Oracles of Asia: Manila theologians and early modern political thought

Early modern Manila was a key centre of European academic and intellectual knowledge production in the region. It had three printing presses in the sixteenth century. The main reason for this dynamic intellectual effervescence was that Manila was one of the few Catholic strongholds in Asia. Missionaries who were sent to China, Japan, and other parts of East and Southeast Asia trained in the Philippines. Manila provided unique opportunities for missionaries to learn Asian languages before beginning a mission, but it was more than just a linguistic training ground. Manila was a centre of consultation for legal and theological questions for the entire region.

This project will examine the unstudied manuscript corpus of academic consultations and treatises written in Manila. A study of this corpus of documents will make three main research contributions that counter the erasure of the importance of the early modern Philippines in intellectual history and its role in shaping Iberian imperialism. Firstly, this project will uncover practical concerns and events in the archipelago and beyond it, like those pertaining to Catholic ritual performance by Indigenous people, not visible in other kinds of sources because the Philippine archive is quite thin relative to other spaces in the empire during this period. Secondly, it will compare the issues and responses of these consultations with those produced in the Americas and Europe to analyse the specifically Philippine perspective on these matters and so reveal the challenges of understanding Spanish imperial claims in Asia. Finally, this project will trace the correspondents of these consultations to examine trans-imperial connected histories in Asia, and map the movement of peoples, ideas, and practices in this multiethnic early modern space.