“Essential reading.” —Erika Lee, author of The Making of Asian America

“A broadly thought-provoking book.” —Asian Review of Books

“Fascinating…While expertly summarizing and engaging existing historical studies, the author also indicates new avenues of research…[This] book thus stands as a bellwether for shifting trajectories of analysis that invite micro-historical follow-up.” —H-Net Reviews

“[This book] offers an invaluable perspective… [it] not only intellectually satisfies the reader with a necessary and innovative view . . . but also makes us want to learn more about this essential and still insufficiently explored topic...will become a fundamental pillar within the discipline.” —Colonial Latin American Review

Between 1565 and 1815, the so-called Manila galleons monopolized trade between Spain’s Asian and American colonies. Sailing from the Philippines to Mexico and back, these Spanish ships also facilitated the earliest migrations and displacements of Asian peoples to the Americas. Hailing from Gujarat, Nagasaki, and many places in between, both free and enslaved Asians made the treacherous transpacific journey each year.

Diego Javier Luis chronicles this first sustained wave of Asian mobility to the Americas, shedding new light on the daily lives of those who disembarked at Acapulco. There, diverse ethnolinguistic populations officially became “chinos,” racialized as members of a single caste under colonial control. Luis shows how Asians resisted legal strictures, forging new connections across ethnic groups and continually adapting to adverse conditions.

Detailing an important era in the construction of race, The First Asians in the Americas vividly unfolds what it meant to be “chino” in the early modern Spanish empire and reveals the significance of colonial Latin America to Asian diasporic history.

"This book is a brilliant exercise of global microhistory and essential reading for anyone hoping to get a full picture of colonial Spanish America, Asian diaspora studies, or protoglobalization. The author never ceases to show empathy toward the people whose history he is carefully reconstructing from widely scattered fragments of evidence. Luis successfully conveys an emotional underpinning to the experience of the first Asians in the Americas in a way that any historian can appreciate and that, importantly, undergraduate and graduate history students should constantly be exposed to." - Hispanic American Historical Review

"A broadly thought-provoking book. …Although the modern Western use of ‘Asian’ is perhaps better (and arguably more benign) than the colonial use of ‘chino’ as an identifier, it suffers from much the same problem of ‘collapsing’ various ‘diverse ethnolinguistic groups’ to the benefit of some, perhaps, but the detriment of others. Luis’s book is a salutary reminder that all this started long ago." - Asian Review of Books

"Fascinating…While expertly summarizing and engaging existing historical studies, the author also indicates new avenues of research…[This] book thus stands as a bellwether for shifting trajectories of analysis that invite micro-historical follow-up." - H-Net Reviews

"Through rigorous archival use, historical and cultural analysis, and an approach through critical race theory, [this book] offers an invaluable perspective… [it] not only intellectually satisfies the reader with a necessary and innovative view on these issues but also makes us want to learn more about this essential and still insufficiently explored topic...will become a fundamental pillar within the discipline." - Colonial Latin American Review

"Diego Javier Luis has expanded our understanding of Asian transpacific migration by studying the lives of both the free and the enslaved, focusing on the processes by which Asians were racialized…will be of interest to any scholar interested in how transoceanic spaces of movement and encounter have worked historically, and how they have helped shape subaltern lives." - International Journal of Maritime History

"Offers a valuable contribution to our understanding of the lived experiences of Asians who crossed the Pacific in the early modern period…enlightening and thought-provoking." - International Quarterly for Asian Studies

"Brilliantly demonstrates that the experiences of Asian peoples in the Americas are, plain and simple, part of history…calls us to expand the US-centric model of Asian American studies, while boldly urging us to go beyond the earliest iterations of the ‘model minority’." - Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies