Presenter: Diego Javier Luis (Johns Hopkins University)
Topic: “Geronima de la Barrera, Defender of Honour and Freedom in Manila”
Respondent: Frank Guridy (Columbia University)
Abstract: Manila was one of the most important commercial zones in the Spanish empire during the seventeenth century, but its social demographics are still imperfectly understood. The city was home to a large and diverse free and enslaved Black population of Africans and Afro-descendants, South Asians, Austronesian islanders, and mixed people that has been almost entirely excluded from the historiography of the Philippines. This chapter focuses on the civil suit of one mixed woman, Geronima de la Barrera, as she simultaneously attempted to both compel her fiancé to follow through on his promise to marry her and defend her family’s honor and freedom. In so doing, it argues that the precarity that these communities experienced was gendered, that Blackness was a uniquely fluid category in the Pacific World, and that such fluidity expanded the social possibilities of Black communities.
This chapter comes from my second project, which I'm currently in the early stages of writing. The project offers 6 chapters of microhistories that correspond to three sections, each seeking to tear down a myth about the early modern Pacific world. This chapter is part of the second section, which introduces the early modern Black Pacific through two free women living in the two ports of Spanish transpacific trade, Manila and Acapulco. Here, I’m writing against the silencing of Black populations in the early modern Pacific (from coastal Asia to the coasts of the Americas) and arguing (as I mentioned above) that Blackness took on uniquely fluid constructions in the Pacific that influenced the social possibilities of free and enslaved people on both sides of the ocean. I'm still thinking up a book title: Microhistories of the Early Modern Pacific or Fragile Empires of the Early Modern Pacific or Counterpoints of the Early Modern Pacific (or something else entirely).
About the International, Global, and Transnational History Workshop
We are thrilled to announce that the International, Global, and Transnational History Workshop will be supported by ISERP, along with Professors Mark Mazower, Adam Tooze, and Matthew Connelly.
This newly designed workshop builds on its earlier version (International History Workshop) but aims to expand its scope - geographically, chronologically, and methodologically. A key new feature is the inclusion of a respondent for each guest speaker, fostering deeper engagement with the presented work.
Our goal is to bring together a diverse group of graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and faculty members interested in comparative, transnational, global, and international subjects. The workshop will meet weekly on Wednesdays, from 6:00–7:30pm, in Fayerweather Hall, Room 413 unless otherwise specified, and will serve as a forum for discussing work-in-progress.
We hope you will find this schedule as engaging as we do and that many of you will join us this semester! To receive the paper (which will be distributed approximately a week in advance), please RSVP using this link. Only registered participants will receive the papers.
Fall Semester Schedule
Below are the upcoming events. The full schedule can be found on our Workshops Page.
November 12
Presenter: Peter Zhang (University of British Columbia)
Topic: “Remains of the Ming: 17th-Century Chinese Diaspora in Japan and Korea and Transnational Discourses on National Identities in Early Modern East Asia”—dissertation chapter
Respondent: Ziqian Zheng (Columbia University).
November 19
Presenter: Mary Elise Sarotte (Johns Hopkins University)
Topic: “The Post-Cold War Era as History”
Respondent: Adam Tooze (Columbia University)
December 3
Presenter: Giorgos Giannakopoulos (City University London)
Topic: “Ιnternational Interventions in Greece in the Shadow of the Crimean War”
Respondent: Mark Mazower (Columbia University)
December 10
Presenter: Yoram Gorlizki (University of Manchester)
Topic: “Ideas and Institutions in Soviet Legal History”—chapter of an upcoming book
Respondent: Yana Skorobogatov (Columbia University)
