Fernando Iwasaki’s book is an erudite collection of narratives dealing with the historical relations between the Far East—principally China and Japan, but also India and the Philippines—and the Viceroyalty of Peru in the sixteenth century. Writing this book was obviously a daunting task: the documentary materials are scattered among archives on several continents, and the stories cover a wide range of topics, including trade, colonial administration, religious missions, and individual family histories.
The author points out that the riches of Peru were known throughout the Far East, as was the fate of the Inca Empire under the Spanish sword, even while most of the movement of people and goods occurred in defiance of the royal edicts banning transpacific traffic. Thus the book is a study of merchandise and artifacts, and of merchants and missionaries bearing their disparate dreams of wealth, power, and martyrdom.
The first chapter tells the tale of the first forbidden voyage between Manila and Lima in 1581, arranged by the regent of the Philippines, Gonzalo Ronquillo de Peñalosa. This is a complex, cautionary tale of family involvement in the corruption that marked this commercial traffic. The second chapter tells of the journey of one Juan de Mendoza, a Peruvian who traveled to China in 1583, was taken prisoner in Macao in 1584, and eventually found his way back to Peru after three years. The third chapter focuses on Japan and the story of Juan de Solís, a perulero who figured in the machinations of the various church orders struggling for influence there.
Chapter 4 delineates the evolution of government policy leading to control over the shipments of mercury (from Almadén in Spain, Huancavélica in Peru, and Chincheo in the Orient) necessary for the amalgamation processing of American silver ore. Chapter 5 follows silver and Jesuits from Peru in China, Japan, India, and the Philippines. The sixth chapter, on population movements between the Orient and Peru, pursues the human evidence of early empire building in the form of trace elements of Asians (and other non-Spanish populations) that have turned up in early accounts and censuses. In the seventh and final chapter, the author focuses on sharply different models of Catholic evangelization implemented in Japan and Peru.
Iwasaki succeeds in putting a human face on emergent relations between Peru and the Far East even while situating his narrative in the larger stories of the colonial empire and its archives. This is a fascinating book with a rich lode of narrative and archival ores.
