition he carries, he is for the most part remarkably non-judgmental in his views. Luarca’s comments on the physical appearance of the Chinese parallel those of his contemporaries. He describes the Chinese in the following terms: ‘Es la gente del reino de China bien dispuesta y membrada, blancos y bien agestados’ (95) [The people of the kingdom of China are well tempered and prudent, white and handsome].17 In this sentence ‘whiteness’ is juxtaposed with positive physical, mental, and emotional characteristics, and its valence as a signifier is thus itself implicitly positive. Yet whereas other writers typically praise the Chinese by citing their cultural achievements and in so doing relate whiteness to Western notions of civilization, Luarca also highlights their penchant for hard work, thereby distinguishing them from indios, whom he deprecates: Cárganse terriblemente, que lleva un chino por dos indios de los de la Nueva España, y con tanta carga andan tanto como un caballo; son diligentísimos y prestos en lo que han de hacer, bien diferente condición de los indios que en otras partes se han visto. (96) [They bear terrible loads, and one Chinese carries what two Indians of New Spain carry, and with such loads they work like horses; they are very diligent and quick with what they have to do, and as such very different from the Indians seen in other parts.]

Luarca not only affirms the Chinese as a people but validates them over other non-Europeans – just as Xavier did with the Japanese when he called them ‘the best thus far discovered.’ Luarca’s comment is

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nevertheless complex, for while on the one hand he expresses compassion for Chinese workers, on the other hand he subtly criticizes indios for not working hard enough, that is, hard enough for their Spanish masters. If Luarca depicts indios as somehow less than the Chinese (and, by extension, the Spanish), he also uses the term indios ambiguously in the Verdadera relación. At times it seems to indicate not a particular ethnic group but rather the lowest rung of the working class. In one passage, for instance, he explains how on the streets some people walk, others go on horseback, while others ride in chairs that are carried on the shoulders of ‘cuatro indios’ (45) [four Indians]. These indios might in fact be persons of a different ethnic group. But given Luarca’s previous comment about the difficult work the Chinese do carrying big loads, they might actually be Chinese. If this is the case, then he must have regarded Indianness primarily as a social rather than physical category of identity and as such similar in function to caste. Although he was writing about peoples outside the Spanish colonial sphere, his comments are thus reflective of Spanish colonial notions of the meaning of the human. In the Verdadera relación, references to skin colour appear in descriptions of flesh-and-blood people as well as theatrical characters. Luarca is in fact among the first Europeans to attend a performance of Chinese theatre, and in his narrative he summarizes two plays he saw, one of which Mendoza includes in his Historia. Luarca explains that the first play was preceded by a sumptuous banquet and a show of acrobats (see figure 2.1).18 He then gives the following synopsis: hubo ha muchos años tres hermanos, valentísimos hombres . . . el uno era blanco y el otro bermejo y el otro negro, y sobre todos era más valiente el bermejo, y determinó hacer rey al blanco, que se llamaba Laupi, y lo hizo y los medios que para ello tuvo y las batallas que venció contenía la representación. (60) [There were, many years ago, three brothers, most valiant men . . . one was white and the other red and the other black, and the most valiant above all was the red man; and he decided to make the white one, whose name was Laupi, king; and he did this; and the means he employed and the battles he won constituted the representation.]

This play is clearly an adaptation of the San Guo Zhi, or The Story of the Three Kingdoms. Written during the early or mid-Ming dynasty (1368– 1644) most probably by Luo Guanzhong, The Story of the Three Kingdoms

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Figure 2.1 Banquet and performance of a Chinese play during the Ming period. The illustration first appeared in an early seventeenth-century edition of Shuihu zhuan [Water Margin], by Luo Guanzhong and Shi Nai’an. It appeared in the twentieth century in Xiju yanjiu jikan [Drama research journal] 3 (1957) cover. In Colin Mackerras, The Chinese Theatre in Modern Times: From 1840 to the Present Day (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975). Used with permission.

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is a source of numerous theatrical pieces. It is based on events following the fall of the Han dynasty (220 ce) and the break-up of China into three warring kingdoms. Much of the action focuses on the conflict between Liu Bei and Cao Cao, both potential candidates for the imperial title. Liu Bei, the hero of the tale, swears an oath of brotherhood with two men, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei. Guan Yu and Zhang Fei assist Liu Bei in his struggles, but in the end a different character, Kongming, helps him accede to the throne. Though Liu Bei lacks the lineage appropriate for becoming emperor, he manages to earn the mandate of heaven and rule because of his inherent virtue. Luarca’s telling of The Story of the Three Kingdoms differs somewhat from Chinese tradition. In typical theatrical performances Guan Yu wears a red mask and Zhang Fei a mask of black and white. Liu Bei wears no facial make-up, while Cao Cao, his nemesis, is painted white, a negative colour in traditional Chinese theatre symbolizing craftiness, treachery, and evil.19 In Luarca’s text, Guan Yu is the red-faced character and Zhang Fei is the black-faced one. The good king, however, is identified as white, a colour clearly privileged in early modern Spanish writings on East Asia. If Luarca chooses to identify the ideal Chinese ruler as white, Mendoza will imply that this figure is (or should be) not only white but also European. Whereas the summary of the first play provides identifying markers, including the name of one of the characters, the summary of the second, although longer, is less specific. According to Luarca’s synopsis, un mancebo recién casado desavenido con su mujer determinó ir a la guerra y entrando un día en una compañía fue tan valeroso y valiente que mereció ser de su capitán favorecido y al fin viéndole hombre de hecho, le enviaba a jornadas de importancia por caudillo, en lo cual se hubo valerosamente y las acabó con gran ventaja; por lo cual pareciendo delante del consejo del rey, le honraron con título de gran capitán, de manera que otros capitanes a quien él había servido le hablaban de rodillas y le servían y le dieron tres carretas cargadas de oro y libertad y franqueza para su linaje, y ansí, rico y honrado por ser valeroso, se volvió a su tierra. Representábase también la vuelta a su patria y el recibimiento que se le hizo de sus parientes. (67–8) [a recently married young man, who had fallen out with his wife, decided to go to war, and after entering one day into a regiment, he was so valorous and valiant that he merited being favoured by his captain, and eventually

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he was recognized as a strong man and was sent on important campaigns as a leader, in which he deported himself valiantly and completed them with great success; for which, when he appeared before the council of the king, he was honoured with the title of great captain, so that the other captains that he had served knelt when speaking to him and served him and gave him three wagons filled with gold, and freedom and exemption for his family, and thus, rich and honoured for his valour, he returned to his land. The play also represented the return to his country and the reception that his relatives gave him.]

The identity of this play is unclear from Luarca’s narrative. What is more, the ending he describes is uncharacteristic of traditional Chinese theatre. While he recognizes, albeit inadvertently, the Confucian values of loyalty, reciprocity, and recompense, he also cites the acquisition of freedom as one of the rewards of the hero – an uncommon goal in the Confucian-inspired theatre he is likely to have witnessed. Even the knight-errant figure in traditional Chinese theatre and fiction, who roamed the countryside and took justice into his own hands, was usually seeking a leader to serve (and often sacrificed his own life for those who recognized his talent or worth), rather than liberty per se. Luarca, to be sure, was born into a culture with a history of feudal principles that emphasized fealty to one’s lord rather than personal status. But in Renaissance Europe the feudal value system was already a thing of the past, as the writing of Luarca’s contemporary, Cervantes, makes clear when he parodies knight-errantry. Although one of Don Quixote’s most famous speeches (in the scene with the galley slaves) exalts liberty, personal freedom does not become a mainstream value in Western culture until the European Enlightenment and afterwards. Yet its position of centrality in Luarca’s rendition of the Chinese play might nevertheless result from his European perspective rather than the ethos of the play itself. Luarca’s description of the play further implies that prior to being a soldier the character was poor and his family was downtrodden. But through military prowess and courage, he achieves glory. Although little is known of Luarca’s own family background, he was himself a soldier who perhaps aspired to riches and fame – which he ultimately did attain in the Philippines. He thus likely found the Chinese story engaging. Yet surprisingly, he reveals nothing about the dress and makeup of the characters or the tone of voice in which they delivered their lines, features that usually strike Western observers unaccustomed to Chinese

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theatre. Indeed, he ignores how the play differs from Western cultural production and instead draws attention to its portrayal of experiences common to Europeans. In so doing, however, he represents the play as something he can understand and ultimately even enjoy. Luarca’s writing, though less polished than that of his clerical counterparts, conveys to its readers not only information but also excitement about Chinese society and culture. Because it remained unpublished for over four centuries, its direct influence on Europeans was inevitably limited. Yet its indirect influence, through the subsequent writing of Mendoza, was enormous. Although there is no direct evidence that Mendoza took the description of the Three Kingdoms play from the Verdadera relación, Lach believes that he did (773 n.240).20 If this is the case, then Luarca’s text must have been available either in Mexico or Spain within the first ten years of its composition, since Mendoza never travelled farther than Mexico in his own attempt to reach China. Mendoza in fact incorporated passages of the Verdadera relación directly into the Historia. According to García-Castañón, his action would constitute plagiarism by today’s editorial standards, but in the late sixteenth century the modern notion of intellectual property did not yet exist (Luarca 2002, xxviii). Mendoza is hence credited with producing the most important European text on China of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As Manuel Gutiérrez Fernández remarks, Luarca’s Verdadera relación lived on in the numerous publications of Mendoza’s Historia, until finally seeing the light of day at the beginning of the twenty-first century (Luarca 2002, viii).21 Prophecy, Sinology, or Cuentos Chinos Mendoza was born in Torrecilla de Cameros, in the Spanish province of Logroño, in 1545. While still a youth, he left Spain and voyaged to Mexico, arriving in 1564 and joining the Augustinian order in Mexico City. During his long ecclesiastical career he journeyed back and forth between Europe and the Americas. He became familiar with the affairs of the Spanish in Asia (and by extension with China) through his fellow Augustinians in Mexico, in part because the Augustinian monastery of Michoacán was the official stopping point for missionaries and travellers en route between Spain and the Philippines. Mendoza, however, never managed to fulfil his lifelong dream of visiting China. Though in 1580 Philip II sent him and a group of missionaries from Spain to China, he was detained on his first stop in Mexico and was subsequently

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instructed by the viceroy to return to Europe on a diplomatic mission – events that he recounts in his Historia.22 Mendoza eventually ended his career as bishop of Chiapas, where he died in 1618. Although Mendoza’s Historia, commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII in 1583, was not the first sixteenth-century European treatise on China, it was by far the most influential and widely read, translated into every major European language and reprinted many times. In preparing his work, Mendoza consulted contemporary writings on China as well as Herodotus and the Biblical and Ptolemaic traditions. His primary sources, in addition to Luarca, Rada, and Marín, were the Portuguese commentators Galeote Pereira, João de Barros, and Gaspar da Cruz, and the Spaniard Bernardino de Escalante.23 Mendoza’s Historia is divided into two parts: the first contains three books covering the geographical, historical, religious, political, and social aspects of China (and, as Lach has remarked, ‘a miscellaneous collection of materials on almost every conceivable subject’ [751]); the second contains three books recounting the expeditions of various Spaniards to China, including Luarca, Rada, Marín, Sarmiento, and Pedro Alfaro. In the definitive 1586 edition of the Historia, the final book relates the around-the-world voyage of Martín Ignacio to Mexico, the Philippines, China, and the East Indies, plus several detailed chapters on New Mexico. Mendoza was thus not solely concerned with China, nor did he regard China as the only important part of East Asia. Most commentators consider the work of Mendoza secular. Nancy Vogeley, author of the most thorough and far-reaching study of the Historia to date, states: ‘Although written by a priest and sprinkled with comments about evangelization, the text shows a movement toward the secularization of historical writing’ (166). Vogeley recognizes Mendoza’s belief that St Thomas the Apostle had preached in China and fundamentally influenced Chinese culture. But she maintains that Mendoza did not interpret this as part of a divinely ordained plan for the conversion of the Chinese and that his history is future-oriented rather than prophetic (169). She specifically places his history of China within a broad history of the movement of Roman Catholicism from the Americas to Asia, and in this way explains his inclusion of the around-the-world voyage and discussion of other regions and cultures. According to her reading, Mendoza hoped not only that a peaceful evangelization of China would stand as a corrective to the brutalities of the Conquest, but also that his Historia would instil in the Spanish a greater respect for their non-European converts and ameliorate the

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ongoing process of evangelization and colonization in the Americas, especially along the northern Mexican border. Mendoza, she speculates, was impressed by the prior decision of the Chinese ‘to end a policy of conquest and war, and retreat . . . back to their land mass to find prosperity in peace’ (174). Through the example of China, Mendoza thus seemed to call Spanish rulers to task for their own expansionist practices, advocating ‘an Augustinian theology of peace . . . as well as a new Roman Church politics, which looked to the religious orders to extend Christian “law” by means other than aggression and violence’ (174). In a way, then, Mendoza’s writing is both a history and a political tract directed against much sixteenth-century Spanish foreign policy.24 Vogeley convincingly argues that Mendoza was a proponent of peaceful evangelization, although some have read his text differently. Pascale Girard, for instance, contends that Mendoza’s Historia is not wholly objective but instead conceived of within a larger sacred history. In this scenario, the missionary is charged not merely with the task of making available to the Chinese the truth of Christian revelation but manifesting to them the hidden truth of their own history, which necessarily leads to Christianity. For Girard, the prophetic vision of Mendoza is in fact a ‘prophétisme conquérant’ (‘La Chine’ 173) [conquering prophesying], erasing the distinctiveness of Chinese history and subordinating China to the West. The view that Mendoza hoped not only for spiritual but also imperial conquest is similarly expressed (and implicitly endorsed as positive) by Félix García in his introduction to the 1944 printing of the Historia: ‘Estos dos propósitos, de engrandecer el Imperio y de ensanchar la Fe, están bien expresos en el texto del P. Mendoza’ (xix) [These two goals, of increasing the empire and spreading the faith, are quite explicit in the text of Father Mendoza]. Lach, in contrast, maintains that Mendoza is unclear on the matter of military conquest but probably supported ‘the cause of peace’ (794). According to Carlos-Luis de la Vega y de Luque, Mendoza ‘defendía la evangelización pacífica . . . sin embargo . . . dejaba abierta una puerta a la esperanza de la hispanización de China’ (12) [defended peaceful evangelization; however, he left open a door to the hope of ‘hispanicizing’ China]. In fact, Mendoza’s writing does contain prophetic strains but for the most part is secular. Yet his secularism is not entirely disinterested nor does it always function to validate the Chinese vis-à-vis Europeans, and in certain passages he implicitly privileges Europe over China. Most early modern Europeans and their Chinese counterparts tend to distinguish each other according to eye shape and facial hair.

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Mendoza, however, also highlights skin colour. In the second chapter of his Historia, he comments on the diversity of skin colours among the Chinese: Hechase esto muy de ver, en la differencia grande que ay, de colores entre los moradores deste Reyno . . . Los que nascen en [la] ciudad de Canton, y en toda aquella costa, son morenos, como los de Fez, o Berberia, porque discurre toda ella, por el paralelo, que Berberia: los de las de mas Prouincias de la tierra a dentro, son blancos, unos mas que otros, segun se van metiendo mas en la tierra fria: ay unos que son como los de España, y otros mas rubios, hasta que llegan a ser como unos Alemanes rubios, y colorados. (4) [This is very obvious, in the great difference that there is in colour among the inhabitants of this kingdom. Those who are born in the city of Canton and along that entire coast are dark, like the people of Fez or Barbary, because it (the coast) runs along the parallel of Barbary. Those of the other interior provinces are white, some more than others, as they approach the cold lands. There are some that are like Spaniards, and others that are fairer, until they become like the blond and ruddy Germans.]

This passage is significant, not because some Chinese are more or less fair than others but because they are depicted as similar in terms of skin colour to the inhabitants of the Mediterranean region and Europe. As Wey Gómez has shown, early modern Spaniards thought that Chinese and Europeans were endowed not only with comparable physical characteristics but also equally developed rational and moral faculties, precisely because they lived along the same lines of latitude and were thus subject to the same effects of climate. Yet despite the ostensible similarities of Chinese and Europeans, Mendoza elsewhere creates a vertical hierarchy between the two populations. In a chapter on the history of Chinese emperors, he declares that the Chinese supposedly possessed foreknowledge that Christian Europeans would one day subjugate them: Dios por su misericordia, los trayga al conocimiento de su Santa Ley, y cumpla un pronostico que ellos tienen, con el qual son auisados, que han de ser señoreados, de hombres de ojos grandes, y de barbas largas, y que vendran a mandar los, de reynos muy remotos, y apartados, que parece señala a los Christianos. (56)

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According to Girard, this prophecy, which resembles the legend associated with the conquest of the Aztecs, has no foundation in Chinese culture; its fulfilment, nonetheless, is in her view the ultimate aim of Mendoza’s entire prophetic historiography (‘La Chine’ 172). Yet just as important is how Mendoza distinguishes the Chinese from their future masters through a reference to physical difference. Though here the markers of physical difference are eye shape and facial hair, in a subsequent reading of a genuinely Chinese narrative Mendoza subtly equates whiteness with moral supremacy and perhaps even a Christian European triumph over China. In recounting the 1575 journey of Luarca, Rada, Marín, and Sarmiento, Mendoza describes the performance of the Three Kingdoms play summarized by Luarca in the Verdadera relación. Antes que se començasse la farça, les dixeron a los nuestros lo que contenia por el interprete, para que gustassen mas de ella, cuyo argumento era, que muchos años atras auia auido hombres muy grandes y valientes, y que entre estos que lo eran, auia particularmente tres hermanos que excedian a todos los de mas en grandeza y valentia, el uno de ellos era blanco, y el otro vermejo, y el otro negro. El vermejo que era de mas ingenio y industria, procuro de hazer rey al hermano blanco, en cuyo parescer vinieron los otros dos, y todos juntos quitaron el reyno al que en aquel tiempo reynaua, que se llamaua Laupicono, hombre muy afeminado, y vicioso. (202–3) [Before the play began, our men were told what it was about by an interpreter, so that they could enjoy it more, and its plot was that, many years before, there had been great and valiant men, and among these there were in particular three brothers who surpassed all the others in greatness and courage, and one of them was white, and the other was red, and the other black. The red one was the most intelligent and resourceful, and he attempted to make the white brother king, to which the other two brothers agreed, and together they seized the kingdom from the one who was

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reigning at that time, whose name was Laupicono, a very effeminate and vicious man.]

Much of this description replicates the corresponding passage in Luarca’s narrative. However, in the light of Mendoza’s prophecy of conquest, the identity of the white-faced character might be read differently than in the Verdadera relación. Rather than simply a white Chinese, he might in fact be regarded as a white European, since in keeping with the prophecy recounted by Mendoza, the Chinese were actually anticipating the arrival of the Europeans. In submitting to this figure, the Chinese would, from Mendoza’s religious perspective, submit to a people that as Christian bear the true ‘mandate of heaven.’25 Mendoza’s synopsis differs from Luarca’s, and indeed from traditional Chinese renditions of the play, in another significant way. Here, the reigning king that the white man will depose is specifically feminine. Normally, this character (Cao Cao in Chinese tradition and not Laupicono [or Liu Bei] as Mendoza writes) is represented as masculine, and as A.C. Scott points out, ‘he sings and speaks with [a] powerful vocal technique . . . [and] his shoulders are tremendously broad’ (192). By explicitly depicting the king as feminine, Mendoza rescripts his gender role. According to Federico Garza Carvajal, the word ‘afeminado’ had four different meanings in the early-modern Spanish period. It could refer to a man 1) who was lustful, dissolute, and inclined to pleasure; 2) who displayed characteristics typical of women; 3) who was weak and delicate; and 4) who was inclined to commit the pecado nefando, that is, sodomy (95–6). Mendoza thus clearly intended to portray the Chinese monarch negatively. As ‘afeminado,’ Laupicono is less than an ideal man and possibly even someone whose ‘vice’ warrants that he be overthrown.26 Mendoza thereby implies that the new and legitimate ruler of China should not simply be white and masculine but also embody the Catholic ethics and European world view that he himself, as a sixteenth-century Spaniard, most values. Though Mendoza at times dichotomizes Europeans and Chinese in ways that privilege the former, his Historia is nevertheless only incipiently orientalist, as his tentative representations of race, gender, and sexuality suggest. And though he anticipates the Christianization of China, he at times depicts the country as wholly self-sufficient, as if Western mediation were somehow irrelevant to it. In a section on Chinese relations with foreigners, he writes that the Chinese

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These last words are striking, for by focusing on material riches they almost make Christianity itself seem superfluous to China. Mendoza, however, simply notes what he regards as China’s superiority to other nations. Pantoja, in contrast, attempts to defend Europe in the face of Chinese civilization. Lettered Eyes Pantoja, who transcribed his name in Chinese as Pangdie or Pangdiwo [龐迪我] and whose Chinese name of honour was Shunyang [to follow the road to the sun], has been regarded as a giant of the early Catholic mission in China (Zhang 21). Born in Valdemoro, Spain in 1571, he took holy orders as a Jesuit in Toledo in the mid-1590s,27 and travelled as a missionary from Lisbon to China between 1596 and 1597. The sole Spaniard, along with six Portuguese and Italians (including Ricci), Pantoja (known for his accomplishments as an astronomer, geographer, and musician) was an integral member of the first successful Jesuit mission to Beijing in 1601. He spent sixteen years in Beijing and a total of twenty-one in China. Like Ricci, Pantoja was an exponent of the Jesuit policy of accommodation. Ricci’s successor, Niccolò Longobardi, was less supportive of accommodation and encouraged greater proselytization, a course of action that provoked the Chinese government to expel the Jesuits from Beijing in 1617. Pantoja was then forced to return to Macau, where he died in 1618.28 In subsequent histories of the Chinese mission, Pantoja’s life and work have been overshadowed by the elder Ricci.29 Zhang Kai, the author of the only book-length study of Pantoja, maintains that Pantoja

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was like a student to Ricci, though he recognizes that the relationship between the two was at times fraught with difficulty. In letters written prior to 1606 Ricci speaks positively of Pantoja, but in a letter that year to Claudio Acquaviva, the superior general of the Jesuit order in Rome, he writes: Tenemos aquí un compañero, el padre Diego de Pantoja, a quien el Padre Visitador declaró hace dos años como ‘digno de la profesión de los cuatro votos,’ que se ha comportado mal. Los hermanos jesuitas y los seminaristas de esta Misión llegan incluso a opinar que carece de virtud y de sensatez, y creo que tiene que sentir vergüenza, puesto que ya ha trabajado junto a mí por espacio de cinco o seis años. (qtd in Zhang 87) [We have here a companion, Father Diego de Pantoja, whom the Father Visitor two years ago declared to be ‘worthy of the profession of the four vows,’ and who has behaved badly. The Jesuit brothers and seminarians in this mission have even come to believe that he lacks virtue and good sense; and I believe that he must feel ashamed, since he has already worked at my side for a period of five or six years.]

Zhang attributes Ricci’s negative language in this letter to a conflict of nationalities, pointing out how at the time some Spanish leaders in the Philippines were considering military strategies to conquer China – a position clearly at odds with the accommodationist stance of Ricci. Zhang further describes Pantoja as impulsive and undiplomatic. This is not directly apparent in Pantoja’s writings on China, although Pantoja does evince an attitude of cultural self-importance vis-à-vis the Chinese (or what Ann Waltner labels ‘condescension’ [425]) that likely ran counter to the subtle approach of Ricci to Chinese traditions. In his outlook Pantoja differs not only from Ricci but in fact from most other Spanish writers of the period, including those opposed to the policy of accommodation and even those bent on conquering China – all of whom tend to express glowing admiration for Chinese civilization. Despite Ricci’s criticism, Pantoja clearly demonstrated diplomatic skill when Ricci died. In a letter to the Emperor Wanli, in which he petitions the monarch to break with tradition and permit the burial of a foreigner in China, Pantoja succinctly outlines his own incredible journey from Spain to China: Io Diego Pantoja lo soi de un reino remotissimo, empero incitado de la virtud i de la fama de vuestro nobilissimo reino navegué las ondas del

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They Need Nothing mar por espacio de tres años, corriendo mas de seis mil leguas, no sin continuos trabajos, i peligros; y finalmente en el año veinte i ocho de Vanlia . . . en la Luna doze. Io juntamente con el P. Mateo Richo, y otros compañeros, que por todos fueron cinco, llegamos a vuestra Corte, i os ofrecimos algunos dones de nuestras tierras. (Trigault and Ricci 306–7)30 [I, Diego Pantoja, from a far away kingdom but drawn by the virtue and fame of your most noble realm, plied the waves of the sea for a period of three years, covering more than six thousand leagues, though not without continual struggles and perils; and finally in the twenty-eighth year of Wanli . . . in the twelfth moon, I, along with Father Matteo Ricci and five other companions, arrived at your court, and offered you gifts from our lands.]

Like Xavier a generation earlier in Japan, Pantoja and his fellow Jesuits were never personally received by the emperor, although they did, through Pantoja’s intervention, manage to secure a place in the Chinese earth for the founder of the Catholic mission in China. Pantoja is the author of two primary texts. He wrote the first, his Relación, in Spanish for a European audience. He wrote the second, with the assistance of several Chinese converts, in Chinese for a Chinese readership. This text is known in Chinese as the Qike [七克] [Seven victories] and in Spanish as the Tratado de los siete pecados y virtudes [Treatise on the seven sins and virtues]. Of the two, the Relación most closely reveals Pantoja’s vision of China. The text was published in Valladolid in 1604, Seville in 1605, and Valencia in 1606, and subsequently in numerous editions in Spanish and other European languages. As Waltner notes, it appeared in print ‘a full decade before Trigault’s recension of Ricci’s journals, [and] is an important early document in the history of the formation of European perceptions of China’ (424–5). The Relación is divided into two main chapters. In the beginning part of the first chapter Pantoja recounts the events of his journey from Macau to Beijing and the establishment of the Jesuits in the Chinese capital. In the latter part of the first chapter he discusses the development of Catholicism in China. In the second chapter he describes Chinese customs, politics, and government, while occasionally interspersing anecdotes of his own interactions with the Chinese. Pantoja composed the Relación in 1602 as a letter to his superior in Toledo, Luis de Guzmán (1546–1605). Guzmán, whom Pantoja addresses throughout the letter as ‘Vuestra Reverencia’ [Your Reverence],

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or simply V.R., was not only the Archbishop of Toledo (where Pantoja spent his formative years as a Jesuit), but also a sinophile. When Pantoja embarked on his journey to Asia, Guzmán was in the process of writing his own history of the Jesuit missions in India, China, and Japan. Pantoja was undoubtedly familiar with this work, though according to Zhang he had also likely read Mendoza’s Historia while residing in Toledo (30). Yet as the Relación implies, Pantoja’s initial interest in Asia was fomented by Guzmán, who, prior to Ricci, was his primary mentor. As addressee, Guzmán, and specifically the apostrophic figure of V.R., plays a significant role in the Relación. Guzmán is an erudite Spaniard with an extensive knowledge of Asia – albeit a knowledge that derives neither from direct experience nor Asian-authored texts but rather from European writings about Asia. Of potential Spanish readers, he is one of the best positioned to appreciate Pantoja’s account. The two men are friends (Pantoja speaks of the affection that Guzmán has always shown him [5]), and Pantoja believes that his narrative will surely be pleasing to Guzmán (6). As if directing himself to a former teacher, Pantoja asks Guzmán to forgive the brevity of the text (he explains that the demands of the mission are all consuming [6]) and also what he considers its unpolished style: ‘con la mistura que ya tengo de diuersas lenguas, tengo perdido gran parte (aunque en poco tiempo) de la natural, y assi necessariamente, eran muchos yerros, barbarismos y palabras portuguesas misturadas’ (7) [with the mixture that I already have of diverse languages, I have lost, even in a short time, a great part of my natural language, and thus there are necessarily many errors, barbarisms, and Portuguese words all mixed in]. Despite these caveats, Pantoja’s writing is not as unpolished as he suggests, nor is his discourse a hodgepodge of the various languages he has assimilated during his travels. Pantoja’s comment on language nonetheless reveals a concern about his own status as a speaker of Castilian and by extension his identity as Spaniard and European. As a result of his prolonged interactions with other Europeans in the Jesuit mission and more important with the Chinese themselves, Pantoja’s cultural framework has become a mixture of European and Asian elements and thereby inevitably different from that of Guzmán and his compatriots and co-religionists on the Iberian Peninsula. As if in an effort to stem his cultural hybridization, Pantoja posits the textual V.R. not simply as narratee but as a marker of Europeanness with which he struggles to identify. Although Pantoja’s osten-

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sible aim in the Relación is to represent the reality of China to the West, he also clearly attempts to assert an image of Europe and of himself as European. He refers repeatedly to ‘nuestra Europa’ [our Europe], as if to say to V.R., ‘you and I are Europeans and as such the same.’ Yet from his geographic and experiential position as narrator, both Europe as a place and Europeanness as a discrete cultural identity are forever out of reach. Indeed, the narrative voice of the Relación is as far removed from the European V.R. as it is from the Chinese emperor to whom Pantoja addresses his final petition for Ricci’s tomb. Ultimately, this voice is neither European nor Chinese but a mediation between what throughout Pantoja’s writing remain two unrealizable essences of cultural selfhood. As Pantoja explains to V.R., he first arrived on the Chinese mainland at Macau, with the intention of continuing to Japan once what he describes as the Japanese persecutions, tumults, and wars had subsided. Instead, in late 1599 he and several other priests secretly entered China, ostensibly in order to conquer ‘el Demonio, que tan apoderado está de este Reyno’ (8) [the Devil, who is in such control of this kingdom]. From Macau they travelled to Nanjing, where they joined Ricci and his small group. After a brief period in Nanjing, they proceeded along the Chinese Grand Canal to Beijing. Throughout the journey the Chinese were suspicious of their intentions, and when the Jesuits insisted that they wanted solely to preach Christianity, many thought their objective was ‘una onrada capa para encubrir algun otro intento’ (19) [an honourable cover to conceal some other intention]. Nevertheless, they secured the help of several mandarins and ultimately arrived in Beijing in 1601, bringing as gifts for the emperor two clocks, three religious paintings, several mirrors (‘que aunque entre nosotros no es nada, aca estiman’ [22] [which, though for us are nothing, here they value]), a Japanese box, several books, including a Teatro del mundo [Theatre of the world] and a breviary, and a ‘monacordio,’ or clavichord.31 Although the Jesuit group was favourably received in the Forbidden City, the Chinese traditionally prohibited foreigners from residing in China, and they initially intended to expel the missionaries, as they had done after Ricci’s first expedition to Beijing in 1598. The emperor, however, eventually let them remain, probably, as Pantoja speculates, so that they would not return to their homeland and disseminate information about China. After several months they managed to obtain a house outside the palace precincts in what Pantoja describes as a prestigious district of the city. From the outset they received numerous visitors,

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and certain friendly mandarins urged them to assume the title of mandarins. Yet in keeping with the policy of Ricci, they declined, for they desired no title or honour but simply permission to ‘dilatar la ley de Dios’ (54) [spread the law of God]. According to Pantoja, the Chinese emperor was keenly interested in the appearance of the European missionaries. But because by tradition he had personal contact only with the most immediate members of his entourage, he did not receive them or arrange to look directly at them. Instead, he ordered two of his court artists to make a portrait of Pantoja and Ricci. Pantoja describes the painting to Guzmán: en la verdad ni a mi, ni a mi compañero conocia en aquel retrato . . . No era en la figura, y modo que V.R. me conoció, sino con una barba de un palmo, y un vestido de letrado honrado China (aunque largo hasta los pies) y muy modesto: mas desde ellos a la cabeça de diuerso modo de nuestro: porque con esta mascara nos obliga a andar la caridad y trato desta Gentilidad, hasta que nuestro Señor quiera otra cosa. (53) [In truth I did not recognize either myself or my companion in that portrait . . . I did not appear in the form or way that Your Reverence knew me, but with a beard a handspan in length and the dress of an honourable Chinese man of letters (which reached my feet) and very modest: from the feet to the head in a manner different from ours: because with this mask they oblige us to seek charity and interact with these pagans, until our Lord desires otherwise.]

As an instance of ekphrasis, this passage does not merely depict through words a Chinese painting of Pantoja and his superior but attempts to interpret, from a European perspective and for a European reader, a Chinese representation of two European figures. Pantoja describes the beard and garb of the Confucian sages that the Jesuits were required to wear and that they in fact willingly accepted in order to merit respect and thereby more effectively carry out their missionary enterprise.32 But he tellingly characterizes his Chinese guise as a mask, and in this way implies the existence of a more essential, European identity that Guzmán once knew but might now not recognize in its current avatar. Through the verbal reproduction of the portrait, Pantoja hence tries to distance himself from the Chinese rendition of his persona. Yet the image of Pantoja that appears within the textual ken of the Relación is not that of a European but, despite the Jesuits’ rejection of any official

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Figure 2.2 ‘Missionary Martyr.’ The Orient Museum, Lisbon. In Alexandra Curvelo, Fernando António Baptista Pereira, Jacques Pimpaneau, and Carla Alferes Pinto, The Orient Museum, Lisbon (Paris: Musées et Monuments de France, 2008), 73. © Hugo Maertens/BNP Paribas/Museu do Oriente. Used with permission.

The Middle Kingdom through Spanish Eyes

Figure 2.3 ‘Missionary Martyr.’ The Orient Museum, Lisbon. In Alexandra Curvelo, Fernando António Baptista Pereira, Jacques Pimpaneau, and Carla Alferes Pinto, The Orient Museum, Lisbon (Paris: Musées et Monuments de France, 2008), 73. © Hugo Maertens/BNP Paribas/Museu do Oriente. Used with permission.

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Chinese titles, a new, hybridized entity known in European historiography as the ‘Jesuit Mandarin’ (see figures 2.2 and 2.3).33 The cultural tensions present throughout the Relación are synthesized most succinctly and most intriguingly in a passage in which Pantoja describes his own eyes. He begins by commenting on the physical appearance of the Chinese, noting that they have little facial hair, small features, and dark eyes. Unlike so many other Western observers, he does not comment on the shape of Chinese eyes. But like most Iberians of the period he does classify the Chinese as white, though not as white as the inhabitants of Europe. In commenting on the dark colour of their eyes, he writes: tienen los ojos prietos, de manera que reparan mucho en la color de los mios (que son çarcos) que nunca vieron, y hallanles mil mysterios, y lo mas ordinario es dezir, que estos mis ojos conocen donde estan las piedras, y cosas preciosas, con otros mil mysterios, hasta parecerles que tienen letras dentro. (107) [they have dark eyes, so they take great notice of the colour of mine, which are light blue and which they have never seen, and they find in them a thousand mysteries, and most often they say that these eyes of mine know the location of gems and precious objects, and a thousand other mysteries, including even that they have letters within.]

According to Pantoja, the Chinese are fascinated by his blue eyes, which they believe are capable of discovering treasures presumably unseen by them. They further claim to perceive letters in his eyes. Because they are Chinese, what they must imagine, as they draw close to his face and regard the light in his pupils, are not the letters of the Western alphabet but rather Chinese characters. In this intimate moment the Spaniard is initially the object of the look of the Chinese. But what the Chinese discover, as Pantoja recounts the episode, is a look far more powerful than their own. Not only are his eyes a means to material riches, but they are also a fount of knowledge insofar as they contain the words (and indeed the very words of the Chinese themselves) by which the world is known. The power of Pantoja’s eyes is thus ultimately epistemological. What is more, it is wielded not through the brute force of conquest but rather a seemingly surreptitious enchantment of the non-European who eagerly ascribes to the European subject a fundamental quality of superiority. This ‘soft imperialism,’ depicted in much of the Relación,

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nevertheless betrays a hubris unseemly in the religious, for if Pantoja is capable of knowing all that is seen and unseen, then in the final analysis he is tantamount to a god. Elsewhere in the Relación Pantoja reiterates the fascination the Chinese supposedly experienced when confronted with Europeans and European culture. At times, as when they depict the sinocized image of Pantoja and Ricci, they attempt to appropriate European difference and recreate it in their own terms – in this instance positively, though more often than not negatively: ‘Para pintar un hombre feo, le pintan con vestido corto, barba, ojos, y narizes grandes’ (107) [To paint an ugly man, they paint him with a short dress and big eyes, nose, and beard]. On other occasions, they appear overwhelmed by what the Europeans show them. They seem particularly astounded by a map of Ricci’s that challenges their traditional image of China and its place in the world.34 Pantoja writes: Vehian un mapa muy hermoso y grande que trayamos, y declaramos les como el mundo era grande, a quien ellos tenian por tan pequeño, que en todo el no imaginauan auia otro tanto como su Reyno: y mirauanse unos a otros, diziendo, no somos tan grandes como imaginauamos, pues aquí nos muestran que nuestro Reyno, comparado con el mundo, es como un grano de arroz, comparado con un monton grande. (61–2) [They saw a very beautiful and large map that we brought, and we explained to them how the world was big, which they had thought was so small that in all of it they did not imagine there was another kingdom as big as theirs: and they looked at one another, saying, we are not as big as we imagined, since here they show us that our kingdom, compared with the world, is like a grain of rice, compared with a large mound.]

In European cartography China does not constitute the bulk of the earth’s land mass and its location is not the focal point of the cosmos, as the Chinese have heretofore imagined. What is more, the world is not flat. According to Pantoja, the recognition of these apparent facts produces in the Chinese a sense of unease. Whereas Hispanic commentators of the period, including Luarca and Navarrete, typically recount their own emotional responses to the reality of China, which more often than not entail amazement, wonder, and awe, Pantoja emphasizes the apprehension of the Chinese towards what he depicts as the cultural advances of Europe.

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The Chinese are troubled not only by European maps but also by European books and learning in general: Tenian para si, no auia en el mundo, ni otra letra, ni otros libros mas que los suyos: y quando vehian los nuestros, que por lo menos vehian en la apariencia exterior tanto mejores que los suyos, quedauan espantados y desenganados, cada vez haziendonos mas honra: y particularmente se espantauan declarandoles cosas de matematica que ellos no sabian, dando a algunas personas reloxes, que para esto de proposito hizimos. (62) [They believed that in the whole world there were no letters or books other than their own: and when they saw ours, which at least from the exterior appearance they saw to be better than theirs, they were frightened and disillusioned, and they kept showing us more honour: and they were particularly startled when we explained to them aspects of mathematics, which they did not know, and also when we gave some of them clocks, which we did precisely for this purpose.]

By impressing the Chinese with European geography, astronomy, mathematics, and technology, the Jesuits hoped to cultivate in them a respect for Christianity as well – though throughout the Catholic missionary period in China the Chinese remained far more interested in European science than European religion. Pantoja writes that after the Jesuit fathers displayed their maps, books, and clocks, they broached the principal matter of their mission to China: ‘las cosas de Dios’ (62) [the things of God]. But what stands out in the passage are not the objects and ideas Pantoja describes but the way he dramatizes the interaction between Europeans and Chinese. According to Pantoja, the European Jesuits express confidence in European cultural accomplishments whereas their Chinese interlocutors seem threatened by them. In their own writings from the period, however, the Chinese do not reveal uncertainty about the merits of their civilization and are at times critical of Christian European culture, as evidenced in reactions to Pantoja’s explicitly religious discourse. Yet Pantoja clearly wants to ascribe selfdoubt to the Chinese when depicting them to his Iberian readership. Throughout the two sections of the Relación Pantoja reflects on numerous aspects of Chinese culture and society. He occasionally registers criticism (initially finding even Chinese rice distasteful [100]), but he typically mixes positive and negative judgments. He applauds

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the Chinese for valuing scholarship and honouring the cultivation of letters, yet he remarks that they lack European-style universities. He argues that they know little about painting (135) but that they are adept with musical instruments, and upon hearing a musical performance he declares: ‘contentome’ (135) [I was pleased] – ’aunque en esto tampoco me parece se puede comparar con nuestra tierra’ [although not even in this, it seems to me, can (China) be compared with our land]. Like most foreign observers he is struck by the material bounty of China, but he contends that the Chinese people are less well off than Europeans: ‘Aunque la abundancia y riqueza deste Reyno es mucha mas, como la gente tambien lo es, no ay gente muy rica, ni en ningun estado de gente se puede comparar en esto con nuestra tierra’ (109) [Although the abundance and wealth of this kingdom are much more, as there are more people as well, there are not very rich people, and in no class of people can (China) be compared in wealth with our land]. If, however, Europeans have more money than the Chinese, land in Europe costs more than in China, so in the end, he concludes, ‘todo se viene a salir a la misma cuenta’ (109) [it all comes out the same]. At times, as in this instance, Pantoja’s comparisons and contrasts ‘even things out’ between the two cultures, though more often than not they reveal a lack of understanding or openness to non-European forms of cultural expression, as revealed in the comments on Chinese painting and music. More significant, the narrative voice of the Relación seems anxious not merely to describe China but to validate European civilization over Chinese. In his remarks on Chinese religion, Pantoja notes that the seclusion of women and the practice of concubinage are deterrents to Christianization. In keeping with his Jesuit confrères, he points out that the ancient Chinese revered a lord of heaven. But now, he maintains, they are all atheists, concerned not with the afterlife but only good government and morality. Despite their lack of religion, he attacks Buddhist priests for fostering a kind of idol worship. Yet like other contemporary European commentators on China, he envisions the possibility of a great Chinese church precisely because of the inherent qualities of Chinese civilization: se ha de fundar una de las ilustres y doctas Christiandades que aya en el mundo: porque la grandeza deste Reyno, las leyes y gouierno tan conforme a razon, el ser como son tan estudiosos, dados a letras, y conocer tanto como conocen de las virtudes morales. (74)

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Pantoja further suggests that Chinese civilization has primed the Chinese for the priesthood and indeed for high ecclesiastical office. Thus, though elsewhere in the Relación he elevates European cultural accomplishments over those of the Chinese, he ultimately regards Europeans and Chinese as fundamentally equal. The Chinese, he contends, might in fact become exemplary Christians, for in addition to ‘la ventaja que a las otras naciones de nuevo descubiertas lleuan en lo natural (ayudados de la diuina gracia) la lleuaran en lo diuino’ [75] [the advantage they have in natural terms over the other nations recently discovered, they will, with the aid of divine grace, also have an advantage in divine terms]. Nevertheless, in asserting the potential of China as a model of Christendom, Pantoja implicitly affirms the epistemological primacy of Europe as ‘discoverer’ of the world and reinforces the Eurocentric position of the Relación. In contrast to the Relación, which has received little critical attention, scholars of the history of Christianity in China typically comment on Pantoja’s second major treatise, the Qike, originally printed in 1614.35 Pantoja composed the Qike in Chinese with the assistance of the Christian converts Yang Tingyun (Waltner 428) and Xu Guangqi (Gernet 142).36 The text describes the seven deadly sins of pride, envy, greed, anger, gluttony, lust, and sloth, and proposes strategies for overcoming them. In part, it resembles a Chinese genre popular in the late Ming period, known as ledgers of merit and demerit, in which one kept a daily log of one’s good and bad deeds (Zürcher, ‘Buddhist’ 119). Of Taoist origin, ledgers of merit and demerit were cultivated by ‘literati with Buddhist inclinations’ (Zürcher, ‘Buddhist’ 119), although as Eugenio Menegon explains, the Qike occasionally inveighs against Buddhist beliefs (14 n.9). By following a Chinese model it nevertheless represents the effort of the Jesuit missionaries to accommodate Christianity within Chinese tradition. The Qike does not make reference to ‘sacramental confession’ (Menegon 14 n.9), and according to Nicolas Standaert ‘was considered a text that contained useful and sound moral advice, regardless of one’s theological predilections’ (Handbook 656). It thus had a wide readership in late Ming China.

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The Qike was printed numerous times, and several Christian converts wrote prefaces for it.37 The document is of particular interest because, unlike the Relación and most contemporary Spanish-authored writings about China, it was commented on by the Chinese themselves. Their typical response to the Qike was not to regard it as representative of a world view radically different from their own but to assimilate it within Confucian ethics.38 As Waltner observes, Chinese readers particularly valued its emphasis on self-mastery, and as a result the Qike quickly ‘entered the repertoire of intellectual discourse in the late Ming’ (444). According to Liam Matthew Brockey, treatises like the Qike ‘contributed much to establishing the reputation of Christianity as a respectable moral system according to the demanding standards of contemporary Chinese literati and created a specific register for discussions of morality among indigenous Christians’ (‘Illuminating’ 131). Yet Christian European texts were also criticized. In the words of the Ming scholar Huang Wendao, What they call the seven [things] to be overcome are pride, avarice, envy, anger, greed, jealousy and sloth. Although all this involves the cultivation of the self, they are only clumsy methods for controlling oneself. What Confucius told Yanzi had to do with a far more elevated concept: he considered the virtue of humanity (ren) as the basis, and propriety (li) as the substance. When one knows how to preserve humanity within oneself, whatever is contrary to humanity disappears of its own accord. When propriety is re-established, whatever is contrary to the rituals eliminates itself of its own accord. (qtd in Gernet 162)

Waltner cites Peng Duanwu, author of one of the prefaces of the Qike, who remarked that even though Pantoja lived among the Chinese, ‘his understanding is only superficial, and can’t see through to the visceral essence of the Chinese temperament’ (441). As she aptly concludes, the Qike, albeit appreciated by some late Ming readers, ‘caused no radical re-evaluation of the self and the other’ – something she contends did not occur in China until the late nineteenth century (447). According to Pantoja’s Relación, however, a certain self-questioning did in fact begin the moment Europeans and Chinese first interacted – both within the Chinese and, as other Spanish writers make clear, the Europeans themselves. The ostensible aim of the Qike was to translate a Christian, European discourse into Chinese and insinuate it within a Chinese cultural tradi-

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tion. The identity of the resulting text, nevertheless, is ambiguous, as the differing reactions of Chinese readers imply. Is it simply a Chineselanguage expression of Christian European theology or, because it patterns itself on a Chinese genre, does it actually form part of late-Ming Christian discourse? And if this is the case, how tied is it to European religion and culture? In his discussion of the Rites Controversy, Zürcher prefers to speak of Chinese Christianity of the period as both a ‘recontextualized Catholic faith’ and as a ‘Confucian monotheism,’ which should be understood ‘as a phenomenon sui generis’ (‘Jesuit Accommodation’ 63). In contrast to traditional Christian scholars, he emphasizes the Confucian dimension of early Chinese Christianity, and asserts that ‘[t]he authority, the sheer mass and attractive power of Confucianism was such that any religious system from outside was caught in its field, and was bound to gravitate towards that centre’ (‘Jesuit Accommodation’ 64). This power of Confucianism, although more apparent in the writings of Chinese converts themselves, is also present in Jesuit writers like Pantoja, and, according to Christian opponents of accommodation, is actually what undermines the Jesuit missionary approach. Pantoja is in fact one of the more radical exponents of accommodation. Though in the Relación he describes contemporary Chinese (that is, neo-Confucians) as atheists, he reiterates Ricci’s contention that ancient Confucians had an intuition of the God of Christianity and that Chinese civilization was therefore inherently compatible with the Christian religion. He further equates the ancient Confucian notion of Tian [heaven] with God. According to Zürcher, Ricci recommended using the term Tianzhu [Lord of Heaven] for God, but Pantoja maintained that the terms were interchangeable (‘Jesuit Accommodation’ 51). For Chinese converts, however, these expressions did not really convey the Christian conception of the divine. As Sun Shangyang explains, the Chinese ‘Lord of Heaven’ or ‘Celestial Emperor’ ‘was neither hypostasized as a creator of the world nor personified as a flesh-and-blood savior’ (6). Pantoja’s use of Chinese terminology, whether simply expedient or reflective of a belief that all peoples regardless of religious practice are capable of perceiving divine truths, not only misrepresented Chinese religious tradition but clashed with mainstream Christian belief in the uniqueness and exclusiveness of Christian revelation, reiterated by the other Catholic orders in China and indeed by some Jesuits themselves. The ensuing Rites Controversy, which pitted the Jesuits against the other orders, began after the death of Pantoja, and constitutes the backdrop of the next major Spanish commentator on China, Navarrete.39

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The seeds of the Rites Controversy appear in the writing of Ricci’s successor, Longobardi. In De Confucio ejusque doctrina tractatus [Treatise on Confucius and his doctrine], written between 1622 and 1625, Longobardi challenges the claim that, prior to the arrival of the European Christians, the Chinese had any notion of the Christian God (Gernet 9–10). This text, which Navarrete subsequently published in a Spanish version in his Tratados, was likely read by the Franciscan Antonio de Santa María Caballero and the Dominican Juan Bautista Morales.40 Caballero and Morales, both Spaniards, arrived from the Philippines in the province of Fujian in 1633. While there, they discovered that Chinese converts still practised some of their traditional cults. Morales, following the lead of Longobardi, launched a significant criticism of the Jesuit policy of accommodation in his seventeen charges, which he composed in 1639 and took to Rome in 1643. As Moffett explains, the attack by the Spanish-supported Franciscans and Dominicans against the Jesuits, who had originally entered China under the auspices of the Portuguese, was part of a larger rivalry between the two Iberian kingdoms for dominance in East Asia (121). The conflict, however, affected the burgeoning Chinese church far more than either the Spanish or Portuguese imperial enterprises. Most modern commentators have shown sympathy for the Jesuits, arguing that they had greater potential for missionary success because they understood better the reality of China. (As Zürcher puts it in his discussion of Ricci, ‘if there was to be any Chinese church, it would have to stand on the basis of the Chinese heritage’ [‘Jesuit Accommodation’ 41].) But they also tend to impute the failures of the early Chinese mission to a religious and cultural intransigence of the Spanish. Early modern Spanish writers on China, nevertheless, do not speak with a single voice, and whereas Pantoja accommodates Christianity within Chinese religious tradition while simultaneously reaffirming European culture, Navarrete, among the most outspoken critics of Jesuit accommodation, exalts Chinese civilization even to the point of disparaging the West. Writing in Chinese Dress Whereas the time frame of Luarca, Mendoza, and Pantoja is the late Ming dynasty, Navarrete wrote shortly after the triumph of the Manchus and the consolidation of the Qing dynasty in the mid-seventeenth century. His six Tratados include discussions of the geography, history, economy, government, religion, philosophy, and social life of China, as

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well as a translation of an entire Chinese text and his own travel log. In an introduction Navarrete perhaps intentionally distances himself from Mendoza when he criticizes those writers who base their descriptions of China on second-hand reports; and in one passage he openly challenges him (28). As one of the leading critics of the Jesuit position of accommodation, he also distrusts writers like Pantoja, even though he himself reveals a far greater appreciation of Chinese culture and society than does the Jesuit. Navarrete was born in Castrogeriz, Spain, in 1618. According to Miguel Herrero, several members of his family were prominent Spanish missionaries in East Asia, including Alonso de Navarrete and Alonso Mena de Navarrete, both of whom went to Japan in the early seventeenth century and were martyred (Navarrete 1940, 8). Navarrete received the Dominican habit in 1635, and in 1646 embarked for the Philippines, where he served for ten years in the missions. In 1658 he proceeded to China. While there, he spent most of his time in Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, although he travelled extensively throughout the country, reaching Beijing in 1665. As a result of the anti-Christian persecution of the mid-1660s, Navarrete was imprisoned in Guangzhou from 1666 to 1670. Afterwards, he returned to Europe and published his Tratados. Late in life he was made archbishop of Santo Domingo, where he remained until his death in 1686. Navarrete stands out among Spanish and indeed all clerical writers of his period as the most outspoken figure of the Rites Controversy, adamantly condemning Jesuit accommodationism. According to J.S. Cummins, the foremost Navarrete scholar of the twentieth century, Navarrete’s writing transformed a local dispute among missionaries in China into an international quarrel (Question 73), providing stimulus to the Jesuit-Jansenist conflict and the anti-Jesuit campaign that led to the suppression of the Jesuit order in the eighteenth century (241–3).41 Navarrete’s rejection of the Jesuit position is nevertheless deeply paradoxical, for if as a friar he denounced Chinese religious and philosophical traditions, he exalted Chinese civilization to such a degree that some, including the Deists, claimed to discern in his writing a defence of natural religion that he himself imputed to the Jesuits (250). What is more, though the French are largely credited with promoting the image of China in eighteenth-century Europe, Navarrete clearly helped fuel the ‘sinomania’ of the period, and Enlightenment thinkers frequently invoked his portrayal of a Chinese utopia in their efforts to reform European society.42

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In his writing Navarrete comments not only on Chinese religion but on numerous aspects of Chinese life that have caught the attention of Western travellers for centuries, from the taste of tofu, to the use of birds for fishing, to the spectacle of the throngs on city streets. Some practices he vehemently opposes, such as the murder of female children and the caning of testicles as a form of punishment. Others he somewhat disconcertingly recommends that Europeans emulate, including the seclusion of women. Often he registers a sense of wonder, as when he and a young catechist witness the festival of lanterns: ‘El año de sesenta y tres, sali de casa a las ocho de la noche a ver esta fiesta, y aun antes de llegar a la calle mayor, quede pasmado, y como dezimos aca, propriamente quede embobado’ (48) [In the year ’63 I left the house at eight in the evening to see this festival, and even before reaching the main street, I was amazed and, as we say here, completely spellbound]. As in the best travel writing, Navarrete’s reactions are as striking as what he actually sees, and he, as much as China, is the subject of the text. Navarrete begins his first Tratado by praising the natural abundance of China – ’el Imperio mas noble en lo natural’ (1) [the most noble empire in all that is natural]. He describes China as a kind of paradise: ‘Pareceme cierto, que se puede con mucha razon dezir de aquel Reyno, lo que de la tierra de Promission dize el cap. 8 del Deuteronomio v. 7. Dominus enim Deus tuus introducet te in terram bonam’ (442) [It seems to me certain that one can truly say of that kingdom what chapter 8, verse 7 of Deuteronomy says of the Promised Land: ‘For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land’]. The features of this Chinese paradise are physical, and as in the passage from Deuteronomy, it is ‘a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates,’ etc. Though Navarrete reads China through a Christian discourse, its riches nevertheless reveal to him a theological paradox: that God has chosen to bestow his utmost favour on a people who do not even know him. This paradox haunts Navarrete’s entire text, ultimately disrupting his Christian/non-Christian dichotomization of the world. As a Dominican with an anti-Jesuit aversion to cultural accommodation, Navarrete seeks to refute Chinese religious and philosophical traditions. To accomplish this, he must read and master Chinese texts: ‘Como podriamos en China impugnar inumerables errores, que tiene aquella Gentilidad, sino leyeramos, y estudiaramos sus libros, y doctrinas? Impossible fuera’ (173) [How could we in China challenge the innumerable errors that these pagans have, unless we read and studied

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their books and doctrines? It would be impossible]. The book he highlights in the Tratados is the Ming Xin Bao Jian.43 The Ming Xin Bao Jian is a compilation of ethical precepts from the classical Confucian, neoConfucian, and Taoist traditions. According to Albert Chan, it was one of the most popular moral tracts of the Ming-dynasty period, particularly in Fujian and the Chinese trading community of the Philippines (182). The version that came to the attention of the Spanish in Manila in the late sixteenth century had been written by Fan Liben in the late fourteenth century. In 1592 Juan Cobo (described by Liu Li-mei as the first Spanish sinologist [Cobo, Espejo 31]) translated it as Espejo rico del claro coraçon [Rich mirror of the pure heart].44 This was the first translation of a Chinese text into a European language. Though it was sent to Philip III soon after its composition, it was not published until the twentieth century – by Carlos Sanz in 1959 and more recently by Manuel Ollé in 1998 and Liu in 2005. Liu suggests that it was not widely circulated in its day because Cobo, albeit not a Jesuit, tried through his work to assimilate Chinese tradition within Christianity, an increasingly difficult task in the anti-accommodationist climate of the Rites Controversy (30–1). Navarrete also translated the Ming Xin Bao Jian, and included it in his Tratados under the title Espejo precioso del alma [Precious mirror of the soul]. In preparing his translation, he may have relied on Cobo’s earlier piece, yet as Chan points out, the two texts differ somewhat (182). According to Liu, Navarrete’s rendition is superior to Cobo’s in both clarity and literary richness (51), although it is less complete, perhaps because Navarrete based his work on an incomplete or mutilated copy of the Chinese original (50). Navarrete follows St Jerome’s advice to translators to provide the general meaning of the original, or to translate sentence by sentence rather than word by word. He does so in order to ‘cleanse’ the original of what he perceives to be doctrinal errors and render it compatible with Christianity. But the Ming Xin Bao Jian resists circumscription within a Christian framework, and Navarrete concludes that many of its principles are simply too lofty and demanding for morally and spiritually deficient Christian Europeans. Through ‘translation’ Navarrete tentatively Westernizes indigenous Chinese discourses, yet in the process comes to adopt a non-Western perspective that leads him to make scathing criticisms of the West. He attacks Europeans on many fronts. In his view, for instance, European students and scholars are less disciplined and serious than their Chinese counterparts. In public places European men are insolent and

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rude, showing little respect for women, the elderly, and even churchmen. And though Christians, Europeans have scant compassion for others. In a moment of anger coupled with shame over his origins he proclaims: ‘es prouidencia particular del Señor, no sepan los Chinas lo que passa en el Christianismo; porque no huuiera entre ellos, quien no nos escupiera a la cara’ (98) [it is by special providence of the Lord that the Chinese do not know what occurs in Christendom; because (if they did) there would be no one among them who would not spit in our faces]. Needless to say, this attitude must have produced a mixed reaction in Navarrete’s Spanish and European readers, and set his work apart from other early modern writings on China. Navarrete’s increasing appreciation of Chinese culture results in a kind of cultural relativism surprising in a writer of his period. Like Mendoza, he invokes Thomas Aquinas’s conception of civilization, stating that the Chinese (as well as the Japanese and Mongols) are civilized precisely because they live according to the laws of reason (14). But all nations, he adds, have certain customs that others might consider barbaric. In this context he cites Japanese seppuku (suicide by selfdisembowelment with a sword), Spanish bullfighting, and European prohibitions against fornication and sodomy: los Iapones . . . tienen por honra cortarse con la catana . . . Las naciones Europeas, por barbaridad tienen el correr Toros los Españoles; y por muy grande, el que un Cauallero se ponga cuerpo a cuerpo con Toro brauo, y feroz . . . Otros huuo en Europa, que no tenian por culpa la simple fornicacion, ni aun la sodomia. (14) [The Japanese consider it honourable to cut themselves with the sword . . . The European nations find Spanish bullfighting barbaric, and especially that a gentleman would go face to face with a wild and ferocious bull . . . There are others in Europe who do not consider simple fornication or even sodomy a crime.]

Navarrete cleverly juxtaposes a ritual anathematized in Europe (seppuku) and a practice typically regarded as distinctively Spanish (bullfighting) because both at least potentially raise the threat of human disembowelment. However, he is not content merely to relate eastern ‘barbarism’ to socially sanctioned violence in the West. He also daringly suggests that the Western proscription of certain sexual acts is itself barbaric, as if a truly civilized society operating in consonance

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with the laws of reason would tolerate extramarital sex. The mention of sodomy is particularly significant since it entails an implicit questioning of the natural law of Catholic theology. Navarrete’s travels in China surely led him to question the universality of this law, if not to consider human idiosyncrasies with a degree of humour. With regard to the incidence of same-sex practice in China he writes: Como aca [España] condenan a Oran, y galeras, condenaua el Chino al muro. El pecado de sodomia tenia esta pena tambien: pero si todos los que tienen este vicio la huuieran de pagar, juzgo, quedaria despoblada la China, y el muro con demasiada guarnicion. (31) [As here (Spain) they condemn men to Oran and to the galleys, they condemned the Chinese to the wall. The sin of sodomy carried this punishment as well: but if all those who commit this vice had to pay, I judge that China would be depopulated and the wall over guarded.]

Navarrete assumes a new view not only of Western culture but also of himself. This occurs as a consequence of his personal interactions with the Chinese. At the beginning of his travels in China he highlights a moment, reminiscent of Luarca’s experience with the Chinese women, when a group of people stares at him. Though usually he is the one who observes and interprets, now he is rendered the object of a sort of reverse orientalizing gaze, more explicit than in the case of Luarca precisely because he can see the people looking at him: ‘auia rio que passar en barco grande de el comun. Despues de no poco cuydado entramos en el passaje, y me vi alli dentro entre muchos, que no hazian mas que mirarme’ (337–8) [there was a river to cross in a typical, big boat. After no small effort, we began the crossing, and I found myself there among many people, who did nothing but look at me]. Because of this experience of difference (in himself, rather than the other), he feels as if he has entered an alien world: ‘quando me vi en tierra, me parecio auia salido a otro mundo’ (338) [when I found myself on land, it seemed to me that I had stepped out into another world]. His unease increases, and then abates, when he sees a strange man watching him: A poco mas de dos leguas encontre con el China mas alto, y fiero en figura, que auia visto hasta alli, para mi fue Angel imbiado de Dios; juntose a mi, alagauame, consolauame, y por señas, y acciones me daua a entender, que

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me alegrasse, y no tuuiesse miedo, que el me sacaria la paz, y a salvo; yo entendia algo, y mi China me lo explicaua bien claramente: en las posadas me daua el mejor aposento; comiendo me ofrecia el mejor bocado; tomauame de la mano, poniame a su lado derecho, y como si fuera mi Tutor, o Pedagogo, andaua siempre mirando por mi: no he visto jamas mejor masa, ni natural de hombre. (338) [After a little more than two leagues I came upon a Chinese man, taller and wilder in demeanour than any I had seen up until then, (but) for me he was an angel sent from God; he stayed by my side, flattered me, and consoled me, and by signs and actions he gave me to understand that I should be happy and not afraid, and that he would get me through peacefully and safely; I understood a bit, and my Chinese man explained everything to me very clearly: in the inns he gave me the best room, eating he offered me the best food; he took me by the hand, sat me by his right side, and as if he were my tutor or teacher, he was always looking out for me. I have never seen a better creature or man.]

In this passage Navarrete inverts the dichotomy of being and appearance. Here a wild, almost inhuman exterior gives way to an angelic interior. Whereas for Mendoza and Pantoja, the potential Christian essence of the Chinese can be actualized only through Western mediation, in the Tratados it is given in the kindness of a stranger whose actions function to ‘save’ the Christian Navarrete. Despite Navarrete’s aspirations as a missionary, he is the disciple. In this account of a single day on a journey of many years, Navarrete moves from the position of subject, to object, to a sort of rebirth to new subjecthood through the first of his Chinese mentors and friends. Navarrete cites several instances when Chinese people take him under their wing, provide him with food and drink, and even let him sleep in their own beds. He describes a night spent with one individual: aquella noche hizo marauillas conmigo aquel hombre, me dio su propio aposento, y cama, que todo era bueno; verdad es que dormi muy poco, por el cuydado de madrugar, regalome, y no quiso recibir cosa alguna por la posada. Entre infieles es poco esto. (337) [that night that man did wonderful things with me, he gave me his own room and bed, all of which were good; the truth is I slept very little, con-

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cerned as I was about getting up early, and he gave his hospitality as a gift, and refused to receive anything for the lodging. Among the infidels this is a little thing.]

Human interactions such as these, more than all the formal aspects of Chinese culture that Navarrete studies, lead him to see the world through fresh eyes. As a result, his sense of self changes, and while in China he assumes the name ‘Min Ming-wo’ [閔 明我].45 Navarrete’s Chinese persona remains with him long after he leaves China, and when at last he returns to Europe after nearly a quarter of a century abroad, he disembarks at Lisbon harbour ‘vestido de Chino’ (407) [dressed as a Chinese man]. As evidenced by Pantoja, Chinese dress was typical of the so-called Jesuit mandarins, who hoped to facilitate the project of conversion by imitating the style of Chinese sages. The friars, as Cummins notes, were not in principle opposed to this, but did consider the wearing of fine silk a deviation from the ideals of clerical poverty (Travels xlvi). In the European context, however, Navarrete’s Chinese dress has less to do with religion than with an effort on his part to assert, and indeed perform, a Chinese persona. In so doing he stands as a forerunner in a long line of orientalist travellers who don foreign garb in an attempt to recreate their cultural identities. In Navarrete’s case, ‘going native’ means forging a vantage point from which he can write against the West and challenge many of its cultural assumptions. As a missionary, he seeks to convert the Chinese to Christianity. But his life adds new meaning to the adage of Xavier that ‘convertir es convertirse’ (Muñoz Vidal 92) [to convert is to be converted], for in the process of his missionary activity he comes to identify with the Chinese. According to Abdul R. JanMohamed, identification with cultural others ‘is possible only if the self can somehow negate or at least severely bracket the values, assumptions, and ideology of [its] culture’ (65). Navarrete never fully negates his origins because he remains Christian. Yet through writing he expresses a kind of cultural hybridity that functions to dislodge the centrality not only of China (a site traditionally regarded by its own inhabitants as the Middle Kingdom, or centre of the earth) but also of Christian Europe. Luarca, Mendoza, Pantoja, and Navarrete all produce texts that meld Hispanic and Asian world views. Moreover, they are all outwardlooking in their observations of the Chinese. But Navarrete, to a greater extent than his compatriot writers, also turns his gaze inwards, revealing

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how the Chinese affect him as an observer and how they ultimately come to transform him. In the Tratados, China is not only the object of Western historical inquiry, as is the case in Mendoza’s Historia, but also an agent of the Western historian’s personal development and potentially a force of change in the West itself. The texts of Luarca, Pantoja, Mendoza, and Navarrete are for the most part modern histories. But if some, like Mendoza’s Historia, echo an earlier tradition of prophetic history, Navarrete’s augurs a more recent kind of self-reflexive historical writing. Together, these texts show how early Hispanic Asianography functioned to produce not only multiple images of China but also of Spain and the West, ultimately revealing a new sense of the human subject and society.

Chapter Three

The Quest for Cambodia

In contrast to Japan and China, mainland Southeast Asia did not figure prominently in the Spanish imaginary of the early modern period. Most Spanish writings on the region were composed in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and most related largely to Cambodia. The Spanish hoped that by conquering Cambodia they might extend their base of operations in Asia from the Philippine archipelago to the continent. To a certain degree they regarded Cambodians and Filipinos as similar insofar as both peoples occupied the same climate zone. In keeping with received classical and medieval notions of the effects of sun and heat on the human body and its physical, mental, and moral faculties, many Spaniards assumed that Cambodians and Filipinos were less civilized than Mediterranean Europeans, Japanese, and Chinese, whose nations shared common lines of latitude. Early modern Spanish depictions of Cambodia thus differed from concurrent representations of Japan and China. Often, Spanish writers described Cambodians negatively, and though they believed that Southeast Asia was materially rich, they never expressed the kind of admiration and enthusiasm that writers like Xavier and Navarrete conveyed in their texts. Some in fact did occasionally highlight Cambodian cultural accomplishments. Yet like much early Spanish discourse of the Americas and the Philippines, Hispanic writings on Cambodia were intended primarily to justify conquest and colonization. According to the early seventeenth-century Spanish chronicler Gabriel Quiroga de San Antonio, the Kingdom of Cambodia was so rich that when the monarch, Paramar¯aj¯a IV,1 fled invading Siamese armies in 1594, he scattered gold and silver coins in their path in order to distract them and make possible his escape into Laos.2 San Antonio regarded

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Cambodia not only as a site of immense wealth but also, mistakenly, as the linchpin in the entire network of East Asian trade. Shortly after the initial conquest and settlement of the Philippines, the Spanish in fact launched two unsuccessful attempts to establish Spanish control over Cambodia. The first, reported by Diego Aduarte in a swashbuckling account of his own role as soldier-priest in Historia de la Provincia del Santo Rosario de la Orden de Predicadores en Filipinas, Japón y China (1640) [History of the Holy Rosary Province of the Order of Preachers in the Philippines, Japan, and China],3 resulted in the murder in 1596 of the reigning Cambodian king, R¯am I.4 The second incursion ended in 1599 with the slaughter of almost all the Europeans present in Cambodia at the time.5 In the Relación de los sucesos del reino de la Cambodja (1604) [Account of the events of the kingdom of Cambodia],6 San Antonio narrates both of these expeditions while describing Cambodian history, politics, and society. Unlike other Spanish clerical commentators of the period (such as Xavier, Mendoza, and Navarrete), who tend to favour a peaceful evangelization of East Asia, San Antonio explicitly seeks to persuade the Spanish monarchy to instigate a third and decisive invasion of Cambodia. Both he and Aduarte advocate war, but the arguments they advance to authorize their positions deviate from the principles of just war elucidated by Thomas Aquinas and reaffirmed in the preliminary phase of Spanish imperialism by Vitoria. Yet both also provide valuable insights into Cambodian life in the early modern period and at times seem even to use Cambodia to hold up a critical mirror to Europe. Though virtually unknown to contemporary Hispanists, their texts are significant in the Spanish imperial canon, marking the beginning of Western writings on a region of the world that would tragically remain at the forefront of the West’s imperialist aspirations well into the twentieth century. Cambodia is first mentioned in European writing in the early sixteenth-century letters from the Portuguese navigator Alfonso de Albuquerque to the king of Portugal and from the Portuguese king to the pope. It is first briefly described in the Suma Oriental (written between 1512 and 1515 and published in 1563) of the Portuguese writer and diplomat Tomé Pires, and subsequently in the Tractado (1569) of Gaspar da Cruz, the first Christian missionary to Cambodia.7 As Bernard Philippe Groslier points out, the first systematic European descriptions of Cambodia are the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century texts of the Spanish (150), and in particular San Antonio’s Relación.8 Most early European writers on Cambodia, including San Antonio, comment on

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Angkor, the ancient Khmer capital whose sites (especially Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom) form the historic and symbolic heart of Cambodian culture.9 Though San Antonio’s depiction of Angkor is neither original nor thorough, it is the most frequently cited of those from the early modern period (75). Like his Iberian compatriots, San Antonio makes erroneous statements, claiming, for instance, that Roman Jews built Angkor before migrating to China. But what is striking is how he reads Angkor through a distinctively Spanish lens, comparing the Mekong River to the Guadalquivir and the putative discovery of Angkor Thom in the mid-sixteenth century by Paramara¯ j¯a IV to the recent discovery of a remote group of sheepfolds in Spain. Although Angkor had in fact been abandoned several hundred years prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the Cambodians probably always knew of its existence, and the assertion that the Cambodian king ‘discovered’ it ultimately functions – as do subsequent Spanish religious and military actions – to subsume Cambodia within a European perspective on the country. Cambodia was in a state of internal political turmoil when Iberian merchants, missionaries, and soldiers attempted to assert themselves in the region in the late sixteenth century.10 Paramar¯aj¯a IV, who ascended to the throne in 1576, was driven from the Cambodian capital at Longvêk (located between Phnom Penh and Angkor) by the Siamese king, Naresuan, in January 1594. Because of repeated attacks by the Siamese, Paramara¯ j¯a IV had previously begun to look to the Portuguese in Malacca and the Spanish in the Philippines for assistance. His two favourites among the Europeans in Cambodia, the Portuguese Diogo Veloso (often spelled Velloso or Belloso) and the Spaniard Blas Ruiz de Hernán González, played decisive roles in establishing relations between the Cambodians and Spanish.11 In 1593 Veloso travelled to the Philippines with a letter from the Cambodian king requesting Spanish military aid and, in exchange, offering the Spaniards trading privileges and the freedom to preach Christianity throughout Cambodia. Veloso presented the letter to the governor of the Philippines, Pedro Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas, who soon afterwards was killed by Chinese during a failed attempt to conquer the Moluccas and succeeded by his son, Luis Pérez Dasmariñas. The latter sent Veloso back to Cambodia with a vague response of support for Paramar¯aj¯a IV. When Veloso arrived, the Siamese had already conquered Cambodia and Paramar¯aj¯a IV had fled Longvêk. Veloso was then captured by the Siamese and imprisoned in the Siamese capital at Ayutthaya. He nevertheless managed to win the favour of Naresuan, who hoped to negotiate Spanish neutrality in an

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imminent war between Siam and Burma, and in late 1594 he returned to Manila as a member of a Siamese embassy. In the meantime, the Cambodians had retaken Longvêk, not under Paramar¯aj¯a IV, as Veloso supposed, but his rival, R¯am I. Veloso, along with Ruiz, persuaded the Spanish in Manila to launch an expedition to support Paramar¯aj¯a IV, whom they mistakenly believed to be king and still under threat from the Siamese. The conflicts and ultimate disasters reported by Aduarte and San Antonio occurred precisely because of this error. Palace Raiders and Priestly Spin The first Spanish military expedition to Cambodia, which Aduarte chronicles in his Historia (1: chapters 46–8), departed from Manila on 18 January 1596. The commander, Juan Juárez Gallinato, led the main frigate, followed by two junks captained by Ruiz and Veloso. The bulk of the troops sailed with Ruiz, whereas the clergymen, including Aduarte, accompanied Veloso. While en route to the Southeast Asian mainland, Gallinato’s vessel was blown off course and driven southward to the Straits of Malacca. Ruiz’s reached the Mekong and navigated upriver, anchoring not far from present-day Phnom Penh (referred to by the Iberians as Churdumuco) and the capital of R¯am I, Srei Santhor (referred to by the Iberians as Sistor).12 But Veloso’s junk foundered near the Mekong delta, and only after numerous difficulties, which Aduarte describes in harrowing detail, did Veloso and Ruiz’s contingents reunite. Gallinato eventually joined them as well, but in the meantime, and to his clear dismay, his Spanish charges had not only incurred the anger of the local authorities but actually gone so far as to incite a battle and kill the reigning king. Aduarte, born in Zaragoza in 1569 and ordained a Dominican in Alcalá de Henares in 1586, first arrived in the Philippines in June 1595. Four years before his death in 1636 he became the bishop of the Philippine diocese of Nueva Segovia. Whereas Manuel Ferrero, the twentieth-century editor of Aduarte’s work, describes him as ‘seco y algo rígido’ (Aduarte 1: xxv) [cold and somewhat rigid], the scholar Lawrence Palmer Briggs depicts him as a ‘rollicking Rabelaisian monk . . . who many years later seemed to take great pleasure in boasting of his exploits on [the Cambodian] expedition’ (152). In his extensive writings, Aduarte in fact elucidates a complex narrative voice. At the outset of his Cambodian narrative he expresses an attitude of humility consonant with his religious vows:

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Yo, a todo esto, tenía para mí que había yo de ir, y lo decía a mis amigos, porque era el que menos falta había de hacer en la Provincia . . . Aunque, por ser mozo de solos [sic] veinte y seis años, no habían dado en mí en la primera, ni en la segunda vez que de este punto trataron. Y al fin ello fue así, que, después de tentados otros vados, les pareció que fuese yo, y vine luego en ello, por ser amigo de estar sin propria voluntad y juicio en cosas de obediencia. (1: 316) [When confronted with this I thought to myself that I had to go, and I told my friends so, because I was the one who would be least needed in the Province . . . Although, as I was a youth of only twenty-six years, they had not considered me either the first or the second time they dealt with the matter. But in the end it turned out that after considering other options, it seemed to them that I should be the one, and I agreed, as I always try not to exercise my own will and judgment in matters of obedience.]

Throughout the narrative, Aduarte attributes both the good and bad fortune of his comrades to divine intervention. If on one occasion God allows them to suffer, this is in order to fortify them for greater hardships to come. If on another occasion he withholds a miracle, this is because he is about to bestow on them an even greater blessing. Though the Spaniards ultimately fight against incredible odds, not a single one, Aduarte insists, is killed during the entire undertaking. Aduarte thus writes in the tradition of sacred history, depicting the unfolding of a providential plan that will inevitably lead to the Christianization of all peoples, including Cambodians. As Joan-Pau Rubiés remarks in his study of early Spanish contributions to Asian ethnology, ‘Aduarte failed to describe Asian countries and peoples in any detail, concentrating instead on the hagiographic narrative’ (427).13 But despite this, he is often attentive to external phenomena, recording his observations of Cambodia and revealing, at times somewhat inadvertently, his own personal reactions to what he sees. Shortly after arriving in Cambodia, he visits two Buddhist monasteries. His encounter with the monks is in fact the only peaceful contact he has with Cambodians during his entire stay in the country. His comments are significant for what they reveal about Spanish clerical attitudes towards a non-Christian religion and a non-European people. Moreover, because the monks are Aduarte’s closest Cambodian counterparts, his comments also provide insight into his own sense of self.

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The first monastery Aduarte visits is located in a town. He speaks to an elderly monk, whom he compares to an abbot, and then meets the entire community in a large assembly hall. Aduarte sits next to the elderly monk on a raised platform rather than with the group of monks on the floor. The monks seem amused by what is obviously a breach of etiquette on the part of Aduarte, and when he attempts to speak a few words of their language, they begin to laugh. But their attitude is cordial, and they offer him fruit to eat. Afterwards, the ‘sacristan’ takes him into the temple and shows him various sacred statues. Aduarte looks at them with respect so as not to offend his host, but through hand gestures indicates that the monks should instead adore something higher. Aduarte then departs. Not surprisingly, he disapproves of what he sees, informing the reader that the altar is dirty and without decoration and describing the statues as idols. But his effort to be gracious and interact with his hosts on their own terms stands in stark contrast to his and his comrades’ subsequent acts of belligerence. Aduarte visits the second monastery in the countryside. Though he does not describe the site, the memory leads him to comment on several aspects of Buddhist practice. He notes that Buddhist monks do not pray in the common language of the country but in another tongue that functions like Latin within the Roman Catholic rite. He also reports the observation of a Portuguese priest that Buddhist monks often make short confessions to their companions as part of their prayer rituals. Aduarte interprets all this as the work of the devil, who, in an effort to imitate God, parodies Christian religious customs in a non-Christian context. He then makes the following assessment of Cambodian Buddhist monasticism: Y con todo eso, estos sus conventos están llenos de vicios y suciedades torpísimas, para las cuales tienen licencia, no la teniendo los demás de la tierra por una razón ridícula, pero indigna de escribirse. (1: 324) [And on top of all this, their convents reek of vices and obscene, vile acts, which, though prohibited in the rest of the land, they are allowed to commit, for a ridiculous reason, albeit one not worthy of being written.]

Aduarte’s references to the ‘obscene’ and ‘vile’ acts of the Buddhist monks he encounters are reminiscent of the Spanish missionaries’ denunciations of the homoerotic activity they witnessed in Japanese Buddhist monasteries. In the context of Cambodia San Antonio himself

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remarks on what he assumes to be the homoerotic practices of Buddhist clergy. Aduarte’s words are nevertheless peculiar, for what is usually unworthy of mention, if not ‘unspeakable,’ is sodomy itself, not the reason why it might be tolerated in a certain group rather than the populace as a whole. What Aduarte seems to avoid articulating is a validation of homoeroticism, which he dismisses as ridiculous. He then concludes his discussion of Buddhist monasticism by describing the vestments of ‘estos devotos y malditos religiosos’ (1: 325) [these pious but damnable monks] and his return to his Spanish comrades: ‘Llegué finalmente al navío de nuestra gente y comunicamos los sucesos de ambas partes, que el contarlos es alivio’ (1: 325) [I finally arrived at our group’s boat, and we told each other the things we had witnessed, because telling them is a relief]. These general observations about Cambodian Buddhist monasticism – regarding the language of prayer, confession, and vice – at first seem detached from Aduarte’s experience in the two monasteries. But they are in fact inserted within the narration of his visits to the monasteries and his return to the Spanish boat, and, with the exception of the comment by the Portuguese priest, likely form part of what he himself learned directly about Buddhist monastic life. The word ‘alivio’ [relief] is particularly revealing, for what Aduarte reports does not seem troubling enough (if indeed troubling at all) to lead to a sensation of relief when the excursion is over. Yet like Xavier’s encounter in Japan, his interaction with a culture both alien and similar to his own clearly disconcerts him. Aduarte perhaps told his comrades more than he writes – something perhaps ‘indigna de escribirse’ [not worthy of being written]. In recalling the episode, however, he also engages in an act of silencing, passing over certain points as if anxious to deliver his narrative persona to a safe space wherein he can speak to others like himself and thereby reaffirm a sense of self possibly threatened in the presence of cultural others. This safe space is ostensibly a Spanish boat separate from the Cambodian mainland. But it is ultimately also the text itself as a site in which personal, national, and religious identities are inscribed. If in the Buddhist monasteries Aduarte expresses profound unease, in the second social space depicted in the text, the royal palace, he acts with considerable resolve. As he explains, the reigning king, R¯am I, was hostile to the Spaniards because he saw them as allies of Paramar¯aj¯a IV, whose throne he occupied. He was also angered when they fought with local Chinese merchants, who were fearful that the Spaniards intended

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to displace them. According to Aduarte, the Spaniards believed that R¯am I was going to kill them, and they therefore decided to attack him in his palace.14 Prior to the assault, Aduarte heard their confessions and clarified to them the proper conduct of war: [D]eclaréles lo que les era lícito, que era sólo lo que la defensa natural pidiese, sin ofender a los contrarios en las haciendas, por ningún caso, ni en las vidas, no siendo forzoso para conservar las nuestras. (1: 330) [I told them what was legal, which was only what natural defence called for, without threatening our adversaries’ property, and under no circumstance their lives, unless it was necessary to preserve our own.]

Here, Aduarte justifies killing only as a means of self-defence. But on this occasion the Spaniards do not engage in self-defence but instead seek to prevent a possible act of aggression against themselves. Their actions are thus ‘offensive’ and as such contrary to the principles of mainstream Catholic theology regarding war. Thomas Aquinas specifically states that for a war to be just, ‘a just cause is required, namely that those who are attacked are attacked because they deserve it on account of some wrong they have done’ (83). Vitoria, Spain’s leading proponent of just-war theory in the sixteenth century, develops this precept in the context of Spanish imperialism: ‘La única y sola causa justa de hacer la guerra es la injuria recibida’ (Las relecciones 249) [‘There is a single and only just cause for commencing a war, namely, a wrong received’ (Victoria, De indis 170].15 But when the Spaniards attack Ra¯ m I, he has done no wrong, and they have suffered no injury. The issue of just war is especially significant in late sixteenth-century Spanish-Asian relations, as the Spanish crown, sobered by the horrific violence of the conquest of the Americas, sought to justify its hegemony by claiming a divinely ordained mandate to disseminate Christianity throughout the world. In late sixteenth-century Cambodia, not only do the Spaniards lack a just cause for waging war; they also lack clear authority for doing so. According to Thomas Aquinas, the first and foremost requirement of a just war is ‘the authority of the sovereign on whose command war is waged’ (81). Here, the immediate ‘sovereign’ is Gallinato, the representative of the governor of the Philippines, who represents the king of Spain. But as Aduarte reports, Gallinato was separated from his contingent, and his men replaced him with a leader of their own choosing: ‘A Diego Velloso se le dio el cargo de capitán

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de todos, como a más práctico en la tierra’ (1: 330) [Diego Velloso was given the position of head captain, as he was the most experienced in the land]. Whereas the sovereignty of the monarch – and, by extension, that of Gallinato – derives putatively from God, the sovereignty of Veloso derives from a group of soldiers and priests, that is, the ‘people.’ The attack on R¯am I might for this reason be regarded as a ‘democratic war.’16 The Spaniards, however, continue to profess loyalty to their own supreme, temporal sovereign, the king of Spain, whose authority they assume only briefly. What is more, they do not expressly advocate regicide, and instead report the murder of the Cambodian king (whom they continually depict as a usurper) as an accident – albeit one that Aduarte will ultimately attribute to divine intervention. They thus appear to act as obedient subjects despite their independence, initiative, and, one might argue, recklessness.17 If the Spaniards’ authority to conduct war against the king of Cambodia is open to question, Aduarte’s participation as an active combatant clearly contravenes Christian doctrine. As Thomas Aquinas maintains, Clerics are forbidden to fight in war, not because it is a sin, but because it is unbecoming their persons. Although to wage a just war is meritorious, nevertheless it is wrong for clerics because they are deputed to works of higher merit. The marriage act, for example, can be meritorious, but for those with a vow of virginity it becomes reprehensible since they are committed to a higher good. (89)

Aduarte reveals that he hoped to avoid the skirmish, not simply because he was a priest but because the fighting promised to be violent; and as if to exonerate himself, he insists that he only joined his compatriots because they pressured him to do so. Once inside the palace, he begins to assume a role of authority, tempering the Spaniards’ bellicosity and ordering them not to burn it. Yet rather than as a pacifier, he sees himself as a religious warrior of almost epic proportions. He even implicitly compares himself to Joshua at the Battle of Jericho: ‘Quisiera yo entonces se detuviera el sol en salir, lo que se detuvo en tiempo de Josué en ponerse, porque tenía a aquella noche por capa de pecadores afligidos’ (1: 331) [I wished then for the sun to stop and not rise, just as in the time of Joshua it stopped and did not set, because the night provided cover for poor sinners]. Eventually, Veloso is wounded, and the group appoints Aduarte as their leader. For the moment, then, it is he who functions as sovereign.

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In describing what follows, Aduarte deftly portrays himself as a soldier-priest. In confronting an enemy leader, he claims that he chose to meet him face to face in the hope that the Cambodian would kill him and in this way spare him from the sight of the butchery to come or from the worse fate of being captured alive. But, ‘tomando mejor consejo’ (1: 332) [following wiser council], he ordered Ruiz to attack the Cambodian. In this way he acts with military decisiveness without actually killing another human being. After the Cambodian is dead, several Japanese soldiers in the Spanish contingent cut him into pieces, ‘sin que le valiesen unos hechizos que traía, en cuya confianza se había metido tanto entre nosotros, pareciéndole que venía muy seguro’ (1: 332) [without the charms he carried defending him, even though he had got into the thick of it with us because he had confidence in them and thought they made him quite safe]. The Cambodians, Aduarte implies, are doomed precisely because they lack the protection that only the ‘true’ religion can afford. The Spaniards, in contrast, seem to enjoy divine favour, and at the decisive moment, Aduarte writes, God intervenes on their behalf and allows the Cambodian king, ‘un demonio sobre un elefante’ (1: 332) [a devil on an elephant], to be killed: En esta ocasión, entre las balas de los nuestros que andaban desmandadas, quiso Dios que alcanzase una al Rey, la cual iba tan bien despedida, que con ser muy grueso, le atravesó todo el cuerpo, y hirió a otro que iba detrás de él en el mismo elefante. (1: 332) [On this occasion, from among the bullets of our men that had gone astray, God willed that one reach the king, and it was so well fired that even though he was very stout, it traversed his entire body, and wounded another man who rode behind him on the same elephant.]

By having the king perish, as it were, at the hand of the ultimate authority and arbiter of justice, Aduarte cleverly lays to rest whatever theoretical objections one might raise regarding the actions of the Spaniards in Cambodia. But though the enemy king is dead, their ordeal is far from over. After sacking the palace and murdering the king, the Spaniards flee Srei Santhor and retreat back to the Mekong. Aduarte continues to provide encouragement to the troops as they ford the river: ‘Y fue Dios servido para mayor gloria suya, por un instrumento tan flaco dar ánimo a quien le tenía ya perdido’ (1: 336) [And God was served for his greater glory, by a servant as insignificant as me, who gave heart to those who

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had lost it]. After crossing through water up to their chins, they reach the opposite shore, only to sink into deep mud. To extricate himself, Aduarte has to leave behind his shoes and stockings: ‘[H]ube de dejar allá en prendas los zapatos y calzas, que no las pude desatollar’ (1: 336) [I had to leave my shoes and stockings there in hock, as I could not pull them from the muck]. This personal detail – of Aduarte losing his shoes and presumably having to march barefoot through the jungle – reveals the arduousness of the escape. But it also makes plain the utter futility of the entire Cambodian adventure, for not only did the Spaniards leave nothing but death and destruction in their wake, but they themselves gained nothing for all their efforts. Making the Case for an Unjust War Unlike Aduarte, San Antonio never went to Cambodia, and his Relación is a second-hand account of the country and the conflicts between Cambodians and Spaniards.18 For this reason, it contains numerous historical errors.19 Yet because the text is a compilation of various sources, it also has a broad scope. What is more, San Antonio aims not simply to justify the past actions of his compatriots but to make a case for future Spanish intervention in Cambodia. His work is thus even more propagandistic than Aduarte’s. San Antonio and Aduarte in fact knew each other, and travelled on the same ship from Acapulco to Manila, where they landed on 10 June 1595. According to Antoine Cabaton, San Antonio was too old and infirm at the time to join the Gallinato expedition (x).20 Instead, he remained in Manila until 1598. He then returned to Spain as a representative of the Philippine Dominicans, making lengthy stops in Malacca (where he joined Aduarte) and Goa, and arriving home in 1603. After his return, he wrote and published the Relación with the express hope of winning the support of the Council of the Indies and Philip III for a full-fledged invasion of Cambodia. Yet equally important as his arguments for war are his readings of Cambodian life and culture. At times San Antonio’s Relación reads like an ethnography. The Cambodian people, he declares, are ‘de mediana estatura, de color baço, llana y senzilla, y de mejor coraçon que los naturales de los otros Reynos’ (1, 1, 4) [of medium height, of a brownish-grey colour, unassuming and simple, and better hearted than the naturals of other kingdoms].21 San Antonio’s use of the word ‘baço’ to describe the skin colour of Cambodians is intriguing. The early seventeenth-century dictionary of Sebastián de Covarrubias defines ‘baço’ as a colour between ‘pardo’ [brownish grey] and ‘negro’ [black] (202). In fact, ‘pardo’ was a caste category

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in colonial Spanish America for a person descending from a white, a black, and an Amerindian. If San Antonio meant to describe Cambodians as darker than ‘pardos,’ then he presumably regarded them as close in colour to indios and negros. Elsewhere, however, he portrays upper-class Cambodian women as ‘blancas’ [white] (1, 1, 4). In his writing, colour thus seems to function as a marker of social strata within a group of people, that is, as caste, rather than a racial designation for an entire group. San Antonio’s depiction of Cambodians as gentle and kind suggests that they would be not only easy to subdue but also receptive to Christianization. According to San Antonio, they differ from other Asian groups and in particular the Chinese, who are the Spaniards’ main commercial rivals in the region. Somewhat surprisingly, he compares the Chinese and Japanese to Jews: Son estas naciones como los Iudios, y aun peores que nunca van a tierra esteril, o pobre: y siempre viuen, y tratan en las tierras que manan leche y miel: y donde pueden sacar prouecho, y es cosa certissima que pues ellas contratan con el Reyno de Camboxa, es Reyno muy rico, y donde hallan grandes prouechos. (4, 1) [These peoples are like the Jews, and even worse in that they never go to a sterile or poor land: they always live and are engaged in lands that flow with milk and honey, where they can derive profit, and it is most certain that since they do business with the kingdom of Cambodia, the kingdom is very rich, and where great gains are to be found.]

San Antonio makes this comment in order to demonstrate that Cambodia is a land worthy of Spanish interest. Although early modern Spanish observers of China and Japan typically compare the Chinese and Japanese to Europeans because they regard their societies as rationally ordered and hence civilized, San Antonio associates them with a Western group in order to denigrate them. His representation of the Cambodians, in contrast, is more complex. One the one hand, they are a ‘simple’ people, like the ‘natives’ so often imagined by European imperialists. But on the other hand their society appears rationally ordered, and in Angkor las casas son de piedra muy hermosas, repartidas en calles con mucho orden, y la labor dellas de sus portadas y patios, salas y camaras, parece Romana. (1, 1, 3)

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[the houses are made of stone and are very beautiful, and are laid out on streets with great order, and the detail on their façades and patios, drawing rooms and bedrooms, seems Roman.]

For San Antonio, however, Cambodia bears the traces of civilization because of prior European intervention (supposedly by Roman Jews) and not as the result of indigenous talent or effort. Cambodians may be susceptible to Europeanization, but unlike the Chinese and Japanese they are at present not comparable to Europeans. In representing Cambodians and Cambodian culture, San Antonio thus melds contemporary Spanish attitudes towards the Chinese and Japanese (and Jews) as well as those peoples they deem less civilized. San Antonio’s depiction of Cambodian women fits within an imperialist agenda. He distinguishes between women of different classes, whom he characterizes according to skin colour. But he maintains that in matrimony all experience a similar plight: [L]as principales son blancas y hermosas, y las otras de ordinario son baças, y labran la tierra mientras los maridos estan ocupados con guerras. Viuen todas ellas muy descontentas, viendose muchas casadas con un solo hombre, porque de ordinario tienen poca paz, y son todas celosas. (1, 1, 4) [The high-born women are white and beautiful, and the others ordinarily are of a brownish-grey colour, and work the land while their husbands are occupied with war. They are all quite unhappy, because many are married to one sole man, and because they ordinarily have little peace and are all jealous.]

San Antonio implies that under a Christian regime of monogamy, Cambodian women would be happier. He makes the point explicit in a reference to the kingdom of Cochinchina (northern Vietnam), where married women, he insists, ‘tienen embidia a las mugeres christianas, porque una sola se casa con un hombre’ (1, 2, 10) [are envious of Christian women, because one alone marries a man]. In fact, it is unlikely that the Southeast Asian women to whom San Antonio refers had observed the lives of many Christian women. His discussion of Cambodian women might thus be read as part of an incipient imperialist discourse of gender that invokes the putatively superior status of women in Western society as evidence of Western superiority in general and as a justification for empire.

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Like Aduarte, San Antonio disparages Cambodian religion by imputing sodomy to the Buddhist clergy: Los que han de seguir este estado religioso, començan desde niños, y si despues quando grandes quieren perseuerar, hazen profession, y prometen quatro votos, conuiene a saber no mentir, no matar, no hurtar, no fornicar con mugeres, que entre si son someticos: quando niños pasiuos, y actiuos quando grandes. (1, 1, 4) [Those who are to follow in this religious vocation begin as boys, and if later when older they want to continue, they profess, and make four vows, to wit, not to lie, not to kill, not to steal, and not to fornicate with women, as among themselves they are sodomites: passive as boys and active when older.]

San Antonio implies a relation between Buddhist clergymen’s fourth vow not to engage in sexual intercourse with women and the ‘fact’ that they are sodomites. The comment is most striking not for what it says about Cambodian Buddhism but for the suggestion that clerical chastity somehow leads to or at least forms the condition of homoerotic practice. It is difficult to imagine that San Antonio did not realize that this anti-Buddhist diatribe could in fact apply to the Roman Catholic clergy to which he himself belonged. If he did, then this is one of several examples in his writing of how he manipulates the image of Cambodia in order to subtly criticize European institutions. San Antonio describes the behaviour of Spaniards and Asians in often highly ambiguous terms. One noteworthy example involves an encounter between a Japanese and a Spaniard: Encontraronse un Iapon, y un Castilla, y sobre qual era mas principal y mas honrado (despues de auer tenido grandes porfias) vinieron a las manos y el Castilla dio tantas cozes y bofetones al Iapon que le dexo muy mal tratado. El se fue a sus compañeros, y supo muy bien exagerar el agrauio recebido. (2, 2, 4) [A Japanese man and a Castilian met, and after much arguing they came to blows over who was nobler and had more honour, and the Castilian gave the Japanese man so many kicks and slaps that he left him very badly wounded. He [the Japanese man] then went back to his companions, and managed very well to exaggerate the injury he had received.]

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San Antonio goes on to explain how the Japanese man sought the help of a local official to instigate an attack against an entire Spanish contingent. Ostensibly, he portrays the Japanese man in a negative light, implying that he exaggerates the offence in order to justify anti-Spanish violence. But if the Spaniard left the Japanese man ‘muy mal tratado’ [very badly wounded], then the latter’s report of the event is likely not an exaggeration. What San Antonio in fact reveals is that the violence of his countrymen often resulted in violent repercussions against them – as happened on various occasions throughout their Cambodian exploits. And as if this were not enough, San Antonio states that ‘[e]l desseo de Reynar en la tierra puede tanto con los hombres que a muchos ha hecho perder la vida y perder el cielo’ (2, 1, 1) [the desire to rule on earth can affect men so much that it has made many lose their lives and also lose heaven]. This observation supposedly applies to a Cambodian king. But it is difficult not to read such passages as charges against the excesses of some of San Antonio’s own compatriots. Despite these seemingly anti-Spanish undercurrents in the Relación, San Antonio writes with the aim of persuading the Spanish monarchy to undertake another incursion into Cambodia and extend the Spanish sphere of influence throughout Southeast Asia. In making his case, he does not begin with theological arguments for war but instead speaks of the material benefits that would accrue to the Spanish through conquest. He highlights that Cambodia is a rich land, well situated for trade and close to other countries of even greater wealth: Ay en Camboxa oro[,] plata, pedreria, plomo, estaño, cobre, seda, algodon, incienso, uenjuy, lacre, marfil, arroz, elefantes, bufanos, cauallos, vacas, cabras, venados, gallinas, y frutas muchas y muy regaladas, y sin esto tiene el contrato de toda la Assia, y es la puerta principal para gozar las riquezas inestimables, que tiene el Reyno de los Laos. (4, 1) [In Cambodia there is gold, silver, precious stones, lead, tin, copper, silk, cotton, incense, benzoin, wax, ivory, rice, elephants, buffalos, horses, cows, goats, deer, chickens, and many delicate fruits, and even without this it has commerce with all of Asia, and is the main gateway for reaching the inestimable riches of the kingdom of Laos].22

He then assures the Spanish monarch that colonization of Cambodia is worthwhile: ‘[A]ssi sin duda, ni encarecimiento[,] poblando V. Magestad

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este Reyno, o los conuezinos, augmentara sus rentas y enriquezera sus vassallos, excessiuamente’ (4, 1) [Thus without doubt, and without cost, if your Majesty colonizes this kingdom, or the neighbouring ones, he will greatly augment his income and enrich his vassals]. Only after clarifying the material justifications for intervention does San Antonio broach theology. He begins by arguing that war against the kingdoms of Siam, Cochinchina, and Champa (southern Vietnam) is appropriate because many Spaniards have already died in these countries and innocent people throughout the region require protection. In this way he subtly deflects the issue of war away from Cambodia, which he maintains is more than happy to become a Spanish protectorate and receive the fruits of Christianization, and directs his invective against Cambodia’s historic enemies. The innocent people to whom he alludes are presumably those who would favour Spanish intervention in Southeast Asian affairs. What San Antonio overlooks is that those who died in fact perished as a result of Spain’s initial and, from the theological standpoint, highly questionable intervention. Yet he insists that ‘en buena Theolugia es causa bastante para hazerles Guerra’ (4, 2) [in good theology this is sufficient cause to make war against them]. He then makes his primary theological argument that war is justified as a means of propagating the faith and saving souls: ‘[L]a conuersion de tantos Reynos[,] la saluacion de tantas almas, y la extension del Euangelio . . . es el prouecho principal desta guerra, desta conquista, o población’ (4, 3) [The conversion of so many kingdoms, the salvation of so many souls, and the spreading of the gospel is the main benefit of this war, this conquest, or colonization]. In the generation just prior to San Antonio’s, Vitoria had nonetheless already begun to delegitimize such reasoning. Whereas Thomas Aquinas highlights the authority of the sovereign as the primary condition for a just war, Vitoria stipulates that war is not an appropriate means for spreading Christianity: ‘La diversidad de religión no es causa justa para una guerra’ (247) [‘Difference of religion is not a cause of just war’ (170)]. More specifically, he insists: Aunque la fe haya sido anunciada a los bárbaros de un modo probable y suficiente, y éstos no la hayan querido recibir, no es lícito, sin embargo, por esta razón, hacerles la guerra ni despojarlos de sus bienes. (211) [Although the Christian faith may have been announced to the Indians with adequate demonstration and they have refused to receive it, yet this

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is not a reason which justifies making war on them and depriving them of their property. (144)]23

Elsewhere in his writing, however, Vitoria modifies his stance: Si los bárbaros, ya sean sus jefes, ya el pueblo mismo, impidieran a los españoles anunciar libremente el Evangelio, pueden éstos, dando antes razón de ello a fin de evitar el escándalo, predicarles aun contra su voluntad, y entregarse a la conversión de aquella gente, y, si fuere necesario, aceptar la guerra o declararla, hasta que den oportunidad y seguridad para predicar el Evangelio. Y lo mismo se ha de decir, si permitiendo la predicación, impiden las conversiones, matando o castigando de cualquier otra manera a los ya convertidos a Cristo, o de otros modos atemorizando a los demás con amenazas. (228) [If the Indians – whether it be their lords or the populace – prevent the Spaniards from freely preaching the Gospel, the Spaniards, after first reasoning with them in order to remove scandal, may preach it despite their unwillingness and devote themselves to the conversion of the people in question, and if need be they may then accept or even make war, until they succeed in obtaining facilities and safety for preaching the Gospel. And the same pronouncement must be made in the case where they allow preaching, but hinder conversion either by killing or otherwise punishing those who have been converted to Christ or by deterring others by threats and fears. (157)]

Vitoria believed that Spaniards had a natural right not only to defend Christians but also to disseminate the Christian religion, and if they failed to achieve the goal of evangelization through peaceful means, they might engage in war, ‘guardando siempre moderación y justicia, para que no se vaya más allá de lo que sea necesario’ (229) [‘but always with a regard for moderation and proportion, so as to go no further than necessity demands’ (157–8)]. Yet according to Vitoria, conversion itself cannot result from force because ultimately ‘el creer pertenece a la voluntad’ (211) [‘belief is an operation of the will’ (145)]. As he sees it, war is not merely unchristian but actually obstructs the exercise of free will through which Christian faith operates. San Antonio, in contrast, never even considers the ethical or theological contradictions raised by religious war and in the end ignores all the traditional injunctions against war, including the precepts highlighted by Vitoria that military

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action not be undertaken for territorial gain or for increasing the glory or wealth of a particular ruler – in San Antonio’s words, ‘el augmento del patrimonio real de V. M.’ (4, 3) [the enlargement of Your Majesty’s royal patrimony]. San Antonio offers other justifications for Spanish intervention in Cambodia. He points out, for example, that the Dutch are beginning to make inroads into Southeast Asia, extracting the riches of the region and promulgating Protestantism. He further maintains that an expedition of conquest and colonization would not tax the already overextended Spanish military but could be staffed by what he regards as the many idle and useless Spaniards living in Mexico, Peru, and the Philippines and clearly in need of productive occupation. For San Antonio, then, the advantages of war are numerous. Prudently, however, he concludes his Relación with the advice that the Spaniards act as discreetly as possible and make every attempt to portray themselves simply as colonizers rather than conquerors: Principalmente porque auiendose de hazer esta jornada el remedio mas conueniente, para que tenga buen successo es hazerla con poco alboroto y ruydo, y con la mayor dissimulacion, y secreto que fuere possible, no entrando los Castillas en estas tierras de presente como conquistadores, sino como pobladores. (4, 3) [Mainly, in order to conduct this expedition in the most advantageous way, and for it to achieve greatest success, it must be carried out with little commotion and noise, and with the maximum dissimulation and secrecy possible, and with the Castilians entering these lands at present not as conquerors but settlers.]

In calling for dissimulation and secrecy, San Antonio ironically reveals a knowledge that in this case war, despite all his reasoning, is not really right. San Antonio, with the input of Christoval de Jaque de los Ríos de Mancaned and others, initially won support for his cause from the Council of the Indies and at least one influential nobleman, the Count of Bailén. But as Briggs points out, Spain, recently defeated by England and France and currently at war with Holland, was not in a position to launch new wars of aggression (160). What is more, the governor of the Philippines soon informed Philip III and the Council of the Indies that Cambodia was not nearly as rich as San Antonio purported and

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that the reigning Cambodian monarch had come under the influence of Siam and was unsympathetic to Christianization (Briggs 160). Finally, as Pagden clarifies in his analysis of the Spanish empire, the crown was keenly aware that ‘if the government of conquered territories were to remain free from internal conflict, its initial act of foundation had to be seen to be legitimate’ (Lords 94). Thus, though in the early seventeenth century two more Spanish embassies made tentative attempts to establish relations between Spain and Cambodia, Spain ultimately withdrew from the Southeast Asian mainland and henceforth focused almost its entire attention in Asia on the Philippines. Overall, Spain failed to achieve its military and commercial objectives in Cambodia. Moreover, although the Cambodians were at least allegedly open to Christian European civilization, the Spanish – as San Antonio’s summary depiction of Angkor reveals – seemed disinterested in the richness of the civilization of Cambodia. Eventually, Cambodia succumbed to the imperial designs of the French in the nineteenth century24 and even more tragically to the excesses of Chinese-styled communism in the twentieth century that led to the ‘killing fields’ of the Khmer Rouge. The rout of the Spaniards in the late sixteenth century was hence an anomaly in Cambodia’s long history of foreign domination – a history that is only now beginning to be transformed.25

Chapter Four

Constructing the Philippines and Contesting the Legacy

Most Hispanic Asianography was produced in the Philippines, not only because the Spanish ruled the Philippines for over three centuries and as a result wrote extensively about Filipino people, history, and culture, but also because Filipinos, especially in the late colonial period, wrote about themselves and Spaniards in the Spanish language. The Philippines, nevertheless, occupy a paradoxical space in the Spanish imaginary and in Spanish colonial discourse. On the one hand the islands were considered Asian simply by virtue of their geographical proximity to the Asian mainland. But they were also regarded as the westernmost extension of the Spanish American empire. More important, the Spanish chose to perceive the Filipino people as indios and thus as fundamentally similar to the native inhabitants of the Americas. Yet Hispanic writing of the colonial Philippines differs from Spanish-American colonial discourse precisely because the Philippines functioned as the commercial and cultural conduit linking Spain and Spanish America to Asia. Most merchandise, ideas, and people that moved from one sphere to the other passed through Manila. As a consequence, most Hispanic images and concepts of East and Southeast Asia came into being through the mediation of the colonial Philippines. The Spanish first set foot in the Philippines when the expedition of Magellan reached the island of Homonhon in 1521. Magellan named the islands the ‘Islas de San Lázaro’ because they were first sighted on the feast day of St Lazarus. Throughout the colonial period they were also referred to as the ‘Islas del Poniente,’ or Western Islands. Ruy López de Villalobos, who undertook an expedition of exploration in 1542, named the islands of Samar and Leyte ‘Felipinas’ in honour of the Spanish prince who would one day reign as Philip II. The modified term, ‘Filipinas,’ was later applied to the entire archipelago.

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Spain did not initiate the conquest of the Philippines until 1565, when the conqueror Miguel de Legazpi arrived in the islands. This delay resulted in part from differing interpretations of the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), which technically placed all of East and Southeast Asia within the Portuguese sphere of influence. In the Treaty of Tordesillas, Pope Alexander VI divided the non-European world into Spanish and Portuguese evangelical fields, separated by a meridian located west of the Cape Verde Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. Portugal received the territories east of the so-called Line of Demarcation, including all of Africa and Asia. In the Treaty of Zaragoza (1529), the anti-meridian was delineated along a line east of the Philippines, and for this reason the islands were initially considered part of the Portuguese dominion. As Alison Sandman explains, Spain and Portugal largely ignored the Line of Demarcation in the early sixteenth century; but after Spain began to stake a claim in the East Indies, the two nations disputed the exact site of the anti-meridian (1109). According to Thomas Suárez, sixteenthcentury Spanish cartographers and chroniclers were politically pressured to push the anti-meridian westward, in some instances as far as the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, thereby placing within the Spanish sphere ‘not only the Moluccas, but also most of the Southeast Asian mainland, virtually all of the Indies, as well as Japan, Korea, and most of China’ (163) (see figures 4.1 and 4.2).1 In fact, Spain’s primary interest in the western Pacific was first the Moluccas, which Charles V ceded to Portugal in 1529. But since, unlike the Moluccas, the Philippines were not rich in spices, Spain was ultimately able to wrest them from Portugal. The beginning of the evangelization of the Philippines was actually deferred until 1570 because of uncertainty regarding the intentions of Philip II, who, some thought, might actually choose to abandon the Philippines for China. Yet from the beginning, Philip II endorsed the Philippine incursion, and in the end the Spanish crown opted against military intervention on the Asian mainland. In an intriguing passage, John M. Headley reflects on the moment when Philip II, at his summer palace in Valsaín in 1566, first heard the news of Legazpi’s arrival in the Philippines. The king was unable to locate the islands on his maps and had his officials hurriedly attempt to make more detailed ones available to him and the Council of the Indies. As Headley puts it, ‘this remote Pacific area began suddenly to come into focus at Valsaín’ (628), and through the king’s cartographers, enter into the European and imperial sphere of knowledge.

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Legazpi, who spearheaded the conquest of the Philippines, landed on the island of Cebú in 1565 with instructions from Philip II to act with restraint: [S]e le ordenaba, entre otras cosas, que ‘la gente que llevéis a vuestro cargo en la dicha armada viva católica y cristianamente,’ así como que procurara ‘con gran diligencia que los españoles no hagan a los indios ninguna injuria ni fuerza, ni den herida, ni hagan mal ni daño ni les tomen su hacienda.’ (Borges Morán 294) [He was ordered, among other things, to ensure that ‘the people you take with you on said armada live in a Catholic and Christian way,’ and to try ‘diligently to keep the Spaniards from injuring or strong-arming the Indians, or wounding them, or doing any evil or damage, or taking away their property.’]

The crown’s ostensible desire to achieve a peaceful conquest of the Philippines resulted from its awareness of the brutalities of the conquest of the Americas and more specifically from the influence of the most noted critics of the preliminary phase of Spanish imperialism, Bartolomé de las Casas and Francisco de Vitoria. Nevertheless, the conquest of some areas of the Philippines, such as Ilocos and the Camarines, was exceedingly violent. What is more, the economic upheaval that followed led to an exploitation of Filipino labour. Like the native inhabitants of the Spanish American empire, Filipinos were granted to Spanish overlords as encomiendas and forced to work or pay tribute, ostensibly in exchange for protection and indoctrination into Christianity. Yet the system was rife with abuse, and early on it was dismantled in the Philippines. From the outset, the clergy opposed the exploitation of Filipinos and even questioned the legality of the conquest itself, although most ultimately accepted it. The first clergymen to arrive in the Philippines (the majority of whom were Augustinians) debated not only the conquest itself but also the process through which it was carried out. Rada, whom Horacio de la Costa describes as ‘one of the most respected of the early missionaries’ ( Jesuits 26), declared that ‘ni las guerras y sucesiones de estas islas fueron justas, ni en ellas se guardó las instrucciones de Su Majestad’ (Borges Morán 313) [neither the wars nor the succession of these islands were just, nor were the instructions of His Majesty followed there]. In response to widespread concerns regarding the treatment of

Figure 4.1 ‘Descripcion de las Yndias Ocidentales.’ In Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas i tierra firme del mar océano (Madrid: Nicolás Rodríguez Franco, 1725), Vol. 9, Map 1. Courtesy of Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.

Figure 4.2 ‘Descripcion de las Indias del Poniente.’ In Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas i tierra firme del mar océano (Madrid: Nicolás Rodríguez Franco, 1725), Vol. 9, Map 14. Courtesy of Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.

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the native Filipino population, the first bishop of the Philippines, Domingo de Salazar, convened an assembly of ecclesiastical and lay leaders, subsequently referred to as the Synod of Manila.2 Among the issues discussed were forced labour, the collection of tribute, the justification and implementation of the conquest in its various phases, and finally and most important, the legitimacy of Spanish sovereignty. According to the members of the synod (whose deliberations De la Costa summarizes), Spanish sovereignty in the Philippines, as elsewhere throughout the Spanish empire, rested with the king. The king possessed authority over non-Hispanic peoples not by natural right but because authority had been granted to him by the pope. The authority of the pope, following the doctrine of Petrine Succession, derived from the apostle Peter and ultimately Christ. Yet if Christ commanded Peter to go and preach the gospel to the peoples of the world, he did not give [him] and his successors any power to take from anyone what was rightfully his, neither their property from private persons nor their kingdoms from kings nor their government from commonwealths. Consequently, while the pope could share and did share with the king of Spain his apostolic commission to spread the Christian faith in the New World, he could not and did not empower him to take away from the native peoples their freedom and self-government. (De la Costa, Jesuits 26)

But as the Synod of Manila agreed, the Spanish in the Philippines had done precisely this. The synod nevertheless reasoned that because the Spanish had a divinely ordained mandate to disseminate Christianity, they could exercise temporal authority if they were unable to preach safely or their converts were unable to practise their new religion freely. Specifically, if one of the following three conditions was not present in a region, the Spanish could intervene militarily: a government and legal system that functioned in consonance with reason; a social order that permitted the development of Christian institutions; and a people whose behaviour did not interfere with the practice of Christianity (De la Costa, Jesuits 27). Since, according to the synod, these conditions were not fully present in the pre-Hispanic Philippines, colonialism was deemed valid. The synod in fact recognized that the Spanish might and often did treat Filipinos unethically. But their own laws, they maintained, were inherently rational, and therefore rebellion against Spanish rule was in principle always wrong – a point that Juan José Delgado would later challenge. In short, the Spanish held that the conquest and coloniza-

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tion of the Philippines was justified because Filipinos were uncivilized. From the Spanish perspective, Filipinos lacked a rationally ordered society, and as a result were prone to evil. In conquering and colonizing the islands the Spanish thus chose to see themselves as liberating a people from injustice, tyranny, and ultimately sin. Throughout the latter half of the sixteenth century the political and religious affairs of the Philippines were intricately tied to China. In 1571 Legazpi moved the colonial seat of government from its initial site in Cebú to Manila, and in so doing redirected the colony from the Moluccas to the Chinese mainland. Though in the late sixteenth century many Spaniards in the Philippines advocated intervention in China, Manila did not become the launching pad for a Spanish military or evangelical conquest of China but instead grew to become the vital link in the trade between Spanish America and the Chinese empire. This trade, famous for the Manila Galleon that plied the Pacific Ocean between Acapulco and Manila from 1565 until 1815, was based on Chinese silks and Mexican and Peruvian silver.3 Although it was supervised by Spaniards, the bulk of the work was carried out by members of the Chinese community of Manila, the Sangleys. The Sangleys were often victims of Spanish abuse, and anti-Chinese riots in Manila’s Chinese quarter, the Parian, occurred sporadically throughout the colonial period. Yet as John Leddy Phelan points out, both groups needed each other in order to reap the benefits of trade (12). According to Boxer, ‘Spaniards were virtually unanimous in their dislike for . . . Chinese traders’ (‘Some’ 209), even if, as Headley puts it, early modern Manila was in reality ‘a Chinese colonial town’ (635). Most historians agree that the Manila Galleon was not particularly lucrative – though Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez advance the argument that the Chinese demand for silver during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries actually financed the Spanish empire.4 If the Spanish questioned the economic value of their Philippine colony (Headley notes that in 1580 the Council of the Indies considered either abandoning it or attempting to exchange it with Portugal for Brazil [635]), they never ceased to affirm the importance of their Christian mission in the islands, upholding their most distant colonial outpost as an ‘almacén de la Fe’ (Schurz 48) [storehouse of the Faith] and the bulwark ‘upon whose preservation rested the cause of Catholicism in the Orient’ (Phelan 14). Spanish colonial writings on the Philippines, like those from the period of the Spanish conquest and initial settlement of the Americas, are distinctive in the Western imperial canon because they typically question the legitimacy of the imperial enterprise itself. Penned largely by

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members of the Catholic clergy, these writings raise questions regarding the justification of conquest and war that remain pertinent to this day.5 What is more, they provide insight into the ways early modern Spaniards conceived of humanity. Like sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Hispanic texts on Japan, China, and Cambodia, Hispanic writings from the Philippines reveal the ‘contradictions and ambiguities’ that, according to Hill, arose when European understandings of human nature and society came into contact with non-European realities. On the one hand they reflect a medieval Christian view of human beings as similarly, if not equally, created in the image of God. But they also situate people within inherently different and unequal social groups. In keeping with the Spanish colonial conception of caste, these groups depend in part on descent. However, they are not fundamentally racial in the modern sense because the ideological apparatus of race was not fully elucidated until the advent of Darwinism in the nineteenth century. From the outset of the colonial enterprise, Spanish writers describe as civilized (or políticos as opposed to bárbaros) those peoples living in what they consider rationally ordered societies. In this way they follow in the medieval Thomistic tradition, which held that all persons could in principle accede to civilization since all were endowed with rational and moral faculties.6 Yet they increasingly emphasize the characteristics of social groups rather than individuals. As Wey Gómez has demonstrated, early modern European observers typically relate group characteristics to the environment and in particular the effects of climate on the ability of human beings to exercise reason and morality. This is clearly apparent in Spanish depictions of Filipinos from the early and middle colonial periods. In contrast, during the latter half of the nineteenth century Spanish as well as Filipino writers reveal a belief in what might properly be called race. Given the long duration of the Spanish occupation of the islands, Hispanic Asianography from the Philippines thus makes visible both early modern and modern notions of human identity and alterity in ways that Hispanic writings on Japan, China and Cambodia do not. One of the most significant demographic features of the colonial Philippines that distinguished it from large regions of colonial Spanish America was the relatively small number of Spaniards – both those born in Spain (peninsulares [Peninsulars]) and those descended from Spaniards (who until the late nineteenth century formed the group known as ‘Filipinos’). Because few Spaniards immigrated to the Philippines, no large mestizo class developed, and local languages were never fully

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marginalized by Castilian (Rafael 18).7 Throughout the colonial period the so-called indios constituted the largest demographic group in the Philippines. In most Spanish colonial writings the word indio refers not to the entire population of the archipelago but to the lowland masses of Malay descent who had been drawn into the sphere of Hispanic, Catholic evangelization. Outside this group were the non-Christian highland peoples, known as Igorots, and the Muslims of the south, as well as the Chinese and mestizos of mixed Chinese/Malay ancestry.8 Nineteenth-century Filipino nationalists challenged the colonial social hierarchy by affirming indios as equal to Spaniards and holding them up as the embodiment of the Filipino nation – although in so doing they tended to exclude Igorots, Muslims, and Chinese. As a result, colonial social groupings and subsequent categories of race came to influence the project of identity formation in the early nationalist period.9 The Dominican bishop, Salazar (1512–94), provides the groundwork for Spanish colonial perceptions of Filipinos in his letter of 1583 to Philip II, titled Memorial de las cosas que en estas Yslas Philipinas de Poniente pasan y del estado de ellas y de lo que hay que remediar [Report of what is happening in these Philippine Islands of the West and their current state, and of what must be remedied].10 In this text Salazar exposes the abusive treatment of Filipinos by Spaniards, and appeals to the crown for redress. Yet even though he directs his wrath against the unethical practices of Spaniards, he nevertheless regards Filipinos as a barbaric people bereft not only of Christianity but also of civilization. His Memorial, while insisting on the fundamental dignity of the Filipino people, thus affirms colonialism. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Augustinian Gaspar de San Agustín (1650–1724) and the Jesuit Juan José Delgado (1697–1765) reiterate views present in the writing of Salazar, but develop them in such a way that they render two completely different portraits of the Filipino people. San Agustín, author of the exhaustive Conquistas de las Islas Filipinas (1565–1615) (1698) [Conquests of the Philippine Islands (1565–1615)], is most famous (or infamous) for a letter he wrote in 1720 in which he lashes out against what he depicts as the baseness and primitiveness of Filipinos. Delgado, in his Historia general sacro-profana, política y natural de las Islas del Poniente llamadas Filipinas [General sacred-profane, political, and natural history of the Western Islands called Philippines] (written from 1751 to 1754 but not published until 1892) denounces San Agustín’s letter (included in his own Historia) as both illogical and un-Christian, and attempts to

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affirm the inherent worth of the Filipino people. The opposing views of San Agustín and Delgado reflect those of Sepúlveda, Las Casas, and Palafox. Like Sepúlveda, San Agustín regards indios as inferior to Europeans. Delgado, in contrast, follows in the tradition of Las Casas and Palafox by validating them, becoming one of the most outspoken Spanish defenders of the Filipino people. Both San Agustín and Delgado express sentiments from the middle years of the colonial period in the eighteenth century. But their writings had the greatest impact as Spanish rule in the Philippines came to an end in the late nineteenth century and Filipino nationalists, including José Rizal, read their texts and integrated their polemic into their own discourses. Throughout his novels and essays, Rizal denounces Spanish colonialism as practised in the Philippines. In his two major literary texts, Noli me tangere [Touch me not] and El filibusterismo, he directs his attack primarily against the friar orders of the Catholic Church, which he regards as the linchpin of Spanish power in the islands. Among his less studied works are an annotated edition of an early Spanish history of the Philippines, the Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (1609) [Events of the Philippine Islands], by Antonio de Morga, and lengthy correspondences with European and Filipino colleagues, friends, and family members. In its day, Morga’s Sucesos was one of the most widely read and respected Spanish histories of the early Philippines, and in fact the only comprehensive treatise not authored by a member of the clergy. Rizal’s edition is significant in the context of Filipino nationalism since through his extensive footnotes he responds to and at times corrects prejudicial depictions of Filipinos and erroneous interpretations of Filipino history that Spaniards had come to accept as fact. Moreover, he comments on numerous episodes of the early Hispanic-Asian encounter, including the failed attempt of the Spanish to conquer Cambodia in the late sixteenth century and Spanish missionary activity in China and Japan in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In his writing, however, Rizal focuses not only on the history and presence of the Spanish in East and Southeast Asia but also on Spain itself, where he lived as a university student. In one striking letter he represents the city of Madrid as if it were the object of a colonialist gaze. In so doing he inverts the metropolitan/colonial binary, while revealing how his own cultural attitudes were deeply embedded in Western notions of progress and development. In the context of Hispanic Asianography penned by Asians, the Madrid experience recorded in Rizal’s correspondence is

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nonetheless particularly significant, since it allows him to grasp the Hispanic-Asian encounter from a perspective initially available only to Spaniards. ‘I can find no words’ One of the earliest and most deeply reflective Spanish writers of the colonial Philippines was Domingo de Salazar. Salazar was born in La Rioja, of Basque descent, in 1512, and died in Madrid in 1594. After joining the Dominican order in Salamanca, he journeyed to New Spain as a missionary and remained for forty years. During this period he became an outspoken advocate for indigenous Christians. On Salazar’s return to Madrid, Philip II had him appointed first bishop of the Philippines, where he arrived in 1581. According to Marciano R. de Borja, the king regarded Salazar as a troublesome figure (‘another de las Casas in the making’ [49]), and hoped to silence him by relegating him to the most distant outpost of the Spanish empire. But while there, Salazar, despite his advanced age, lashed out against Spanish abuses of the Filipino people, convening the Synod of Manila in order to remedy what he regarded as a scandalous situation and writing numerous missives to the king informing him of the affairs of the colony. As De Borja explains, Salazar made enemies of the colonial governor, the encomenderos, the entrenched religious orders in the islands, and the ecclesiastical authorities in New Spain. But his influence was felt not only in the political and ecclesiastical spheres but also in the city of Manila itself, much of which he had rebuilt with durable materials (51). What is more, he commissioned a hospital for the local Chinese community and gave refuge to prostitutes – a gesture that led his enemies to question his own sexual morals (51). In his Memorial he condemns Spanish actions in the Philippines while revealing his attitudes towards the Filipino people. He also synthesizes many of the issues raised by the Synod of Manila. In his history of the hispanization of the Philippines, Phelan declares that ‘the completion of the military conquest was swift and relatively bloodless’ (10). But according to Salazar, the conquest of the Philippines, albeit swift, was anything but benign. In his letter to Philip II he writes: No hago caso de los agravios que recibieron de los Españoles quando fueron de ellos conquistados, pues de lo que en otras partes de las Yndias

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pasó, se podrá colegir lo que acá pudo pasar, que no fue menos, sino en algunas partes mucho más. (11) [I do not mention the injuries which the Indians received from the Spaniards during the conquest, for from what happened to them in other parts of the Yndias can be inferred what would happen here, which was not less, but in many places much more. (Blair and Robertson 5: 221–2)]11

What occurs during the collection of tributes, however, is even worse: Aquí se me acaba el juicio y me falta spíritu, y no hallo palabras con que significar a V.M. las desventuras, agravios y vexaciones, tormentos y miserias que sobre la cobrança de los trivutos les hacen pasar. (12) [Here my powers fail me, I lack the courage, and I can find no words to express to your majesty the misfortunes, injuries, and vexations, the torments and miseries, which the Indians are made to suffer in the collection of the tributes. (223)]

For Salazar the most egregious aspect of early colonial rule in the Philippines is precisely the system of tributes. Not only is the amount exacted excessive but the manner of collection is patently unjust. When, for instance, local chiefs fail to deliver the full tribute required of all the individuals in their charge, the encomenderos often crucify them. Salazar’s mention of this fact is significant, for if writers like Ribadeneira imply that the Japanese were inordinately cruel in their treatment of the Spanish friars, the Spanish were equally brutal in their handling of their Asian subjects. Throughout the Memorial Salazar directs his invective primarily against the encomenderos, who collect the tributes and inflict the punishments, and whose disruption of the social structure of the islands has led to economic and material devastation. Because Filipino men are often sent from their villages to work (rowing frigates, cutting forests, transporting goods to the capital, etc.), they leave their fields unattended for extended periods, and their families are subsequently faced with food shortages. Moreover, they are compelled to sell what rice they do produce at low prices, and later buy it back at an inflated amount. Since they are paid little if anything for their work, many as a result have died. Salazar thus remarks:

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[S]ólo digo con verdad que esta tierra está destruida y ay duda que si otro año pasa por ella como los dos próximos pasados, no llegará a el tercero, y esto no es encarecimiento. (19) [I only say, and truthfully, that this land is ruined; and it is doubtful whether, if it experiences another year like the two just past, it will endure till the third – and this is not exaggeration. (229)]

Salazar denounces the Spanish mistreatment not only of the Filipinos but also of the Sangleys. In his letter to Philip II he recognizes the essential role that the Chinese play in the commercial life of the colony, both as purveyors of merchandise and supplies and also as financial investors. He further contends that a good trading relationship with China is important because it will allow Spain to gain a foothold in the country, ‘que tanto de todos [reinos] es deseado’ (27) [which of all kingdoms is so much desired].12 But because of continued harassment and abuse, he is concerned that the Chinese will simply cease to do business in Manila. Salazar depicts as an injustice the confinement of the Sangleys in the Parian: ‘[L]os mandaron recoger todos a una casa cerrada que se hiço ogaño, a donde fueron muy contra su voluntad’ (27–8) [‘They were all ordered to live apart, in one fenced-in dwelling made this year, whither they have gone very unwillingly’ (237)].13 There they are forced to buy goods at shops charging higher prices than on the outside, and are supervised by a warden with authority to punish them – even for stepping outside at night to relieve themselves. They are thus treated as virtual prisoners. Typically, they turn to Salazar, as bishop, for redress. Salazar highlights one incident involving twenty or thirty Sangleys who were sent like slaves to row on a Spanish galley bound for Japan. Several appealed to him, complaining that they had gone to the Philippines in order to earn a living for their children, but he was unable to help them. The oppression of the Sangleys, Salazar summarizes, is not only ethically wrong but also, from a purely practical standpoint, misguided, since as a result large numbers of Chinese have already begun to abandon Manila, thus adversely affecting the economy of the colony. Salazar not only recognizes the plight of the non-Spanish inhabitants of the early colonial Philippines, but also understands their negative reactions to Spaniards and even Christianity itself. With dismay he recognizes that Islam has begun to spread in the islands and in some areas competes with Christianity for the allegiance of the Filipinos.

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He attributes its success among Filipino converts to the fact that Muslim proselytizers treat them with far greater respect that do Christian Spaniards: [L]os que han recivido esta sucia ley, la guardan, y con mucha pertinencia, y ay mucha dificultad en hacérsela dexar; y savido, porque las raçones que dan para vergüença y confusión nuestra, porque fueron mejor tractados de los predicadores de Mahoma que lo an sido y son de los predicadores de Christo. (15) [Those who have received this vile law keep it with much pertinacity, and there is great difficulty in getting them to leave it. Moreover it is known that the reason which they give – to our shame and confusion – is that they were better treated by the preachers of Mahoma than they have been and are by the preachers of Christ. (225)]14

For conversion to Christianity to be meaningful, it must be freely accepted. But if the example of Christian behaviour provided by the Spanish is as negative as Salazar maintains, then Filipinos will naturally resist Christianization, and the most the missionaries can ever hope to gain from their Filipino neophytes is a ‘sí con la boca, y no con el coraçon’ (16) [‘ “yes” with the mouth and “no” with the heart’ (225–6)]. Although the Spanish ostensibly entered the Philippines in order to bring Christianity to the Filipino people, from the Filipino perspective they sought merely to subjugate them and force them to pay tributes. According to Salazar, ‘como esta es cosa que todas las naciones naturalmente rehusan, de aquí es que adonde les an podido resistir, siempre lo an hecho, y recibido de guerra’ (12) [‘As this is a thing which all peoples naturally refuse, it follows that where they have been able to resist they have always done so, and have gone to war’ (222)]. Salazar does not explicitly endorse armed resistance to colonialism, but by describing it as ‘natural’ he recognizes that it is a logical response to the unjust colonial practices of Spain. Like Vitoria, he in principle considered colonialism beneficial. But as Pagden remarks in his analysis of Vitoria’s conception of Native Americans, Salazar also surely believed that ‘the Indian had to accept his subjugation willingly [and that] [t]he “barbarism” of the Indian . . . conferred on the Spaniards political dominium but only so long as it was exercised in the Indians’, and not in the Spaniards’, favour’ (Fall 105). As Salazar’s comments elsewhere reveal, he too regarded Native Americans and Filipinos as barbarians. Yet he was also

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keenly aware that the subjugation of the Filipinos to the Spanish was neither freely accepted nor favourable to them, and he therefore vehemently deplored it. Nevertheless, Filipinos were not only subjugated by the Spanish but in some instances actually enslaved. As Salazar points out, the enslavement of indios is prohibited by the crown throughout the Spanish empire. In the Philippines, however, some Filipinos hold slaves, and on occasion sell others, including their own children, to the Spanish. According to Salazar, todos los demás son mal abidos y hechos contra justicia, como lo harían gente tan bárvara como ésta y lo hacen oy día, que por interés vende el pariente del presente y los que más pueden a los que menos. (33) [All others are wrongfully obtained and unjustly enslaved – as would be done by a people so barbarous as this, who at this very time sell a relative for gain, and among whom the more powerful will sell the weaker. (242)]

Salazar clearly opposes the institution of slavery, but he attributes different motives to Filipino and Spanish slave holders. He maintains that the actions of Filipinos result from barbarism, whereas Spaniards operate out of a sense of expediency, claiming that slavery is necessary because of the great amount of work they themselves are obliged to perform. Though pressured by Salazar to give up slavery, they refuse to do so because of ‘porfía’ (34) [‘obstinacy’ (242)]. The upshot, if Filipinos are barbaric and Spaniards simply obstinate, is that the latter are better equipped to realize social justice, even if, for Salazar, Spanish colonialism as currently practised requires the purifying mediation of Christians like himself. According to Salazar, because of unremitting abuse at the hands of the Spanish, the Filipino people have come to abhor the king of Spain himself, whom they regard as the source of their suffering: ‘a V.M. [tienen] por Rey cruel y que no pretende sino aprovecharse de sus haciendas y servirse de sus personas’ (17) [‘They consider your Majesty a cruel king, and think that you are trying only to profit by their estates and to claim their personal service’ (227)]. At first glance this statement might seem erroneous, since the animosity of the Filipinos is most surely directed at the encomenderos and other Spaniards in the islands, rather than a distant monarch about whom they know very little. But it is likely intended to arouse the ire of the king against those responsible for the abuse of the Filipinos. Salazar is quick to add that the Filipinos’

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view of the Spanish sovereign is mistaken, given ‘las santas leyes y ordenanças que para el buen govierno destas tierras V.M. tiene hechas y mandadas guarder’ (17) [‘the holy laws and ordinances which, for the good government of these lands, your Majesty has made and ordered to be observed’ (227)]. But as he makes clear through a point-by-point explanation, these laws and ordinances have either been ignored or contravened. Salazar offers various suggestions for ameliorating the dire situation of the Philippine colony. He specifically cites the need for a special protector of the Filipino people. The selection of this official, he maintains, should not be made through favour or sale, but preferably on the nomination of the Philippine bishop himself. Salazar concludes the Memorial by recommending other officials for appointment to the Philippines. He closes by reiterating the plight of the Filipino people and appealing to the goodwill and wisdom of the crown. Because of his efforts to defend Filipinos from Spanish abuse, Salazar has often been compared to the great sixteenth-century advocates of the Native Americans, including Vitoria and Las Casas. Cayetano Sánchez Fuertes, for example, describes him as a disciple of Vitoria (337) and the ‘Bartolomé de las Casas’ of the Philippines (338). This view, however, has been challenged by historians such as Jesús Gayo y Aragón, who argues that Salazar fundamentally differed from Vitoria and Las Casas insofar as the Synod of Manila, which he represented, ultimately justified the Spanish conquest of the Philippines (89). Vitoria, of course, himself conceded that Spaniards could intervene militarily in the lands they claimed if they were unable to carry out evangelization through peaceful means alone. In fact, despite the injustices committed by Spaniards against Filipinos, Salazar supported Spanish colonialism in the Philippines as the appropriate method not only for carrying out the missionary project but also for ‘civilizing’ the Filipino people. His legacy is thus twofold. Because of his defence of Filipinos, he anticipates the benign paternalism of subsequent writers like Delgado. But because he implicitly asserts a Spanish-Filipino hierarchy through his depiction of Filipinos as barbaric, he also provides groundwork for the anti-Filipino hostility of writers like San Agustín. The White Men’s Quarrel Spanish colonial depictions of Filipinos tend to be paternalistic even when most positive. In fact, both San Agustín and Delgado regard

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Filipinos paternalistically. But San Agustín’s notorious letter of 8 June 1720, known as the Quadraginta [Forty], is blatantly hostile, and as a result has come to overshadow his monumental Conquistas de las Islas Filipinas – a treatise that Joan-Pau Rubiés includes among ‘the most scientifically significant works’ of the colonial period, that is, those that provide ‘an empirically informed, analytically organized, and speculatively rationalized discourse’ (428). The word ‘quadraginta’ refers to the forty years San Agustín spent observing Filipinos. He begins the letter by declaring that after forty years, ‘solo [ha] venido a aprender que son incomprensibles’ (Delgado 273) [(he has) only come to learn that they are incomprehensible].15 He then follows with a quote from the Psalms in which God lashes out against the Israelites for disobeying him during their forty years in the wilderness: ‘Quadraginta annis proximus fui generationi huic et dixi: semper hi errant corde’ (273) [for forty years I was near to this generation and said: they always err in their heart]. This verse is typically translated to express God’s utter disgust with the Israelites. The Revised Standard Version of the Bible, for instance, renders it as ‘For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people who err in heart” ’ (Psalm 95:10; emphasis added). The passage is significant in the context of San Agustín’s letter not merely because he begins by passing judgment on the Filipino people but because he does so by invoking the voice of God as his own and thereby implicitly conferring on what follows an air of divine authority. The manuscript version of the Quadraginta is titled ‘Carta de Fr. Gaspar de San Agustín, a un amigo suyo en España, que le pregunta el natural ingenio de los indios naturales de estas Islas Philipinas’ [Letter from Friar Gaspar de San Agustín, to a friend of his in Spain, who asks him about the natural ingenuity of the native Indians of these Philippine Islands].16 The Augustinian scholar Manuel Merino indicates that the letter was sent to ‘un innominado y tal vez fingido amigo’ (xxv) [an unnamed and perhaps fictitious friend], whereas Jacques Lafaye maintains that it was directed to the Jesuit Pedro Murillo (211). San Agustín in fact does not specify the name of the recipient at the outset of the letter, and addresses it simply to ‘Muy señor mío’ [Dearest sir]. But at the end of the body of the letter he writes: ‘Pregunta del Padre Pedro Murillo, de la Compañía de Jesús. ¿Qué cosa es el Indio?’ [Question of Father Pedro Murillo, of the Company of Jesus. What is the Indian?]. He then briefly summarizes the characteristics enumerated in the letter. The last two pages of the manuscript contain a ‘Resumen de

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toda la carta por el dicho Padre Murillo’ [Summary of the entire letter by said Father Murillo]. These pages are written in the same hand as the letter. Thus, though San Agustín seems to have written the letter in response to Murillo’s question, it is not entirely clear that he sent it to Murillo. Merino argues, unconvincingly given the testimony of the Quadraginta, that San Agustín loved the Philippines and that he composed the letter as a mere pastime with no intention of ever publishing it (xxv). San Agustín’s fellow Augustinians saw fit to withhold it from publication after his death, although as Boxer clarifies, it was widely circulated over the years in manuscript form (‘Some’ 206). In the words of the Jesuit scholar Miguel A. Bernad, ‘Spaniards gave it an importance that it did not deserve’ (162), and ‘influential people took its allegations seriously’ (163). As Merino remarks (not without sarcasm), the Quadraginta saw the full light of day only when the Jesuits published Delgado’s Historia in the late nineteenth century (xxv). If the Quadraginta achieved notoriety, this was because it appeared in print precisely at the highpoint of Filipino anti-clericalism during the Filipino nationalist movement of the 1890s. Though deeply colonialist, the Quadraginta had the most influence on Filipino society precisely at the moment when Spanish colonialism was beginning to unravel, functioning as a lightning rod for the nationalists in their denunciation of the so-called frailocracy and of Spanish rule in general. Whereas the Quadraginta remained unpublished for nearly two centuries, San Agustín’s Conquistas was printed at the time of its completion in the late seventeenth century. Delgado’s Historia, in contrast, was virtually forgotten from the time of its composition in the mideighteenth century until its publication in the late nineteenth century. José Arcilla Solero suggests that it was not published in its day because of the expulsion of the Jesuit order (of which Delgado was a member) from the Philippines in 1768 (386). It finally appeared in 1892 as one of the volumes of the Biblioteca Histórica Filipina – a corpus of texts related to the history of the Philippines written by members of the various religious orders present in the islands during the colonial period.17 Arcilla Solero explains that although Delgado wrote the Historia in three years, he based his work on notes he had taken over the course of his entire Philippine sojourn (386). As he further points out (387), the most famous section of the Historia is Delgado’s refutation of the Quadraginta (387). According to Boxer, Delgado was afraid that the Quadraginta, given its wide circulation, would discourage potential

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Spanish missionaries from joining the Philippine mission (‘Some’ 207). Yet Delgado was not only concerned about the future of the mission but also motivated by a genuine desire to defend the Filipino people. For this reason scholars such as Boxer describe him as a ‘historian in the tradition of Las Casas and Bishop Palafox’ (208). San Agustín begins the Quadraginta precisely by criticizing Las Casas and Palafox, whose Libro de las virtudes del indio (ca 1650) [Book on the virtues of the Indian] he directly challenges.18 San Agustín may have been hostile to Las Casas and Palafox not only because they defended Native Americans but also because they were bishops. Bernad explains that the missionary friars in the Philippines ‘tended to look upon the bishop[s] as . . . superfluous interloper[s] whose presence was neither desirable nor necessary to the work of evangelization’ (262). As Lafaye adds, the friars in fact often fought with the bishops because they believed they lacked the experience required for successful interaction with the native population (216). San Agustín thus claims, albeit unjustifiably, that Las Casas and Palafox did not have enough direct experience to substantiate their views of Native Americans – although as Lafaye points out, San Agustín himself probably had little knowledge of Las Casas since on one occasion he refers to him as ‘Bernardino’ rather than ‘Bartolomé,’ thus apparently confusing him with Bernardino de Sahagún (216). San Agustín assures his reader that he will base his comments on what he has personally observed, which, were he to spell it out in full detail, would require more paper than could be found in all of China. Despite the hyperbole, he rightly recognizes that his contemporaries often regard indios as a homogeneous group when in reality Native Americans and native Filipinos are vastly different from each other. But he then proceeds to conflate all East and Southeast Asians (except the Japanese) as different from Europeans: Son . . . los indios asiáticos de Filipinas lo mismo casi que los de las demás naciones de la India oriental, por lo que mira a su genio, índole e inclinación, y así los malayos, siamés, mogores y camarines, sólo se distinguen por los trajes, lengua y ritos. Excepto los japoneses que son, como doctamente dijo Gracián, los españoles del Asia, y los chinas que por su cultura, política y amor a las letras parecen diversos, aunque tocados a la piedra de la experiencia, son lo mismo que los indios; porque los más de los defectos y resabios de estos indios son comunes por los influjos de los astros que dominan el Asia. (274)

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[The Asian Indians of the Philippines are almost the same as those of the rest of the nations of the East Indies, with regard to their character, nature, and inclinations, and so the Malays, Siamese, Moguls, and inhabitants of the Camarines differ only according to dress, language, and ceremonies. Except the Japanese, who are, as Gracián wisely said, the Spaniards of Asia, and the Chinese, who through their culture, politics, and love of letters seem different, although when known through experience, are the same as Indians, for the majority of defects and vices of these Indians are similar because of the influence of the stars that dominate Asia.]

The exception of the Japanese notwithstanding, San Agustín clearly asserts a uniform East/Southeast Asian identity. By subsuming the Chinese and Filipinos within the same group and deprecating them, he differs from earlier Spanish colonial writers, who at times idealize the Chinese. He also differs from those who regarded Chinese and Europeans as similar because they inhabited similar climatic zones. In fact, he represents the hostile attitudes of the Spanish in Manila towards the Sangleys and, more important, a gradual but increasingly negative attitude of Europeans towards Asians in general. According to San Agustín, whose comments on the human body remain within the Ptolemaic framework, physical differences between peoples result from external influences on the bodily humours – in particular the stars and the moon, which have given native Filipinos a similar physiognomy. Diet, he maintains, has also affected them: [L]a igualdad y poca variedad de los alimentos con que se crían y se criaron sus antepasados . . . constituyen una naturaleza en su raíz muy diferente de los europeos y muy igual. (275) [The similarity and small variety of foods with which they nourish themselves and their ancestors nourished themselves constitute a nature in its core very different from Europeans and very uniform.]

Whereas Europeans differ greatly from one another because of an almost infinite combination of the bodily humours (presumably because they live in a more variable climate and eat a wider range of foods), Filipinos are uniform in their makeup. San Agustín’s reference to the diet of the Filipinos’ ancestors is significant, for if the physical constitution of the Filipino people might initially have been externally conditioned, it now seems congenital. San Agustín, however, characterizes Filipinos

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not only as inherently different from Europeans but also inferior. This negative view of tropical peoples was shared by other Spanish writers of the early modern period, including Sepúlveda. Sepúlveda’s denunciation of the native inhabitants of the Americas, as expressed in Democrates Segundo (ca 1533), is particularly virulent because he implies that their dissimilarity to Spaniards actually makes them less than human: [C]on perfecto derecho los españoles ejercen su dominio sobre esos bárbaros del Nuevo Mundo e islas adyacentes, los cuales en prudencia, ingenio y todo género de virtudes y humanos sentimientos son tan inferiores a los españoles como los niños a los adultos, las mujeres a los varones, los crueles e inhumanos a los extremadamente mansos, los exageradamente intemperantes a los continentes y moderados [y] finalmente cuanto estoy por decir los monos a los hombres. (33)19 [With perfect right the Spanish exercise their dominion over these barbarians of the New World and adjacent islands, who, in prudence, ingenuity, and all manner of virtues and human sentiments are as inferior to the Spanish as children to adults, women to men, the cruel and inhuman to the extremely gentle, the exaggeratedly intemperate to the restrained and moderate, and finally, I must say, monkeys to men.]

In contrast to Sepúlveda, San Agustín even more explicitly dehumanizes Filipinos when he declares that ‘todas las acciones [de los Filipinos] son aquellas que la naturaleza por lo animal dicta’ (289) [the actions (of the Filipinos) are all dictated by animal nature]. In the tradition of Sepúlveda, San Agustín privileges group identity over individual identity, insisting that ‘[el] conocimiento de estos indios [filipinos] no está en los individuos, sino en el género; porque conociendo uno, son conocidos todos sin distinción’ (274) [knowledge of these (Filipino) Indians is not a matter of individuals but genus; because when one is known, all are known without distinction]. In the body of the Quadraginta he enumerates what he perceives to be the common traits of Filipinos, painting them as ungrateful, inconstant, malicious, impertinent, arrogant, ignorant, credulous, lazy, gluttonous, alcoholic, lustful, etc. At times Filipinos evince seemingly contradictory characteristics – they are both tyrannical and cowardly. And though they are prone to imitate Spaniards, they only copy their bad points, such as swearing and gambling. One feature of Filipinos that

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particularly irks San Agustín is their disparagement of the figure of the mabibig, or informer to the Spanish – as if their greatest shortcoming were their group solidarity. According to San Agustín, Filipinos nonetheless do possess several positive attributes. In his view, for instance, Filipino women are properly subordinate to men: [E]n medio de ésta que parece inhumanidad, se les puede alabar el haber acertado a tratar a las mujeres como ellas merecen para tenerlas sujetas y contentas, porque esta sujeción las hace mujeres humildes y recatadas y conformes con la sentencia de ser sujetas al hombre. (283)20 [In the midst of what seems like inhumanity, they can be praised for having succeeded in treating women as they deserve in order to keep them subjugated and content, because this subjugation makes women humble and modest and resigned to the law that they be subordinate to man.]

Europeans, San Agustín advises, should in fact endeavour to emulate Filipino gender roles: [S]i los europeos aprendieran de ellos esta útil economía vivieran con más paz y menos gastos, y el matrimonio fuera más suave y más pacífico y bien ordenado, según razón, y más bien dirigido al fin para que fue instituido, como vemos se logra en ellos con una fecundidad que causa admiración. (284) [If Europeans learned from them this effective management (of domestic life), they would live with more peace and less expense, and marriage would be more mellow and more tranquil and well ordered, according to reason, and better directed to the end for which it was instituted, as we see occurs in their marriages with a fecundity that causes amazement.]

San Agustín approves not only of the gender hierarchy of Filipino society as he perceives it but also what he believes to be a widespread Filipino hatred of black Africans: Tienen otra propiedad que, si la tuvieran las indias de América, no estuviera aquella tierra tan llena de mulatos, gente feroz y facinerosa, y es el horror que tienen a los cafres y negros, tanto que primero se dejarán matar que admitirlos. (288)

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[They have another attribute which, if the Indian women of America had it, that land would not be so full of mulattos, and savage and villainous people, and that is the horror they feel towards Kaffirs and blacks, so much so that they would rather be killed than accept them.]

Ironically, but perhaps not surprisingly, Filipinos’ putative attitude towards Africans and their aversion to miscegenation are among the few ‘good’ qualities that San Agustín is capable of identifying in them. Yet if from the perspective of San Agustín Filipinos are implicitly superior to blacks, they nevertheless remain inferior to the Spanish. To maintain this social order, San Agustín encourages Spaniards to use force against the Filipinos – though corporal punishment, he points out, should always be accompanied by a parental judiciousness: No se les han de perdonar todas las faltas, porque se harán insolentes y peores cada día, y así es forzoso a los padres ministros dar algunos azotes de padre con mucha moderación, porque basta que se azote la vanidad y soberbia. (292) [They should not be forgiven all their faults, because they will become insolent and worse by the day, and so it is necessary for the clerical ministers to give them occasional lashings, but in a fatherly way and with much moderation, because it is sufficient to whip their vanity and pride.]

Ultimately, San Agustín compares the relationship between Spaniards and Filipinos to the relationship between parents and children. In so doing he replicates a typical justification of colonialism and indeed even slavery. Although Delgado attempts a point-by-point refutation of the arguments of San Agustín, he too will regard Filipinos paternalistically. Delgado begins his response to San Agustín by rejecting the validity of generalizations about entire groups: ‘[N]o se puede hacer juicio de una nación entera y mucho menos de todas las islas, que son varias y diversas en genios y costumbres’ (298) [One cannot judge an entire nation and much less all the islands, which are varied and diverse in character and customs]. He ridicules San Agustín’s exaggerations, and levels against him the same charge that San Agustín directs against Las Casas and Palafox: namely, ‘poca experiencia’ (298) [little experience]. Yet at the outset Delgado seems most incensed by San Agustín’s depiction of Filipinos as lazy, arguing that they perform the real work of the colony on which the Spanish depend:

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¿Este es el agradecimiento que les damos, cuando estamos dominándolos en sus mismas tierras y hechos señores en ellas, sirviéndonos ellos casi de esclavos? Debemos dar a Dios Nuestro Señor muchas gracias, porque nos mantiene sólo por el amor y bien de los indios en estas tierras, que si no fuera por este bien y por la salvación de los indios, quizá nos hubiera ya arrojado de ellas. (301) [Is this the thanks we give them, when we are dominating them in their own lands and have made ourselves lords over them, while they serve us almost as slaves? We ought to give many thanks to God our Lord, because he keeps us in these lands only for the love and welfare of the Indians, for were it not for the welfare and salvation of the Indians, he perhaps would have thrown us out already.]

Delgado believes that the presence of the Spanish in the Philippines is justified solely by the mission project, which they have undermined through their un-Christian treatment of the Filipinos. Through his critique of San Agustín, he thus challenges the Christian spirit of his fellow Spaniards. More intriguing, he uses religion itself to denounce the labour exploitation of Filipinos and by extension the very dynamics of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines. According to Delgado, Filipinos have on occasion rebelled against their Spanish masters. In the spirit of Salazar, he holds the Spanish entirely responsible for Filipino disobedience. Furthermore, although he does not openly advocate rebellion, he implies that it is at times necessary: Ni hay que admirar que en varias ocasiones haya habido alzamientos, los cuales quizás no han provenido del mal ánimo de los indios con los españoles, antes sabemos que muchos de ellos han sido motivados por la crueldad, maldad y tiranía de algunos alcaldes mayores y otros españoles que, levantados de viles principios se quieren en las provincias hacer dioses y reyes, tiranizando a los indios y a sus haciendas. Y esta es la causa muchas veces de los alzamientos; ojalá pudiera referir algunos casos particulares en esta materia; empero, no quiero ensangrentar mi pluma, y escribir, en vez de historia, tragedias. (302) [One should not be surprised if on various occasions there have been uprisings, which perhaps have not resulted from the ill will of the Indians

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towards the Spaniards, for we know that many of them have been motivated by the cruelty, evil, and tyranny of certain magistrates and other Spaniards who, for vile reasons, want to make themselves gods and kings in the provinces, tyrannizing the Indians and their property. And this is often the cause of the uprisings. I wish I could relate some particular cases in this regard; however, I do not want to bloody my pen, and write, instead of history, tragedies.]

Sentiments such as these would clearly be well received by late nineteenth-century Filipino nationalists. As might be expected, Delgado does not broach the issue of clerical abuse, and while he denounces certain expressions of Spanish tyranny, he refrains from writing an actual history of the Spanish oppression of the Filipinos. Instead, he uses San Agustín’s Quadraginta as a means of affirming their inherent worth as a people. Delgado challenges San Agustín in terms of his own logic, arguing that the physiognomy of native Filipinos is influenced not by the moon but the sun (because of the sun’s intensity in the tropics) and that they are therefore endowed with traits diametrically opposed to those cited by San Agustín.21 Nevertheless, both Delgado and San Agustín share the same classical and medieval view that differences among human beings result from their geographic position and specifically the latitude of their habitat. They thus differ from later generations of race ideologists, for whom human diversity is a consequence of inherent and indelible biological characteristics. Despite Delgado’s objections to San Agustín’s reasoning, he too indulges in generalizations – albeit positive ones. Moreover, he rejects San Agustín’s misogyny and his implicit approval of the physical abuse of women. In response to San Agustín’s exhortation that women be treated ‘como ellas merecen’ (314) [as they deserve], he sarcastically replies: No sé que sea laudable el tratarlas de esta suerte con palos, coces y pesadumbres, ni que esto sea conforme al amor conyugal, ni al texto y sentencia de estar sujetas al hombre. Ni tampoco parece laudable exhortar a los europeos a que aprendan esta útil economía para vivir con más paz y menos gastos, añadiendo que el matrimonio fuera más suave, pacífico y bien ordenado; antes me parece a mí, y creo que parecerá a todo hombre prudente, lo contrario. Porque de andar a palos, coces y con

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pesadumbres, fuera el matrimonio más pesado, y no bien dirigido y ordenado al fin para que fue instituido, ni hubiera hombre ni mujer de juicio, que se casara. (314) [I do not know if it is laudable to treat them in this way with whacks, kicks, and abuse, nor if this is in accordance with conjugal love, nor to the letter of the law that they be subordinate to man. Neither does it seem laudable to exhort Europeans to learn this effective management (of domestic life) in order to live with more peace and less expense, adding that marriage would be more mellow, tranquil, and well ordered; rather it seems to me, as I believe it would seem to any prudent man, that the opposite is true. For going about whacking, kicking, and inflicting pain would make marriage more oppressive, and not well directed or ordered to the end for which it was instituted, nor would any sensible man or woman ever marry.]

Delgado further questions San Agustín’s interpretation of Filipinos’ views of Africans, suggesting that what Filipinos most value is the maintenance of social hierarchy – though he does not comment on the significance of this feature in their relationships with Spaniards. Delgado ultimately contends that the position of San Agustín is not simply illogical but un-Christian: [I]mputar alguna cosa grave a una comunidad y familia (no obstante que se puede verificar de algunos de ella) es grave pecado y escándalo, y queda obligado el que lo comete a la restitución in integrum de la honra del prójimo. (320) [To impute something serious to a community or family (even if it can be verified in some individuals) is a grave sin and offence, and he who commits it remains obliged to restore in integrum the honour of his neighbour.]

This statement is important, for by insisting that slander against a people is a sin, Delgado provides a theological rationale for a rejection of ethnic bias. From Delgado’s theological perspective, San Agustín’s negative portrayal of Filipinos makes a mockery of Christian charity and specifically Christ’s second commandment that one love one’s neighbour as oneself. His positive portrayal of Europeans is equally pernicious, revealing a sin of pride tantamount to an unfounded belief in the superiority of certain social groups over others, which

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Delgado debunks as un-Christian as well. As Delgado ironically asks, although [p]ropensión es de la humana fragilidad el notar los vicios ajenos, olvidando los propios (320), ¿por ventura entre los españoles y demás naciones europeas faltan los vicios que su reverencia ha aplicado a los indios? (319) [it is a tendency of human weakness to note the vices of others, forgetting one’s own, by chance do the Spanish and other European nations lack the vices that his reverence has ascribed to the Indians?]

The upshot of his argument is that Europeans are inherently no better (or, for that matter, no worse) than their colonial subjects. Delgado concludes his refutation of the Quadraginta with two religious anecdotes that he indicates having read in Spanish writings on the Philippines. The first relates the experience of a missionary who came to believe that his mission work had been an utter failure. As he prepared to leave the mission field, he purportedly witnessed a vision of the crucified Christ, who in his agony exclaimed: ‘[¡¡]te vas y me dejas de esta suerte!!’ (321) [You are going away and leaving me in this state!!]. According to Delgado’s interpretation, Christ brought the Spanish to the Philippines in order to Christianize the Filipino people and make possible their redemption. In the anecdote, the missionary rejects his preordained role by abandoning the Filipino people, and as a result Christ suffers, for many Filipinos have yet to receive the proper Christian indoctrination necessary for salvation. Though San Agustín does not propose that the Spanish clergy abandon the Philippines, Delgado fears that the Quadraginta will discourage potential Spanish missionaries from joining the Philippine mission and possibly even undermine the entire project of evangelization in the islands. More important, he cunningly implies that by inveighing against the Filipinos, San Agustín actually persecutes Christ, who in the anecdote clearly identifies with the Filipinos and not the Spanish. The second anecdote describes a devout Spaniard who, while travelling by boat in the Philippines, beat the rowers for what he perceived to be their indolence. Later, as he prayed, Christ supposedly appeared to him and asked: ‘¿cómo tratas de esta suerte, a estos pobres? [¿]No sabes que los indios son las niñas de mis ojos?’ (322) [How can you treat these poor people in this way? Do you not know that the Indians

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are the apple of my eye?]. Upon hearing these words, the man gave up his Spanish identity, donning Philippine dress and going barefoot, sitting and eating in the Philippine style. As a consequence, his fellow Spaniards no longer recognized him as one of their own and began treating him as an indio. On one occasion, a Spanish cleric saw him and, thinking he was Filipino, ordered him to help him ford a river: ‘indio, ven aquí y pásame de la otra banda’ (322) [Indian, come here and carry me to the other side]. Afterwards, the man knelt and kissed the cleric’s hand. Impressed by his humility, the cleric asked him where he was from, and when the man responded in Spanish that he was from Spain, the cleric was stunned. This passage reveals the contradictory attitude of Spaniards like Delgado towards native Filipinos. Ostensibly, Filipinos are better people than Spaniards, and by imitating them Spaniards will be drawn closer to Christ. But ironically, it is a childlike inferiority that makes Filipinos better. When Delgado refers to Filipinos as ‘las niñas’ of Christ’s eyes, he does not conceive of them as subjects (the literal translation of ‘la niña del ojo’ is ‘the pupil of the eye’) but rather as objects – figuratively speaking, ‘the apple’ of Christ’s eyes, and more specifically, children. Though the passage is informed by Christ’s exhortation, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me’ (Mark 10:14), it thus reasserts a colonialist paternalism. Unlike commentators in the tradition of Sepúlveda, Delgado does not regard indios as sinful but rather innocent. In keeping with the reasoning of Vitoria, however, he sees them as requiring the mediation of Christian Spaniards if they are ever to achieve their fullest human potential. Whereas elsewhere in his refutation of the Quadraginta Delgado uses Christianity to denounce San Agustín’s privileging of certain groups over others, he also (though surely inadvertently) manipulates religion to re-establish a European/Filipino hierarchy. This hierarchy might initially seem benign – Filipinos, after all, are Christ’s favourites. Yet such ‘truth’ is known only by Spaniards and not Filipinos, who remain, according to the image, infantilized objects. If Delgado’s writing serves as a corrective to the crudely colonialist tirades of San Agustín, it is in the final analysis a colonialist corrective that subtly affirms colonialism. Throughout his refutation of the Quadraginta Delgado attacks San Agustín for his disparagement of Filipinos, but ultimately he does not question San Agustín’s fundamental belief that Filipinos are barbarians. When San Agustín criticizes the rhetorical skills of the Filipinos,

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Delgado sarcastically notes their similarity to many rural Spaniards. Yet he adds: Y así, ¿qué quiere el reverendo padre que unos indios bárbaros, rudos y sin cultivo de letras hablen de teología y filosofía como unos Aristóteles? Esto sería pedir al olmo peras. (317) [And so, what does the reverend father want, that some barbarous Indians, unpolished and unlettered, speak of theology and philosophy like some Aristotle? That would be tantamount to asking an elm tree for pears.]

According to this passage, Filipinos are qualitatively different from Spaniards, even if, through Christian instruction, they might become the same. Despite his defence of Filipinos, Delgado’s position is hence closer to San Agustín’s than that of Las Casas, who, in his Apología (1552–3) [Apology], refers to indios as barbarians but nonetheless depicts them as the intellectual equals of Europeans: Pues, del hecho de que los indios sean bárbaros no se deduce que sean incapaces de gobernar y que deban ser gobernados por otros, salvo que deban ser instruidos en la fe católica e iniciados en los santos sacramentos. No son ignorantes, inhumanos o bestiales, sino que, mucho antes de haber oído la palabra ‘español,’ tenían estados rectamente organizados, esto es, prudentemente administrados con excelentes leyes, religión e instituciones. Cultivaban la amistad y, unidos en sociedad de vida, habitaban muy grandes ciudades, en las que prudentemente, con justicia y equidad, administraban los negocios tanto de la paz como de la guerra, regidos por leyes tales que, en muchos aspectos, superan a las nuestras y podrían causar la admiración de los sabios de Atenas. (105 and 107) [From the fact that the Indians are barbarians it does not necessarily follow that they are incapable of government and have to be ruled by others, except to be taught about the Catholic faith and to be admitted to the holy sacraments. They are not ignorant, inhuman, or bestial. Rather, long before they had heard the word Spaniard they had properly organized states, wisely ordered by excellent laws, religion, and custom. They cultivated friendship and, bound together in common fellowship, lived in populous cities in which they wisely administered the affairs of both peace and war justly and equitably, truly governed by laws that at very many points sur-

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pass ours, and could have won the admiration of the sages of Athens. (In Defense 42–3)]

If Delgado did not consider native Filipinos equal to ‘the sages of Athens,’ he did believe they should be allowed to join the ranks of the clergy. In contrast to San Agustín and the majority of Spanish clerics in the Philippines, Delgado in fact regarded the ordination of ‘indios [y] negros’ [Indians and blacks] as an extension of the tradition set by the Apostles themselves (295).22 He thus clearly represents the enlightened wing of the larger Philippine mission, which in the course of the nineteenth century became increasingly aligned with political reaction and in the end was perceived by Filipino nationalists as the final bastion of Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines. The Ilustrados’ Reaction Although San Agustín and Delgado lived and wrote in the period that Hill so aptly describes as the ‘pre-history of race,’ their quarrel did not become public until 1892, when social Darwinism was at its height, and race ideologists attempted to use contemporary scientific theory to justify European subjugation of non-European peoples.23 Delgado’s response to San Agustín appeared not only in the 1892 printing of his Historia but also in La Solidaridad, the primary journal of the Filipino ilustrados [the enlightened ones] in the late nineteenth century. The ilustrados were members of a highly educated, nationalist elite that appeared in the Philippines in the second half of the nineteenth century. Their most noted spokesperson was Rizal. The initial aim of the ilustrados was not Filipino independence but assimilation, that is, full incorporation of the Philippines into the Spanish state with proportional representation in the Spanish parliament. As Rizal’s deeply anti-clerical narratives make clear, they regarded the Catholic Church, and in particular the religious orders, as the driving force of Spanish authority in the Philippines and the main obstacle to Filipino progress. But they also challenged nineteenth-century Spanish colonial racism and rejected Spanish colonial discourses of native inferiority as unscientific. As Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr explains, the ilustrados marshalled contemporary scientific theories of demographic migration to argue that the people the Spanish labelled indios descended from a third wave of Malay migrants to the archipelago and were more advanced than the peoples they encountered and ultimately displaced – the so-called negritos and

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early Malay migrants who mixed with negritos and from whom the Igorots supposedly descended. The goal of the ilustrados was to affirm indios as the exemplary Filipino people. But they did so at the expense of certain local minorities, and in this way unwittingly replicated elements of colonial racism, which already posited these minorities as inferior to indios. La Solidaridad, edited by members of the Propaganda Movement (the association of expatriate, proto-nationalist Filipinos residing in Spain), was first published in Barcelona and subsequently Madrid, and ran 160 biweekly issues from 15 February 1889 to 15 November 1895. It reprinted Delgado’s text in eight instalments, along with several satirical commentaries on his critics, between September and December 1892.24 These satirical commentaries, although quite brief, are significant insofar as they reveal how the writings of Delgado and San Agustín were received by both Filipinos and Spaniards, and how their quarrel not only crystallized the racial dynamics of late Spanish colonialism in the Philippines but also informed the reaction of the ilustrados to Spanish colonial rule. Several items relevant to the quarrel of Delgado and San Agustín highlight the ‘Picadillo’ [Small things] section of the paper on 15 August 1892, immediately prior to the publication of the first instalment of Delgado’s text. One quotes the charge of a critic who accused Delgado of impudence for attempting to write in the spirit of Las Casas: ‘Si el P. Delgado era un sujeto ilustre que supo escribir bastantes cosas buenas, fue también un chiflado, que al querer actuar de nuevo P. Las Casas, (¡qué diferencia!) escribió muchas tonterías.’ (4: 394) [‘If Fr. Delgado is an illustrious person, who was able to write many good things, he was also a (crazy) one, who wrote many silly things when he (wished) to act as Fr. Las Casas.’ (4: 395)]

Here, the editors of La Solidaridad implicitly ridicule the disingenuousness of a Spaniard who dismisses Delgado as a second-rate Las Casas. The upshot is that if the Spaniard in question indeed regarded Delgado’s writings as silliness, then his or her position was most likely akin to San Agustín’s. Another item recognizes a possible Jesuit/Augustinian conflict with regard to indios. According to one critic, ‘parece como que los jesuitas son paladines ardientes de los indios, y que los agustinos son sus

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depresores’ (4: 394) [‘it seems that the Jesuits are ardent defenders of the natives, and that the Augustinians are (their) oppressors’ (4: 395)]. Rather than simply affirm Delgado in the role of Jesuit defender of the indios, the editors of La Solidaridad cleverly validate him because he himself reasons like an indio: Hubiera sido muy conveniente, según el rapsodista de las órdenes, que esos capítulos [de la Historia de Delgado] hubieran sido suprimidos, porque en ellos el P. Delgado, el jesuita, ‘a veces discurre lo mismo que cualquier estudiantillo indígena.’ (4: 394) [It would have been better, according to those who rhapsodize over the orders, if those chapters (of Delgado’s Historia) had been removed, for in these chapters Fr. Delgado, the Jesuit, ‘sometimes (reasons like any little indigenous student).’ (4: 395)]

Here, Delgado is cast not in the role of the good priest or Spaniard (in opposition to the ‘bad’ San Agustín) but (with added irony, given the diminutive ‘estudiantillo’ [little student]) as a sort of cryptoFilipino. Whereas in San Agustín’s and Delgado’s texts the identity of the indio is contested, La Solidaridad appropriates and reinscribes the identity of the Spaniard, albeit in the sarcastic words of one of Delgado’s critics. An even more provocative item recognizes the potential subversiveness of Delgado’s writing. According to the editors of La Solidaridad, El director de Administración civil de Manila ha emprendido la tarea de formar una biblioteca que llama Filipina reeditando antiguos códices poco conocidos. Ha comenzado por la historia del P. Delgado valiéndole esta determinación las censuras de los ‘incondicionales.’ ¿Por qué? dirán ustedes. (4: 394) [The Director of Civil Administration in Manila has begun the task of forming a library which he calls Philippine, re-editing old, little known (codices). He has begun with the history of Fr. Delgado, which has aroused the criticism of the uncompromising ones (loyalists to Spain). Why? You may ask. (4: 395)]

The answer is given in the words of a Spanish critic:

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La cosa es clara; porque ‘puesta la obra del Padre Delgado en manos de tres mil indios y mestizos, algunos de ellos de la cáscara amarga, es una imprudencia.’ (4: 394) [It is very clear: because ‘to place the work of Father Delgado into the hands of 3,000 natives and mestizos, some of them embittered, is not very wise.’ (4: 395)]

In keeping with the powerful anti-clericalism of the ilustrados, La Solidaridad does not respond directly to the Spanish critic’s concern, but instead mockingly turns it back against the church: Es verdad; la cosa es verdaderamente imprudente. ¡La obra de un jesuita! . . . El hecho ha de traer hondas perturbaciones. En la cabeza del censor incipiente. (4: 394) [It is true. This is not wise at all. The work of a Jesuit! . . . The fact should cause much disturbance. In the head of the incipient censor. (4: 395)]

Like nineteenth-century Spanish secular liberals, the ilustrados sought to limit the role of the clergy in society and expand representative government. To do so, they argued, required freedom of expression. Yet as they indicate in the pages of La Solidaridad, in the Philippines ‘toda manifestación del pensamiento les está vedada [a los indígenas]’ (4: 394) [‘all manifestation of thought is forbidden (to the indigenous)’ (395)]. And as their previous examples demonstrate, ‘¡… ni aun los PP. Delgado y San Agustín están libres de ser mutilados en manos de estos colonizadores!’ (4: 394) [‘Not even Fr. Delgado and San Agustín are exempt from being mutilated in the hands of these colonizers!’ (4: 395)]. Spanish reaction to the publication of Delgado’s text thus clearly reveals the oppressiveness and intransigence of late Spanish colonialism. The views of both San Agustín and Delgado were manipulated not only by staunch colonialists but also the ilustrados themselves. In an article published in an earlier ilustrado newspaper, España en Filipinas, a pseudonymous author, typically identified as Rizal, writes: ‘San Agustín only concedes us half a soul, saying that we are descendants of monkeys’ (trans. Schumacher 71).25 San Agustín in fact makes neither claim in the Quadraginta. But by attributing these sentiments to him, Rizal effectively aligns him with the most prejudicial views of both tra-

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ditional theologians and nineteenth-century pseudo-scientists, and in so doing exposes what from the ilustrado perspective was the true face of Spanish colonial racism. In contrast, Delgado’s text evinces a paternalistic attitude that reflects and supports colonialism. Yet both the editors of La Solidaridad and the colonialist critics they deride implicitly place him in the anti-colonialist camp simply by reading him as a defender of the Filipino people. For if, as his text is understood to say, Filipinos are equal to Spaniards, then the Philippines should logically occupy a position of equality with Spain in a reconfigured state that would no longer be colonial. But as a matter of fact, Delgado’s text might be read differently. As the reference to ‘la cáscara amarga’ (or centuries of bitterness of the Filipino people towards Spanish colonialism) implies, it might also be taken as an incitement for rebellion and ultimately outright separation of the colony from the metropolis. From both the colonialist and ilustrado perspectives, therefore, the quarrel of San Agustín and Delgado, though silent for over a century, was potentially incendiary. In fact, it remained symptomatic of the racial tensions of colonialism present in the Philippines until the very end of Spanish rule, and during the subsequent United States occupation as well. Rereading the Spanish Narrative Rizal is not only the iconic figure of the Philippine nation but also, as Austin Coates argues, the progenitor of modern Asian nationalism and the initiator of the twentieth-century Asian independence movements from Western colonialism (351). In addition to Sun Yatsen and Rabindranath Tagore, Coates detects a particular affinity between Rizal and Mohandas Ghandi insofar as both conjoined ethics and politics and championed non-violent, national self-affirmation (351–2). In Noli me tangere and El filibusterismo, as well as numerous poems, essays, and letters, Rizal denounces Spanish colonialism in the Philippines, especially as carried out by the friars. In certain texts, such as his edition of Morga’s Sucesos, he provides a Filipino response to Spanish colonial readings of Filipino history and culture. During his sojourn as a student in Madrid, he also wrote about Spain itself, thereby providing an informed Asian interpretation of the country not readily available in the colonial Philippines, or for that matter in the writings of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Chinese and Japanese commentators on Europe.

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Rizal was born in 1861 to a family that traced an ancestral line to the province of Fujian, China. In the Philippines he studied at the Ateneo Municipal of Manila and the University of Santo Tomás, majoring in medicine. In May 1882 he travelled to Madrid, where he remained until 1885, receiving a licentiate degree in medicine from the Central University. He subsequently studied at the universities of Paris and Heidelberg, eventually specializing in ophthalmology and achieving fluency in French and German. During this period he also wrote the Noli and the Fili, publishing the first in Berlin in 1887 and the second in Ghent in 1891. The Austrian scholar Ferdinand Blumentritt (Prague 1853, Leitmeritz 1913), Rizal’s closest European friend and mentor, translated the Noli into German and wrote the first preface for the Fili.26 In 1890 Rizal published Morga’s Sucesos, for which Blumentritt also provided a prologue. Morga’s Sucesos is the only comprehensive account of the early Philippines not authored by a member of the clergy. Rizal read the original in the British Museum, and hand copied and edited it. In a brief foreword he states that he was completely ignorant of the Filipino past until he read Morga’s text. The Sucesos, he maintains, not only revealed to him the past of his people, that is, what he takes to be his own past, but also gave him a voice and granted him the authority to speak of this past. Rizal, however, does not simply transcribe Morga’s text, and thereby narrate the past with a ventriloquized, Spanish voice but, through extensive footnotes, responds to Morga’s reading in a way that validates the Filipino people and simultaneously corrects what he perceives to be Morga’s misconceptions and prejudices – even if he regards Morga as the most sympathetic Spanish commentator of the Philippines from the early colonial period. From the early seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries Morga’s Sucesos in fact functioned as a master narrative of the history of the Spanish in the Philippines, and indeed in East and Southeast Asia in general. Rizal’s footnotes, though appearing at the bottom of the page and hence (at least visually) in a position of subordinance to Morga’s discourse, come to constitute a new Filipino articulation of this history. In a sense Rizal ‘piggy-backs’ on Morga’s narrative in order to carry out his own reading of the past and retrospectively establish the conditions for Filipino national identity in the present and the future. Ambeth R. Ocampo affirms that in his edition of Morga’s Sucesos Rizal elucidates the first history of the Philippines from ‘an indio viewpoint’ (210), that is, the viewpoint of a Filipino. He points out, however, that Rizal’s interpretation of Filipino history has been rendered

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obsolete by more recent anthropological research on the pre-Hispanic Philippines. Indeed, Rizal makes various claims about pre-Hispanic Filipino culture that have proved to be erroneous. For example, he maintains that pre-Hispanic Filipinos had a written language that was completely eradicated by the Spanish friars. According to Ocampo, although anthropologists have discovered an extensive ‘oral literature’ dating most likely to the pre-Hispanic period, ‘[t]hat all trace of preHispanic writing was destroyed is highly improbable . . . To be fair to the much maligned early missionaries, knowledge of the pre-Hispanic syllabary was probably preserved rather than obliterated by the friars’ (201). Because Rizal wrote before the advent of Filipino archaeology he had no choice but to base his history of the Philippines on Spanish colonial historiography, which, while biased, was actually closer than he was to the issues he discusses. His edition of the Sucesos is thus of value today not so much for providing insight into the Filipino past but for revealing the process through which he, and by extension early Filipino nationalists, fashioned Filipino identity and, as Ocampo puts it, created ‘a sense of national consciousness’ (202). Rizal’s foreword to the Sucesos is followed by the prologue of Blumentritt, who situates Rizal’s historical project in a political and racial context. Blumentritt criticizes the Spanish for not having re-edited and republished the text themselves. The first modern editions were the English translation of Henry E.J. Stanley, followed by Rizal’s annotation of the original Spanish version. As Blumentritt sarcastically remarks, ‘tú fuiste quien ha pagado la deuda de la nación, de la misma nación cuyos hijos degenerados se burlan de tu raza y le niegan las dotes intelectuales’ (viii) [you were the one who paid the debt of the nation, the same nation whose degenerate sons mock your race and deny its intellectual gifts]. Blumentritt decries European racism, which holds that, con excepción de la raza blanca, de los Chinos y Japones, todas las otras naciones y razas del mundo son o salvajes, hombres primitivos o, por lo menos, hombres a quienes la providencia del Ser Supremo dotó con una inteligencia infantil y limitada. (x) [with the exception of the white race, and the Chinese and Japanese, all the other nations and races of the world are either savages and primitive, or at least men whom the providence of the Supreme Being endowed with an infantile and limited intelligence.]

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According to Blumentritt, Rizal’s comments are important precisely because they come not from a European but from one of the descendants of the victims of European intolerance during the early colonial period. Blumentritt nevertheless criticizes Rizal on two fronts: first, for employing contemporary ethical criteria to censure the actions of peoples of the past (a problematic charge, since Morga’s own contemporaries, including Salazar, levelled similar indictments against Spaniards’ mistreatment of indios), and second, for seemingly attacking the Catholic Church as a whole rather than the egregious behaviour of certain members of the Catholic clergy. Blumentritt concludes by expressing the hope that Spanish readers will realize that Filipinos are not reducible to the stereotypes promoted by the friars and enemies of the Filipino people, for if the Spanish do not change their attitudes towards Filipinos and in so doing fully integrate the Philippines into the Spanish state, then Filipino revolution will be inevitable. In the Sucesos Morga covers the history of the Spanish conquest of the Philippines, as well as the history of the early relations between the colonial Philippines and China, Japan, and Cambodia, with the greatest emphasis on the latter country. He also includes texts from other writers. In the final chapter he describes the customs and traditions of the Filipinos, a section of particular interest to Rizal. In his footnotes Rizal elaborates Morga’s comments, often challenging his assertions and at times expressing subtle sarcasm. When, at the outset of his narrative, Morga writes, ‘Encomendóse (n.1) la tierra a los que la han pacificado’ (12) [the land was given as an encomienda to those who had pacified it], Rizal responds, Esta palabra encomendar como la de pacificar, tuvo después una significación irónica: encomendar una provincia, era como decir: entregarla al saqueo, a la crueldad y a la codicia de alguien, según después se portaron los Encomenderos. (12 n.1) [This expression, ‘to give as an encomienda,’ like the word ‘pacify,’ later had an ironic meaning: ‘to give a province as an encomienda’ was like saying to hand it over for sacking to the cruelty and greed of someone, as the holders of encomiendas later behaved.]

Rizal’s assertion that the encomenderos were cruel and avaricious is clearly judgmental, but it does not, despite Blumentritt’s view, differ in tone from Salazar’s own condemnation of his Spanish contemporaries.

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For the most part Rizal is in fact sensitive to the temporal specificities of Morga’s text. In his notes on the sections of the Sucesos related to Spanish-Chinese relations, Rizal praises Ricci for his tolerance and skilled diplomacy, which he contrasts with the position of the Spanish friars in China (130 n.1). He further condemns the role of the Spanish friars in Japan, citing Spanish writings that suggest that they were indeed spies for the Spanish authorities in the Philippines and that the Spanish did hope to subjugate the Japanese nation (78–9 n.1). His comments on the Spanish incursions into Cambodia are more extensive, precisely because Morga devotes more space to them and includes various texts related to the Spanish-Cambodian encounter. In commenting on a letter of Blas Ruiz de Hernán González to Morga, which recounts the actions of Aduarte, Rizal writes: Este es el Fray Diego Aduarte, que fue después Obispo de Nueva Segovia, y escribió Relaciones de Mártires y una Historia de la Provincia del Santo Rosario, en donde cuenta largamente esta expedición y la parte que en ella había tomado. Ha tratado en vano de pintar esta empresa bajo un aspecto favorable, procurando presentar como disculpables la matanza de los Chinos, la muerte de Anacaparan [el rey] y el incendio de su palacio, aunque con contradicciones y detalles inverosímiles, entre milagros y acciones verdaderamente heroicas y maravillosas . . . Fr. Diego Aduarte es el tipo del fraile aventurero de entonces, medio guerrero y medio sacerdote, valiente y sufrido, confesando, bautizando y matando lleno de fe y sin escrúpulo alguno. (95 n.1) [This is Fray Diego Aduarte, who was later the bishop of Nueva Segovia and wrote the Accounts of the Martyrs and a History of the Holy Rosary Province, in which he tells at length of this expedition and the role he played in it. He has attempted in vain to paint the undertaking in a favourable light, trying to present as excusable the slaughter of the Chinese, the death of Anacaparan [the king], and the burning of his palace, although with contradictions and implausible details, including miracles and truly heroic and wondrous actions . . . Fray Diego Aduarte is the type of adventurous friar of the time, half warrior and half priest, valiant and long-suffering, confessing, baptizing and killing, imbued with faith but without any scruples whatsoever.]

Rizal further remarks that the Spanish intervention in Cambodia did not constitute a just war (a point he claims Stanley failed to grasp in

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his comments on the events [113 n.2]), even despite Ruiz’s attempt to portray it as such and thereby avoid any charge that the Spaniards’ booty was in fact a theft. Rizal thus concludes that the Spanish project in Cambodia deserved to fail (137 n.2). In the final chapter of the Sucesos, Rizal comments on Morga’s discussion of the social and religious conditions of the islands. Rizal notes that slavery increased under the Spanish, but maintains that as a consequence of its prevalence in the pre-Hispanic Philippines the Filipino people were disinclined to defend their native rulers and hence offered little resistance to the Spanish conquest (299 n.3). Although he recognizes strong class distinctions in native Filipino society, he argues that there was actually greater class flexibility in the pre-Hispanic Philippines than in early modern Europe because marriage outside of one’s class of origin was common (301 n.1). The introduction of Christianity, however, did not ease the oppression of the poor but rather, as he puts it, increased the number of tyrants (300 n.1). As might be expected, Rizal lashes out against the religious orders. When Morga states that from the outset they did much to spread the faith in a positive fashion, Rizal acidly responds: Sólo, después que los religiosos vieron su posición consolidada, empezaron a esparcir calumnias y a rebajar las razas de Filipinas con la mira de darse más importancia, hacerse siempre necesarios y excusar así su torpeza e ignorancia con la pretendida rudeza del Indio. Hay que exceptuar, sin embargo, a los Jesuitas, quienes casi siempre han hecho justicia al Indio, siendo también los que más le han enseñado e ilustrado, sin pretender por eso declararse como sus eternos protectores, tutores, defensores, etc., etc. (329 n.2) [Only after the religious saw their position consolidated did they begin to spread calumny and humiliate the Filipino races with the intention of making themselves more important and always necessary and using the supposed coarseness of the Indians to excuse their own dullness and ignorance. One, however, must exempt the Jesuits, who have almost always done justice to the Indians, being the ones who taught and enlightened them the most, without trying to use this to position themselves as their eternal protectors, tutors, defenders, etc., etc.]

As previously remarked, the ilustrados perhaps regarded the Jesuits in a positive light because they had been inactive in the islands during the period of their protracted expulsion. But Rizal’s attitude towards the

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order was also likely influenced by his own experience at the Jesuitaffiliated Ateneo de Manila. Rizal reflects on many of the Filipino customs described by Morga. He highlights one tradition, the veneration of the bones of the dead, to criticize the Catholic veneration of holy relics – something that Fabian Fucan had done several centuries earlier in Japan. Encontramos mucho más natural y piadoso venerar los restos de los padres, a quienes lo deben casi todo y llaman ‘segundos Dioses en la tierra’, que no venerar y reverenciar la memoria, huesos, pelos, etc., de ciertos santos, muchos de los cuales fueron extraños maniáticos y de santidad tan dudosa . . . Idolatría por idolatría, preferimos la de nuestros padres a quienes debemos el ser y la educación, a la de algún sucio fraile, maniático ermitaño, o fanático mártir, a quienes no conocimos ni tratamos y que probablemente no se acordarán jamás de nosotros. (313 n.2) [We find it much more natural and pious that they venerate the remains of their parents, to whom they owe almost everything and whom they call ‘the second gods on the earth,’ than to venerate and revere the memory, bones, hairs, etc. of certain saints, many of whom were weird obsessives and of very doubtful holiness . . . Idolatry for idolatry, we prefer that of our parents, to whom we owe our being and our education, to that of some filthy friar, obsessive hermit, or fanatical martyr, whom we did not know or have dealings with and who will probably never remember us anyway.]

Although Rizal does not compare the Filipino veneration of the dead to the Chinese practice of ancestor veneration, his tolerance of certain preChristian Asian rites is reminiscent of Jesuit accommodationism, and as such implicitly anti-friar and anti-Spanish, and thus consonant with the anti-Spanish tenor of his entire work. Rizal takes particular umbrage with Morga’s depictions of the sexual mores of the native Filipinos. Morga states that unmarried Filipinos were a ‘gente de poca continencia’ (308) [people of little abstinence]. Rizal does not deny this, but instead argues that sexual promiscuity is natural, noting that even in Mosaic law what was most rigorously proscribed was not fornication per se but adultery. Only under Christianity, he observes, did extramarital sex become a mortal sin (308 n.2). Rizal, however, agrees with Morga’s comments on sodomy. According to Morga, sodomy was not practised in the Philippines until the arrival of the Spanish and the Chinese (308). Rizal, in his effort to represent early Filipino society as natural, accepts Morga’s contention that the

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‘pecado nefando contra natura’ (308) [nefarious sin against nature] was unknown in the pre-Hispanic Philippines: Esto confirma que la incontinencia de los Filipinos gentiles no era desenfreno, sino exceso de naturalismo y falta de prohibición religiosa o moral . . . A pesar de lo que dice Morga, y a pesar de haber trascurrido desde entonces casi tres siglos, el Filipino sigue aborreciendo este crimen. (308–9 n.3) [This confirms that the lack of abstinence of the pagan Filipinos was not unbridled, but an excess of naturalism and a lack of religious or moral prohibition . . . In spite of what Morga says, and in spite of the fact that almost three centuries have passed since then, the Filipino continues to abhor this crime.]

In this note Rizal unwittingly reflects nascent, late nineteenth-century European notions of heterosexual normalcy and homosexual deviance in an effort to paint traditional Filipino society in what he considers a positive light. As J. Neil C. Garcia remarks, [W]hile Rizal sees the unbridled sexual activities between native men and women – which were much remarked about and bewailed in the early Spanish accounts – as constitutive of a kind of natural innocence or ‘naturalism,’ he cannot imagine that such an innocence could have allowed the same people to ‘wander through [sodomy’s] mistaken paths.’ In other words, Rizal criticizes Morga by ‘denaturalizing’ his moralistic account of sexuality, yet stops his argument short when it begins to dangerously wander into the ‘unnatural’ (yes, Rizal unblinkingly accepts this adjective!) terrain of sodomy.

Rizal’s stance is nevertheless not surprising and reveals how he himself had interiorized both the open-mindedness and prejudices his period.27 From Rizal’s perspective, the most significant aspersion that Morga casts against the Filipino character (but which Delgado vehemently dismisses) is that Filipinos are lazy. The imputation of laziness to colonized peoples is a particularly pernicious feature of imperialist discourse since it implies that, regardless of intellectual capability, nonWesterners will never progress without the necessary coercion of their Western masters. Morga states specifically that Filipinos are ‘enemigos del trabajo’ (337) [enemies of work]. Rizal, however, argues that they in fact worked harder when they were not under the yoke of the enco-

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menderos. In his view, what Morga fails to perceive is the origin of the putative indolence of the Filipino people: [M]ás trabajaban y más industria tenían cuando no había encomenderos, esto es, en su gentilidad . . . fue que los Indios, viendo que eran vejados y explotados por sus Encomenderos a causa de los productos de su industria, y no considerándose como bestias de carga o cosa parecida, empezaron a romper sus telares, abandonar las minas, los sembrados, etc., figurándose que sus dominadores los iban a dejar al verlos pobres, míseros e inexplotables. Así degeneraron y se perdieron la industria y la agricultura tan florecientes antes de la llegada de los Españoles. (337 n.2) [They worked harder and were more industrious when there were no encomenderos, that is, when they were pagan . . . what happened is that the Indians, seeing that they were humiliated and exploited by the encomenderos for the products of their industry, and not considering themselves beasts of burden or something similar, began to break their looms, abandon the mines and fields, etc., supposing that their dominators would see them as poor, miserable, and unexploitable, and would leave them. They thus degenerated and lost the industry and agriculture that so flourished before the arrival of the Spanish.]

Interestingly, Rizal accepts the notion of Filipino indolence but interprets it as both an act of resistance to oppression and in the long run a negative remnant of colonialism. Clearly, Rizal does not attempt to portray Filipinos in an idealized light. As he sees it, Filipino society is backward. But colonialism is not the solution to this backwardness; rather, it is the cause. Now Who Are Still ‘Savages’? Rizal’s reading of the Spanish narrative of Filipino history in his edition of Morga’s Sucesos, albeit less well known and influential than the Noli and the Fili, is one of the clearest examples of Asian-authored Hispanic Asianography. In this text Rizal uses the Spanish language to produce (and reproduce) an Asia of meaning. In contrast, in one of his letters to Blumentritt he turns his attention from Asia to Spain itself, assessing Spanish culture through the prism of the city of Madrid.28 Strictly speaking, this letter is not an instance of Hispanic Asianography but rather what might be called ‘Asian Hispanography,’ since it reveals the

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effort of an Asian author to construct a meaning of Spain and Spanishness. Although a few early modern Japanese and Chinese writers (including Fabian Fucan, the creators of the Kirishitan monogatari, and the neo-Confucian commentators of Diego Pantoja’s Qike) responded to Spanish incursions into Japan and China and to aspects of Christian theology, they did not actually write in Spanish and, with the exception of the Namban artists, did not attempt to depict Spain itself. Early modern Japanese travellers like Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga observed Spanish society, but his diaries have been lost. Rizal’s writing on Spain, as evinced in his letter to Blumentritt, is thus an essential component of the more than three-and-a-half-century encounter of Spain and Asia during the Spanish colonial period. As Rizal explains to Blumentritt, he knows Madrid quite well, since he has lived there for an extended period of time, unlike other regions of the Iberian Peninsula, which he has only visited briefly. In his letter, however, he exoticizes Madrid, representing it through a lens that ultimately functions to portray the city, and, by extension, the entire Spanish nation, as a hybridization of Europe and the Orient, here understood as the Islamic sphere of North Africa and the Middle East. To the extent that his comments are directed to a northern European, Germanic reader, he may intentionally express what he presumes to be this reader’s image of the Spanish capital. But his comments also suggest that he himself has internalized conventional and at times clichéd notions of Spanish culture and society. This might seem surprising, given his acute awareness of Spanish exoticist views of the Philippines, but it also reveals his own embeddedness in the imperialist discourses he ostensibly challenges. Rizal writes that Madrid combines the spirit of both Europe and the Orient, and although it has adopted ‘l’Europe civilisée’ (101) [‘civilized Europe’ (68)], it has not rejected ‘les vives passions, les mœurs primitives des tribus de l’Afrique, des arabes chevaleresques dont les traces sont encore à reconnaître partout’ (101) [‘the ardent passions, the primitive customs of the African tribes, of the chivalrous Arabs whose traces are still recognizable everywhere’ (68)]. If passion is the overriding characteristic of Spaniards, it manifests itself most explicitly in Spanish women and specifically their eyes. German women, he writes, are grandes, blondes, belles, mais sérieuses, sans un sourire aux lèvres, sans une étincelle aux pupiles [sic], marchant à peu près comme les hommes de ce pas rapide, pressé, allant aux affaires ou à la fabrique. (101)

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[tall, blonde, pretty but serious, without a smile on their lips, without a sparkle in their eyes, walking a little like men with a rapid and hurried pace in going about their business or to the factory. (67)]

In contrast, Spain is the land of les belles femmes aux yeux noirs, profonds et ardents, avec leur mantille et leur éventail, toujours gracieuses, toujours pleines de feu, d’amour, de jalousie et quelquefois de vengeance. (100) [the beautiful women of the black eyes, deep and ardent, with their mantillas and fans, always gracious, always full of fire, of love, of jealousy, and sometimes of vengeance. (67)]

Rizal recognizes that this is a northern European fantasy of Spanish women, yet he declares that ‘il est aussi vrai’ (101) [‘(i)t is also true’ (67)]. Rizal clearly and perhaps not unwittingly orientalizes Madrid – the geographical and political locus of European imperial power in the Philippines – rendering it peripheral to Europe and, like the Philippines itself in the imperialist imaginary, European in its political structure but non-European in its cultural essence. He also, in typical orientalist fashion, feminizes the Spanish nation, conflating it with the passionate (and as such passive) gaze of the Spanish woman. In contrast to the German woman, who is depicted in movement and engaged in activities similar to those of men, the Spanish woman is static insofar as her whole life revolves around the love of men: ‘nées pour aimer, vivant pour l’amour, et mourant pour avoir aimé, cela est vrai’ (101) [‘born to love, living for love and dying for having loved; that is true’ (67)]. The Spanish woman is thus not the agent of her life. The upshot is that Spain, even though it continues to wield power over the Philippines, is not a suitable model for the Filipino people as they attempt to assert their history and culture. If Rizal’s comments are not expressly intended to denigrate Spain, they nonetheless function to diminish it as a site of positive inspiration for national self-renewal. As Rizal’s writing elsewhere makes clear, the ideal European model of the period is Germany. According to Rizal, someone visiting Madrid from abroad will be struck by ‘l’animation, les brillantes couleurs, et quelqu’allure sans façon [sic]’ (101) [‘the life, the brilliant colors, and a certain unaffected

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manner’ (68)] not typical of northern Europeans. But if Madrid possesses the colour of the exotic, it is also less hygienic than the European norm: ‘[L]e Guadarrama . . . y envoie un vent qui cause beaucoup de pneumonies’ (102) [‘From the Guadarrama River . . . blows a wind that causes much pneumonia’ (69)]. What is more, ‘[l]es maisons sont mal bâties, le plancher est en briques; on trouve une ou deux cheminées dans la maison, ce qui fait grelotter en hiver et prendre des rhumatismes’ (102) [‘(t)he houses are poorly constructed; the floor is made of bricks(, and) (a)lthough a house may have one or two chimneys, one shivers in winter and gets rheumatism in it’ (69)]. And if you look up aux balcons pour admirer les jeunes filles qui les couronnent au milieu des fleurs et des plantes grimpantes . . . vous courez le danger de marcher sur quelque chose qui vous obligera à changer de bottes. (101) [at the balconies to admire the girls who crown them amid flowers and climbing plants[,] . . . you run the risk of stepping on something which will compel you to change your shoes. (68)]

Like the non-European world in the imperialist imaginary, Spain possesses local colour, but it is also unsanitary and, in the final analysis, dirty. If Rizal, despite his colonial status, regards Spain from what for all intents and purposes is the orientalist perspective of a non-Hispanic European, he also evinces class biases vis-à-vis the Spanish people he encounters in Madrid. He maintains that the ‘best’ of Madrid is in fact the middle class, which, despite aristocratic tastes, is republican in outlook and liberally educated. Although ostensibly anti-clerical, it remains wedded to Catholicism and hostile to Protestants, Jews, and freethinkers – attitudes that Rizal does not challenge. The Spanish bourgeoisie in fact arrogantly considers itself the very finest in the world, but if one of its members does wrong or fails, it invokes what it considers its own deficient racial heritage: ‘[N]ous sommes encore des sauvages, nous sommes des vandales, nous avons encore du sang africain, etc.’ (102) [‘We are still savages, we are Vandals, we still have African blood, etc.’ (69)]. Spanish pride thus masks an insecurity not unlike that of a formerly colonized people who have succeeded in affirming their national identity while remaining haunted by colonialist notions of native inferiority.

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Rizal, perhaps through class identification, affirms the middle-class citizen of Madrid as the true madrileño [inhabitant of Madrid], a type that he laments is gradually disappearing: [I]l n’en reste que le bas peuple, la canaille qui est la boue, la fange de Madrid. Toutes les fois que je pense à cette société, je m’imagine le bas peuple comme un fumier, la bourgeoisie comme la fleur qui croît sur le terrain enfumé. (102) [Remaining is the low class of people, the rabble which is the filth and mire of Madrid. Everytime I think of this society, I imagine the rabble as the rubbish and the bourgeoisie as the flower that grows in smoked ground. (69)]

In Rizal’s view it is not the ‘people’ who incarnate the ethnos of the city and, by extension the Spanish ‘Volk,’ but the liberally educated middle class – the same class he believes capable in his country of advancing the Filipino cause. As he writes in another letter to Blumentritt, Unsere Raçe [sic] hat zwar viele Fehler, sowohl Laster, aber wir sind nicht es wie uns einige Leute geschildert haben, wie z. B. der P. Gaspar de S. Agustin . . . [W]ir sind ja alle Menschen, durch Bildung und Unterricht vervollkommungsfähig [sic] wie die andern welche einige Jahrhunderte früher auch in der Barbarei lagen. [Our race has its defects and vices, but it is not as Fr. San Agustín . . . and others describe it . . . We are all human and we can improve ourselves through education and culture, as other peoples did which only some centuries ago were still savages.]29

Rizal deprecates the lower classes of Madrid, portraying them as a kind of rot in the Spanish earth that will destroy the burgeoning middle class, which he distinguishes from a harmless but dying aristocracy, and which alone might make possible the progress of the nation. Although he does not elaborate his views, his vision of the future of Spain is bleak precisely because of his scathing representation of the Spanish lower classes. Rizal’s experiences on the streets of Madrid are particularly negative. Though Madrid may be ‘une ville des plus riantes du monde’ (101) [‘one of the gayest cities of the world’ (68)], one must be careful never to

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reveal that one is a foreigner: ‘[C]ela pourrait vous faire un mauvais jeu’ (102) [‘That may make you the butt of a bad joke’ (68)]. And a visitor should never ask police officers for directions, as they will either feign ignorance or provide a maze of incomprehensible details. The best features of Madrid, according to Rizal, are the cafes and restaurants, où l’on parle de politique, de taureaux, on discute, on dispute, on crie, on rit, on se bat sans être sûr des motifs ou des causes des divergences d’opinion. (102) [where one talks of politics and bullfights, argues, debates, shouts, smiles, fights without being sure of the motives or causes of the differences of opinion. (69)]

This comment, while seemingly lighthearted, nevertheless implies a lack of intellectual seriousness in Rizal’s conversations with the people of Madrid. Although Rizal seems almost hostile to the poor of Madrid, he evinces sympathy for the most marginalized members of Filipino society, including the Igorots, who were brought to Madrid for the Philippine Exhibition of 1887. The purpose of this exhibition was to showcase to the Spanish public the peoples and traditions of the Philippine archipelago. But as Rizal writes to Blumentritt, Aber ich fürchte mich ob den armen Leuten: sie sollen in dem Madrider zoologischen Garten sich ausstellen, mit ihren Kleidern: sie werden eine köstliche Lungenentzündung bekommen. [I pity this poor people (the Igorots). They will be exhibited in the Zoological Garden of Madrid and with their simple original apparel they will catch a dreadful pneumonia.]30

If Rizal regards the Madrid poor as ‘rubbish,’ he is incensed by how the Spanish treat the Igorots as virtual animals. He notes in another letter that while some newspapers, such as El Liberal, declare that ‘es sei nicht der Würde der Menschen günstig, ihn auszustellen, neben den Thieren [sic] und Pflanzen!’ [‘it is not consistent with human dignity to be exhibited side by side with animals and plants!’], others take the opportunity to belittle and demean the Igorots.31 He further remarks, ‘Ich habe viel dagegen gearbeitet, damit diese Erniederung [sic]

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meines Stammvolks nicht stattfinden möchte, aber ich war kraftlos’ [‘I have done everything possible to prevent the carrying out of this degradation of men of my race, but I have not succeeded’ (emphasis added)].32 Although the ilustrados tended to regard the Malays as the dominant ethnic group of the Philippines and hence as the prototype of the Filipino people, Rizal in this letter ostensibly establishes a bond of commonality with all the native inhabitants of the archipelago, thereby transcending local ethnic differences. In his exhaustive study of the Philippine Exhibition of 1887, however, Luis Ángel Sánchez Gómez challenges Rizal’s assertions to Blumentritt. He points out that the Igorots were not exhibited in the Madrid zoo but on grounds near the zoo where exhibitions were typically mounted. What is more, he argues that Rizal’s defence of the Igorots is superficial, and that elsewhere he speaks of them disparagingly, even if he worries about their health (251). Rizal’s main concern, according to Sánchez Gómez, was that a negative representation of native Filipinos would adversely affect the cause of the ilustrados in Spain.33 But apart from the context of the exhibition, it is unlikely that he ever considered the Igorots and other non-Malay or non-Christian groups, such as the Muslims of the southern islands, as his compatriots (255). In fact, Rizal did not comment extensively on the Philippine Exhibition since he was not in Spain during the event and was absorbed at the time in the completion of the Noli. Rizal’s readings of both Filipino history and Spain reveal his rejection of colonialism, especially as practised by the Spanish in the Philippines. But he nevertheless affirms a Western belief in progress. In his view, progress is achieved not simply by imitating the ‘right’ European models (that is, not Spain but preferably a country like Germany), but by opening oneself up to the world at large. Rizal recognizes travel and migration as natural to all living beings: ‘Viajan, pues, emigran e inmigran como en continuo vaivén todos los seres de la tierra’ (La Solidaridad 1: 160) [‘Every creature travels then – [they] migrate and immigrate in a continuous alternating movement’ (161)].34 His vision of migration, however, is not related to material or economic exigencies but to a vaguely defined and idealized belief in the value of knowledge and intellectual growth. What is more, the peoples who stand most to benefit from a new-found openness to the world are precisely non-Europeans, since presumably they have been more insular than Europeans throughout their history:

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La India ha abierto ya sus grandiosos templos y enseña sus ídolos colosales, como la China, las puertas de sus murallas, exponiendo sus raros y maravillosos productos. El África y el Polo abren sus grandes desiertos y se sentarán dentro de poco en el banquete del progreso, siendo deudores a Lowinstone, Stanley y Nordens Kjolo de su adelanto y felicidad. (160) [India has opened her grandiose temples and exhibited her colossal idols, in the same way that China has opened the gates of her walls and exhibited her rare and marvelous products. Africa and the Poles opened their huge deserts and quickly joined the march of progress, thanks to Livingstone, Stanley, and Nordens Kjolo (Nordenskjöld) to whom their progress and prosperity is owed. (161)]

This comment reflects a decidedly Western bias despite Rizal’s fundamental rejection of Western colonialism. Yet through it Rizal attempts to validate what non-European cultures and lands have to offer the world (including his ‘Perla del mar de Oriente’ [Pearl of the Eastern Sea]),35 not for colonial exploitation but for the enrichment of all humanity. Rizal affirms Western progress, but as something in which all peoples (including the Filipinos and indeed even the Spanish) might ultimately participate. Rizal was accused by the Spanish colonial government of conspiring to foment revolution and executed on 30 December 1896. In his final letter to Blumentritt, he denied the charges against him.36 His execution took place in what is now known as Rizal Park, an open space just outside the old walled centre of Manila, Intramuros, which the Spanish had originally cleared in order to prevent native Filipinos from launching clandestine attacks against the colonial government. Two years later, on 10 December 1898, in the wake of the Spanish-American War, Spain signed the Treaty of Paris, thereby ceding control of the Philippines to the United States. This marks the end of the Spanish empire and of colonial Hispanic-Asian relations. Rizal’s final poems and letters from prison are thus among the last vestiges of Asian-authored Hispanic Asianography, for although Spaniards continue to write about East and Southeast Asia, Filipino writers in the twentieth century would abandon Spanish and henceforth write in the Filipino languages and English.

Conclusion

Hispanic Asianography covers a long span of history, from the early decades of European maritime expansion, through the three and a half centuries of Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines, to the postcolonial present. As a corpus of writings it reveals a transition from a Christian to a secular-based conception of the world. Given the tremendous historical and cultural diversity of Hispanic Asianographers, the only common thread uniting them might seem to be the Spanish language, although even this is not the case with an author like Xavier, who wrote in both Spanish and Portuguese. Most of these writers, nevertheless, express a profound interest in Asian and European cultural identities and a preoccupation with the relation of the self to other human beings, whom they envision as both deeply familiar and at the same time foreign. They therefore share affinities with writers not only from periods other than their own but from different colonial traditions as well. Most Hispanic Asianographers trace an ontological trajectory from the self to the Other in conjunction with a geographical trajectory from Europe to Asia, although writers like Sotelo and Rizal in fact move back and forth between the two regions. Moreover, in the early centuries of the Asian-European encounter they envision Asia as a place to be conquered, either militarily (the Philippines, Cambodia, and even China in the fantasies of Sánchez and Rada) or spiritually, as evidenced in the writings of the Catholic missionaries. Hispanic Asianography thus describes and participates in the European intervention in East and Southeast Asia during the early modern and modern periods. But it is never completely unidirectional, for however much it intervenes in Asia it also, at least implicitly, redefines and remakes Europe itself.

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The Hispanic-Asian and by extension larger European-Asian encounter that began in the sixteenth century was an ‘event,’ as the philosopher Alain Badiou conceives of the term, marking ‘a truly foundational ‘break’ with the established order . . . in such a way that what had hitherto been unthinkable suddenly became possible’ (Vilaseca 66).1 In early Hispanic Asianography this ‘break’ typically occurs in a moment of interchange between Spaniards and Asians and is experienced both with anxiety and exhilaration, as revealed by Xavier, Aduarte, Pantoja, and Navarrete. What is more, the discursive subject of early Hispanic Asianographers does not, as Badiou writes, ‘pre-exist the event . . . but is rather “brought into being” or “induced” by the event itself’ (69). The selves depicted by these writers (and indeed by such late colonial authors as Rizal) would have been inconceivable to them prior to their encounters with Asians in Asian contexts (or, in the case of Rizal, prior to his own sojourn as an Asian in Spain). Just as their textual selves were brought into being by the event of the Asian-European encounter, so too were the ‘Asias’ and ‘Europes’ that appear in their writings. Not only would these sites of meaning have been unimaginable to preencounter Asians and Europeans, but they in fact did not exist until they were drawn into discourse by early modern writers. The early European-Asian encounter and subsequent European colonization of Asia changed the lives of Europeans and Asians forever. Yet as the writings of Rizal reveal, European and Asian histories did not lead in teleological fashion to the events of the encounter and colonialism. Rather, the conditions for these events as well as Asian nationalism itself were created retroactively. In the example provided by Rizal, this occurred first through Morga’s articulation of the Filipino historical narrative and subsequently through Rizal’s re-articulation of this narrative. Rizal’s literary and historical work is in fact significant in Hispanic Asianography because it is one of the few instances in which the discursive subject is Asian and the discursive object is Spanish. In postcolonial Hispanic Asianography, as in Hispanic Asianography from the early modern period, the subject is almost exclusively Spanish, since after 1898 Filipino writers gradually stopped writing in the Spanish language. Postcolonial Hispanic-Asian Encounters During the colonial period the Spanish in the Philippines managed the trade between China and Spanish America, making American silver

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available to China and Chinese silk available to New Spain and ultimately Europe. In the twenty-first century Spain continues to envision a ‘triangular relationship’ with China and Latin America. In 2005 the Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero announced that Spain was anxious to serve as a bridge in the burgeoning economic interchange between China and Latin America, a role for which it felt well suited given its cultural and linguistic ties to the Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas. In 2009 Jiang Shixue, Deputy Director at the Institute of Latin American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, welcomed this position, and remarked that ‘[a]s a matter of fact, the triangle relationship has never been so good.’2 As in the past, a three-pronged relationship between Spain, China, and Latin America might be good for Spanish and Chinese business, although its advantages for Latin American development are less evident. Nevertheless, Chinese-Spanish relations are now characterized by a phenomenon not present in the early modern, Sino-Hispanic encounter: migration. Spanish migration to Asia and the Philippines was never great, and although Chinese migrated to Latin America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Chinese migration to Spain did not become significant until the late twentieth century. Today, Chinese form the largest Asian community in Spain, exceeding all other Asian-migrant groups.3 The majority of Chinese migrants in Spain are independently employed in the food-service industry, operating small restaurants and grocery stores. Most, however, are not well integrated into Spanish society, even though they are also less subject to the overt racial discrimination suffered by other migrants, especially those of North African and Sub-Saharan origin. In the late nineteenth century Filipinos constituted a small but culturally and politically significant community in Spain. Most, like Rizal, were young men of the Filipino middle and upper classes who had been sent by their parents to Madrid and Barcelona to complete their university education. After the end of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines, however, most Filipino overseas migration occurred between the Philippines and the United States. Yet Filipinos continued to migrate to Spain in the twentieth century, and today the combined community of overseas Filipino workers and Spanish nationals of Filipino descent in fact surpasses the Chinese community in size. These groups, as well as the other much smaller communities of East and Southeast Asians in Spain, have received little attention from scholars and observers of contemporary Spanish society, who tend to

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focus on the economic and social conditions of African and Latin American migrants and how these groups are represented in the media and popular culture. In contrast to the growing scholarly interest in the history of Asians in Latin America, the Asian presence in Spain remains a subject of marginal interest both within Spain and abroad.4 The presence of Spaniards in Asia is similarly overlooked, as are Asia-focused writings by twentieth- and twenty-first-century Spaniards. These are all areas of inquiry that should be included in Hispanic Studies as the field seeks to expand its transatlantic and transnational scope. Postcolonial Hispanic Asianography The work of the twentieth-century Spanish poet Jaime Gil de Biedma (1929–90) is one of the most deeply reflective examples of postcolonial Hispanic Asianography. During the mid-1950s Gil de Biedma lived for a brief period in the Philippines. While there, he kept a diary in which he examines his personal encounters with Filipinos and how these interactions affected his sense of self as an individual and European.5 He specifically emphasizes themes of race and sexuality. Both race and sexuality are modern categories of identity and as such not present in early modern Hispanic Asianography. As I have argued, in representing human reality early modern Hispanic Asianographers tend to highlight external conditions that influence human behaviour and temperament (as when San Agustín and Delgado quarrel over the effects of climate and diet on the physical constitution of Filipinos), or human faculties assumed to be universal (as when Xavier invokes free will in his denunciation of the ‘sin’ of sodomy committed by Buddhist monks). Gil de Biedma, in contrast, writes explicitly about race, which in late colonial and postcolonial Spanish discourse is intended to signify an internal and indelible essence. As revealed in his Philippine diary, Gil de Biedma seems haunted by the race history of Spain and the Philippines, yet he consciously struggles to transcend it. If in his writing he challenges the belief in racial essentialism, he nevertheless assumes that sexual orientation is an innate condition. It is precisely through sexuality that he strives to forge a bond of commonality between himself as a European and the gay Asian men he encounters in the Philippines. Although the Spanish presence in the Philippines was eclipsed in the twentieth century by the United States, Spain continued to maintain lucrative business relations in the islands. In the mid-1950s Gil de

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Biedma, who worked in the Spanish office of the Compañía General de Tabacos de Filipinas [General Company of Philippine Tobaccos], was sent to the Philippines to study Philippine labour, fiscal, and corporate laws and to participate in the reorganization of the company’s local offices. While there, he became acutely aware of Western racism and his own historical complicity as a Spaniard in the exploitation of the Filipino people. As he confesses in his diary, the sight of Caucasians fills him with shame (‘uno no quiere reconocerse en ellos’ [25] [One does not want to recognize oneself in them]), and he is frustrated by the fact that he is perceived by Filipinos in the same light as other whites (‘Me abruma la continua incomodidad de sentirme un ser genérico, un blanco. No soy o no represento más que eso, y me humilla’ [11] [I am overwhelmed by the constant discomfort of feeling like a generic being, a white. I am not, nor do I represent anything more than that, and it humiliates me]). What Gil de Biedma discovers during his overseas sojourn is that his identity is inseparable from his appearance and that in the postcolonial milieu of the Philippines the meaning of his appearance is ultimately determined not by him but by Filipinos. Although Gil de Biedma lashes out against racial prejudice, he himself remains haunted by the phantasms of racism, as revealed when he walks through Manila and experiences an amorphous but overpowering sense of apprehension: Uno pasea por la calle como si alguien le acechara, como si en cualquier momento pudiera desaparecer . . . [Hay] [u]n terror que es una equivalencia urbana del pánico primitivo y que ni en Barcelona ni en Londres ni en París había sentido nunca con tanta intensidad. (21) [One walks down the street as if one were being stalked, as if at any moment one might disappear . . . There is a terror that is the urban equivalent of a primitive panic and that I have never felt with the same intensity either in Barcelona, London, or Paris.]

Gil de Biedma’s fear of an invisible but ubiquitous other not present in the European cities with which he is familiar reveals his own deeply entrenched, European race consciousness. Yet his unease is also reminiscent of early modern Spanish writers, such as Pantoja and Aduarte, when they encountered what for them were profoundly different societies.

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Gil de Biedma, nevertheless, makes a tremendous, if somewhat clumsy effort to achieve reciprocity in his intimate interactions with Filipino men. As Paul Patton remarks in his discussion of Gilles Deleuze’s conception of the ‘event of colonization,’ despite four centuries of hierarchical Spanish-Filipino relations ‘the potential for radically different forms of social relation remains’ (110). In describing an evening spent with one friend, Chris de la Vera, Gil de Biedma writes: tan pronto estamos lo bastante bebidos nos lanzamos a una disquisición apasionada acerca de la imposibilidad de toda amistad sólida entre nosotros, se lamenta él de haber nacido esclavo, me desespero yo de haber nacido tirano y de trabajar en una sociedad que es un símbolo de tiranía, doy viento al sentimiento de culpabilidad racial que he adquirido desde que estoy aquí, él declara que mi simpatía no es otra cosa que una actitud protectora, le devuelvo yo la impertinencia, cada cual decide no ver más al otro y cuando la situación es ya imposible nos confesamos que ha sido una noche maravillosa y que somos hermanos – lo cual, por mi parte, es absolutamente cierto: le quiero mucho–; una vez llegados a la catharsis, nos despedimos hasta la próxima vez. (30) [as soon as we are sufficiently inebriated we launch into a passionate argument on the impossibility of any solid friendship between ourselves, he laments having been born a slave, I despair having been born a tyrant and working in a society that is a symbol of tyranny, I air the feeling of racial guilt that I have acquired since being here, he declares that my sympathy is nothing more than a patronizing attitude, I return to him the impertinence, each one decides not to see the other again and when the situation has become impossible we confess that it has been a wonderful evening and that we are brothers – which for my part is absolutely true: I love him very much; once we have reached the catharsis, we bid farewell until the next time.]

This passage, as Patton’s analysis suggests, shows how ‘[t]he event of colonization may reemerge into history in unexpected ways’ (110). Gil de Biedma acknowledges racial guilt as if in order to extend to De la Vera an apology for Western racism and thereby transcend the racefraught history of Filipinos and Spaniards. De la Vera, however, rejects his gesture as patronizing and, as such, a subtle expression of power. Gil de Biedma wants to see De la Vera as a brother and declares, at least

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to the reader, that he loves him. But De la Vera seems suspicious of Gil de Biedma and hesitant to accept his overtures. Ultimately, both Gil de Biedma and De la Vera are products of a common history of conflict, and though their interaction takes place in a private setting (and though their sparring might in fact be read simply as a prelude to sexual intimacy), they are unable to extricate themselves from this history. Yet as gay men they are also the products of a history that has situated them in terms of their sexuality at society’s edge, and thus perhaps in a position where reciprocity might more easily be imagined and where (‘next time’) more propitious encounters might take place. Hopefully, Hispanic-Asian encounters such as these will also form part of future studies of the Asian and Hispanic worlds.

Notes

Introduction 1 The full text of this document is reproduced by Colín, 438–45. In fact, the Jesuit order as a whole hoped to carry out a peaceful evangelization of China. In an effort to thwart Spanish military designs on China, the Spanish Jesuit José de Acosta identified in the Sánchez report four principal justifications for invading the country: the prohibition of relations between Chinese and foreigners; the mistreatment of Spanish and Portuguese subjects within China; the interference with Christian evangelization; and the persecution of Chinese converts. As De la Costa explains, Acosta subtly refuted each of these arguments ( Jesuits 85–7). For a thorough discussion of the role of Sánchez in sixteenth-century Sino-Hispanic relations, see both Ollé ( La empresa) and De la Costa ( Jesuits). 2 In this and the following passage I have modified somewhat the translation of Blair and Robertson ( 6: 219 and 219–20). Unless otherwise indicated, all further translations are mine. 3 Keevak argues that early modern European observers of East Asia tended to associate whiteness with a predisposition to Christianization ( Becoming 28). For an earlier discussion of the European racialization of East Asians and ‘how the Chinese changed from white to yellow,’ see Mungello, Great 92–4. 4 Hinsch explains that the relative tolerance of male-male sex in Mingdynasty China clashed with European views. Chinese men in Manila were in fact arrested by the Spanish authorities for sodomy and either burned at the stake or sent as slaves to the Spanish galleys, albeit protesting that in their own country their actions were accepted ( 137). Pereira and Cruz both regarded the practice of male-male sex as a major shortcoming of Chinese

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society. According to Spence, the Portuguese chronicler Fernão Mendes Pinto mocked this attitude of his compatriots ( Chan’s 35). 5 According to Frederickson, Western racism has its roots in pre-Conquest Iberia and specifically in the ideology of limpieza de sangre [blood purity], which situates an ‘innate, indelible, and unchangeable’ difference on the level of the body ( 5). Although the ‘idiom remained religious, and what was inherited through the “blood” was a propensity to heresy or unbelief rather than intellectual or emotional inferiority’ ( 40), Frederickson regards limpieza de sangre as an example of how culture can ‘be reified and essentialized to the point where it becomes the functional equivalent of race’ ( 7). Whereas Frederickson identifies the antecedents of modern, racist antiSemitism in pre-Conquest Iberia, he maintains that racism based on skin colour is a modern phenomenon. Sweet, however, advances the argument that medieval Iberians equated black skin with servitude long before the advent of Western colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade. Based on his studies of Christian-Muslim interchange in the medieval period as well as Columbus’s own diaries, he postulates that ‘[t]he racist beliefs that Iberians and others would later refine to a “science” were firmly entrenched before Christopher Columbus made landfall in the Americas’ ( 144). The upshot of his study is that even if the arguments used to justify prejudice clearly differed in the early modern and modern periods, the victims of Western prejudice have typically been the same. As Wynter explains, race ‘is ultimately a non-Christian concept insofar as it posits a fundamental ‘nonhomogeneity of the human species’ ( 34). Within what she describes as the ‘racial caste hierarchy of Latin America . . . the differing degrees of mixtures were designated as more human the more they bred in the European and bred out the Indio and Negro, while the latter category came to serve as the nec plus ultra sign of rational human being’ ( 36). 6 Boone notes that in orientalist homosexual writing, purported ‘Orientals’ ( in the framework of his analysis, Arabs) might just as likely be stereotyped as hyper-masculine ( 91). In the lead essay of a volume on gay and lesbian topics in the context of contemporary East and Southeast Asia, Jackson argues that ‘[t]he effeminization of Asian males has a long history in Western imperialist imaginings of the “exotic Orient” ’ and that the ‘effeminization of Asian men and a related privileging of a model of masculinity [is] based on a fetishization of the attributes of an idealized Caucasian male body’ ( 11). 7 In comparing the Japanese and Chinese, Xavier writes: ‘A gemte da China, a que até quy tenho vista, asy em Japão como em outras partes, hé muito aguda de gramdes emgenhos, muito mays que os japões’ [The people of China that I have seen thus far, both in Japan as well as in other places, are

Notes to pages 15–18 187

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extremely quick-witted and of great ingenuity, much more so than the Japanese] ( Schurhammer and Wicki, letter 96, 277). As Détrie clarifies in an essay on French travel writing from the second half of the nineteenth century, ‘La notion d’Extrême-Orient s’est constituée durant la seconde moitié du XIXè siècle, principalement par extension aux pays d’Asie orientale des qualités anciennement attribuées à l’Orient en général et à la Chine en particulier ( 5) [The notion of the Far East was constituted during the second half of the nineteenth century, principally through an extension to the countries of eastern Asia of qualities formerly attributed to the Orient in general and to China in particular]. In Spanish writings of the period, the geographic contours implied by the word ‘oriente’ [Orient] remain fluid. In the early seventeenth century, for example, the historian Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas speaks of Europe, Africa, and Asia as distinct spaces. Moreover, in his narration of the initial voyage of Columbus over one hundred years earlier, he identifies the Azores and Cape Verde as the westernmost lands of ‘nuestro occidente’ [our occident] ( vol. 1, 3). But when contrasting these islands with ‘las partes más orientales de la India’ [the easternmost parts of India], he does not relate the latter to a specific place called the ‘oriente’ but rather to the easternmost extension of what he describes as the ‘camino de oriente’ [eastward road]. Descriptions of the geographic location of the Philippines are clearly indicative of the fluidity of early modern notions of ‘east’ and ‘west.’ Although typically identified as part of Asia, or the ‘oriente,’ the islands are also depicted as the westernmost outpost of Spain’s American empire, and thus often referred to in early modern Spanish writings as the ‘Islas del Poniente’ [Western Islands]. In his discussion of the late colonial Philippines, Morillo-Alicea maintains that the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico formed a single colonial entity, which he calls the ‘Spanish Imperial Archipelago’ ( 27). In his view the Philippines should be included in Latin American Studies. Although the country does not lie within the traditional geographic confines of Latin American Studies, neither does its post-Conquest history fit within what Anderson calls ‘a standard Southeast Asian framing’ ( 24). Although Iberian Europe held sway in East Asia during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many of the most noted Jesuit missionaries of the period were Italian, including Matteo Ricci ( 1552–1610) and Michele Ruggieri ( 1543–1607) in China and Alessandro Valignano ( 1539–1606) in Japan. The most prominent German Jesuit in the early Chinese mission was Johann Adam Schall von Bell ( 1591–1666). During the eighteenth century the French Jesuits were the leading Catholic missionaries in China. See, for example, Keevak, Pretended and Story, and Mungello, Leibniz.

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13 See, for example, Padrón, Spacious, Suárez, Early, Brockey, Journey, Mungello, Great, and Spence, Chan’s. 14 Unless otherwise indicated, the Iberian authors I cite all wrote in castellano [Castilian] rather than the other languages of the Iberian Peninsula, even though they do not all have roots in Castile. In sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury writings the Spanish are referred to not only as españoles [Spaniards] but also castillas [Castilians]. 1. Japanese and Spaniards in the Christian Century Some material in this chapter previously appeared in the following article: ‘ “The Best Thus Far Discovered”: The Japanese in the Letters of Francisco Xavier,’ Hispanic Review 71.2 ( 2003): 155–69. 1 Drummond writes that the shoguns ‘feared a coalition of Christian daimyō who, under the banner of the transcendent God, could theologically question human pretensions to absolute power and could presumably launch a resistance movement of unified ideological power. The Christian daimyō in fact never, so far as we know, intended to form such a coalition and movement, but . . . the very possibility caused grave concern. In any case, in this situation the notion of Spanish or Portuguese military participation was clearly of secondary concern’ ( 92–3). 2 For an important early modern Spanish text on Japan not penned by a cleric, see the account of Rodrigo de Vivero y Velasco, reprinted most recently by Ferrando. Vivero was born in New Spain and served as governor of the Philippines from 1608 to 1609. While en route from the Philippines to Mexico, he was shipwrecked off the coast of Japan, where he remained for nearly a year and attempted to foment commercial relations between Spain and Japan. 3 Schurhammer and Wicki, letter 90, 186. Unless otherwise indicated, all citations are from this source. Letter numbers and pages are indicated in parentheses. 4 ‘Xavier’ is in fact the Basque name of the castle where he was born. It means ‘new house’ ( Brodrick 330 n.1). 5 The letters from Japan, numbered 90–4 in the Schurhammer-Wicki series, were all written in Kagoshima on 5 November 1549. Letters 90–3 are in Spanish. The last three paragraphs of letter 93 are in Portuguese. Letter 94 is in Portuguese, with a postscript in Spanish. 6 I also cite from letters 96 and 97 ( Cochin, 29 January 1552) and letter 108 ( Goa, April 1552). Letters 96 and 108 are in Portuguese and letter 97 is in Spanish.

Notes to pages 30–5 189 7 The sonnet, ‘No me mueve, mi Dios, para quererte’ [It does not move me to love you, my God], has often been attributed to Xavier. For a discussion of this text, see Elizalde ( 59–105) and Herrera. 8 I know of no similar studies of Xavier’s influence on Portuguese writing. 9 Angirō’s letter is reproduced by Izawa ( 314–20). 10 It is not clear from the letters why Angirō was able to return to Japan without facing retribution for his earlier crime. 11 App, who wrote two articles on Xavier’s discussion of Japan both prior to and during his visit, highlights Xavier’s ignorance of Japanese Buddhism. Ross, in contrast, argues that Xavier’s effort to translate Christian doctrine into Japanese reveals a belief that ‘becoming a Christian was not to be linked inextricably to becoming Portuguese’ ( 28). Ross thus sees Xavier as an early practitioner of the adaptive missionary style of the Jesuits in East Asia. 12 Martin Luther, in a similar vein, states in his twenty-seventh thesis: ‘There is no divine authority for preaching that the soul flies out of purgatory immediately [after] the money clinks in the bottom of the chest’ ( Dillenberger 493). 13 Alvares writes that the bonzes ‘usan la sodomia con los muchachos q enseñan y esto no es abominable antre ellos en general’ ( Izawa 253) [practise sodomy with the boys they teach, and in general this is not regarded by them as abominable]. 14 For further examples of how the Jesuits used sodomy to disparage Buddhism, see Cooper, They Came, 46, 47, 315, 318, 319, and 322. 15 As Faure points out, Europeans were so inclined to impute sodomy to their enemies that Xavier’s testimony by itself is not a reliable gauge of the extent of homoerotic practice among Japanese Buddhist clergy ( 209). 16 For representations of samurai homoeroticism in pre-modern Japanese writing see The Great Mirror of Male Love, the tales of the sixteenth-century author Ihara Saikaku, translated by Schalow. For contemporary analyses of male-male sexuality in early Japanese writing and culture, see Leupp, Pflugfelder, Schalow ‘Kūkai,’ and Watanabe and Iwata. 17 Shudō is a contraction of wakashudō ( wakashu = adolescent-male and dō = way). As Pflugfelder points out, in depictions of shudō relations not only is the erotic object male but, as in most traditional Japanese discourses, the erotic subject is male as well. 18 Cabezas recognizes the larger scope of homoerotic activity in sixteenthcentury Japan, but replicates the negative stance of Xavier when he writes that ‘la sodomía era rampante entre los bonzos y los samurais’ ( 49; emphasis added) [sodomy was rampant among the bonzes and the samurais].

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He also imposes contemporary norms ( or prejudices) on pre-modern Japan when he speaks of ‘maricones declarados’ ( 51) [out-of-the-closet fags]. Though male-male sexual expression was accepted in Japanese religious and military orders, male-male sexual relations were never an alternative to heterosexual marriage, and female-female sexual relations were largely ignored. As Pflugfelder points out, the primary kinship metaphor of shudō was in fact brotherhood, not marriage ( 41). After Xavier’s departure Angirō again fled Japan, perhaps to avoid persecution by Buddhist clergy, and became a pirate on the China seas. Pero Diez, a Galician from Monterrey, Mexico, whose recollections form the basis of the earliest written account of the Portuguese ‘discovery’ of Japan, describes the Japanese as a ‘gente . . . blanca é barbada’ ( Izawa 235) [a white and bearded . . . people], adding that ‘las mujeres son en gran manera muy blancas y hermosas, [y] andan vestidas á manera de catellanas, de paño ó seda, conforme á su estado’ ( 236) [the women are to a great extent very white and beautiful, and they go about dressed in the Castilian manner, in cloth or silk, depending on their class]. Alvares also speaks of the Japanese as a ‘gente blanca de buenas disposissiones’ ( Izawa 245) [a white people with a positive disposition]. Elsewhere Xavier remarks that though the Chinese have ‘ojos muy pequenños’ ( letter 97, 291) [very small eyes], they too are a ‘genta blanca’ [white people]. Xavier writes ‘Bando’ to indicate ‘Kantō,’ the site of the university, Ashikaga-gakkō. See Schurhammer 95 n.76. As App insightfully suggests, the whole question of sameness and difference is complicated by mutual misunderstanding. To the extent that the Japanese interpreted Christianity as an avatar of Buddhism, difference appeared to them ‘in the guise of the same’ ( 242). App argues that Xavier realized this at the end of his Japanese sojourn and therefore believed his entire mission had failed. The Islas Platarias ( also known as the Isla Rica de la Plata) were not always identified with Japan and, as Knauth points out, continued to haunt the European imagination long after Japan was known to the West ( 197). This first edition was published in Barcelona by Gabriel Graells. Four copies are located in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid. I cite from the 1947 edition of Juan R. de Legísima, which replicates the original. The first Franciscans to enter Japan were the lay brother Juan Pobre Díaz Pardo and Diego Bernal, who arrived in 1582. The official entry of the order occurred in 1593, as detailed by Ribadeneira.

Notes to pages 44–8 191 28 Even though the Jesuits, especially in China, adopted local dress, Japanese paintings of the period suggest that both Franciscans and Jesuits wore their habits in public places. See figure 1.1. 29 For a recent study of this text, see Padrón, ‘Blood.’ 30 For discussions of this embassy and relevant documents, see Gil ( 384–425) and Cabezas ( 333–40). 31 The first official Japanese delegation ( though not the first Japanese people) to visit Europe is known as the Tenshō Embassy, for the period in Japanese history ( 1573–92) when it occurred. It was spearheaded by the Jesuit Alessandro Valignano in 1582, and consisted of four young Japanese men, known by their hybrid names: the envoys Mancio Ito ( Itō Mansho) and Miguel Chijiwa ( Chijiwa Migeru) and their assistants Julião Nakaura ( Nakaura Jurian) and Martinão Hara ( Hara Maruchino). They travelled with Valignano to Goa, and then made their way to Lisbon, Madrid, and Rome. They were accompanied by the Portuguese Jesuit Diogo de Mesquita, who functioned as their interpreter and subsequently wrote of their expedition. According to Matsuda, Mesquita ‘wanted the Japanese shown nothing that would contradict the image of Europe he hoped to project’ ( 455). The envoys did not learn Spanish or Portuguese, and because of their youth they lacked a mature understanding of Japanese culture. Thus, though a number of books were published in Europe recounting their embassy, their influence both in Europe and in Japan after their return was limited ( 455– 6). For a general discussion of this embassy, see Cooper ( The Japanese Mission) and Guillén Selfa. For an analysis of late sixteenth-century European perceptions of the embassy, see Brown. A later embassy was sent in 1610 to the court of Philip III. Sotelo had hoped to lead it but was too ill at the time to do so and was replaced by the Franciscan Alonso Muñoz. 32 Scipione Amati, who accompanied the Keichō Embassy in Italy, authored one of the primary contemporary European accounts of the embassy. 33 A version of this letter was probably presented to Philip III in Madrid, but was subsequently lost. Another was presented to the pope, which is conserved in the Vatican ( Fernández Gómez 271). The original Spanish translation of the letter is contained in the Relacion breve, y sumaria del Edito que mandó publicar en todo su Reyno del Bojú, uno de los mas poderosos del Iapon, el rey Idate Masamune, publicando la Fe de Cristo, y del Embaxador que embia a España en compañia del reuerendo Padre Fray Luys Sotelo Recoleto Francisco, que viene con embaxada del Emperador del Iapon, hijo de Seuilla, y lo que en el viage le sucedio [The brief account and contents of the edict that King Idate Masamune, one of the most powerful in Japan, ordered published throughout

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Notes to pages 49–53

his kingdom of Bojú, announcing the faith of Christ, and of the ambassador that he sends to Spain in the company of the reverend father Fray Luys Sotelo, a Recollect Franciscan and son of Seville, who comes with the embassy of the emperor of Japan, and of what occurred on the trip]. This text was published in Seville in 1614 by Alonso Rodríguez Gamarra, and reprinted by Velázquez y Sánchez in 1862 and Pérez in 1924. The original is located in the Tōyō Bunko [Oriental Library], a branch of the National Diet Library in Tōkyō. I cite from a facsimile reproduction located in a volume in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, under the call number 4/45022. There is no pagination. The text was originally published in Seville by Diego Pérez. The original is located in the Tōyō Bunko. I cite from a facsimile reproduction located in a volume in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, under the call number 4/45022. There is no pagination. Viglielmo and Russell note that although the editors of the facsimile give 1615 as the year of publication, the text itself bears no date ( 155 n.2). In this passage the ‘Queen of France’ is Princess Ana of Austria, who at the time was betrothed to Louis XIII. The ‘Princess Nun’ is Princess María Ana of Austria. Hasekura’s full Christian name at baptism was Felipe Francisco Hasekura. According to Fernández Gómez, the Council of the Indies advised the king not to confer on Hasekura the Cross of Santiago ( 288). This text was originally published in Seville by Francisco de Lyra. The original is located in the Tōyō Bunko. I cite from a facsimile reproduction located in a volume in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, under the call number 4/45022. There is no pagination. Pérez, a Franciscan historian, wrote a biography of Sotelo on the three hundredth anniversary of his death. In it, he attempts to mitigate the charge that Sotelo was a zealous enemy of the Jesuits and a detriment to the entire Japanese mission ( 6–7). Because he died a martyr, Sotelo was beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1867. According to Gessel, Japanese accounts of Hasekura’s life after his return to Japan are unreliable ( 270). Several items that he obtained abroad are housed in the Sendai City Museum, including paintings of him and Pope Paul V. A painting of Hasekura by the seventeenth-century French artist Claude Deruet is located in the Borghese Gallery in Rome. For images of the items in the Sendai City Museum, see http://www.city.sendai.jp/ kyouiku/museum/syuuzou/hasekura/index.html. Endō’s novel is of particular interest because it reveals how the lives of Sotelo and Hasekura and, by extension, the entire Japanese-European

Notes to pages 53–9 193

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encounter of the Christian Century have passed into contemporary Japanese and international literary discourse. In fact, given Endō’s status as a writer both in Japan and abroad, his text has become a sort of master narrative of the travels and lives of Hasekura and Sotelo. However, his depiction of Hasekura’s journey through Europe, including the audiences with King Philip III and Pope Paul V, differ markedly from the corresponding passages in Sotelo’s writing. Whereas Sotelo focuses on the external details of the events, Endō describes what he believes the Japanese ambassador experienced internally when interacting with Europeans in Europe. He also uses the story of Sotelo and Hasekura to affirm his own Catholic beliefs, for the ultimate truth discerned by the characters of The Samurai is God, and specifically the suffering Christian God of the Crucifixion. For studies of The Samurai, see Gessel, Takemoto, and Mark B. Williams. The word bateren is the Japanese version of padres and refers to Catholic priests. The word iruman, which derives from the Portuguese irmão, means ‘brother.’ The word furaten is used to designate the friars. Varley notes that the Japanese were introduced to Western cartography through the Tenshō Embassy of the 1580s and afterwards began painting the so-called Namban maps ( 150). Shirahara indicates that the history of the screens is unknown. She cites catalogue material indicating that prior to 1931 they were owned by a Spanish nobleman. In 1931 Tomita Kumasaku purchased them in Paris and in 1932 sold them to Ikenaga Hajime. They were subsequently acquired by the Kobe museum. The inscription in the upper-right quadrant identifies the city as ‘いすはに やの都’ ( which reads phonetically as ‘i-su-ha-ni-ya-no-miyako) [a capital or metropolis of Spain]. The use of the word ‘miyako’ [place of the court] ( the traditional designation of the imperial capital of Kyōto and even more ancient Japanese capitals, such as Nara and Asuka), might have suggested to some viewers that the picture was intended to represent the capital of Spain, that is, Madrid. Hoefnagel engraved most of the copperplates for the Civitates Orbis Terrarum. He also provided most of the original drawings for the Spanish cities, which, in addition to Seville, included Bilbao, Cádiz, Granada, and Toledo. For a version of his depiction of Seville, see http://usm.maine. edu/maps/exhibition/5/8/sub-/the-representation-of-cities. Proust indicates that the image of Seville on which the Four Cities version is based ‘was already in circulation as a separate sheet as early as 1593’ ( 96).

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48 An equally famous apostate is the Portuguese Jesuit Christovão Ferreira ( 1580–1650), whose experience in Japan is central to Endō’s most highly acclaimed novel Silence ( 1966). 49 Elison notes that the figure here is compared to a ‘[l]ong nosed goblin: tengu, a denizen of dark mountains, somewhat similar in shape to a human being, but with an exceedingly long nose, long claws on hands and feet, and wings which enable it to fly about freely’ ( 475 n.2). 50 For a discussion of the beliefs and practices of the clandestine Christians of the period of the Tokugawa shogunate, see Proust 120–48. In his view, ‘[t]he religion invented by the secret Christians is a sui generis creation that might be called Christianized Buddhism’ ( 139). 2. The Middle Kingdom through Spanish Eyes Some material in this chapter previously appeared in the following articles: ‘The Middle Kingdom through Spanish Eyes: Depictions of China in the Writings of Juan González de Mendoza and Domingo Fernández Navarrete,’ Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 83.6 ( 2006): 469–83; ‘Representations of China and Europe in the Writings of Diego de Pantoja: Accommodating the East or Privileging the West?’ in Western Visions of the Far East in a Transpacific Age ( 1522–1657), ed. Christina H. Lee ( Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2012) 101–15. Reprinted by permission of the Publishers. 1 As García-Castañón points out, this was not likely the explorer Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, who was in Peru at the time of the Rada expedition ( Luarca 2002, xxxi n.26). Although Sarmiento de Gamboa was present in the western Pacific in the late 1560s ( he was a member of the expedition of Álvaro de Medaña, who discovered the Solomon Islands in 1568), in the early 1570s he was directed by the viceroy of Peru, Francisco de Toledo, to write a history of the Incas. His Historia de los Incas was delivered to Philip II with a letter dated 1572 ( Benites 48). There is no evidence that he travelled again to the western Pacific. 2 The initial sixteenth-century European chroniclers of China were Portuguese traders. Galeote Pereira wrote the first detailed report, dated 1561. João de Barros’s chronicle appeared in 1563. Gaspar da Cruz, the earliest clerical author, published what is considered the first sixteenth-century European book on China, in 1569. Luarca and Rada’s works are dated 1575 and that of their compatriot, Bernardino de Escalante, is dated 1577. For a discussion of these and other sixteenth-century writers, see Boxer ( South), Lach, and Ollé ( ‘Invención’).

Notes to pages 68–70 195 3 For a discussion of the writing of the Spanish Jesuit, Adriano de las Cortes, who travelled from Manila to China in 1625, see Girard, ‘Introduction,’ and Lisón Tolosana ( 67–70). For a comparison of the texts of De las Cortes and Luarca, see Moncó. 4 Luarca’s Verdadera relación remained unpublished until 2002. Mendoza’s Historia was reprinted in Spanish as recently as 1990. The only modern publication of Pantoja’s Relación is a 1925 reprinting of the 1625 English version of the text. There has been one modern reprinting of Navarrete’s work in Spanish, in 1940. Cummins notes that ‘in his own country, friar Domingo’s work seems to have remained virtually unknown’ ( Travels ciii). In the eighteenth century Benito Jerónimo Feijóo, who wrote on China, never mentions having read Navarrete; in the nineteenth century some Spaniards, including Eugenio de Ochoa, Zeferino González, Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, and Juan Valera, do express an interest in Navarrete ( Cummins, Travels ciii–civ). 5 Girard explains that the Augustinians first went to China at the end of the sixteenth century and then again at the end of the seventeenth century. The Dominicans and the Franciscans arrived in the early seventeenth century. Whereas the Jesuits focused their attention on Beijing, the Augustinians were located primarily in Guangdong, the Dominicans in Fujian, and the Franciscans in Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangxi, and Shandong (Les religieux 14–15). 6 The Jesuits were more partial to Confucianism than Buddhism, which they considered ‘their central rival in its claim to ethical good and in performance of acts of charity’ ( Spence, Memory 250). Mungello maintains that their interest in Confucianism may also have resulted from the fact that they sought first to Christianize the ruling classes: ‘The social and class antagonism in China at that time was expressed by the upper classes ( literati) often being anti-Buddhist and anti-Daoist and by the lower classes ( shopkeepers, craftsmen, peasants, workers, and the dispossessed) being anti-Confucian’ ( Great 19). 7 For further studies of the Rites Controversy, see Brockey, Journey, Cummins, A Question, Gernet, Minamiki, and Mungello, Chinese. 8 In commenting on the crisis in the Jesuit mission from 1638 to 1639, Zürcher argues that it was ‘mainly caused by the imprudent behaviour of some Dominican and Franciscan preachers from the Philippines. Their intransigent crusade against “heathen superstitions” not only brought them into sharp conflict with the Jesuits, but also led the provincial [Fujian] government (that understandably made no distinction between Catholic orders) to ban Christianity and to exile all missionaries to Macao’ (‘The Jesuit Mission’ 429).

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Notes to pages 71–6

9 According to Blair and Robertson, Luarca’s Philippine account can be found in manuscript form in the Archivo General de las Indias in Seville ( 5: 21). They provide a transcription of the manuscript along with an English translation ( 5: 34–187). 10 In ‘Vida y andanzas de Miguel de Luarca,’ Carlos Rico-Avello states that his late brother, Pablo Rico-Avello, ‘discovered’ the two Luarca manuscripts in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid. García-Castañón maintains that MSS 3042 is the older of the two manuscripts, dating from the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century ( Luarca 2002, xxxiii). I quote from his edition of the Verdadera relación, after having compared it to both manuscripts in the Biblioteca Nacional. I follow his lead in referring to the sixteenth-century soldier-writer by the modernized form of his name ‘Luarca,’ rather than ‘Loarca.’ 11 Rico-Avello notes that in several instances the vocabulary of the Verdadera relación is distinctively Asturian ( 398–9). 12 Rico-Avello indicates that Luarca was born between 1540 and 1545 ( 356), but García-Castañón argues that he was born earlier, between 1536 and 1538 ( Luarca 2002, xxx). 13 Rico-Avello cites sources indicating that Luarca was an encomendero on the island of Otón before 1576 ( 374). 14 When the Rada party arrived, there was already a European presence in Xiamen, which the Portuguese had begun using as a trading port in 1541, some six years after obtaining the right to anchor their ships off Macau. 15 As Sánchez Avendaño explains, both Luarca and Mendoza are typical of sixteenth-century European writers on China insofar as they highlight the country’s material wealth. However, like seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury writers they also comment on its cultural achievements ( 212). 16 The term berdache is often used by anthropologists to designate a Native American of mixed gender identity. The word, however, comes to English from French, with origins in Spanish ( bardaja or bardaje) and Arabic ( bardag¯ ), all of which connote a young male prostitute. This, rather than the ‘two spirit’ identity of the Native American tradition, is the meaning implied by Luarca. 17 Luarca’s companion, Rada, characterizes the Chinese differently in his chronicle, remarking that although Chinese children are ‘very fair . . . when they grow up they become ugly’ ( qtd in Boxer, South 282). Rada is perhaps the first to articulate what would become a common and pernicious Western stereotype of the Chinese. 18 This image depicts a banquet and performance of a Chinese play during the Ming period, perhaps similar to the spectacle of the Three Kingdoms

Notes to pages 78–85 197

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that Luarca and his companions witnessed in the mid-1570s. The image first appeared in an early seventeenth-century edition of the Chinese novel, Shuihu zhuan [Water margin], by Luo Guanzhong and Shi Nai’an. It appeared in the twentieth century on the cover of the Chinese journal Xiju yanjiu jikan [Drama research journal] 3 ( 1957). For illustrations of these characters in Peking opera, see Zhao and Yan. According to Boxer, Rada mentions the play briefly but does not summarize the action ( South 289). He further notes that Luarca’s summary confirms that it derived from The Story of the Three Kingdoms ( 289 n.2). Despite the importance of the Verdadera relación in Sino-Hispanic history, García-Castañón’s recently published edition is available in only a few libraries worldwide. See part 1, book 2, chapter 24. Lach assesses Mendoza’s incorporation ( and what some critics have called plagiarizing) of his sources. Hino contends that Mendoza’s book is inferior to Cruz’s since he tends to idealize the Chinese ( 7). As Lach points out, however, Mendoza does express disapproval of certain aspects of Chinese society, such as the manner of punishing criminals ( 763). Mendoza is often thought to be the first European to reproduce Chinese characters in a Western publication; but, according to Sanz, the first was in fact Escalante ( 44). Hsu argues that Mendoza was deeply influenced by Christian humanism and that he produced a highly idealized representation of China in part in an effort to criticize contemporary Spanish politics and morality. Roberts provides the historical context for the writing of The Story of the Three Kingdoms, explaining that the Chinese of the Ming period were interested in the tale because they themselves had triumphed in a struggle of dynastic succession against the Mongols, and also because they regarded the Han dynasty, which is depicted in the play, ‘as a model of imperial order’ ( 937). It is interesting that Mendoza chose to highlight The Story of the Three Kingdoms, rather than the other play described by Luarca, since he perhaps envisioned a ‘dynastic’ struggle to impose Spanish rule on China. In book 10, chapter 11 of his Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, the great chronicler of the Conquest, Bernardino de Sahagún, explicitly relates the word ‘afeminado’ to the so-called passive sodomite, and calls for his destruction: ‘El somético paciente es abominable, nefando y detestable, digno de que hagan burla y se rían las gentes, y el hedor y fealdad de su pecado nefando no se puede sufrir, por el asco que dá a los hombres; en todo se muestra mujeril o afeminado, en el andar o en el hablar, por todo lo cual merece ser quemado’ ( 37) [The passive sodomite is abominable, nefarious, and detestable, worthy of being mocked and laughed at by the

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Notes to pages 86–94

people. The stench and ugliness of his nefarious sin cannot be tolerated because of the disgust it provokes in men. In every way he shows himself womanly or effeminate, in walking or in talking, all for which he deserves to be burned]. Dehergne indicates that Pantoja began his novitiate in 1589 and was ordained a priest sometime between 1593 and 1596 ( 193). Brockey explains that according to an imperial degree of 3 February 1617 Pantoja and his fellow Jesuit Sabatino de Ursis ‘were to be shackled inside wooden cages and carted to Canton, from whence they would be sent to Macau and onward to the West’ ( Journey 68). Pantoja and Ursis had previously begun to reform the Chinese calendar after the Muslim mathematicians at court had failed to predict accurately an eclipse. But the mathematicians, jealous of the increasing prestige of the Jesuits, influenced the emperor to have them stop their work ( Dunne 116). Leña, in his preface to Zhang’s study of Pantoja, notes that Spence, the author of the most recent major study of Ricci, mentions the Spanish Jesuit only three times ( 9–10). After Ricci’s death, the Jesuit missionary Nicolas Trigault took his journals to Europe, translated them from Italian into Latin, and published them in 1615 along with documents relating to Ricci’s death and burial. Pantoja’s letter to the Emperor Wanli appears in Spanish in the Spanish translation of Trigault’s book, published in Seville by Gabriel Ramos Veiarano in 1621. According to Spence, Pantoja, whom he describes as the ‘young musician friend’ of Ricci, taught the court musicians how to play the instrument so that they could entertain the emperor ( Memory 213). He himself had been taught how to play it in Nanjing by Lazzarro Cattaneo, who did not accompany the Jesuit party to Beijing. Moffett explains that the Jesuits, based on the recommendation of Ricci’s predecessor, Michele Ruggieri, had initially worn Buddhist robes. But Ricci had them change to the dress of the Confucian literati. Often disparaging of the Buddhist priests, the Confucian literati were the leading government officials, and the Jesuits logically sought their favour and support ( 110). See Peterson for a detailed discussion of the changes in the dress of the Jesuit missionaries. These figures, located in the Orient Museum in Lisbon, are both titled ‘Missionary Martyr.’ They are from the nineteenth century and are of either Philippine or central European origin. They are made of gilded and polychrome wood, canvas, twine, and glass. Although they represent European missionaries, they wear the dress and hairstyle of Chinese mandarins. Yet their martyrdom by crucifixion is more evocative of the

Notes to pages 95–102 199

34 35

36

37

38

39

40 41 42

Twenty-Six Martyrs Incident in Japan than the experience of the sixteenthand seventeenth-century European missionaries in China. The figures thus not only hybridize European and Asian identities but also implicitly conflate distinct moments of the early European-Asian encounter. For analysis of Ricci’s maps, see Spence, Memory 64–5, 96–7, 148, and 149. The Qike has not been translated into any European language. Waltner is the author of the most thorough analysis of the text, whereas Gernet is the author of the most comprehensive study of sixteenth-century Chinese responses to Christianity. I have not read the Qike in the original Chinese, and I base my comments largely on Waltner and Gernet’s discussions of the work. Brockey explains that Yang Tingyun and Xu Guangqi, along with Li Zhizao and Wang Zheng, were elite Christian converts who ‘became the mission’s primary protectors and promoters, publishing books in defense of Christian doctrine and Western learning, and displaying their friendship with the Jesuits’ ( Journey 59). For a comprehensive discussion of Yang Tingyun, see Standaert, Yang. Waltner indicates that, in addition to Yang Tingyun, the following authors wrote prefaces to the Qike: Cao Yubian, Zheng Yiwei, Xiong Mingyu, and Chen Liangcai ( 436). Zürcher argues that ‘ “[a]ccommodation” was not only practised by the Jesuit fathers, but also, in another and deeper sense, by the converted literati themselves. Without exception they were convinced Confucianists, and remained so after their conversion’ ( ‘Jesuit Accommodation’ 32). Zürcher astutely remarks that the Rites Controversy, though significant in the history of the Catholic Church in China, is ‘from a sinological point of view . . . a subject of very limited interest’ ( ‘Jesuit Accommodation’ 31). Standaert suggests that Longobardi’s text was originally written in Portuguese and translated into Latin by Caballero ( Yang 185–6). Another full-length study of Navarrete is the dissertation of Julia Su Ming Sun. In eighteenth-century France the main source of information on China were the Lettres édifiantes et curieuses [Edifying and curious letters], authored by French Jesuits in China ( see Vissière). In his Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations [Essay on the customs and the spirit of nations], however, Voltaire draws on the Spanish friar, whom he describes as ‘[l]e fameux archevêque’ ( 340) [the famous archbishop] and ‘[l]e sage Navarrète’ ( 345) [the wise Navarrete], even though his praise of Confucianism is at odds with Navarrete’s rejection of Chinese religion. As Cummins argues, Navarrete’s account of China’s agricultural economy perhaps

200

Notes to pages 104–11

influenced the eighteenth-century Physiocrats, and in particular François Quesnay ( ‘Fray’ 1959). 43 The title of the text in Mandarin is Ming Xin Bao Jian. According to Ollé, Cobo transcribed it as Beng Sim Po Cam in keeping with the Fujian dialect spoken by the majority of the Chinese in the Philippines ( Cobo, Beng, 1998, 11). 44 Perhaps the Chinese text Cobo used for his translation was among the some one hundred books that Rada, according to Dunne, took with him on his return from China to the Philippines in 1575 ( 17). Van der Loon notes that Cobo wrote a letter dated 15 July 1589, indicating he had seen books on Chinese theatre, and that he also summarized a theatrical version of The Story of the Three Kingdoms ( 25). Possibly, the source for his synopsis, like Mendoza’s, was provided by the Rada party. So too, perhaps, was the original Ming Xin Bao Jian. 45 ‘Min’ may be a transliteration of the first syllable of Navarrete, since the first character in a Chinese name is typically the surname. ‘Ming-wo’ clearly evokes the last two syllables of Domingo. Cummins points out that Navarrete’s successor, the Jesuit Claudio-Filippo Grimaldi, assumed the name ‘Min Ming-wo’ upon his arrival in China ( Question 166–7 n.24). 3. The Quest for Cambodia Some material in this chapter previously appeared in the following article: ‘Cambodia in the Writings of Diego Aduarte and Gabriel Quiroga de San Antonio,’ Hispanic Research Journal 8.3 ( 2007): 217–31. 1 Paramarājā IV, also known as Saţţhā, is often referred to in Iberian writings as Apram Langara. For the spelling of Cambodian names and places, I follow the lead of the contemporary historian of Cambodia, Mak Phoeun. 2 Rodao García explains that the legend of Cambodia’s wealth was widespread in seventeenth-century Spain and present in the work of various prominent writers, including Góngora, Claramonte, and possibly even Cervantes ( 20). For a summary of Claramonte’s play, El nuevo rey Gallinato [The new King Gallinato] ( which actually places the leader of the first Spanish military expedition to Cambodia in an American context and depicts Cambodia and Chile as neighbouring countries), see Hernández Valcárcel ( 115–18). For further analysis of El nuevo rey Gallinato as well as a discussion of the significance of the kingdom of Candaya in the episode of the Condesa Trifaldi in Don Quixote, see the essays of De Armas. 3 Aduarte’s Historia was first published in 1640, by Luis Beltrán, at the University of Santo Tomás in Manila. Few copies of this edition remain. One

Notes to pages 111–12

4 5

6

7 8

9

201

is located in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid and another in the British Library in London. The second edition, which included a second volume written by Baltasar de Santa Cruz, was published in Zaragoza in 1693. Subsequent editions and volumes were published in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 1962–3 Manuel Ferrero published a modernized version of the copy of the first edition located in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid. I cite from this text. For further discussion of the various Spanishlanguage editions, see Ferrero’s introduction ( Aduarte xxvii–xxxi). Rām I, also known as Rām de Joen Brai, is often referred to in Iberian writings as Nacaparan Prabantul, Huncar Prabantul, and Nahuncar. Aduarte describes two further Spanish incursions into Cambodia in 1603 and 1627–8. Again, the Spaniards failed to achieve their objectives, though on these occasions no blood was shed. See Aduarte ( 1: 419–25 and 2: 299– 305). Barbier provides a somewhat flawed summary of these expeditions ( 2: 9–13). Phoeun places them specifically within the context of Cambodian history ( 132–3 and 202–3). San Antonio’s Relación was first published in 1604, by Pedro Lasso, in Valladolid. A copy of this edition is located in the British Library in London. In 1929 Antonio Graíño republished the 1604 edition in the original Spanish. I cite from this text. For a discussion of these and other early commentators, see Groslier. Other early Spanish writings on Cambodia include those of Ribadeneira ( 1601), Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola ( 1609), and Christoval ( or Miguel) de Jaque ( or Xaque) de los Ríos de Mancaned, a member of the first Spanish intervention in Cambodia. Jaque’s narrative closely parallels San Antonio’s. However, no original manuscript has been located, and the earliest version of the text is a translation appearing in Henri TernauxCompans’s Archives des voyages ( 1840–1). Cabaton considered the Jaque narrative an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century forgery ( vii–viii). But Groslier refutes this claim, arguing not only that it is authentic but also that San Antonio actually copied much of it ( 84–5). Briggs initially advanced this view, though he believed that Jaque and San Antonio both drew on the same reports by Dominican travelers to Cambodia ( 137 n.5 and 160 n.1). San Antonio’s portrayal of Angkor parallels that of the Portuguese historian Diogo do Couto. According to Groslier, Couto provided San Antonio with information about Angkor during a period when the two were in Goa ( 84). Couto wrote the earliest known European description of Angkor. He based his report on the observations of the Portuguese missionary António da Magdalena, who visited Angkor in the mid-1580s. Couto’s description of Angkor was not published until the twentieth century. For a French

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11

12

13

14

15

Notes to pages 112–17

version of the text, see Groslier ( 68–74). For further discussion of Couto, see Boxer ( Three 12–22). For a detailed discussion of the political events occurring in Cambodia during the primary period of Spanish intervention from 1594 to 1599, see Phoeun ( 47–91). For an English-language overview of the period, see Chandler ( 96–105). According to Phoeun, Cambodian chronicles refer to Veloso and Ruiz as the adopted sons of Paramarājā IV ( 67). Briggs notes that Veloso became a legendary figure within Cambodia and that as late as the nineteenth century some Cambodians even claimed to descend from him ( 158). For a discussion of these figures, see Phoeun and Groslier as well as the full-length study by Dusmet de Arizcún. Briggs and Groslier point out that the word ‘Churdumuco’ is a variation of ‘Chaturmukha,’ meaning ‘four faces,’ a reference to the four faces of the Bodhisattva Lokesvara found on the towers of the Bayon temple of Angkor Thom, some of which were thought to have been taken to Phnom Penh after the fall of Angkor ( Briggs 152 and Groslier 10). Rubiés remarks that elsewhere in his writing Aduarte attacks the Jesuit practice of cultural accommodation in China. The Historia, he maintains, can thus also ‘be regarded as a milestone in the history of the [Chinese] rites controversy’ ( 427). Phoeun summarizes some of the divergent opinions regarding the Spaniards’ decision to attack the Cambodian king. According to a letter Ruiz wrote to the lieutenant general of the Philippines, several Christians, including a young man of European and Asian descent who was born in Malacca and spoke Cambodian, warned the Spaniards that Rām I intended to kill them. As Phoeun points out, however, this letter was written after the regicide in order to justify what the Spaniards had done ( 70). Jaque speaks specifically of two Cambodian Christians, whereas Ribadeneira maintains that the informer was a Portuguese page at Rām I’s court. Argensola, in contrast, reports that a beautiful Cambodian woman alerted Veloso and Ruiz. Phoeun speculates that this latter assertion might be related to a passage in the royal Cambodian chronicles indicating that two women from Rām I’s court, who knew of the king’s plans, warned ‘le Portugais’ [the Portuguese man] ( Phoeun 70 n.112). For a nuanced analysis of just-war theory compiled in the wake of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, see Walzer. Just-war theorists, Walzer explains, assume ‘that war is sometimes justifiable and that the conduct of war is always subject to moral criticism’ ( ix). They thus typically set themselves in opposition both to pacifists and war advocates.

Notes to pages 118–28

203

16 On occasion Vitoria intriguingly implies that sovereignty for war in fact lies with the people, as when he writes: ‘Si al súbdito le consta de la injusticia de la guerra, no puede ir a ella, aun cuando el príncipe se lo mande’ ( 254) [‘If a subject is convinced of the injustice of a war, he ought not to serve in it, even on the command of his prince’ ( 173)]. Ironically, the actions of the Spaniards in Cambodia seem democratic not because they resist an unjust command to fight but because they ignore or are unaware of the sovereign’s desire that they refrain from fighting. 17 Briggs depicts the attack of the Spaniards as ‘a feat which for boldness of design and swiftness of execution would have done credit to Hernán Cortés or Francisco Pizarro’ ( 153). Ghosh, in contrast, speaks more cynically of the ‘gang’ of Spaniards who raided the Cambodian royal palace and killed the king ( 236). 18 Little is known about San Antonio’s early life. Cabaton points out that he was a ‘son’ of the Dominican convent in Ocaña, Spain ( ix). He died in 1608. 19 Briggs is particularly critical of San Antonio’s text and of what he regards as Cabaton’s uncritical use of it in synthesizing the history of the Spanish in Cambodia. He chastises Cabaton for ‘[h]is seeming predilection in favor of this “Relación” of Fray Gabriel, which is propaganda pure and simple, as against the scholarly history of Antonio de Morga’ ( 133), whose writing covers many of the same episodes. 20 Ferrando in fact speculates that San Antonio was much younger. Since at that time in history men entered religious orders and went to the missions at a young age, he proposes that San Antonio was born around 1570 ( 16). 21 Graíño’s edition reproduces the irregular pagination of the original Relación. I therefore indicate, whenever possible, the subdivisions ( part, chapter, and section) in which the passages I cite are located. 22 According to Chandler, Europeans of the period had virtually no knowledge of Laos and imagined it as a kind of El Dorado ( 103). 23 In the original Latin text Vitoria uses the word ‘barbari,’ appropriately rendered in Spanish as ‘bárbaros,’ which Bate translates as ‘Indians.’ 24 Pierre Loti’s highly exoticized ( and racially problematic) depiction of Angkor seems eerily aware of the vainglorious adventure of the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, then being repeated by the French: ‘In our days, it is true, some new adventurers, come from a country further to the west ( the land of France), are disturbing in a small way the eternal forest, for they have founded not far from here a semblance of a little empire. But this latest episode will lack grandeur, and more especially it will lack duration. Soon, when these pale conquerors will have left in turn, in this

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Notes to pages 128–35

Indo-Chinese soil, many of their own – alas, many poor young soldiers not responsible of [sic] this mad escapade – they will pack their belongings and flee. Then there will hardly be seen any more wandering in these regions, as I am wandering, men of the white race, who are so foolishly covetous of governing immemorial Asia, and of disturbing everything they find there’ ( 70–1). 25 For a collection of current Cambodian writings that reflect on Cambodia’s recent and ancient history, see Stewart and May. 4. Constructing the Philippines and Contesting the Legacy 1 These maps, titled ‘Descripcion de las Yndias Ocidentales’ and ‘Descripcion de las Indias del Poniente,’ were made in the mid-1570s by the Spanish cartographer Juan López de Velasco. They were first published by Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas in 1601 in his Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas i tierra firme del mar océano [General history of the deeds of the Castilians on the islands and mainland of the ocean sea]. As Suárez explains, López de Velasco drew the anti-meridian through East and Southeast Asia in such a way that most of the countries in these regions, including a large part of Thailand, appear within the Spanish sphere of influence ( 163). For a detailed discussion of the position of the anti-meridian in early modern cartography and historiography, see Ezquerra Abadía. 2 As De la Costa explains, this gathering was referred to at the time as a junta or congregación, though it clearly met the canonical definition of a synod ( The Jesuits 23). For a full discussion of the Manila Synod, see also Porras Camúñez. 3 Legazpi himself suggested that trade in Chinese silks might replace the commerce Spain had hoped to establish with the Moluccas ( Andaya 13). For a thorough, though somewhat dated, discussion of the Manila Galleon and its impact not only on the Philippines but also Spanish America, see Schurz. Schurz, based on the writings of Alexander von Humboldt, describes the annual Acapulco fair in Chinese goods ( ‘the most renowned fair of the world’ [307]) and the caravans that traversed the ‘China Road’ between Acapulco and Mexico City. 4 According to Phelan, the Spanish merchants who monopolized transatlantic commerce, and in particular the Andalusian textile manufacturers, attempted to limit the Manila trade because they did not want Spanish American markets flooded with Chinese silks that would compete with their own products ( 14). The trade in silver, nevertheless, clearly benefited Spain. With regard to the ‘silverization’ of the Chinese economy in the

Notes to pages 136–41 205

5

6

7

8 9

10 11 12

sixteenth century, Flynn and Giráldez write: ‘We would go so far as to say that Spain’s extensive Empire would have been impossible in the absence of events emanating from within Ming China’ ( 333). For further discussion of the Sino-Hispanic silver trade, see Boxer, ‘Plata.’ Though most Spanish clerical writers of the colonial Philippines were male, one notable exception was Mother Jerónima de la Asunción, the first female European missionary to Asia and founder of the first Asian convent, Santa Clara de la Concepción, in Manila in 1621. Her writings are located in the Archdiocesan Archives of Manila. Mohan argues that according to Thomas Aquinas, ‘[c]ivilization is the result of a corporate recognition of the objective hierarchy of values in human existence, and the translation of those values into intellectual, religious, social, and political life’ ( 1). The emphasis here is on the notion of the ‘corporate,’ for although individuals might achieve the goal of civilization in their private lives, ‘the social unit as a whole’ must engage in the process for civilization to be realized. Arrizón points out that in the colonial Philippines, in contrast to colonial Spanish America, the social position of mestizos was quite close to that of Spaniards ( 126–7). For a summary of the various ethnic groups of the colonial Philippines, see Kramer ( 39–40). Rafael argues that traditional historians of the Philippines have failed to problematize the function of Christianity in Spanish colonialism in the Philippines. As he puts it, their studies, ‘[a]nchored to the reductive categories “Christianization” and “Hispanization,” . . . end up unwittingly rehearsing the Spanish logic behind conversion and conquest’ ( 6). Following Ileto’s pioneering study, Rafael contends that conversion to Christianity set the patterns ‘of authority and submission in colonial society’ ( 7). But since conversion typically took place in native languages, it ‘alternately supported and deflected the exercise of Spanish power to the extent that that power was formulated in a language other than that of its original agents’ ( 21). Rafael, as well as William Henry Scott ( Cracks and Looking) and Reed, examine colonial Filipino responses, written in both Tagalog and Castilian, to the Spanish colonizers. The text was first published by Retana in 1897, under the title Relación de las cosas de las Filipinas [Account of the affairs of the Philippines]. Unless otherwise indicated, English translations of Salazar’s Memorial are all drawn from the translation of Blair and Robertson, vol. 5. Blair and Robertson mistranslate this passage as ‘which of all things is so much desired’ ( 5: 236). Though Salazar anticipated the Christianization of

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14 15 16

17

18

Notes to pages 141–7

China and even supported a Spanish military presence for the purpose of protecting missionaries and aiding in evangelization, he feared a conquest of China similar to that of the Americas, which ultimately destroyed and depopulated whole regions. The first Parian was constructed in 1581. As See explains, only nonChristian Chinese were confined to the Parian, whereas Christian converts and Chinese-Malay mestizos had freedom of movement throughout the islands ( 3). For a recent discussion of early Chinese-Spanish relations in the Philippines, see García-Abásolo. Retana maintains that this comment is not directed against the Spanish clergy but rather the encomenderos ( Salazar 15). I quote from the Quadraginta as published in Delgado’s Historia. Copies of the manuscript are located in the Memorial Library of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the Newberry Library in Chicago, and the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid. I have consulted the Newberry manuscript. Though most of the religious orders were vilified by Filipino nationalists in the late nineteenth century, the Jesuits, according to Bernad ( 254), were ‘tolerated, and perhaps in some cases admired’ ( 254), in part because after their expulsion and subsequent restoration they no longer held parishes in the heavily populated regions of Luzon and Visayas. The publication of Delgado’s argument with San Agustín perhaps functioned to further distance the Jesuits from the other religious orders and thereby position them as historic allies of the Filipino people. In this treatise Palafox describes for King Philip IV what he regards as ‘las calidades, virtudes y propiedades de aquellos utilísimos y fidelísimos vasallos de las Indias’ ( 11–12) [the qualities, virtues, and properties of those most useful and faithful vassals of the Indies], that is, the indigenous Mexicans, and specifically the Tlaxcaltecas. Palafox planned but never completed two other volumes describing their labour conditions and proposing remedies to the abuse they suffered. As bishop of Puebla ( and for a time archbishop of Mexico and interim viceroy of New Spain), Palafox clashed with the regular clergy and in particular the Jesuits over the regulation of the native population. But according to Álvarez de Toledo, ‘Palafox’s vision was not exclusively . . . indigenista’ ( 90), and if he challenged the role of the regular clergy, this was because he regarded the native population as ‘a Catholic peasantry at the service of a regional oligarchy whose financial health was crucial for the economic restoration of both Spain and New Spain’ ( 91).

Notes to pages 149–63 207 19 The italicized words are not present in the earliest text of Sepúlveda’s Democrates Segundo, but appear in later codices. See Sepúlveda ( 33 n.28). 20 In his description of Filipino gender relations, San Agustín fails to recognize how considerably they had changed since the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century. For a discussion of gender in the context of the preHispanic and early colonial Philippines, see Brewer ( Holy and Shamanism). 21 Phelan compares Delgado to his Enlightenment contemporary, Montesquieu. Both believed that character traits were moulded by the environment. But unlike San Agustín, they insisted that character defects were also ‘susceptible to rational correction’ ( 86). 22 De la Costa points out that in the mid-seventeenth century the Philippine Jesuits and Dominicans ( who were both engaged in higher education) advocated the ordination of native clergy ( Jesuits 579). For a discussion of the history of the native Filipino clergy, see De la Costa ( ‘Development’) and De la Costa and Schumacher. 23 For a discussion of social Darwinism in Spain and Latin America, see the collection of essays edited by Miranda and Vallejo. 24 All of the issues of La Solidaridad were reprinted in Manila in 1996 along with English translations. See ‘El indio del P. S. Agustín,’ La Solidaridad: Quincenario Democrático 4.86 ( 1 September 1892): 791–4; 4.87 ( 15 September 1892): 805–6; 4.88 ( 30 September 1892): 815–16; 4.90 ( 31 October 1892): 840–1; 4.91 ( 15 November 1892): 853–4; 4.92 ( 30 November 1892): 863–5; 4.93 ( 15 December 1892): 877–9; 4.94 ( 31 December 1892): 888–9. These are the original volume and page numbers of the newspaper. Parenthetical references to La Solidaridad within my text refer to the volumes and pages of the 1996 reprinting. 25 Schumacher cites the full reference: J.R. ‘Dudas,’ España en Filipinas 12 ( 28 May 1887). He notes that Retana indicates Rizal as the author of the article ( Schumacher 72 n.19; Retana 465). For a discussion of España en Filipinas, see Schumacher ( 59–82). 26 Blumentritt was a professor of history and a specialist in Tagalog. In the prologue to Rizal’s edition of the Sucesos he describes himself as an adopted son of the Philippines ( vii). Sichrovsky clarifies that Blumentritt had an ancestor who served as colonial governor of the Philippines. Also, an aunt of his married a Peruvian Creole, and when widowed moved to Prague, where Blumentritt ‘recovered in her house those impressions which determined [his] life: the love for the Spanish colonial world’ ( 4). Rizal, who was fluent in several languages, wrote most of his letters to Blumentritt in German.

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Notes to pages 169–75

27 According to Garcia, Rizal’s comments on sodomy are also ironic. Despite the tendency of biographers to highlight Rizal’s supposedly numerous romantic relationships with women ( and though Rizal and Blumentritt only met once in person), Garcia suggests that Rizal might have in fact experienced a homoerotic attachment to Blumentritt. To justify this assertion, he cites not only the highly affectionate tone of their correspondence ( something not altogether unusual in letters between men of the time) but one particular missive in which Rizal remarks on how their affection is different: ‘[T]here exists one letter, written by Rizal, in which an intimation of a kind of shame creeps in, though it is one which he quickly brushes off.’ Rizal writes of ‘die innige Bruderschaft die uns beide für einander haben und fühlen’ [‘the intimate fraternity that we profess mutually’] ( ‘Rizal, Paris, 19 November 1889,’ The Rizal-Blumentritt 1: 304). He continues: ‘Dieses Gefühl aber werden die Feinde nicht verstehen da sie kein feines Gefühl haben können, und vielleicht ( weil ich die Spanier sehr gut kenne) darüber spotten: und ich möchte Niemand über unsere Bruderschaft spotten sehen . . . Vielleicht du verteht [sic] mich’ [But our enemies will not understand this sentiment, because they don’t have a delicate sentiment, and as I know the Spaniards very well, perhaps they may even scoff at it, and I do not want anyone to mock our fraternity . . . Perhaps you may understand me]. 28 The only record of this letter is a draft written in French in Rizal’s medical notebook, Clínica ( 109), which is currently located in the Newberry Library. Retana transcribed the letter and included it in his biography of Rizal, maintaining, he claims, the exact orthography of the original. According to Retana, Rizal composed the letter in Heidelberg in 1886. I cite from Retana’s transcription ( 100–2) and from the English translation in Rizal’s Prose, titled ‘Rizal’s Impressions of Madrid, Letter to Dr. F. Blumentritt’ ( 67–9). With regard to Rizal’s experience in Madrid, Ortiz Armengol remarks that ‘[a] Rizal . . . no le interesa Madrid apenas nada. Lo ve como el poder que está ejerciendo injustamente un mando colonial en Filipinas. No le interesa la literatura española; no se sabe que leyese ningún libro español, a excepción de una novela de Ortega Munilla’ ( ‘Rizal: vida y obra’ 23) [Rizal is hardly interested in Madrid at all. He sees it as the power that is unjustly exercising colonial rule in the Philippines. He is not interested in Spanish literature; it is not known if he read any Spanish book, with the exception of a novel of Ortega Munilla]. For further discussion of Rizal’s experiences in Madrid, see also Ortiz Armengol, ‘Rizal in Spain.’ 29 ‘Rizal, Berlin, 12 January 1887,’ The Rizal-Blumentritt 1: 37–8. 30 ‘Rizal, Berlin, 22 November 1886,’ The Rizal-Blumentritt 1: 22.

Notes to pages 175–81 209 31 ‘Rizal, Geneva, 6 June 1887,’ The Rizal-Blumentritt 1: 96. The anti-Filipino diatribes in the Spanish press at the time of the Philippine Exhibition were, according to C.W. Watson, ‘partly the product of a strand of racist European thought which had developed out of social Darwinism, which it [the Spanish press] opportunistically used to justify the continuing subjugation of those whom they [the Spanish] regarded as backward, and partly from a vicious legacy of contempt for colonized peoples’ ( 287). 32 Sánchez Gómez cites Rizal’s statement to Blumentritt that he did everything possible to prevent the Philippine Exhibition from happening, but indicates that there is no evidence to support this claim ( 252). 33 Sánchez Gómez thus disagrees with the position of Schumacher, who maintains that the ilustrados felt great solidarity with their denigrated and humiliated compatriots in Madrid ( 256). 34 From ‘Los viajes’ [‘Travels’], which Rizal published under the pseudonym Laong Laan. La Solidaridad 1.7 ( 15 May 1889): 156–61. 35 This is one of Rizal’s most famous poetic images, from the poem ‘Mi último adiós’ [My final farewell], written just several hours before his execution ( Poems 25). According to Sarkisyanz, however, the Spaniard Luis Rodríguez Varela was the first to use the image of the ‘Pearl of the Orient’ to describe Manila ( 77). 36 ‘Rizal, Fort Santiago, Manila, 29 December 1896,’ The Rizal-Blumentritt 2: 539. Conclusion 1 The late scholar David Vilaseca provides the most in-depth study of the philosophy of Badiou as well as of Gilles Deleuze, Giorgio Agamben, and Slavoj Žižek in the context of Spanish writing and film. 2 See www.blog.china.com.cn/jiangshixue/art/862190.html. 3 Gómez reports that in 2005 some 80 per cent of Chinese migrants to Spain came from the province of Zhejiang in southeastern China. 4 For studies of the Asian presence in modern Latin American writing and society, see López-Calvo. 5 Gil de Biedma’s diary from 1956 was not published until 1974, and then only in an abridged form that omitted certain references to homosexuality. The complete version, from which I cite, was first published in 1991.

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Index

Acosta, José de, 67, 185n1 Acquaviva, Claudio, 87 Aduarte, Diego, 16, 20 – 1, 113 – 20, 123, 179, 182, 201n5; and Buddhism, 16, 114 – 16; as critic of Jesuit accommodationism, 202n13; and Historia de la Provincia del Santo Rosario de la Orden de Predicadores en Filipinas, Japón y China, 111, 113 – 20, 200 – 1n3; and just-war theory, 117 – 18; and murder of Cambodian king, 119; and sacred history, 114; and sodomy among Buddhist clergy, 116. See also Rizal, José afeminado [effeminate]: meaning of, 85, 197 – 8n26 Agamben, Giorgio, 209n1 Aguilar, Filomeno V., Jr, 158 Albertus Magnus, 7 Albuquerque, Alfonso de, 111 Aldridge, A. Owen, 18 Alexander VI, Pope, 130 Alfaro, Pedro, 81 Alighieri, Dante: and Inferno, 31 Alvares, Jorge, 25, 30; and skin colour, 190n21; and sodomy, 33, 189n13

Álvarez de Toledo, Cayetana, 206n18 Amati, Scipione, 191n32 Andaya, Leonard Y., 204n3 Anderson, Benedict, 187n10 Angirō (Paulo de Santa Fe), 30 – 1, 33, 37, 189nn9 – 10, 190n20 Angkor, 112, 121, 128, 201 – 2n9, 202n12, 203 – 4n24 App, Urs, 189n11, 190n24 Aquinas, Thomas: and civilization, 105, 136, 205n6; and clerics as combatants, 118; and just-war theory, 21, 111, 117, 125 Arcilla Solero, José, 146 Argensola, Bartolomé Leonardo de, 201n8, 202n14 Arrizón Alicia, 205n7 Augustinians: in China, 195n5; and Chinese rites, 69; and indios, 160; in Mexico, 80; in Philippines, 131; and Quadraginta, 146. See also González de Mendoza, Juan; Jesuits; San Agustín, Gaspar de autobiography, 16. See also Francisco Xavier; Luarca, Miguel de Azevedo, Agostinho de, 38

228

Index

Badiou, Alain, 209n1; and ‘event’ of Hispanic-Asian encounter, 179 Bailén, Count of, 127 banquet and performance of Chinese play (figure 2.1), 77, 196 – 7n18 Barajas, Countess of, 49 – 50 Barbier, Victor, 201n5 Barros, João de, 81, 194n2 Bautista, Pedro, 40, 41, 45 – 6 Benedict XIV, Pope: and Ex quo singulari, 69 Benites, María Jesús, 194n1 berdache, 74, 196n16 Bernad, Miguel A., 146, 147, 206n17 Bernal, Diego, 190n27 Blair, Emma Helen, 140, 185n2, 196n9, 205n11, 205 – 6n12 Blanco, Francisco, 45 Bleys, Rudi C., 11, 12 Blumentritt, Ferdinand, 163, 164, 165, 170, 171, 174, 175, 176, 207n26, 209n32; and racism, 164. See also Garcia, J. Neil C.; Rizal, José Boone, Joseph A., 186n6 Borges Morán, Pedro, 67, 131 Boxer, Charles Ralph, 25, 26 – 7, 41, 44, 46, 135, 146, 147, 194n2, 196n17, 197n20, 201 – 2n9, 204 – 5n4 Braun, Georg, 59 Brewer, Carolyn, 207n20 Briggs, Lawrence Palmer, 113, 127, 128, 201n8, 202nn11 – 12, 203n17, 203n19 Brockey, Liam Matthew, 18, 99, 188n13, 195n7, 198n28, 199n36 Brodrick, James 32, 36, 188n4 Brown, Judith C., 191n31 Buddhism, Buddhist, 25, 26; Christianized, 194n50. See also Aduarte, Diego; Francisco Xavier; Fucan,

Fabian; Jesuits; Pantoja, Diego de; San Antonio, Gabriel Quiroga de Caballero, Antonio de Santa María, 101, 199n40 Caballero de Cabrera XXIV, Diego, 49 Cabaton, Antoine, 120, 201n8, 203nn18 – 19 Cabezas, Antonio, 189 – 90n18, 191n30 Cao Cao, 78, 85 Cao Yubian, 199n37 caste, 8 – 9, 10, 136, 186n5. See also Luarca, Miguel de; San Antonio, Gabriel Quiroga de caste project, 8 Castro, Manuel de, 39 – 40 Cattaneo, Lazzarro, 198n31 Cervantes, Miguel de, 79, 200n2 Chan, Albert, 104 Chandler, David, 202n10, 203n22 Charles V, 39, 130 Chen Liangcai, 199n37 chigo monogatari [acolyte stories], 33 Chijiwa, Miguel, 199n31 China: proposed Spanish conquest of, 3, 185n1. See also González de Mendoza, Juan; Salazar, Domingo de China Road, 204n3 chorography, 59 Christian Century: period of, 24, 28, 39, 61, 192 – 3n41; term, 26 Civitates Orbis Terrarum, 59, 193n46 Claramonte, Andrés de: and El nuevo rey Gallinato, 200n2 Clement XI, Pope: and Ex illa die, 69 climate: effects of on humans, 5, 6 – 7, 19, 110, 136. See also Delgado, Juan

Index José; Francisco Xavier; González de Mendoza, Juan; San Agustín, Gaspar de Coates, Austin, 162 Cobo, Juan, 40; and Ming Xin Bao Jian (Espejo rico del claro coraçon), 104, 200nn43 – 4; and The Story of the Three Kingdoms, 200n44 Colín, Francisco, 3, 4, 185n1 Columbus, Christopher, 6, 7, 68, 186n5, 187n9 Confucian/Confucianism, 17, 20, 199 – 200n42; ancient/early, 10, 69, 70; and Christianity, 70, 100; and converts from, 199n38; -inspired theatre, 79; neo-, 100, 171; rationalism, 69; rites, 68 – 9; values, 44, 79. See also Fucan, Fabian; Jesuits; Longobardi, Niccolò; Pantoja, Diego de; Ricci, Matteo Cooper, Michael, 189n14, 191n31 Coronil, Fernando, 12 – 13 Cortés, Hernán, 67, 203n17 Couto, Diogo de, 201 – 2n9 Covarrubias, Sebastián de, 120 critical race theory, 8 Cruz, Gaspar da, 81, 185 – 6n4, 194n2, 197n23; and Tractado, 111 Cummins, J.S., 102, 108, 195n4, 195n7, 199 – 200n42, 200n45 daimyō, Christian: vs. shoguns, 188n1 Darwinism, 136; social 158, 207n23, 209n31 Date Masamune, 26, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52 De Armas, Frederick A., 200n2 De Bary, William Theodore, 65 De Borja, Marciano R., 139

229

De la Costa, Horacio, 131, 134, 185n1, 204n2, 207n22 De la Vega y de Luque, CarlosLuis, 82 De la Vera, Chris, 183 – 4 De las Cortes, Adriano de, 195n3 Dehergne, Joseph, 198n27 Deists, 102 Deleuze, Gilles, 209n1; and ‘event of colonization,’ 183 Delgado, Juan José, 17, 144, 145, 147, 151 – 8, 159, 160, 161, 162, 169, 206n17; and effects of climate on humans, 181; and effects of diet, 181; and exploitation of Filipinos, 152; and Filipinos and gender, 153 – 4; and Filipinos and race, 154; and Historia general sacro-profana, política y natural de las Islas del Poniente llamadas Filipinas, 137, 146, 158, 160; and indios, 152, 155, 156, 157, 158, 160, 161; and Bartolomé de Las Casas, 21, 138, 147, 151, 157, 159; and Montesquieu, 207n21; and Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, 21, 138, 147, 151; and Quadraginta, 146, 153, 155, 156, 206n15; and rebellion, 134, 152 – 3, 162; and religious anecdotes, 155 – 6; and Gaspar de San Agustín’s generalizations, 151; and Gaspar de San Agustín’s unchristian attitude, 21, 154 – 5; and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, 21, 138, 156; and Francisco de Vitoria, 21, 156 Deruet, Claude, 192n40 Détrie, Muriel, 187n8 Díaz Pardo, Juan Pobre, 190n27 Didier, Hugues, 32, 33

230

Index

Diez, Pero: and skin colour, 190n21 Dillenberger, John, 189n12 Disraeli, Benjamin, 11 Dominicans, 69; in China, 101, 195n5, 195n8; in Philippines, 207n22. See also Aduarte, Diego; Jesuits; Navarrete, Domingo Fernández; Salazar, Domingo de; San Antonio, Gabriel Quiroga de Drummond, Richard Henry, 26, 188n1 Dunne, George H., 198n28, 200n44 Dusmet de Arizcún, Xavier, 202n11 ekphrasis, 91 El Liberal, 175 Elison, George, 62 – 5, 194n49 Elizalde, Ignacio, 30, 189n7 encomendero(s). See Luarca, Miguel de; Rizal, José; Salazar, Domingo de encomienda, 131; definition of, 72 Endō Shūsaku: and The Samurai, 53, 192 – 3n41; and Silence, 194n48 Enlightenment, European, 18, 79. See also Navarrete, Domingo Fernández Escalante, Bernardino de, 81, 194n2, 197n23 España en Filipinas, 161, 207n25 Europeanness, 12, 89 – 90 Ezquerra Abadía, Ramón, 204n1 Fan Liben: and Ming Xin Bao Jian, 104 Faure, Bernard, 33, 189n15 Feijóo, Benito Jerónimo, 18, 195n4 Felipe de Jesús, 45 feminine/femininity: and Indian, 11. See also orientalism

Fernández Gómez, Marcos, 48, 52, 191 – 2n33, 192n36 Ferrando, Roberto, 188n2, 203n20 Ferreira, Christovão, 194n48 Ferrero, Manuel, 113, 200 – 1n3 Filipinos: early Japanese views of, 65; vs. peninsulares, 136. See also Delgado, Juan José; indios; Rizal, José; Salazar, Domingo de; San Agustín, Gaspar de Flynn, Dennis O., 135, 204 – 5n4 Forner, Juan Pablo, 18 Foucault, Michel, 10 Franciscans: in China, 69, 101, 195n5, 195n8; in Japan, 19, 24 – 8, 38, 39 – 46, 48, 52, 190n27, 191n28; vs. Jesuits in Japan, 26 – 8, 40, 42 – 4, 52; in Namban art, 54 – 5. See also Jesuits; Ribadeneira, Marcelo de; Sotelo, Luis Francisco de la Parrilla, 45 Francisco Xavier, 15, 16, 17, 19, 24 – 5, 27 – 8, 29 – 39, 47, 50, 63, 74, 75, 88, 108, 110, 111, 116, 178, 179, 189n8, 190n20, 190n23; and autobiography 29; and Buddhism, 31 – 3, 189n11, 190n24; and comparison of Japanese and Chinese, 186 – 7n7; and effects of climate on humans, 37; literary legacy of, 30; name of, 188n4; and ‘No me mueve, mi Dios, para quererte,’ 189n7; and the Other, 36, 38; and question of evil and hell, 31 – 2; and samurai, 33 – 4; and Shintō, 32; and skin colour, 37, 190n22; and sodomy among Buddhist clergy, 29, 33 – 5, 181, 189n15, 189 – 90n18; writing style of, 30. See also Namban art Frederickson, George M., 9, 186n5

Index Fucan, Fabian, 28, 53, 61 – 2, 65, 66, 168, 171; and Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shintō, 61; and Ha Daiusu [Deus destroyed], 61, 65; and Myōtei mondō [Myōtei dialogue], 61 Gallinato, Juan Juárez, 113, 117, 118, 120. See also Claramonte, Andrés de García, Félix, 82 García, Gonzalo, 45 Garcia, J. Neil C.: and José Rizal’s relationship with Ferdinand Blumentritt, 208n27; and José Rizal’s views of sexuality, 169 García-Abásolo, Antonio, 206n13 García Castañón, Santiago, 71, 72, 73, 80, 194n1, 196n10, 196n12, 197n21 Garza Carvajal, Federico, 85 Gayo y Aragón, Jesús, 144 Gernet, Jacques, 98, 99, 101, 195n7, 199n35 Gessel, Van C., 192n40, 192 – 3n41 Ghandi, Mohandas, 162 Ghosh, Manomohan, 203n17 Gil, Juan, 191n30 Gil de Biedma, Jaime, 181 – 4; diary of, 209n5; and (homo)sexuality, 181; and race (racism), 181 – 3 Giráldez, Arturo, 135, 204 – 5n4 Girard, Pascale, 82, 84, 195n3, 195n5 Gluck, Carol, 65 Gnecchi-Soldo, Organtino, 62 Gómez, Luis, 209n3 Góngora, Luis de, 200n2 González, Zeferino, 195n4 González de Mendoza, Juan, 14 – 15, 17, 20, 68, 69, 70, 71, 80 – 6, 101, 102,

231

105, 107, 108, 109, 111, 197nn23 – 4; and abundance of China, 86, 196n15; and Augustinian theology of peace, 82; and effects of climate on humans, 83; and Historia de las cosas mas notables, ritos y costumbres del gran Reyno de la China, 68, 80 – 6, 89, 109, 195n4; and proposed Spanish conquest of China, 82; and skin colour, 78, 83, 84 – 5; and The Story of the Three Kingdoms, 76, 78, 80, 84 – 5, 197n25, 200n44 Gregory XIII, Pope, 81 Grimaldi, Claudio-Filippo, 200n45 Groslier, Bernard Philippe, 111, 201nn7 – 8, 201 – 2n9, 202nn11 – 12 Guan Yu, 78 Guillén Selfa, José, 191n31 Gutiérrez, Fernando G., 54, 55 Gutiérrez Fernández, Manuel, 80 Guzmán, Diego de, 49 Guzmán, Luis de, 40, 88 – 91 Hacking, Ian, 14 Han dynasty, 78, 197n25 Hara, Martinão, 191n31 Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga, 19 – 20, 47 – 53, 66, 171, 192n40, 192 – 3n41; baptism of, 49; Christian name of, 192n35; and Cross of Santiago, 50, 192n36; and letter to city of Seville, 48, 191 – 2n33; and reception by Philip III, 49 – 50; and reception in Rome, 51 – 2 Hayot, Eric, 14 Headley, John M., 67, 130, 135 Hernández Valcárcel, María del Carmen, 200n2 Herodotus, 81 Herrera, Arnulfo, 189n7

232

Index

Herrera y Tordesillas, Antonio de, 187n9, 204n1 Herrero, Miguel, 102 Hervás y Panduro, Lorenzo, 18 Hill, Ruth, 7, 8, 136, 158 Hino Hiroshi, 197n23 Hinsch, Bret, 185 – 6n4 Hispanic Asianography, 14, 18, 39, 47, 109, 129, 136, 138, 170, 177, 178 – 9; vs. Asian Hispanography, 170; and postcolonial, 179, 181 – 4 Hoefnagel, Joris, 59, 61, 193n46 Hogenberg, Franz, 59 homosexuality (male-male sex): in early Japan, 189n16, 190n19; in Ming-dynasty China, 5, 185 – 6n4; and science of deviance, 12, 179. See also Gil de Biedma, Jaime; orientalism; shudō; sodomy Hsu, Carmen Y., 197n24 Huang Wendao, 99 Humboldt, Alexander von, 204n3 Ignacio, Martín, 81 Igorots, 137, 159. See also Rizal, José Ihara Saikaku: and The Great Mirror of Male Love, 189n16 Ikenaga Hajime, 193n44 Ileto, Reynaldo C., 205n9 ilustrados, 158 – 62, 176, 209n33; and indios 158 – 9; and Jesuits, 167 indios, 3 – 4, 186n5; and Cambodians, 121; and Filipinos, 10, 129, 131, 137. See also Augustinians; Delgado, Juan José; ilustrados; Jesuits; Las Casas, Bartolomé de; Luarca, Miguel de; Native Americans; Rizal, José; Salazar, Domingo de; San Agustín, Gaspar de Iriarte, Tomás de, 18

Ito, Mancio, 191n31 Iwata Jun’ichi, 189n16 Izawa Minoru, 30, 189n9, 189n13, 190n21 Jackson, Peter A., 186n6 JanMohamed, Abdul R., 108 Jaque de los Ríos de Mancaned, Christoval de, 127, 201n8, 202n14 Jerome, Saint, 104 Jerónima de la Asunción, Mother, 205n5 Jesuit accommodationism, 20, 39, 168, 199n38; friars’ rejection of, 68 – 70, 101. See also Aduarte, Diego; Navarrete, Domingo Fernández; Pantoja, Diego de; Ricci, Matteo Jesuit Mandarin, 94, 108 Jesuits: and Buddhism, 195n6; in China, 185n1, 191n28, 195n5, 198n32; and conflict with Augustinians, Dominicans, and Franciscans, 26 – 8, 100, 101, 159, 195n8; and conflict with Jansenists, 102; and Confucianism, 10, 68 – 9, 195n6; dissident, 69; and expulsion/suppression of order, 102, 146, 167; and French, Germans, and Italians, 187n11; and indios, 159 – 60, 167; in Japan, 25 – 8, 40, 41, 43, 44, 47; and Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, 199 – 200n42; in Namban art, 54 – 5, 61; in Philippines, 146, 206n17, 207n22; and Portuguese, 25, 26; and sodomy, 189n14; and three cornerstones of missionary practice, 27; travel trajectory of, 17. See also Delgado, Juan José;

Index Franciscans; Francisco Xavier; ilustrados; Pantoja, Diego de Jews. See San Antonio, Gabriel Quiroga de Jiang Shixue, 180 just-war theory. See Aduarte, Diego; Aquinas, Thomas; San Antonio, Gabriel Quiroga de; Vitoria, Francisco de; Walzer, Michael Kagan, Richard L., 59, 61 Kangxi, Emperor, 69 Keevak, Michael, 5, 18, 185n3, 187n12 Keichō Embassy, 47, 52, 53, 191n32 Khmer Rouge, 128 Kirishitan monogatari [Christian stories], 53, 62 – 5, 171; ‘How the Kirishitans First Crossed Over to Japan,’ 62 – 3; ‘How the Kirishitans Were Dragged through the Land in Carts during the Reign of the Taikō Hideyoshi,’ 63 – 4; ‘How a Man Appeared to Accuse the Kirishitans of Desiring to Subject Japan to South Barbary,’ 64 – 5 Knauth, Lothar, 190n25 Kongming, 78 Kramer, Paul A., 205n8 La Solidaridad, 158 – 62, 176, 207n24, 209n34 Lach, Donald F., 40, 68, 80, 81, 82, 194n2, 197n23 Lafaye, Jacques, 145, 147 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 12, 131; and Apología, 157 – 8; and indios, 157. See also Delgado, Juan José; Salazar, Domingo de; San Agustín, Gaspar de

233

Lavazares, Guido de, 72 Legazpi, Miguel de, 130, 131, 135, 204n3 Leña, Juan, 198n29 Lerma, Duke of, 49 – 50 Leupp, Gary P., 189n16 Li Zhizao, 199n36 Libro del cognosçimiento de todos los rregnos e tierras et señoríos que son por el mundo, 7 Lifshey, Adam, 22 Limahon (Lin Feng), 67, 72 limpieza de sangre [blood purity], 8, 186n5 Line of Demarcation, 130; and antimeridian, 130, 204n1 Lisón Tolosana, Carmelo, 195n3 Liu Bei, 78, 85 Liu Li-mei, 104 Livingstone, David, 177 Longobardi, Niccolò: and De Confucio ejusque doctrina tractatus, 101, 199n40; and Matteo Ricci, 86 Lope de Vega y Carpio, Félix Arturo: Triunfo de la fee en los reynos de Japón, 46 López-Calvo, Ignacio, 209n4 López de Gómara, Francisco: and sodomy, 5, 11 López de Velasco, Juan: and ‘Descripcion de las Indias del Poniente’ (figure 4.2), 133, 204n1; and ‘Descripcion de las Yndias Ocidentales’ (figure 4.1), 132, 204n1 López de Villalobos, Ruy, 129 Loti, Pierre, 203 – 4n24 Loyola, Iñigo de, 29, 30, 35 Luarca, Lucía de, 72 Luarca, Miguel de, 20, 67, 68, 70, 71 – 80, 81, 95, 101, 106, 108, 109,

234

Index

194nn1 – 2, 195n3, 196n16; and abundance of China, 73, 196n15; and autobiography, 72; and caste, 76; date of birth of, 196n12; as encomendero, 72, 196n13; and gender, 73 – 4; and indios vs. Chinese, 75 – 6; name of, 196n10; and physical appearance of Chinese, 75; and Relación de las Yslas Filipinas, 71, 196n9; and skin colour, 76; and sodomy, 74 – 5; and theatrical performance of The Story of the Three Kingdoms, 76 – 8, 84 – 5, 196 – 7n18, 197n20, 197n25; and Verdadera relación de la grandeza del Reino de China, 68, 71 – 80, 84 – 5, 195n4, 197n21; writing style of, 71 Luo Guanzhong: and The Story of the Three Kingdoms, 76 – 8; and Water Margin, 77, 196 – 7n18. See also Cobo, Juan; González de Mendoza, Juan; Luarca, Miguel de Luther, Martin, 189n12 MacKenzie, John, 6 Mackerras, Colin, 68, 70 Magdalena, António da, 201 – 2n9 Magellan, Ferdinand (Magalhães, Fernão de), 129 mandate of heaven, 78, 85 Manila Galleon, 135, 204n3 Marín, Jerónimo, 67, 73, 81, 84 Markley, Robert, 18 Martín de la Ascensión, 45 Matsuda Kiichi, 191n31 May, Sharon, 204n25 Medaña, Álvaro de, 194n1 Medina Sidonia, Duke of, 48 Mendes Pinto, Fernão, 185 – 6n4 Menegon, Eugenio, 98

Menéndez de Avilés, Pedro, 72 Menéndez y Pelayo, Marcelino, 195n4 Merino, Manuel, 145 – 6 Mesquita, Diogo de, 191n31 mestizaje, 8, 30 mestizo(s), 8; in Philippines, 136, 137, 161, 205n7, 206n13 metis, 8 migration: to Philippines, 136, 158 – 9; and José Rizal, 176; to Spain, 180 – 1, 209n3 Minamiki, George, 69, 195n7 Ming dynasty/period, 76, 77, 98, 99, 101, 104, 196 – 7n18, 197n25. See also homosexuality Miranda, Marisa, 207n23 miscegenation, 4, 151 ‘Missionary Martyr’ (figures 2.2 and 2.3), 92, 93, 198 – 9n33 Moffett, Samuel Hugh, 27, 31, 66, 101, 198n32 Mohan, Robert Paul, 205n6 Moncó, Beatriz, 195n3 Montesquieu. See Delgado, Juan José Morales, Juan Bautista, 101 Morga, Antonio de, 17, 22, 138, 179, 203n19. See also Rizal, José Morillo-Alicea, Javier, 187n10 mulato(s), 8, 150 Mungello, David E., 18, 185n3, 187n12, 188n13, 195nn6 – 7 Muñoz, Alonso, 191n31 Muñoz Vidal, Agustín, 108 Murillo, Pedro, 145 – 6 Nakaura, Julião, 191n31 Namban art, 28, 53 – 61; ‘Four Great Cities of the West’ (figure 1.2), 59 – 61, 193nn44 – 5, 193n47; portrait

Index of Francisco Xavier, 54; ‘Screens of Europeans in Japan’ (figure 1.1), 54 – 8; and skin colour, 55; term, 53. See also Franciscans; Jesuits Namban artists, 171 Namban maps, 193n43 Namban ship, 54 – 5 Naresuan, 112 Native Americans, 10 – 12, 21, 24, 196n16; early Japanese views of, 66. See also indios; Salazar, Domingo de; San Agustín, Gaspar de natural man, 9 – 10 natural religion, 102 Navarrete, Alonso de, 102 Navarrete, Alonso Mena de, 102 Navarrete, Domingo Fernández, 4, 13, 15, 16, 65, 68, 70, 71, 73, 95, 100, 101 – 9, 110, 111, 179, 195n4, 199n41; and abundance of China, 103; as critic of Jesuit accommodationism, 20, 68, 70, 101, 103; and criticism of West, 104; and cultural relativism, 105; and European Enlightenment, 20, 70, 102; and ‘going native,’ 108; as Min Ming-wo, 108, 200n45; and Min Xin Bao Jian (Espejo precioso del alma), 104; and the Other, 108; and sodomy, 105 – 6; and Tratados historicos, politicos, ethicos, y religiosos de la monarchia de China, 68, 70, 101 – 9. See also Voltaire negritos, 158 – 9 negro(s), 120 – 1, 158, 186n5 Nordenskjöld, Otto, 177 Ocampo, Ambeth R., 163 – 4 Ochoa, Eugenio de, 195n4 Oda Nobunaga, 25 Okamoto Yoshitomo, 59

235

Oliandia, Francisco, 44 Ollé, Manuel, 3, 104, 185n1, 194n2, 200n43 Omi, Michael, 8 Orient: as conceptual category, 13, 29; vs. Occident, 13; as a space, 15, 29, 187n9 orientalism, 11; essentialist 70; and feminine, 11; and homosexual writing, 186n6; vs. Japanese stereotypes of westerners, 62; vs. occidentalism, 13; and José Rizal’s views of Madrid and Spain, 171 – 3; and sodomy, 5; and Spanish writers and Catholic missionaries, 15, 71 orientalist art, 6 orientalist travellers, 108 orientalizing gaze, 106 Oriente, extremo (Far East), 15, 187n8 Ortiz Armengol, Pedro, 208n28 Oviedo y Valdés, Gonzalo Fernández de: and sodomy, 5, 12 Padrón, Ricardo, 18, 188n13, 191n29 Pagden, Anthony, 9 – 10, 37, 128, 142 Palafox y Mendoza, Juan de: and Libro de las virtudes del indio, 147, 206n18. See also Delgado, Juan José; San Agustín, Gaspar de Pantoja, Diego de, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 68, 70, 71, 86 – 101, 102, 107, 108, 109, 179, 182, 198nn27 – 31; and books, 96; and Buddhism, 97, 98; and Chinese culture and society, 96 – 8; and Confucianism, 20, 91, 99, 100; and cultural identity, 89; as exponent of Jesuit accommodationism, 20, 86, 87, 100; and eyes, 94; and ledgers of merit and

236

Index

demerit, 98; and maps, 95; portrait of, 91; and Qike (Tratado de los siete pecados y virtudes), 88, 98 – 9, 171, 199n35, 199n37; and Relación de la entrada de algunos padres de la compañía de Iesús en la China, 68, 88 – 98, 99, 100, 195n4; and Matteo Ricci, 86 – 91, 95, 100, 198n31 Paramarājā IV, 110, 112, 113, 116, 200n1, 202n11 Patton, Paul, 183 Paul V, Pope, 48, 51, 192n40, 192 – 3n41 Peng Duanwu, 99 Pereira, Galeote, 81, 185 – 6n4, 194n2 Pérez, Diego, 192n34 Pérez, Lorenzo, 191 – 2n33, 192n38 Pérez Dasmariñas, Luis, 112 Pérez Dasmariñas, Pedro Gómez, 40, 112 Perry, Commodore Matthew C., 66 Peter the Apostle, 134 Peterson, Willard J., 198n32 Petitjohn, Bernard, 66 Petrine Succession, doctrine of, 134 Pflugfelder, Gregory M., 34, 189nn16 – 17, 190n19 Phelan, John Leddy, 135, 139, 204 – 5n4, 207n21 Philip II, 3, 80, 129, 130, 131, 137, 139, 141, 194n1 Philip III, 48, 50, 104, 120, 127, 191n31, 191n33, 192 – 3n41. See also Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga Philip IV, 206n18 Philippine Exhibition, 175 – 6, 209n31. See also Rizal, José Philippines: demographics of, 136 – 7; geographic location of, 187n9; in Latin American Studies, 187n10

Phoeun, Mak, 200n1, 200n5, 202n10, 202n11, 202n14 Piedra, José, 11 Pires, Tomé: and Suma Oriental, 111 Pius IX, Pope, 192n39 Pizarro, Francisco, 203n17 Pliny, 6 Polo, Marco, 25, 29, 68 Porras Camúñez, José Luis, 204n2 Propaganda Movement, 159 Proust, Jacques, 193n47, 194n50 Ptolemy, 59 Qing dynasty, 101 Quadraginta. See Augustinians; Delgado, Juan José; San Agustín, Gaspar de Quesnay, François, 199 – 200n42 race, 8 – 9, 136, 137, 153, 186n5; prehistory of, 7, 158; yellow, 5, 185n3. See also Delgado, Juan José; Gil de Biedma, Jaime; San Agustín, Gaspar de racism (Spanish colonial), 158, 159, 162, 186n5. See also Blumentritt, Ferdinand; Gil de Biedma, Jaime Rada, Martín de, 67, 71, 73, 81, 84, 131, 178, 194nn1 – 2, 196n14, 196n17, 197n20, 200n44 Rafael, Vicente L., 137, 205n9 Rām I, 111, 113, 116, 117, 118, 201n4, 202n14 Reed, Anthony, 205n9 Retana, W. E., 205n10, 206n14, 207n25, 208n28 Ribadeneira, Marcelo de, 19, 25, 27, 28, 39 – 46, 47, 50, 63, 64, 140, 190n27, 201n8, 202n14; Historia de las Islas del Archipielago, y reynos de

Index la gran China, tartaria, Cochinchina, Malaca, Sian, Camboxa y Jappon, 39 – 46 Ricci, Matteo, 20, 101, 187n11, 198nn29 – 30, 198n32, 199n34; and Confucianism, 68 – 70, 100, 198n32; and Jesuit accommodationism, 39, 86. See also Longobardi, Niccolò; Pantoja, Diego de; Rizal, José Rico-Avello, Pablo and Carlos RicoAvello, 72, 73, 196nn10 – 13 Rites Controversy, 68 – 9, 100 – 1, 102, 104, 195n7, 199n39, 202n13 Rizal, José, 17, 21 – 2, 158, 162 – 77, 178, 179, 180, 207n25; and Diego Aduarte, 166; and Asian nationalism, 162; and Asian nations (Cambodia, China, and Japan), 165 – 7; and correspondence with Ferdinand Blumentritt, 170 – 6, 177, 208nn27 – 30, 209n31, 209n36; and encomenderos, 165, 169 – 70; and El filibusterismo, 22, 138, 162, 163, 170; and Filipino language, 164; and Filipino sexual mores, 168 – 9; and Filipino veneration of dead, 168; and Igorots, 175 – 6; and impressions of Madrid, 138, 170 – 6, 208n28; and imputation of laziness to Filipinos, 169 – 70; and indio viewpoint, 163; as Laong Laan, 209n34; and ‘Los viajes,’ 209n34; and ‘Mi último adiós,’ 209n35; and Antonio de Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, 17, 22, 138, 162 – 70, 207n26; and Noli me tangere, 138, 162, 163, 170, 176; and ‘Perla del mar de Oriente,’ 177, 209n35; and Philippine Exhibition, 175 – 6, 209n32; and progress, 176 – 7; and

237

Matteo Ricci, 166; and Blas Ruiz de Hernán González, 166 – 7; and Gaspar de San Agustín, 161, 174; and social class in Spain, 173 – 4; and social and religious conditions of Philippines, 167 – 9; and sodomy, 168 – 9, 208n27; and Spanish women, 171 – 2. See also Garcia, J. Neil C.; migration; orientalism Roberts, Moss, 197n25 Robertson, James Alexander, 140, 185n2, 196n9, 205n11, 205 – 6n12 Rodao García, Florentino, 200n2 Rodríguez, Simón, 39 Rodríguez Franco, Nicolás, 132, 133 Rodríguez Gamarra, Alonso, 191 – 2n33 Rodríguez Varela, Luis, 209n35 Rodríguez Zapatero, José Luis, 180 Ross, Andrew C., 189n11 Rubiés, Joan-Pau, 114, 145, 202n13 Ruggieri, Michele, 187n11, 198n32 Ruiz, Bartolomé, 41 Ruiz de Hernán González, Blas, 112, 113, 119, 202n11, 202n14. See also Rizal, José Russell, Robert H., 192n34 Sahagún, Bernardino de: and Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, 197 – 8n26; and sodomy, 197 – 8n26. See also San Agustín, Gaspar de Said, Edward W., 11, 13, 70 – 1 Sakoku [‘Locked-Country’ period], 63 Salazar, Domingo de, 17, 21, 134, 137, 139 – 44, 152, 165; and conquest of Philippines, 139; and encomenderos, 139, 140, 143, 206n14;

238

Index

and Filipinos as barbaric, 142, 143, 144; and indios, 143, 165; and Islam, 141 – 2; and king of Spain, 143 – 4; and Bartolomé de las Casas, 139, 144; and Memorial de las cosas que en estas Yslas Philipinas de Poniente pasan y del estado de ellas y de lo que hay que remediar (Relación de las cosas de las Filipinas), 137, 139 – 44, 205nn10 – 11; and Native Americans, 142, 144; and proposed Spanish conquest of China, 205 – 6n12; and Sangleys, 141; and slavery, 143; and Francisco de Vitoria, 142, 144 Salcedo, Juan de, 67 Samurai, 11; and male-male sexual relations, 5, 189n16, 189 – 90n18. See also Angirō; Endō Shūsaku; Francisco Xavier; Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga San Agustín, Gaspar de, 21, 66, 144 – 58, 159, 160, 161, 162, 206n17, 207n21; and bodily humours, 148; and Conquistas de las Islas Filipinas (1565 – 1615), 137, 145, 146; and corporal punishment, 151; and effects of climate on humans, 148, 181; and effects of diet, 148, 181; and Filipino identity 149; and Filipinos and gender, 150, 207n20; and Filipinos vs. other Asians, 147 – 8; and Filipinos and race, 150 – 1; and indios, 138, 145, 147, 149, 160; and Bartolomé de las Casas, 21, 138, 147, 151; and Native Americans, 147; and Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, 21, 138, 147, 151; and Quadraginta, 145 – 51,

153, 155, 156; and Bernardino de Sahagún, 147; and Sangleys, 148; and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, 21, 138, 149. See also Delgado, Juan José; Rizal, José San Antonio, Gabriel Quiroga de, 21, 110 – 13, 120 – 8, 201n8, 201 – 2n9, 203nn18 – 20; and behaviour of Spaniards, 123 – 4; and Cambodians and gender, 122; and caste categories, 120 – 1; and conquest of Cambodia, 124; and Jews, 112, 121 – 2; and just-war theory, 125 – 6; and Relación de los sucesos del reino de la Cambodja, 111, 120 – 8, 201n6; and skin colour, 120 – 1, 122; and sodomy among Buddhist clergy, 21, 115 – 16, 123 San Felipe (ship), 44, 46 San Juan Bautista (Date Maru) (ship), 47 Sánchez, Alonso, 3 – 5, 178, 185n1 Sánchez Avendaño, María Teresa, 196n15 Sánchez Fuertes, Cayetano, 144 Sánchez Gómez, Luis Ángel, 176, 209nn32 – 3 Sandman, Alison, 130 Sangleys, 135. See also Salazar, Domingo de; San Agustín, Gaspar de Santa Cruz, Baltasar de, 200 – 1n3 Sanz, Carlos, 104, 197n23 Sarkisyanz, Emmanuel, 209n35 Sarmiento, Pedro, 67, 73, 81, 84 Sarmiento de Gamboa, Pedro: and Historia de los Incas, 194n1 Saussy, Haun, 14

Index Schall von Bell, Johann Adam, 187n11 Schalow, Paul Gordon, 189n16 Schumacher, John N., 161, 207n22, 207n25, 209n33 Schurhammer, Georg, 32, 37, 39, 186 – 7n7, 188n3, 188n5, 190n23 Schurz, William Lytle, 135, 204n3 Scott, A.C., 85 Scott, William Henry, 205n9 See, Teresita Ang, 206n13 Sempuku kirishitan [hidden Christians], 66, 194n50 Sepúlveda, Juan Ginés de, 66; and Democrates Segundo, 149, 207n19; and sodomy, 5, 12. See also Delgado, Juan José; San Agustín, Gaspar de Shi Nai’an: Water Margin, 77, 196 – 7n18 Shintō. See Francisco Xavier; Fucan, Fabian Shirahara Yukiko, 59, 193n44 shudō [the way of youths], 34, 189n17, 190n19 Sichrovsky, Harry, 207n26 Silverblatt, Irene, 9, 12 sinography (Sinographies), 14, 16, 23 sinology, 14, 67, 68, 71, 80 sinomania, 102 Sixtus V, Pope, 41 skin colour, 5, 6 – 8, 62, 186n5; in The Story of the Three Kingdoms, 76 – 8. See also Alvares, Jorge; Diez, Pero; Francisco Xavier; González de Mendoza, Juan; Luarca, Miguel de; Namban art; race; San Antonio, Gabriel Quiroga de

239

sodomy, 5, 11 – 12, 85. See also Aduarte, Diego; Alvares, Jorge; Francisco Xavier; Jesuits; López de Gómara, Francisco; Luarca, Miguel de; Navarrete, Domingo Fernández; orientalism; Oviedo y Valdés, Gonzalo Fernández de; Rizal, José; Sahagún, Bernardino de; San Antonio, Gabriel Quiroga de; Sepúlveda, Juan Ginés de Sotelo, Luis, 19 – 20, 25 – 6, 27, 28, 47 – 53, 178, 191n31, 192n38, 192 – 3n41; beatification of, 192n39; and Franciscan mission in Japan, 52; and Relación verdadera que embio el padre Fray Luis Sotelo de la Orden de san Francisco . . . , 49 – 50, 192n34; and Relación verdadera del recibimiento que la santidad del Papa Paulo Quinto . . . , 51 – 2, 192n37 South Barbary, king of: as king of Spain, 53, 64 – 5 Spanish Armada, 3 Spanishness, 9, 12, 171 Spence, Jonathan D., 5, 18, 185 – 6n4, 188n13, 195n6, 198n29, 198n31, 199n34 Standaert, Nicolas, 98, 199n36, 199n40 Stanley, Henry E.J., 164, 166 Stanley, Henry Morton, 177 Stewart, Frank, 204n25 Suárez, Thomas, 18, 130, 188n13, 204n1 Sun, Julia Su Ming, 199n41 Sun Shangyang, 100 Sun Yatsen, 162 Sweet, James H., 9, 186n5 Synod of Manila, 134, 139, 144, 204n2

240

Index

Tagore, Rabindranath, 162 Takemoto Toshiō, 192 – 3n41 Tenshō Embassy, 59, 191n31, 193n43 Teresa de Jesús, 30 Ternaux-Compans, Henri: Archives des voyages, 201n8 Thomas the Apostle, 81 Tiedemann, Arthur E., 65 Toby, Ronald P., 53, 62 – 3 Tokugawa Hidetada, 48, 53 Tokugawa Ieyasu, 25, 26, 48, 53 Tokugawa shogunate, 25, 194n50 Toledo, Francisco de, 194n1 Tomita Kumasaku, 193n44 Tormo Sanz, Leandro, 30 Toyotomi Hideyoshi, 25, 40, 41, 44, 45, 46, 63 Transatlantic Studies, 22 travel writers, 16 Treaty of Paris, 177 Treaty of Tordesillas, 25, 41, 130 Trexler, Richard C., 11 triangular relationship (between Spain, Latin America, and China), 180 Trigault, Nicolas, 88, 198n30 Twenty-Six Martyrs Incident, 28, 39, 44 – 6, 62, 63 – 4, 198 – 9n33 Ursis, Sabatino de, 198n28 Valera, Juan, 195n4 Valignano, Alessandro, 187n11, 191n31 Valladares, Rafael, 67 Vallejo, Gustavo, 207n23 Van der Loon, Piet, 200n44 Varley, Paul, 193n43

Velázquez y Sánchez, José, 48, 191 – 2n33 Veloso, Diogo, 112, 113, 118, 202n11, 202n14 Viglielmo, V. H., 192n34 Vilaseca, David, 179, 209n1 Villanueva Bilar, Catalina, 30 Virgil, 31 Vissière, Isabelle and Jean-Louis Vissière, 199 – 200n42 Vitoria, Francisco de, 10, 21, 131, 203n23; and just-war theory, 21, 111, 117, 125 – 6, 203n16. See also Delgado, Juan José; Salazar, Domingo de Vivero y Velasco, Rodrigo, 188n2 Vizcaíno, Sebastián, 48 Vogeley, Nancy, 81 – 2 Voltaire: Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations, 199 – 200n42; and Domingo Fernández Navarrete, 20, 199 – 200n42 Waltner, Ann, 87, 88, 98, 99, 199n35, 199n37 Walzer, Michael: and just-war theory, 202n15 Wang Zheng, 199n36 Wanli, Emperor, 87 – 8, 198n30 Watanabe Tsuneo, 189n16 Watson, C.W., 209n31 Western: vs. Eastern, 12 Wey Gómez, Nicolás, 6 – 7, 11, 17, 83, 136 Wicki, Josef, 186 – 7n7, 188n3, 188n5 Williams, Mark B., 192 – 3n41 Williams, Raymond, 12 Winant, Howard, 8 Wynter, Sylvia, 9, 186n5

Index Xiong Mingyu, 199n37 Xu Guangqi, 98, 199n36 Yan Jiqing, 197n19 Yang Tingyun, 98, 199nn36 – 7 Yao, Steven G., 14

241

Zhang Fei, 78 Zhang Kai, 86, 87, 89, 198n29 Zhao Menglin, 197n19 Zheng Yiwei, 199n37 Žižek, Slavoj, 209n1 Zürcher, Erik, 69, 98, 100, 101, 195n8, 199nn38 – 9