Kristie Flannery, "Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

Jul 28, 2024

Dr. Kristie Flannery, an expert on Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines, discusses her groundbreaking work on piracy's role in shaping the Spanish Pacific World. She reveals how colonial officials and missionaries allied with Indigenous Filipinos and Chinese migrants to combat piracy. The conversation delves into the unexpected influence of Catholic priests in legitimizing imperial power. Flannery also explores the tumultuous Sino-Spanish relations, highlighting the fluctuating fates of Chinese immigrants amid piracy and colonial tensions.

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Intro

00:00 • 2min

Navigating Piracy: Insights from the Spanish Pacific

01:41 • 8min

Priestly Influence in Colonial Piracy

10:07 • 7min

Sino-Spanish Relations and Maritime Conflicts

16:50 • 29min

Expulsions in the Spanish Pacific

46:00 • 7min

Exploring Piracy, Slavery, and New Beginnings

52:57 • 2min

Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024) offers a new interpretation of Spanish colonial rule in the Philippine islands. Drawing on the rich archives of Spain’s Asian empire, Dr. Kristie Patricia Flannery reveals that Spanish colonial officials and Catholic missionaries forged alliances with Indigenous Filipinos and Chinese migrant settlers in the Southeast Asian archipelago to wage war against waves of pirates, including massive Chinese pirate fleets, Muslim pirates from the Sulu Zone, and even the British fleet that attacked at the height of the Seven Years’ War. Anti-piracy alliances made Spanish colonial rule resilient to both external shocks and internal revolts that shook the colony to its core.

This revisionist study complicates the assumption that empire was imposed on Filipinos with brute force alone. Rather, anti-piracy also shaped the politics of belonging in the colonial Philippines. Real and imagined pirate threats especially influenced the fate and fortunes of Chinese migrants in the islands. They triggered genocidal massacres of the Chinese at some junctures, and at others facilitated Chinese integration into the Catholic nation as loyal vassals.

Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World demonstrates that piracy is key to explaining the surprising longevity of Spain’s Asian empire, which, unlike Spanish colonial rule in the Americas, survived the Age of Revolutions and endured almost to the end of the nineteenth century. Moreover, it offers important new insight into piracy’s impact on the trajectory of globalisation and European imperial expansion in maritime Asia.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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