Navigating Competing Asias: Layers of Geographic Knowledge in the Making of the Boxer Codex (1590s), by Niping Yan
September 27, 2024, 15:00 Central European Time. Online via MS Teams.
The Boxer Codex is one of the most famous illustrated Spanish manuscripts made in the late sixteenth-century Philippines, demonstrating the most comprehensive Spanish knowledge of Asian ethnography, geography, and history. Although scholars are still unsure about its exact author(s) or time of compilation, the Chinese contribution to the Spanish project has been widely confirmed. These Chinese in the Philippines not only collaborated with the Spaniards in trade but also offered various knowledge demanded by the Spaniards, such as geographic knowledge, which was placed at the forefront of Spanish knowledge acquisition in the sixteenth century. Behind the wide geographic scope of East and Southeast Asia presented in the Boxer Codex, the source knowledge was complex, and the projection of geographic knowledge reveals layers of various groups’ understanding of the maritime Asian world. This talk focuses on the layered geographic knowledge in the Codex, particularly that of the Chinese in the Philippines, as greatly shaped by both their maritime experience as well as the book print and reading culture of Ming China. Besides, since the 1590s witnessed a tense Sino-Hispanic relationship in the Philippines, this talk will also discuss the Chinese agency in the Codex making and the possible legacy of this collaboration.
Niping YAN is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Macau. Her research focuses on the trans-Pacific interactions between Chinese and Spaniards during the early modern period, with a particular emphasis on trade, material culture, and the exchange of books and knowledge. She obtained her Ph.D. in 2023 from the University of British Columbia, where her dissertation explores the making of the famous Boxer Codex in the late sixteenth century. Her recent works take a long-term perspective to understand the trans-Pacific histories of cochineal and quicksilver. Her article on American cochineal is forthcoming in the Journal of Global History.
To register for the talk, please send us an e-mail.
Recent Comments