Pacific Overtures

In 1616, Spanish officials in Acapulco watched nervously as a Japanese galleon arrived uninvited—the third such vessel in a decade. In an important challenge to accepted narratives of isolation and insularity, Joshua Batts reveals the surprising story of Tokugawa Japan's repeated attempts to establish direct trade with Spanish America. Though ultimately unsuccessful, these attempts flip the script about which societies sought to expand the geography of encounter in the early modern world. Early Tokugawa Japan emerges as an assertive polity whose ambitious outreach threatened Spanish prerogative in the Pacific and provoked a guarded response from a global empire. Based on archival sources from Japan, Spain, Italy, and the Vatican City, Batts reconstructs a tale of shipwrecks, political manoeuvring and cultural collision that stretches from Edo to Rome. The unique blend of adventure and foreign encounter redefines our understanding of the opportunities for, and obstacles to, early modern globalization.