Three Cities of the Early Modern Pacific, 1550–1640

This volume examines the impacts of Pacific trade on three port cities—Zhangzhou in China, Manila in the Philippines, and Mexico City in New Spain—during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, exploring how these urban centers generate critical spaces in which competition, cooperation, and connections among imperial actors crystallize into spatial forms and policies.

It argues that port cities function as intermediary spaces—sites wherein central state authority intersects with local engagement in global trade. Drawing on miscellanies, travelogues, gazetteers, and government correspondence, the book uncovers how people, goods, and ideas circulate through urban environments. While these cities enable convergence in everyday life, they also reveal tensions and contradictions at the imperial level. The spatial organization of these cities fosters social and cultural dynamics that often exceed the intentions of imperial planners, demonstrating that early modern globalization is neither coherent nor uniform but unfolds through multiple and sometimes competing regional networks.

Contributing to the scholarly discussion of early modern trade from a Pacific perspective, this book is essential reading for scholars and students of early modern history, Pacific studies, urban history, and global trade networks.