This book tracks the complex history of Asian slaves who journeyed to Mexico on the ships of the Manila Galleon in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Tatiana Seijas examines the implications of these individuals' change in legal status from the bondage of chino slavery to the freedom of the Mexico City streets as liberated Indians.
Tracing the history of the new nations of Mexico and the United States, Seijas and Frederick show how the creation of U.S. dollars and Mexican pesos paralleled these countries' efforts to establish enduring political and economic systems, clearly illustrating why these nations closed the nineteenth century on very different historical trajectories.