Periodic Reporting for period 1 - UNSILENCE (Trafficking of girls and Catholic missionary networks in the South China Sea (18th-19th centuries): a transnational approach)
Reporting period: 2022-02-01 to 2024-01-31
The project titled “UNSILENCE: Trafficking of girls and Catholic missionary networks in the South China Sea (18th-19th centuries): a transnational approach” examines the reception and buying of abandoned Chinese little girls by Catholic missionaries in their inland missions, Canton and Macau, and their transportation to the Philippines to be raised as Christians in the early modern period. Human trafficking, decolonisation in Asia, and gender equality are major contemporary challenges. Every country in the world is affected with thousands of victims attested in Europe alone, and with a high percentage of the victims being females and children under 18 subjected to different types of dependencies. UNSILENCE project not only helps to understand its historical roots, and the mechanisms behind but also seeks to raise awareness about the importance of History to fight against human trafficking and in favour of women and children rights. The overall objectives of this project have been to (1) reconstruct child trafficking systems between 1700 and 1800 by studying the agents participating and their roles in the context of the political, religious, social, economic and jurisdictional conditions of Macao, Canton and Manila; (2) analyse the life trajectories of little girls and boys including also the number of children, their age, gender, prices and destinations, both geographically and in terms of life trajectories; (3) analyse the consequences of this phenomenon at two different levels: individuals (missionaries, children and their foster families) and receiving societies: colonial settlements that took in these children and Europe itself, as European believers were informed about, and funded, charitable actions in China.
The project UNSILENCE has consisted in research, dissemination, and career development activities. The work has been divided in five work packages. The WP 1, 2 and 3 pursued the main scientific objectives and included archival research (in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and the Philippines) literature review (KU Leuven and Bonn Center for Slavery and Dependency Studies), and the systematization of information and its analysis. Work Package W1 [WP] sought to understand how the networks to shelter and raise abandoned children worked in the South China Sea; WP2 proposed to analyse the children and young girls’ life trajectories trying to know how the everyday lives of these children and their agency were; and WP3’s objective was to weight the impact of this traffic and how it affected to the receiving societies. The WP 4 was devoted to the dissemination of the results: the researcher has published 1 monograph, 5 articles, 2 book chapters; presented her project in 14 international and national academic events (10 by invitation, and 4 by proposal); organized and co-organize 1 international workshop and 1 summer course; presented a poster; was invited to discuss 1 session in a conference; has created an online exhibition, a game for high-school and university students, and 4 knowledge clips; has participated in 3 podcasts, 1 radio programme and deliver 2 non-academic talks. Furthermore, the Fellow has 2 articles under preparation and is currently organizing 2 conferences and preparing new teaching materials. WP 5 included the monitoring of the project’s progress throughout the action, and the professionalization and career development of the fellow. The training was focused on academic writing, teaching, Chinese language, data management, digital humanities and career guidance. Acquisition of specialized knowledge has focused on transpacific exchanges; historical slaveries and dependencies; public history; and global history. During the action the fellow has expanded her network of contacts significantly. As a result of all this work, the Fellow has gained a 5-year tenure track contract of the National Research Agency of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.
The project was focused on a very specific question: the participation of European religious members in a largely understudied local network of movement of Chinese girls across the South China Sea. The study of this phenomenon has made three crucial contributions to the field. Firstly, it has contributed to the creation of a new history of early modern Christianity in China by (1) demonstrating the purchase of children in the slave market by Mendicants to later be raised in the Christian faith or sent as domestic servants; (2) assessing the transformation of the evangelization project in the mission field which combined ideas of charity, humanity, profit and pragmatism (3) demonstrating the existence a missionary culture of collaboration between members of all religious orders overcoming the traditional perspective of reading the Chinese mission through the Chinese Rites Controversy (4) providing the first quantitative approximation and gender-aware approach to this phenomenon; and (5) attesting for the creation of a mission network between Canton, Macao and Manila. Secondly, UNSILENCE project has advanced in the identification of the multiple forms of dependency by (1) incorporating completely unknown “small slaveries” in cross-Pacific networks overcoming the Atlantic-centered perspective in slavery studies; (2) understanding the complex reasons behind actions of infanticide, abandonment and exposure that help us to explain the mechanisms of dependencies behind situations of coercion; and (3) contributing to the understanding of local dynamics in the South China Sea that affected the Christian sociability in those areas. This new approach challenges traditional associations between Chinese Confucian culture and female infanticide and help us to add nuance to a multifaceted reality. Thirdly, this project has helped to reconsider the frontiers in South Asia, and in the Iberian Empires in Asia by (1) adding new elements to ongoing debates on the construction of identity, agency and intercultural encounters in the big South China Sea (2) questioning the traditional idea that ideas, knowledges, or norms in Asia were produced and systematically imposed by central authorities such as the Emperors, the Roman authorities, the officials, or the Iberian Monarchies’ mandates, and, on the contrary propose missionaries, nuns, merchants, and captain’s agency as the creators of new social, political, or legal outcomes to be implemented in the field (3) moving the focus of law from the centre of empire towards its peripheries overcoming the traditional idea of law tied to the metropolitan image of empire and demonstrating that law in the Ancient Regime incorporated different normative textual traditions not only from the centre but also from the so-called peripheries; (4) and discussing about the role of missionaries, Propaganda Fide, and the Spanish crown in a context of competition between the universalism of the Church and the defence of the Royal Patronage’s rights by Iberian monarchies in Asia.
From the dissemination point of view, UNSILENCE has decisively contributed to explain to a general public how missionaries, captains, girls, or nun’s actions and networks help us to understand today’s sensitivities towards poverty and exclusion, and call to action to end trafficking and violence against women and children, as stated by United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda (1. No poverty; 5. Gender equality).
From the dissemination point of view, UNSILENCE has decisively contributed to explain to a general public how missionaries, captains, girls, or nun’s actions and networks help us to understand today’s sensitivities towards poverty and exclusion, and call to action to end trafficking and violence against women and children, as stated by United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda (1. No poverty; 5. Gender equality).