“The First Asians in the Americas is essential reading for anybody interested in the histories of global migration, race, and colonization in the Americas. Through painstaking archival research in Spain, Mexico, the United States, and the Philippines, Diego Javier Luis offers a bold reconceptualization of Asian migration to the Americas and restores heretofore little-known people and communities to their rightful places in history.”―Erika Lee, author of The Making of Asian America: A History

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“No clue is too small for this modern-day detective-historian. Diego Javier Luis has pieced together the most comprehensive and fascinating history to date of Asians in colonial Mexico.”―Andrés Reséndez, author of Conquering the Pacific

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“A groundbreaking study of Asian diasporic experiences in the Spanish Empire. The decks of the Manila galleons, the coastal Acapulco-to-Colima corridor, and much of Pacific Mexico emerge here as spaces of Asian adaptability and social, cultural, and linguistic exchanges. Through the lens of global microhistory, Luis recovers and humanizes the history of colonial ‘chino’ populations in all their complexity.”―Pablo Miguel Sierra Silva, author of Urban Slavery in Colonial Mexico

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“Diego Javier Luis has given us the first of its kind: a study of the transpacific Asian migration to the Americas under Spanish imperial rule. This book radically revolutionizes our understanding of race-making and mestizaje in the Spanish Americas and the Spanish transpacific.”―Christina H. Lee, author of Saints of Resistance

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"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."―Rubén Carrillo Martín, Hispanic American Historical Review

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"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'."―Paula C. Park, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies

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"The First Asians in the Americas is not only comprehensive and groundbreaking; it is a scintillating read. I couldn't recommend this monograph more. Luis expands the maps and chronologies of Asian and Latin American studies, with an attention to detail and patience for nuance that really don't often show up in scholars' first books. He shows a concerted effort to make evident his interpretive process, the book representing a master class in reading the colonial archives against the grain...Not only does he resuscitate forgotten voices in colonial archives, but he sees them as invitations for reimagining fleeting structures of empathy, solidarity, and shared historical heritages."―Ernest Rafael Hartwell, Sixteenth Century Journal

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"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."―Javier Zapata Clavería, Colonial Latin American Review

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"This book is essential reading for scholars of Asians in the Americas, Afro-Asian studies, and colonial Latin American history, in addition to anyone interested in histories of migration, race and racism, race mixing, and empire across the Pacific and Atlantic Worlds."―Ramaesh J. Bhagirat-Rivers, American Historical Review

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"Diego Javier Luis has expanded our understanding of Asian transpacific migration by studying the lives of both the free and 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."―Ricardo Padrón, International Journal of Maritime History

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"Su análisis riguroso no solo desafía las narrativas convencionales,
sino que también amplía la comprensión del papel que jugaron las interacciones asiáticoamericanas en la historia continental. A través de la disección de documentos históricos, Luis destaca la profunda influencia que las culturas asiáticas ejercieron en diversos aspectos de la vida en las Américas. Este estudio proporciona un contrapunto indispensable a la perspectiva eurocéntrica que, incluso hoy, domina los textos académicos. The First Asians in the Americas nos invita a revalorizar las múltiples capas de interacción que han configurado las sociedades actuales, enriqueciendo así nuestra comprensión de la historia global."―Victor Sierra Matute, Confluencia: Revista Hispánica de Cultura y Literatura

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"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."―Kaori Mizukami, International Quarterly for Asian Studies

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"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."―Peter Gordon, Asian Review of Books

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"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."―Rainer Buschmann, H-Net Reviews

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"Luis offers an important contribution to the historiography on the ambiguous racial positioning of Asian Americans and the divergent pathways Asians take in navigating relationships with other racial groups...With its beautiful prose, The First Asians in the Americas reminds us that history—at its best—functions as an exchange of past and present, in which 'the archival records of peoples long gone come alive as they lift off from tattered pages and alight in our minds' (p.236)."―Alexander Jin, Pacific Historical Review

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"Diego Javier Luis's [book] is a monumental work of scholarship. Devoted to tracking the experiences and transformations of Asians in the Americas, the book sheds much needed light on a topic that has until relatively recently remained one of the dark spots of global history: the Transpacific connections that permeated across the Hispanic world and beyond."―Juan José Rivas Moreno, Southeast Asian Studies