Microhistory and Microcosm: Chinese Migrants, Spanish Empire, and Globalization in Early Modern Manila

Abstract

This article looks at the lives of don Pedro Quintero Tiangnio and don Juan Felipe Tiamnio, two migrants from southeastern China who became powerful and influential figures in Manila—both within Spanish colonial society and in the Chinese overseas community—during the late seventeenth century. Their life stories, set against the backdrop of an early modern “global city,” shed light on the cross-cultural interactions that were critical to early modern globalization, as they contributed to the cultivation of global trade and participated in the far-reaching projects of Spanish imperial expansion and Chinese overseas settlement. Applying the practices of microhistory to world history, the article uses a microscopic lens and focuses it on a microcosm, a locale (like early modern Manila) where people from different parts of the world came together, interacted, clashed, and ultimately coexisted with one another.