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Ruth Mandujano López, "Steamships Across the Pacific: Maritime Journeys between Mexico, China, and Japan, 1867–1914" (U Hong Kong Press, 2025)
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Ruth Mandujano Lopez
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Sarah Bramau Ramos
Welcome back to New Books Network. My name is Sarah Bramau Ramos and I am one of the hosts on the channel, and I'm here today with Ruth Mandujano Lopez to talk about her new book, Steamships across the Maritime Journeys between Mexico, China and Japan, 1867-1914. And this came out in 2025 with the University of Hong Kong Press, and it focuses on Mexico's trans Pacific relations during the 19th century. Particularly, it looks at how Mexico participated in the steam network with China and Japan. So the book is organized around specific trips made by specific steamships, and the book highlights the voyages themselves. So it looks at what each voyage meant to those that were on it, those that were viewing it, reading about it and thinking about it, and really those that surrounded it. So through this it combines global history, the study of the Pacific Ocean and Pacific links, and Mexican Asian connections. So with all that, Ruth, welcome to the New Books Network.
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Ruth Mandujano Lopez
Thanks a lot, Sara. Thanks for having me.
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Sarah Bramau Ramos
Great. So we always start at the beginning, with your beginning. So how did you come to work on cultural history?
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Ruth Mandujano Lopez
I think it's because throughout my professional life, I've always been participating in the fields related to literature and history and language teaching and culture. So I found in cultural history, like a field that could encompass all my interests, where I could go towards analyzing text from a more literary point of view, historical text, where I could actually make use of the different languages that I've learned, of the different concepts of different disciplines as well. So I find that I'm kind of, as the book says, in movement. And then cultural history allowed me to kind of land in a field that allowed me to take concepts, to take languages, to take ideas from different fields without kind of requiring me to just focus on something more specifically. So I think that's how I ended up in the general field of cultural history.
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Sarah Bramau Ramos
You were talking there about pulling lots of different things together. And so thinking about that pulling process you talk about in this book, about how it came out of your doctoral work. And I think that that for a lot of people is really a pulling period of time where you're kind of bringing everything together. And then of course, once you're done with your PhD, trying to take that and turn it into a book. So could you talk a little bit about that process? What was the dissertation to book process like for you?
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Ruth Mandujano Lopez
It was long, it was painful, but it was also very interesting, I guess, like the journey of life. I finished my PhD actually way before this turned into a book. So I finished my PhD in 2012, and this book is coming out in 2025. Right. So what happened is just I had my manuscript, I defended it, and then I just needed a break from the research. But I always remain in just participating in conferences and kind of gathering more and more information. And something that happened as well when I finished my dissertation. I don't know if that happens to. To many people, but I've talked to several of my classmates and it happened to them as well. It's like once I finished, I finished basically because I had to finish. I had to present, funding was over, and I just had to finish. But there were so many kind of loose ends that were left. And I also was a different person when I initiated that dissertation. So all of a sudden, many of the things that I put there, I was not necessarily thinking the same way anymore, because a history PhD takes, at least in my case and most of my classmates, six years. So the person that started was not the person that finished. So I think what happened is that I just. All those ideas and notes that I compiled after the dissertation, in a way led to very different kind of introduction, very different first chapter, very different conclusions, and fine tuning lots of the chapters. So I think that's what happened. And through the process of putting it to Hong Kong University Press and then anonymous readers and all that, I had the fortune to have very good anonymous readers that gave me everything from general comments to very specific things that they wanted, which led to many years of more research, because the things they wanted sometimes took me to a different continent to look for them. So I think that was what I mean by long and painful. The process of writing, which you can see in my acknowledgments, it can be painful for me. I love being in archives. I love getting excited about the stories I learn. I talk about it with my students, with my peers, congresses, awesome. But when it comes to just sitting in front of the screen, it's just like, oof. So I think the most interesting part for me that I highlight from that journey that I was fascinated is just the journey, literally to go into the archives, different places, to just look for what my anonymous readers, but also the people that were behind me helping me edit the book, wanted. That was very interesting. And just the conversations I had, the painful part of the journey was the writing alone and just focusing alone in my house, talking about so many interesting people that were traveling. Right. And I was just sitting in front of my screen. So that's, in general, what I can say about that journey from dissertation to book.
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Sarah Bramau Ramos
I have no doubt that we're going to come back to the archives because they come up, you know, they are woven throughout your book as a whole. But because you mentioned your acknowledgments, I did want to ask you about them. Because you begin your acknowledgments with a line from a conversation that you had with Bill French where he's telling you to start, stick with it and build momentum. Could you talk a little bit about that conversation? When did that take place in your process of your painful process of working on this project?
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Ruth Mandujano Lopez
I think that was when I came back from all the kind of second or third or fourth round of visits to the archives, and I finally had to give something to Hong Kong University Press, you know, to start kind of giving final edits and things like that because I had up until then just kind of put notes and here's what's going to go there. And when I saw all the notes I had and all the ideas I wanted to convey, it was just too much and quite frustrating. So I'm talking about all these people that traveled, and for many of them it was a shipwreck rather than a landing. And that's how they described it. And I, in a way, felt identified with that notion. I'm in this journey and I feel I'm shipwrecking and I don't know how to put together all these new ideas, data and everything. Bill French was my PhD. I don't even know what the official term is. Like the head of my comedy, but he's a good friend of mine. He's just more than the head of my comedy. He's just a good friend of mine. And I, in a way had the fortune that he had just retired once I had to start kind of writing. So he had lots of time, or at least maybe he didn't. And he just devoted the timing he had to me because he actually reread everything again and was basically almost on a daily basis there for me if I needed just to bounce ideas and then back. It's not necessarily like, you know, the specific stories that I talk about. It's not necessarily what he works with around. He works in the same time frame, kind of 19th century Mexico. So obviously he's well familiar with what I was talking about, but not specifically about the Pacific and maritime journeys. But he's an incredible and intelligent person. So anyways, yeah, I just called him because we were in different places and I remember telling him what it says in my acknowledgments. Like, I feel lost in the middle of the Pacific without knowing where to start rowing, just because. Just like some of the people that I talk about, right. And then he just came up with this clever phrase that I'm just going to repeat for my acknowledgement, which was, don't draw, fire up a steam engine because you're talking about steamers. So seriously, just start and stick with it and you'll build momentum. And he was right. You know, like once when I had all the notes and I hadn't started, it just seemed like something impossible to put together and the momentum is true. You know, once you're there and you devote time every day, like not leave it. I think that's important. You know, your brain gets into it, your body gets into it and it becomes more manageable. But you have to be doing it, to actually do it. I don't know if that makes sense, you know, unless you are there doing it every day, it just seems not manageable, at least for me, you know, like, I'm not one of those kind of like talented writers that's just going to come up with things right away. So I need my time and that's why I put it there. And if anyone else feels identified with the feeling, you know, like the build momentum, it's true.
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Sarah Bramau Ramos
As someone who's currently working on building momentum, I really appreciated it, the reminder. So thank you for deciding to include it. Like I said, as someone who's working on building momentum, I think it was for me at least, a very, a welcome reminder that, yes, it is a process, but so let's move to talk a little bit about what your book focuses on. You've touched already on the steamers, the steamships, the people rowing, Feeling Lost. So the focus of your book is on the people, the goods and steamships that are circulating and moving between Mexican and Asian ports. And you are building on, I guess, more of a robust set of secondary scholarship on this topic now. But it hasn't always been that way. When I first started off doing Chinese history, this wasn't a topic that was really being talked about. So thinking really broadly about Mexican Asian connections during this period, is there anything in particular you would say that people, you know, get wrong or just don't know about when it comes to Mexican Asian connections in the 19th and 20th centuries?
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Ruth Mandujano Lopez
I think that the most common general idea amongst those who study the field but are not specialists necessarily is that Mexico's ports and Asian ports were connected during colonial times through the Manila galleons that circulated basically more or less since the 1560s to the 1810s. And in the 1810s, Mexico gets its independence from Spain and therefore the Manila galleons stop, which they do, you know, because they were mostly boats that were sailing galleons that were managed by Spanish merchants and the Spanish crown. So of course, when the independence from Spain comes, that specific line of connection disappears. But it doesn't mean that the connections that had been forged for 300 years, years, almost 250 years, entirely disappear. They just get reconfigurated. And I think that was my point of departure. Like, I mean, I, I, I saw, you know, with my own family, because my family's from the Pacific coast that, you know, they had lots of friends and acquaintances with Asian heritage, you know, and my, my family's from close to one of the big ports of the Pacific. So. And then talking to those people is just like, no, you know, like their ancestors came from, you know, 19th century. In some cases. It's just like, where are they? In the books I read about Mexican history, the books I read about global history. And so I guess that's what I want to highlight, that there's a lot to discover about 19th century Mexicanacean connections that were just, in a way, at the beginning of it. Because also what happened is, with, at least on the Mexican side, is that because of the Mexican Independence War, lots of archives got destroyed, and there were a lot of civil wars after a lot of foreign invasions. So kind of the 19th century after the War of Independence is basically war after another. And obviously, there's other things that happen. There's a lot of peace in other areas. But I'm just. What I want to say is the archives were not systematically kept in Mexico. So those of us who depart from Mexico, we just go to the archives, and then we realize that there's nothing. And that's why I think we have assumed there's no connections because there's nothing. But there's nothing because of the specific circumstances of 19th century Mexican politics. So you have to go elsewhere where they, for the different historical reasons, they actually kept records to find those records. And I think Mexican historians of the 19th century are starting to just go elsewhere. And just finding and starting means it's not like, you know, with me, like, there's a group of people that have been doing it for a few decades already, but it's not the most evident. So the fact that we don't find those links in the archives doesn't mean that they don't exist. And also, I think because it's this transition, at least in terms of the maritime world, from sail to steam, sometimes we go to the ports that were important for the sailing ships, but the archives there might not have anything because you have to go to the new ports that emanated and were more important because of this transition. I guess what I would like to highlight is that there's a lot of room of research for these connections. And I think my book is just a general first try to just say, look, there's this here, and this is what I could find after years of looking here and there and everywhere. But if you actually go back to those markets, if you speak better, you know, if you speak better Chinese and Japanese than I do, you know, like. And Spanish, and there's, thankfully, researchers that are starting to manage those languages as well, like the archives there. So then you will find those connections. And also we have to go to the Atlantic, which is something that people might think, like, why to look for the Pacific white, we need to go to the Atlantic, but we just have to think in 19th century terms where the routes were different. So as one of my chapters talk about for a group of Mexican scientists that needed to go to Japan, they actually went to Veracruz on the Atlantic side and Cuba and New York, and then they took the train across the continent to San Francisco, and then they took the steamer to Yokohama because that was faster than actually going directly to the Mexican Pacific ports. Right. So I think there's a lot to dig in, more even in the Atlantic side to learn about the Pacific. So I guess, yeah, that's the general idea I want to highlight.
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Sarah Bramau Ramos
You were talking there about the different archives, and in particular, you know, you were, you were emphasizing the fact that, you know, for historians, if they want to do work on this area, they will have to go outside of Mexico and go to different places and go to maybe different coasts and look in different places for archives. Could you talk a little bit about your own archival work? Where did you end up that you didn't think you would? I'm going to guess Japan, but just based on your answer to my previous question, but what kinds of archives did you draw on for this? And which ones were the most unexpected?
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Ruth Mandujano Lopez
Yeah, I guess to begin with, I'll start with Mexican archives because I think we have very centralized politics, which means certainly, I mean, we didn't talk about today, but 19th century. But what I mean by that is we have a central archive in Mexico City, where everything from everywhere for 19th century, that's where we go. And there's lots of things there. But from there I just realized that, okay, this is taking me to specific ports, and when I look for those ports, it wasn't necessarily evident that I could find the archive there. So you actually have to go to the actual port and then talk to local people. And it's just like, okay, what's happened? I think it's probably better documented now than when I started. I think probably now you can find emails and maybe social media that would make the link. But in my case, I started with Mexico City information, and then that led me to Salinacruz, which is a port in the south of Mexico in the Pacific, you know, in the state of Oaxaca. So that led me to two places, which was the Salina Cruz archives, you know, of the actual port, but also to the Oaxaca city archives. Because that's the other thing. The port might not have as many things because they also have a centralized port provincial kind of government that centralizes records. So I learned through going that, okay, I'm not finding much here. So you ask the local historians, which sometimes also the local historians are not necessarily in academia. And I think sometimes people from academic background, they kind of neglect talking to them. But they are an amazing source of information because they do know about the local history so well, they might not connect it with the global because they're interested in just finding out what's happening with their own locality. Right. So it's not that they don't want to. They're just interested in something different. Right. But if you talk to them, they just point at avenues and then eventually they pointed to the state capital archives. So that was where that. So for instance, I went to the port of Mazatlan, that one. I did find lots of things. So I didn't have to go to Culiacan, which was the main, which is the capital city. But for instance, Manzanillo is my other port and I did have to go to Colima city. So in terms of what I wasn't expecting, I wasn't expecting to go to the mainland to find ports things. I expected that the ports themselves would have them and by local, to local historians. And then he was like, no, it's just that the central state took them. So let's go there. Right. And then I started finding my, you know, my, my steamships, you know. And then there was not necessarily too much information, but they said that these team sheets were coming from Hong Kong and Yokohama, right. So it's just like, well, I guess I gotta go. Right? So, so that's what, at that point, I didn't know anyone doing Mexican history that went to Hong Kong and Yokohama. Yokohama wasn't that helpful to me because I don't read Japanese, but Hong Kong was, because it was an English, you know, port. So turns out that all the documents from the time I was looking were translated to English. So and all the negotiations and all that. So Hong Kong was an immense kind of like source of information for me that I, I, I just wasn't expecting, I was expecting that it was just going to be like, like Yokohama where I, I'm unable. So I need to just, you know, I won't be able to, but to the contrary. So Hong Kong was amazing. So that's, I, I didn't expect it. And of course certain things that I found in Hong Kong came from London, you know, because A lot of the negotiations and dispatches came from officers from the English empire that the records kind of took me to London. So I wasn't expecting to go to London for a work based on the Pacific, but of course it is. You know, I mean, I wasn't expecting, because again, we're just kind of looking in a very limited sense, but as global historians, we definitely should expand it globally, right? So that took me to London, for instance, and the last place that I was eventually taken. Well, and then obviously they took me to San Francisco. Because what happened is that San Francisco became kind of the intermediary between Mexican ports of Manzanillo and Salina Cruz and Hong Kong and Yokohama. And so once I realized that, it's just like, okay, I'm just going to look for my connections there. And San Francisco has so many archives of different kinds focusing on steamships. So that was amazing. Which, again, originally I didn't think, but then it's an obvious connection once you are in the topic. And then the last bit was a trip to Madrid because one of my anonymous readers kind of wanted more information in that transition from kind of Spanish imperialism to English imperialism dominating the Pacific maritime connections and how those affected Mexican connections. Because before it was, as I mentioned, with the Manila galleons between Acapulco and Manila. Right. And then eventually, by the end of the 19th century, I was finding that it was not Acapulco and it was not Manila, but it was actually Manzanillo, Salina Cruz, a little bit of Mazatlan with Yokohama and Hong Kong and the intermediation of San Francisco. Right. So I had to go to Madrid to find kind of records of those times. Because what happened with the Spanish colonies is like in the Americas, in the continental Americas, the colonies got independent and formed the countries of Latin America. But for the case of the Philippines, they remained a colony of Spain until 1898. So that transition, actually, I was thinking like, okay, is it Manila or is it Madrid that I have to go? I still have to go to Manila. I just didn't have time to go. But while talking to the different kind of archivist, it seemed that Madrid would give me what I needed at least for that transition, to explain that transition from Spanish imperialism to English imperialism and that. So. So that was the last bit that I wasn't originally envisioning, you know, to end up in. In Madrid, which is super central, which is like the period of time I talk about doesn't really have anything to do with Madrid. But of course, the antecedents do so, and I did find really interesting information in the Madrid archives. And actually eventually, sorry, to Sevilla, because I thought Madrid would have it. But most of the archives for colonial times are in Sevilla, in Seville. So it's called the Archibald, the Indies Archives. So that was the last place that I eventually ended up finding information about the Pacific.
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Sarah Bramau Ramos
I love how you were describing that as sort of almost like somewhere between a snowball and an octopus. Like the way in which a project just kind of keeps on going and gathers and. And there's always that one archive that you never have time to put in. I know it acutely. But thank you for sort of unspooling that, because in some ways that you've already set us up for, you know how your book is organized and the different voyages that, you know, we follow across the chapters of your book because it is organized around specific ships and specific journeys. So your book is divided into six chapters, and each centers on a specific steamship that made a trans Pacific journey in between Mexican ports. Yokohama, Japan, or Hong Kong, with its fabulous archives. Could you talk a little bit about that decision to organize your book in that way? Because it is very clearly divided into these different ships, these different voyages that then take us across this period as a whole. So what. What was it about your archives, the material that you were working with that made you think that this was a good way to organize it?
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Ruth Mandujano Lopez
So what started happening is that those journeys that I started finding more information were the ones that I just decided to focus on because there were so many possibilities to go and do. But I just knew that I was not going to have enough lifetime to just go into the minutiae. So I decided to just pick the ones that were being highlighted by my archives, but also that had stories that kind of explained the evolution of these connections between Mexican and Asian ports precisely to prove a point that they did not disappear with the end of the Manila galleons. So, and then what I started to do is just like, if it's kind of an evolution, where does it start? Where does it end? More or less, obviously, as historians, we don't know that there's an actual one year beginning and one year end. But more or less, where should it begin? Where should be end? And then once I had that beginning and ending, which I situated in the 1860s, because that's when the first maritime. The first trans Pacific commercial ventures kind of started with regular trips, you know, across with steamships. You know, it used to happen with sail boats, but now with steamships. So I situated at the beginning in the 1860s, because that's the first company that had these Trans Pacific regular steamship trips offered to the public that could pay for it. Okay. And then I just eventually gathered the information as of there. And then I realized that there's also kind of a bit of a break in the 1910s because of the geopolitics of the time, which is starting with Mexico. There's a Mexican Revolution that kind of made a whole transition to a different country in a way. So that also affected the trips in both coasts, but particularly in the Pacific. There was also the integration of the Panama Canal that also shifted the importance of Mexican ports for this transferring of load and cargo and people from the Pacific to the Atlantic. And Mexican ports were very important for that. So now Panama becomes that. So, so there's also the transition from steam to oil power vessels, which means that there's a whole new set of ports, geopolitics dynamics. And there's World War I that also stops Trans Pacific trips. So once I have those two points of beginning and end, it's like, okay, more or less defined. Then I just wanted to give an idea to myself and to the readers of what happened between those decades. And then so I just look for kind of the trips. If I had to highlight one or two trips, and eventually it was one per decade, that would just take me from the 1860s to the 1870s and then just explain that transition to that particular trip. And then the 1880s, the 1890s, and then 1908, and then the 1910s. So that's. That's how it ended up, because I knew I could not do, like, all the trips that I wanted to do, but I wanted to highlight those that would shed light on that evolution between the 1860s and the 1910s.
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Sarah Bramau Ramos
I think that gives us a perfect excuse to move into some of the trips as you set us up so beautifully. So, you know, we as. As you indicated, you know, each chapter does focus on a trip, although I will note chapter one actually talks about a few. But it kind of gives the prehistory, as you said. You know, it looks at the beginning of the Manila Acapulco route inaugurated by the Galleon san Pedro in 1565. And then it ends with sort of regular trips being established and in particular the trips of the ship Colorado in the 1960s. And by that point we've got, as you said, the first Trans Pacific commercial venture was kind of well established and on the go. This brings us then to chapter two, which moves ahead just a little bit to the 1870s and 1873 in particular, which is when the first Mexican delegation visits Asia. And they're going as a part of a really interesting trip, a scientific trip, an astronic trans Pacific journey. So they are in Asia to study the transit of Venus, if I've gotten that correct, which is part of itself a bigger project to correctly identify the dimensions of the entire solar system. So it's really interesting. And that in and of itself sounds like a global story. There seems to have been other trips that were taking place at the same time, but you're sort of focusing on this trip and in particular the memoirs of those on this trip, particularly looking at how the members of the Mexican delegation were viewing those around them. So there's a lot going on in this chapter. But what stood out the most to you from the memoirs and records that you were looking at about this trip?
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Ruth Mandujano Lopez
I think this trip is in a way it sets the tone of how the Mexican government and the Mexican bureaucrats are going to deal with transpacific trips and in particular to the people arriving from Japan and China, because these are the two places that the scientists visit. So there it's a group of five Mexican scientists that just like many other scientists in the world, are actually traveling to China and Japan to look at the transit of Venus, as you mentioned. So Venus is going to be positioned in front of the sun and if the measurements come correctly, the scientific community expected to finally come up with the astronomic unit, which was it's basically the distance between the Earth and the Sun. It was thought at that moment that because people didn't know at that moment, so this would allow them to come up with a distance between the Earth and the sun. So the Mexicans are just coming out of a French invasion that ended up like a few years before their own Mexican civil war as well. And then last minute the money is gathered and the permission from the President and the sponsoring from the President to actually send a Mexican delegation. So it's a very last minute decision, like pretty much everyone else has set up their observatories because each delegation kind of set up their own observatory. And it was basically thought that it was going to be seen the best in Japan and China. So that's why the destinations of the Mexican scientists end up being within Japan and China. They originally wanted to go to Peking, but because it was last minute and because of all the hassle that it takes them to get to cross the ocean, because they, as I mentioned before, they actually have to go to the Atlantic coast and do A long tour to finally get to San Francisco, take a PMSS steamship that will take them. And PMSS is being the first company that established steamship direct, regular routes between the American continent and Asia. So they take the boat and then they land in Yokohama. They realize that they have to set up camp there because otherwise the transit of Venus is going to happen without them having an observatory. So that's what happens. But they did not only produce a booklet with all the measurements and eventually, well, I guess the measurements and what happens with that, it's another story. So I guess I won't talk that because otherwise I'll be talking all day. But anyways, besides that, they also write two memoirs. Basically the oldest member of the commission and the youngest member of the commission. So Kobarrulias and Bulnes, they write their own memoirs. But those memoirs are not just for them. Those memoirs are actually expected to be published and circulate amongst the Mexican public. And they are basically the first memoirs that are circulating about Mexicans traveling to Asia. I mean, at least that we know up until kind of now. Long memoirs of somebody actually spending months and coming. So what we start to see there in both memoirs, but particularly in the one of Covarrubias, which is the head of a commission and the oldest member, is that they make a difference between Japanese people and Chinese people. And they start making this difference because according to them, what they find in Japan is a Japanese state that is modernizing a little bit like what the Mexican state is trying to do. So they find a lot of correlation and. And they identify with the political and economic project that is happening in Meiji Japan. And they just compare it and yeah, it's like us, to be honest, I think the Japanese were way ahead in many ways, but they were like, yeah, just like us, these economic reforms and these educational reforms, cultural reforms, political reforms is what we're trying to do. There is maybe still some disdain for. For certain customs that they find strange for kind of the poor people, that they look like the poor people in Mexico and they disdain poor people in general, whether from Mexico or Japan. But certainly they find this correlation with the project of the elites happening in Japan. When they go to China, where they actually spend less time, they report that they are not impressed because the Chinese are actually fighting the Westerners and they are not taking science as, you know. But of course, the Italian was just, you know, they're invading. It's like. And they are not treating foreigners properly, like treating them properly. You know, while the Japanese made a huge effort you know, like to just in a way, show how Japan was modernizing to all the scientists that arrive. And that was not the case that they felt in China. Maybe other delegations did, but they didn't. So they start kind of disdaining China and just generalizing how the Japanese, even the poor people, they have this drive towards progress, while the Chinese people is completely the opposite, and they're degenerated. So I think those memoirs, in a way, set the tone of what's going to happen in later decades. Not only those, of course, there's other ideas that are being circulated and discussed between Mexican elites, academic elites, and Europeans and nations that in a way, kind of relate to this. But what I thought was very interesting is the difference between the description of Japanese peoples versus the description of Chinese peoples. And eventually that's going to lead to a different welcoming or lack of welcoming when they take journeys the opposite way. Right when you have now Chinese and Japanese people coming to Mexican ports and
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Sarah Bramau Ramos
of course, journeys the opposite way is what we see in the next two chapters. So thank you for segueing us so lovely, so nicely there. And I say this because. So chapter three looks at attempts to establish maritime routes between Mexico and Asia, and then chapter four looks at the arrival of the first Japanese colonists in Latin America in general. So there's, you know, as you've said, we've already gotten a sense of what kind of welcome or lack of welcome, they're gonna get. There's also a lot going on to promote European immigration kind of running in the background. So that's also contributing to this welcome or lack of welcome. But thinking of these two chapters together, three and four, how would you characterize the kind of reception those from China and Japan received when they arrived?
- [42:05]
Ruth Mandujano Lopez
So I guess now we're moving to the 1880s, and I think something important to talk about is the Chinese Exclusion act in the States in 1882. So what happens is that on the part of Chinese people, they were already coming to Mexico beforehand, but just in more isolated groups. But what happens is when the doors are closed in the States and eventually in Canada as well, they just started looking at Mexico, and it's just like, well, you know, there's a big border there, and, you know, like, we can actually establish connections with our family members there. And actually, there's a lot of work done. Like, Romero Chao is one of the ones that has done a lot of work, but there's so many that have worked already on kind of how many of the Chinese that arrive. They actually cross the Border and go to the States, because the border was not with the big wall and monitor as it is now. It was just, you know, deserted land where people crossed. And so that's why we start having more and more. That's one of the main reasons we're starting to have more and more Chinese traveling to Mexico. Probably originally with the idea of joining their family members in the States, since they cannot enter directly to San Francisco, maybe just through Mexico, and then taking the land routes. But some of them, of course, in the process of getting to the Mexican ports and trying to travel north, I mean, they just find lots of opportunities in the coastal parts of Mexico. And then they start establishing particularly small businesses, groceries, but also laundries, the same types of businesses that we saw emerging in the States. And what also happened is that there was a lot of their family members would send them capital and would sell them merchandises. So it was actually relatively easy. I mean, it was not easy, of course, because you are a new immigrant in a new country. Most of them, or a large, large, large majority didn't speak a word of Spanish, you know, like. So it was obviously tough. But at the same time, you know, like, they had these networks that had already existed for decades. So I think that's what started happening. And then the Mexican government, on its part, they also say, well, if these people are coming, we can actually use them to build the industrial infrastructure, just like it's happening in the States and it's happening in Canada and in other parts of Latin America. So originally they wanted to bring Europeans, you know, like the Mexican government, to kind of like industrialize the country and do these transformations that the economic transformations they wanted to do. But the Europeans don't want to come, you know, in the terms that the government wants to give them or sometimes even though, even, even if they offer land and things, you know, like, Mexico is not necessarily the first pick for those people or whomever they come are insufficient, according to the Mexican government, because they have so many industrial projects, like ports, like a whole kind of railroad system, which started from like zero in the 1870s, and it became the second largest of Latin America in 1910, right? Like, like over 20,000 of kilometers of railroad. So it was this massive kind of industrialization of the country. And then not only that, but like, all the industries, you know, that you can think of, you know, like, they just want to use machines and build machines and build ports. So they need people for that, and they want to pay them as little as possible to these people. And so they just Say, well, let's just use the Chinese. And since the tone is already there about, like, okay, the Chinese, we really don't like them. They don't really like progress. And then they're here, well, let's use them for this cheap labor that we need. But obviously, the Chinese there had plans of their own. Some of them obviously took those jobs to begin with, but then they moved on. But then more people started coming. And then what happened is that at that moment, like the 19th century, Mexico never closed the borders to Chinese, while the US And Canada did. So more and more people, Saudi Arabia and the Mexican government kind of sees also a business opportunity, and they want to create their own steamship company to bring those people, rather than relying on the Pacific mail, which takes all the money from all the, you know, the tickets, you know, that these people pay. So that's what they try to do. But then. And so they want to create, like, direct routes, not going through San Francisco, but directly from Mexican ports to Hong Kong for the moment. Japan. Yes. But, you know, since Japan doesn't want to send their people, like, for, you know, cheap laborers, and they're kind of controlling their immigration more. So they go. They go to Hong Kong and then they create a company. The government finances it. It's three Mexican entrepreneurs. But they are heavily subsidized by the Mexican government. And all steamship companies at the time were heavily subsidized by their governments. It was impossible to get enough capital for such a costly venture. So it's not only everybody subsidizing. So Mexico subventions them. But then once they get their first, you know, like, steamship there, the Mount Lebanon, which is chartered, they don't own it, it's chartered. Mexico, like, didn't build big boat, big steamships during this time. So then what happens is, like, Hong Kong is a British administration, and they don't want to, in a way, let go of the monopoly of the Chinese migration. But at the same time, they also have treaties with the Chinese government to not allow any more mistreatment of Chinese subjects. So it is interesting because the result goes between, we're not allowing you to take these Chinese peoples because you're going to be exploited in your country. But at the same time, they do let them through their own British companies and the US Companies as well. Right. So they use their rhetoric of, like, in a way, protection of the rights for their benefit or not. So there's this diplomatic kind of discussion problem. So what happens is just like, the Mexican company has to just close and not do any Trips because they eventually just get allowed to do one single trip which is months after the fact. They don't. Yeah, it doesn't even make sense anymore. We know. Or I found that there might have been trips happening from Macau again, another place I need to go to find because I couldn't find anything in Mexican or Hong Kongese archives about these Macau trips. So I think if anyone's listening and wants to go somewhere, go to Manila, go to Macau to find what's there in the archives. So maybe in Macau they found isolated, but truly not a company that would do regular trips that I didn't find. And I find it just the government, the central government. Mexico at that time already had kind of archives to record that. So I don't think there will be a company leaving from Macau. I mean there is one, it's called the CM am. But if there is, it's short lived because the owner dies in 1901. So maybe in the 1890s there might be something coming from Macau, irregular trips, maybe through that company. So I think there's a lot to dig there for people that want to go to Macau. But anyways, in general the Mexicans fail because of the geopolitics. So that leads then to the 1890s where what they seek then now is just more formal relations with Japan, which they actually didn't have. Like diplomatic relations with Asian countries did not exist until the 1890s between Mexico and Asian countries. There was a short lived treaty that happened during the French invasion of Mexico in the 1860s. So where the French Maximilian emperor kind of made an agreement with China so that Mexico and China would have diplomatic relations. But it was mostly in paper. And Mexican historiography doesn't even recognize this because they don't recognize Maximilian as a legitimate president or figure. But whether you recognize it or not, it just didn't pass beyond paper. And maybe a couple of exchanges of Chinese workers coming to Mexico after that that I found in the 1860s. But so in the 1890s what's happening is just Mexico keeps on, the Mexican government keeps on with like, okay, we need migrants to come and help us industrialize the country. Let's try now with Japan because then we are just dealing directly with Japan and not China and England for the case of Chinese. And then what happened is that the Japanese are actually willing at that point to start relations with a Latin American country just as part of their own kind of geopolitics as well. There's this coincidence that already happened with the trip of the scientists before but now it's happening with diplomats. We have a lot of transoceanic travel between Japan and Mexico to create first the first treaty of, you know, inaugurating the official relations. And then to the Japanese want to send, not migrants privately, but actually as a state sponsored colony. Because again, you know, they start seeing the restrictions and the mistreatment of Japanese in the States and Canada. Right. So they just said like, okay, we'll set a precedent of equal treatment of, you know, our diplomats, but also of our people that, that migrate there. So that's what happens. So symbolically I take the steamship that they go from Yokohama to San Francisco. So still San Francisco is the port where if you want to travel to Mexico, you have to transfer in San Francisco. So it's called Gaelic. It's a British steamship, manufactured steamship, but it's run in a way by the pmss, a subsidiary of the pms. So they arrive, they eventually, you know, take a small boat. They arrive to the southern part of Mexico where it's actually where my family is from, from the state of Chiapas to a small place called Escuintla. And what happens there is like, you know, they. The beginning is disastrous because obviously, like, it's a different. Because what both parties agreed is that they were going to grow coffee and other products from the area. But of course, you know, like, as a Japanese, you come and as much as you studied, because they did study the land and how to grow coffee. I mean, it's a new, like they get. They also arrive in the rainy season, which is a totally wrong reason to a wrong time to arrive and grow like that. That's not when you start growing. So it's originally disaster. But you know, once the official backing of Japan kind of leaves and then whomever wants to be returned to Japan gets returned by the Japanese government. But some say, you know, we want to stay as independent businessmen and they actually prosper. They marry Mexican women, they create their families. And you know, like some of them are the ones that actually grew up with my mother and her siblings, you know, in recently. So I think that also shows us how on the side of the global politics there might be some objectives and some ideas on how you want to incorporate those who travel. But those who travel have their own ideas and their own dreams and their own means of adapting to the circumstances. So. So that trip eventually led to prosperous Japanese colonies and eventually Chinese colonies as well. Not colonies to say, because again, they're kind of Chinese groups of people and Japanese groups of people that prosper in the southern part of the country, because usually the Chinese would go more to the north part of the country. So I think that inaugurates kind of more massive arrivals of Chinese and Japanese to the southern part of Mexico.
- [55:01]
Sarah Bramau Ramos
I didn't expect this.
- [55:03]
Ruth Mandujano Lopez
TikTok has more short dramas than I could ever finish.
- [55:07]
Sarah Bramau Ramos
Each episode leaves you wanting the next.
- [55:11]
Ruth Mandujano Lopez
Download TikTok now and try it.
- [55:17]
Sarah Bramau Ramos
I mean, there's so much in those two chapters that we see kind of carrying over into the latter part of your book. So the geopolitics definitely continues. Failed trips also continues. You know, would be colonists or, you know, would be immigrants with their own ideas and hopes and dreams. That definitely continues. And in particular, it continues into chapter five. And I just want to make sure we have a moment to talk about this because it's just a fascinating episode. So this focuses on a 1908 ship which is a chartered steamer from the China Commercial Steamship company, a Hong Kong company which was created to establish direct routes between Asia and Mexico. And so the ship leaves Hong Kong, it arrives in Mexico, it is inspected by the port's health delegate, and then it all falls apart. It's just a fascinating episode. So without getting too deep into the weeds of all of the political debates and discussions and everything that's going on, what is important to know about this voyage, this ship, I guess, just before
- [56:31]
Ruth Mandujano Lopez
we get into the voyage itself, I think, and the failure of this voyage, I just want to point out that there was success beforehand. So this China Commercial Steamship company is basically the first one that manages to establish direct steamship connections between Mexican ports and Asian ports. Like everyone else failed, but this time they managed. It's basically a group of Hong Kongese Chinese, Hong Kongese businessmen. And they obviously have the support of the Hong Kong administration because they are from Hong Kong. So I would say that was 1903 when they established the company. So between 1903 and 1908, we have five years that the company flourishes and sends monthly steamships to Mexico. And they average around, like, you know, I remember doing the math, and it was like around 480, you know, per trip. But, you know, let's say around 500 people in steerage that were pretty much Chinese coming from Hong Kong to Mexico. And then on the way back, that was direct. And then on the way back, they would actually stop in San Francisco and take all the people that wanted to leave the States because of all the political context that they were not wanted or those that were visiting back. So on the way back, they stop at San Francisco, and then they stop at Yokohama to leave the Japanese and then Hong Kong. So there's success for five years and regular migration. But again with the mind frame set since this 19th century that the Chinese are not progressive peoples. So what happens is when the Chinese start coming massively, the government wants to install them in certain projects where they are paid very little and the working conditions are very difficult. The Chinese themselves, some of them obviously start with that, but then they also start their own, you know, businesses and prosper and some of them marry locals and all that. So in what happened in 1908 with the Sui Sang is they. They get caught in, into kind of these rhetoric of local merchants blaming the Chinese for kind of their economic failures. And so they start pressuring the government. And the government already had, you know, people in the government already had these racist ideas, you know, against the Chinese to stop the migration. And then one way is just like. So they implement, they get accused of, of bringing diseases and the boats, because also. Let's talk. I mean, the boats are harsh conditions because also the Hong Kong businessmen, they also want to get a lot of money for that. So it's not that the steerage conditions are not amazing. So of course it could be possible some of them are arriving sick because of the bad conditions. But everything is exacerbated by the rhetoric, the anti Chinese rhetoric. So the government starts implementing laws of like, you know, health laws and all that. So what happens with the Suisang is like the health authority of Selena Cruz does the review checkup, and then according to him, out of the sort of 500 people in steerage, there's like, you know, 300 and something that they have trachoma, which is a contagious disease. And then what happens is the company says, the company doctor says that's not trachoma, that's conjunctivitis, which is just a simple eye problem that just happens in boats because you're at sea, blah, blah, blah. So then this debate, trachoma versus conjunctivitis becomes a diplomatic dispute of I am not allowing any more Chinese migrants to come. Because what happens is the next boat from the China commercials team to comping that comes again. You know, like gets blamed to have like a couple hundred or like sick of trachoma, which some people is conjunctivitis, and some people say that that doesn't even exist. They're not sick. You know, so if you check the archives both in Mexico and Hong Kong, I mean, and then you dig into the local politics, the Doctors. You know how the doctors used to work in Hong Kong, and they just want to just affect the people in Hong Kong. So it's just like a lot of personal politics that it doesn't make sense to talk about right here. But then it will eventually become a dispute that will turn into the end of the China Commercial Steamship Company, because they cannot now be sure that the people they're bringing, which is their main business, will be allowed in. So this is the beginning of the diminishing of massive Chinese arriving through these journeys, even though the nail in the coffin is actually going to come later in the Mexican Revolution. They continue. I found records of the Chinese Commercial Steamship Company, not with as many trips and not with as many people in those trips all the way to 1813. So they continue all the way to. And in 1813, I found no more records. But again, maybe that doesn't mean that they don't exist. Also, there's the Mexican Revolution, where all the documents kind of might not be there anymore, but it is true that they certainly diminish and they sue the Mexican government. So there's a diplomatic tension there of the China Commercial Steamship Company that will basically go unsolved because the Mexican Revolution ends up with any diplomatic dispute because the. The country goes to war, right? Civil war. Yeah.
- [62:18]
Sarah Bramau Ramos
And it also, of course, sort of dovetails and. And. And leads to sort of immigration laws for, you know, for the new immigration laws in Mexico. So there's a lot kind of that goes into things changing and the floodgates, I guess, if you know, the rhetorical floodgates closing, I guess. So this brings us then, to the 20th century. So the very last chapter of your book covers a ship that sailed in 1914. And so you've already touched on some of the big things that are changing in Mexico. So the Mexican Revolution, the country being at war. There's also the First World War, there's the inauguration of the Panama Canal. I think that has already come up in our conversation. There's then new technologies coming about. And, you know, all of this is changing steamship travel, changing travel, changing the nature of the relationship between Mexico and Hong Kong and Asia. So there's a lot going on. So in all of this, is there anything in particular that you want to highlight kind of about the end of this period and the end of your book?
- [63:28]
Ruth Mandujano Lopez
I guess, you know, if we follow the technology that I'm following and that made possible this kind of reconfiguration of connections between Mexico and Asia, I just think the transition of vessels run by Steam to those run by oil is an important thing to note. So I didn't dig into all the changes that happen with vessels drawn by oil, but I think there's something there for. For researchers that want to look into that and how that reconfigured the world. It's not only that, but as you mentioned, Mexican connections with Asia are shifting also because of the Mexican Revolution. So it's our own civil war that what happens is Manzanillo's port gets actually burned at some point. Salina Cruz, there's a lot of robberies. So it's no longer because the central government and the authorities cannot kind of have a police force, because we have changes of governments all the time. So the police are just local police are just basically doing whatever they want. So the two Mexican ports, kind of Manzanillo and Salina Cruz are just no longer working. So that kind of limits the exchanges. But as you mentioned, the Mexican Revolution has had a lot of xenophobic and very nationalistic rhetoric. So there's a lot of new laws that get implemented that actually stop the possibility for Chinese and Japanese to immigrate in large numbers. Although always with Japan, there was a lot more kind of connections and diplomatic. So instead of stopping them, they just switch and they say, okay, now we just want families in small numbers. And so it's not sounding like a prohibition, but a negotiation, which in a way was as well. So with the Chinese, they don't get totally forbidden federally, but the northern states of Sonora and Sinaloa, which are the ones where most Chinese ended up, that stayed in the countries, ended up kind of moving to. They do expel the Chinese after the Mexican. Well, during and after the Mexican Revolution, particularly all the way to the 1930s. And many of them have married Mexican women. Schiavone has done an amazing research about, like, the women that were expelled, the Mexican wives that were expelled with their Chinese husbands. Because what happened is that if a Mexican as part of these laws, like anti. Like xenophobic laws, like any Mexican women that married a Chinese, lost a Mexican citizenship, and then so they actually were no longer Mexicans. So you have now, as of the 1830s, a large flow of Mexican women actually going to China. And that has been studied that I know of by Eschebani. Well, but there's a lot to dig in as well there of this flow of Mexicans, particularly women, to Asia. So there's that there's a revolution. And I think just to explain the Panama Canal, so what happened is that Salina Cruz was Also, not only the port where most of the Trans Pacific steamers arrive, but also the beginning of the transcontinental railroad to the Atlantic coast or the Gulf of Mexico coast. So what happened is a lot of the merchandise is arriving not only to Mexico, but that wanted to go to the US to the east coast, rather than arriving to San Francisco and then just transferring through trains. The Mexican train was shorter. If you picture a map of Mexico, there's an area where it's very thin. So that's where Salina Cruz starts the transcontinental railroad to Cuatzacualcos on the other side. So as of 1907, when that transcontinental railroad started happening, it was a big business just to transfer merchandise from all over the world. Actually, even if you wanted to take something from Asia to Europe, you could just transfer it there. What happens is once the Panama Canal opens, all of a sudden you have your cargo ships and some of them starting to transfer to oil. And then rather than transferring everything, moving everything from the ship to the trains, and then another ship carrying you elsewhere, the same ship can just go to Panama, cross the Panama Canal, and then. So that's a big thing that makes the importance of Salina Cruz plummet. And that's why also, like, there's this diminishing also maybe also of people wanting to go to Salina Cruz. You know, like, they just want to go and flow through Panama and then just give them. So I think those are some of the things I want to highlight from that last chapter.
- [68:37]
Sarah Bramau Ramos
Yeah, I mean, I think as you can. I hope listeners can tell from your description of it, there is a lot going on and a lot of changes at this period. At the end of your book, we're very far from chapter one in terms of not so much in terms of years, but in terms of all of the different things that have changed and shifted. New technologies, new places of importance. But taking your book as a whole and kind of zooming out, is there anything in particular that you want to highlight for listeners of this podcast and readers of your book about Mexico's participation and engagement with Asia during this picture, during this period, actually, as a whole?
- [69:21]
Ruth Mandujano Lopez
Well, first of all, that there was a lot of engagement, you know, that there's a lot more to dig into. And I've already pointed to two archives that I think should be explored with the idea in mind of finding more connections between Mexican and Asian ports, which is Manila and Macau and certainly Yokohama for those of those that can read Japanese. So there's that also about Thinking about movement, you know, like history in terms of movement and not about statistically. Because I find national narratives tend to. Not national, but specifically nationalistic narratives tend to place history happening in a specific territory that seems to be fixed time immemorial, where everything happens within and people come in and go out. Right. But if you think of networks and you think of movement, then I think you can just escape kind of what I see as kind of the trap of nationalistic history that just says that some people belong and some people don't belong because they just focus on a specific recent period of time, specific archives, specific sources that obviously point at that rootedness of relations, of territories, of who belongs and who doesn't belong. Right. But if you just follow. Follow whatever you're interested in to wherever it takes you. Because in a way, for me, I just had that childhood experience that eventually led me to just be curious about it, and where are these people coming? And then that just led me to go to so many different places that I didn't expect I would go. So I would say just. Just maybe try to escape that rootedness and then just see what's outside, and not even outside, because there's no outside or inside. Once you have your network, you actually. The space is conceptualized differently. Right. So I think reconceptualizing our own spaces based on our own research is something that I. I'd like to highlight out of what I did, but also what I learned while doing this particular research.
- [71:54]
Sarah Bramau Ramos
I think that brings us wonderfully full circle to where we began our conversation, going back to the branching out and again the mix between the snowball and the octopus in creating the network, we've come all of the way full circle. So with that, Ruth, now that you have finished this book, and congratulations on finishing it on, you know, on powering through, on going to the places you didn't expect to go on, you know, pulling together the histories that you might not have initially expected to be pulling together. So congratulations with this being done. Now that this is done, what is it that is inspiring you at the moment?
- [72:41]
Ruth Mandujano Lopez
Well, there were certainly, as I mentioned, kind of certain loose ends that at some point I want to explore. And those loose ends, I think, would relate to participation of women, because I think that's a major limitation of my work in this book, that it is true that if you go to the sources, wherever you are, whatever archives, it's mostly men who travel, but there are women traveling. And I already pointed out at, you know, how so many women travel from Mexico to Asia. At some point right in my particular time frame, from the 1860s to 1910s, I don't think we're going to find necessarily these huge waves of women, but there are female travelers. And you can find them everywhere from, like, wives of sailors, particularly high rant that are there. You know, like, you find them with, you know, wives of, you know, like people in steerage, but also of like. Like probably like single young travelers as well, that. That just, you know, like, maybe both. Some of them maybe disguised as men, you know, like. So I think there's. There's some of that that I want to explore from the book. And then I think it's taken me also elsewhere. It's taken me to. Together with, like, kind of, you know, the whole AI incorporation of like. So I just. I just. I'm just rethinking and I don't know where that's going to take me, but rethinking the kind of the writing of monographies. Like, I don't know, like, you know, because I just. I just see my students and then, you know, like, I mean, there's a lot to criticize about AI and this is not the place to just expand on that because it would take us forever. But I also see, for instance, my students, so they just place a bulk of information there. It gets processed, and then they can actually come up with so many new things that for me, it took me years to realize what was there, available, what wasn't. So I'm wondering if now maybe it's not necessarily these long monographies that some things might be repetitive, maybe just case studies in shorter articles that are more useful for just expanding knowledge. So I don't know where this is going to take me, but I don't think it's going to take me to another monography. But we'll see. So rather, I would say, like Histis, that you can just throw out there. And eventually AI can also process so that people can know about it, but also start new research from that. And it's also taking me to a break, and I've started just being really focused on music. So I just took a break and then I started taking lessons of classical guitar. And that has also taken me to the history of the classical guitar, you know, and then archives where I saw, like, guitars or instruments, musical instruments kind of being transferred and traveling through these boats and ships and all that. So I think, if anything, it will probably lead me towards just following, following music, following rhythms, following rather than only kind of, you know, people only centered, just following the music maybe following the rhythms, following the connections of the instruments and the scores that you can find in the lists of those, you know, boats that I studied and that I didn't pay too much attention because they weren't part of what I was. And I was like, oh, wait a second, I remember there was. There were instruments being carried there, you know, and then also as a way to bridge, like, I just find the kind of politics that I studied in my research, but also the ones that we're experiencing now are tending to divide us a lot rather than to connect our common humanity, you know. And I think obviously this is an idealization of music because there's a lot of populations in music and musicians and all that. But I do think that it is possible to connect through music and to find that all of a sudden our cultures are not monolithic, but have been nicely enriched by all the cultural contributions of so many people around the world. So I think maybe if we just look it through the lens of music, maybe we can also point out not only at the disconnections, but the connections. And I feel that's. That's way necessary these days. And not. That's not necessarily how I felt when I started my dissertation, like in 2006, but I think it's more urgent, at least for me right now.
- [77:51]
Sarah Bramau Ramos
It sounds like you have a whole new sort of slate of connections and journeys ahead of you. So my very best, you know, wishes and good luck with all of those, you know, that work those projects. And I hope that one day you get to go to look at archives in the Philippines and Macau. I will be holding out hope for that. But for now, thank you so much for taking the time, Ruth, to talk with me about this book and this project and these journeys.
- [78:21]
Ruth Mandujano Lopez
Thank you so much. Sara, as I mentioned to you before we started, like, I just really, really appreciate all the time you took to review the book and to prepare for the interview to read it and just how pleasant this conversation was. Thanks a lot.