Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World - (Early Modern Americas) by Kristie Flannery (Hardcover)

About the Book

"This book argues that anti-piracy politics were the ideological glue that held Spain's Asian empire together and ensured its surprising resilience and longevity. Flannery reveals that Indigenous Filipinos and Chinese migrant settlers allied behind Spain's colonial officials and militant missionaries to wage wars against sea robbers, who had long terrorized them prior to Spanish arrival"--

Book Synopsis

Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World offers a new interpretation of Spanish colonial rule in the Philippine islands. Drawing on the rich archives of Spain's Asian empire, Kristie Patricia Flannery reveals that Spanish colonial officials and Catholic missionaries forged alliances with Indigenous Filipinos and Chinese migrant settlers in the Southeast Asian archipelago to wage war against waves of pirates, including massive Chinese pirate fleets, Muslim pirates from the Sulu Zone, and even the British fleet that attacked at the height of the Seven Years' War. Anti-piracy alliances made Spanish colonial rule resilient to both external shocks and internal revolts that shook the colony to its core.

This revisionist study complicates the assumption that empire was imposed on Filipinos with brute force alone. Rather, anti-piracy also shaped the politics of belonging in the colonial Philippines. Real and imagined pirate threats especially influenced the fate and fortunes of Chinese migrants in the islands. They triggered genocidal massacres of the Chinese at some junctures, and at others facilitated Chinese integration into the Catholic nation as loyal vassals.

Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World demonstrates that piracy is key to explaining the surprising longevity of Spain's Asian empire, which, unlike Spanish colonial rule in the Americas, survived the Age of Revolutions and endured almost to the end of the nineteenth century. Moreover, it offers important new insight into piracy's impact on the trajectory of globalization and European imperial expansion in maritime Asia.

Review Quotes

"[Flannery's] research goes beyond the conventional narrative of imperial power and control, delving into how piracy and maritime violence were factors that contributed not only to instability but, more importantly, to the consolidation and global expansion of Spanish colonial power in the Pacific and beyond...[A] significant contribution to global and imperial history studies ]that] breaks new ground for the analysis of collaboration as a strategy of survival and resistance in the colonial context."-- "Global Intellectual History"

"Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World provides a pertinent new angle within the historiography of the Philippines, which overcomes traditional perspectives...[A] thoughtful and innovative approach to the colonial past of the Philippine archipelago, which will be very useful to researchers, teachers and students of colonial settings and of Southeast Asia."-- "Journal of Historical Geography"

"Kristie Flannery's groundbreaking first book is not only about how Spanish colonial rule worked in the Philippine Islands. Rather, Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World analyzes how colonialism, forms of capitalism, and religion forged political, economic, and religious alliances across Asia, the Americas, and Europe...This is a carefully structured book with a geographical richness to enjoy. A book that becomes part of the field of colonial studies with a fascinating vision of a space sometimes forgotten by historiography: the Pacific."-- "Not Even Past"

"Kristie Patricia Flannery's Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World is a compelling account of Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines during the long eighteenth century. It takes readers on a journey through the tumultuous waters of the Spanish Pacific, where piracy was not just a threat but a defining force in shaping dynamics of power, resistance, and adaptation. Through meticulous research, Flannery uncovers the hidden influence of sea marauders in forging imperial destinies and shows that responses to piracy--ranging from military action to diplomatic negotiations--were central to the Spanish colonial project in the Philippines. This book offers a crucial addition to our understanding of the Spanish empire's history in Asia and of the impact maritime violence had on the intertwined trajectories of colonization and globalization."-- "Sebastian Prange, University of British Columbia"

About the Author

Kristie Patricia Flannery is a Research Fellow in the Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at Australian Catholic University.