In June 1579, the Franciscan friar Pedro de Alfaro sailed up the busy Pearl River estuary toward the city of Guangzhou (also known as Canton). After having endured many dangers during the arduous two-year-long journey from Spain, Alfaro had come close to realizing his dream: reestablishing the Franciscan mission in China. In the weeks that followed, the friar and his companions appeared before the county magistrate in Guangzhou and the provincial magistrate in Zhaoqing, who granted them permission to stay in Guangzhou temporarily. Alfaro's journey and the six months that he spent in China are at the center of Ashleigh Dean Ikemoto's broader explorations of the development of Sino-Spanish relationships during the second half of the sixteenth century and first half of the seventeenth. In Pedro de Alfaro and the Struggle for Power in the Globalized Pacific, 1565–1644, she argues that Alfaro and his company, as the first Spaniards...

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