Dentro y fuera de los muros: Manila, Ethnicity, and Colonial Cartography

Abstract

In 1671 the Dominican friar Ignacio Muñoz created a map of Manila that has since become one of the most frequently published images of the city. His pen-and-ink image describes key places in the island city—some that would have been characteristic of urban spaces across Spanish America and some that were highly distinctive. This cartographic representation also enlists visual and textual language that was, by the late seventeenth century, familiar across the Indies. In what ways, then, does the Muñoz map speak to local histories as well as those that were more global? This essay addresses this query and its implications by examining the ways the Muñoz map documents and implicitly imagines the spatial and civic experiences of Chinese, indigenous, and Spanish residents of Manila. In pursuing this theme, this essay also considers relationships between colonial cartography and histories of ethnic diversity.