investments in military technology give the impression that research and
development are used simply to maintain empire through fighting wars and
not by cultivating the productivity of the younger generations. Covert action
and American reliance on weak and corrupt leaders worldwide promote
the image, especially in societies that Americans hope to win over, that
Americans are insensitive and enablers of unpopular governments. All these
public perceptions cast doubt on America’s reputation as a unique power
that believes in rights, the rule of law, democracy, self-determination, and a
dynamic economy that fosters innovations, which originally made America
appealing to the peoples of other nations (255–56).
Tristan Miguel Osteria
Department of History, Ateneo de Manila University
<tosteria@ateneo.edu>
E VA M A R I A M E H L
Forced Migration in the Spanish
Pacific World: From Mexico to
the Philippines, 1765–1811
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 310 pages.
The Spanish Jesuit Vicente Alemany, a keen observer of the república of
Manila in his 1760s sequel to Francisco de Quevedo’s picaresque novel El
Buscón, portrayed all Europeans in Manila in a sarcastic but faithful way
as “deserters, cabin boys, spanked [convicts], marcados, barbers, minions
of the law, and more of this kind,” while the americanos were all “vulgar
people from the flea market [thieves] and from prison,” the worst of whom
were selected to serve in the militia and the marina (Andanzas del Buscón
don Pablos por México y Filipinas, ed. Celsa Carmen García Valdés [Eunsa,
1998], 92–93). Forced Migration in the Spanish Pacific World sheds light on
the lives of these people who had to cross the Pacific Ocean, mostly against
their will. It follows their trajectories from rural villages in New Spain to the
remotest presidios of Mindanao.
The author, Eva Maria Mehl, is associate professor at the University of
North Carolina Wilmington and has specialized on colonial Mexico and
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the Spanish Philippines. Under her maiden name, St. Clair Segurado, she
has published on the history of the Jesuits in China and their expulsion
from Mexico in 1767. Forced Migration in the Spanish Pacific World is
based on her dissertation, which she defended in 2011 at the University of
California Davis.
The Manila galleon and the transpacific connection it enabled are
fascinating phenomena that have led a large number of scholars to focus
on the interchange between Acapulco and Manila. Many historians of the
early modern period emphasize the importance of reading the Pacific as a
bridge rather than a barrier and understanding both sides of the ocean as a
space of common agency. Traditionally, their main attention was set on the
material exchange, yet in recent years the cultural and human exchanges
have become attractive objects of study too. Especially, the subject of forced
migration—in both directions—has aroused much interest on the part of
scholars such as Tatjana Seijas and Stephanie Mawson.
Eva Maria Mehl also makes a strong case for the idea of an
interconnected and intertwined transpacific world. Two decades after María
Fernanda García de los Arcos’s remarkable study, Forzados y reclutas: Los
criollos novohispanos en Asia (1756–1808) (Potrerillos, 1996), Mehl tackles
the subject of forced migration to the Philippines with an innovative view on
human dynamics at the fringes of the Spanish empire. Transcending former
studies, her book discusses the “larger significance that the deportation of
recruits and vagrants had in the implementation of imperial policy in New
Spain and the Philippines” (13).
Mehl identified 3,999 individuals who were sent to the Philippines via
Acapulco as part of the defensive scheme of the Spanish empire. Facing
a number of military challenges, the Philippine colonial government was
in urgent need of these reinforcements and employed them as workers or
soldiers. Yet, the governors in Manila continually complained about these
individuals as they appeared to be worthless for any employment, being
either unfit for service, sick, uncontrollable, or not up to the standard of
“whiteness” of the time. By analyzing the reasons behind this predicament,
Mehl offers a look not only at the lives of these individuals, their families, and
their social context, but also at the institutional history of the Spanish empire
at the height of Bourbon reforms. She thereby connects late–eighteenth-
century ideas of Enlightenment in the Spanish empire neatly with Michel
Foucault’s analysis of discipline and punishment in early-modern Europe.
98 PSHEV 66, NO. 2 (2018)
Mehl provides a picture of the socioeconomic insecurities and dynamics
of New Spain and displays the complex machinery behind the recruiting
parties, the levies, and the transportation process to Manila.
To develop the argument, the book starts with an overview of the
intertwined transpacific history since 1571, focusing on the connection via
the Manila galleon and the flow of people across the ocean. The first chapter
gives a comprehensive introduction to the Spaniards in the Philippines
and discusses the military needs and security concerns of the colonial
government. In the second chapter Mehl turns to the greater context of
the Spanish empire and explains the chronic undersupply of soldiers from
Acapulco with the fact that New Spain needed able bodies for its presidios
too. Because there were never enough volunteers, a lot of criminals and
vagrants had to be sent to Manila to fill the gap. This practice led to the
Manila governors’ various complaints to the Spanish monarchy: the number
of able bodies was always too small, many soldiers were unfit for service, and
others displayed such a bad attitude that the governor decided to return them
to New Spain right away.
In the third chapter Mehl gives an account of enlightened thinking in
Spain in regard to “true” poverty and outdated ideas of charity, punishment,
and society in general at a time when idleness was seen as an offense to
productive society. A demographic drift of the rural poor to the cities led
to the breakdown of public services in New Spain, stirred elite concerns
about poverty and vagrancy—often related to the use of alcohol, violence,
gambling, and sexual misbehaviors—and reinforced ideas of social cleansing.
In this context, sentencing criminals and vagrants to forced labor had three
purposes: it liberated society from morally and economically harmful
subjects, served to educate the individual, and provided the state with a
cheap workforce.
Presenting several cases of convicts from government sources (above
all the Mexican Archivo General de la Nación), the fourth chapter offers
a panorama of the circumstances and procedures of levying vagrants.
Since 1783 the number of vagrants and other criminals who were arrested
and sent to the Philippines increased. While this practice caused much
individual suffering, some used this deportation system in their favor. It gave
members of all classes the opportunity to exercise agency since everybody
could make a denunciation; Mehl even shows some women who had their
cruel husbands deported. Moreover, and in line with Enlightenment ideas,
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many colonial subjects believed deportation to be an appropriate penance
and means for correction. Following sixty-two cases in which convicts were
turned in by their own family members, Mehl argues in chapter five that
many collaborated in good faith, sending their wayward sons or husbands to
the Philippines to serve the king, reform their corrupt behavior, and save the
reputation of the family.
In the last chapter Mehl returns to Manila and recounts what happened
to the forced migrants as well as how disappointed the colonial officials
were upon receiving the recruits. By shipping vagrants and criminals as
“reinforcements” to Manila, officials in New Spain were able to transfer some
of their problems elsewhere, but consequently vagrancy, crime, alcoholism,
gambling, and disloyalty to the crown intensified in the Philippines.
Disobedient recruits and deserters aggravated the chaotic situation in which
Manila found itself after the British occupation. While indicating that some of
the work carried out by the convicts was useful for the Philippines, such as in
the construction of fortifications and infrastructure, Mehl concludes that their
presence in the colony was “unquestionably detrimental for the aspirations
of the Spanish empire” (264). Although the recruits’ negative effects on the
Philippines are evident, classifying their contribution on a strategic/military
level as “unquestionably detrimental” strikes me as exaggerated, especially
when we look further back. Since the sixteenth century, the Spanish colony
in Asia was short of soldiers and requested reinforcements from Spain and
New Spain until the nineteenth century. Despite continuous complaints by
the governors since the beginning—instancing the very same accusations
that Mehl mentions for the late eighteenth century, including the arrival of
vagrants and children—the petitions for more soldiers from New Spain never
ceased. This situation indicates that their contribution to the “aspirations of
the Spanish empire” must not solely be perceived negatively.
Mehl’s contribution to the field does not reside in tackling a new
subject but in placing it in a new context and presenting a bigger picture.
She claims to provide a window through which one can see “the broader
developments in the Spanish Philippines, namely the Bourbon attempts to
intervene in the social, moral, and economic order of the islands” (264). The
book does live up to that promise. Analyzing the topic within the context
of European Enlightenment offers her the chance to unfold exciting views
on social change and the history of mentalities in New Spain. Stressing the
entanglement of America and Asia, Mehl highlights the importance of the
100 PSHEV 66, NO. 2 (2018)
Philippines for New Spain. Well-balanced in her writing, she pays attention
to the mechanism of the institutions as well as to the agency of the individuals
and their families.
Forced Migration is a sound study of the connectedness between
Mexico and the Philippines. It gives a valuable overview of the Spanish
colonial history of the Philippines and offers interesting angles for the
understanding of the phenomenon of forced migration in the Age of
Enlightenment. It combines thorough historiographical analysis with
insights from meticulously scrutinized archival material, resulting in a
highly readable and elucidating book.
Eberhard Crailsheim
Institute of History, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)
<ecrailsheim@hotmail.com>
M A R I A R O V I S C O A N D J O N AT H A N C O R P U S O N G , E D S .
Taking the Square: Mediated Dissent
and Occupation of Public Space
London and New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016. 244 pages.
Taking the Square: Mediated Dissent and Occupation of Public Spaces joins
the conversation on how to think about the public sphere beyond the classical
ideal that Jürgen Habermas has sketched out. It connects with the theorizing
stream of Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge (Public Sphere of Experience:
Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere; Verso, 1993), who
deem the public sphere as the “social horizon of experience,” thus expanding
the definition of this phrase beyond institutions and practices like the press,
public opinion, and public places. Places, presence, and publicity, which
are presupposed in a public sphere, are useful elements to think about when
reading the ten essays in this book.
Mediated dissent refers to protests and other forms of oppositional
communicative practices that are presented through media technologies
(2–5). At the same time a mediated public sphere can be found on the
internet. The internet is such an imposing public space that one of the
contributing authors, Paulo Gerbaudo, calls it “digital-popular,” a take on
the Gramscian phrase “national-popular,” which refers to the commonly
held beliefs of subaltern groups (39). Many of the case studies in the book
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