Where the Devil Stands: A Microhistorical Reading of Empires as Multiple Moral Worlds (Manila–Mexico, 1577–1580)

Abstract

"Woe to thee, o land, when thy king is a child and thy princes feast in the morning. (Ecclesiastes 10:16)". As it developed in its English-speaking version over the course of the last three decades, global history has mostly been the story of a world peopled by large-scale and relatively resilient entities (such as cultures, civilizations, religions). One specific entity, namely 'imperial polities', has been granted a prominent place in the grand narrative of how the world became more and more densely interconnected.