Luscious and Alluring Fruits from the East: The South China Sea through the Lens of a Sixteenth-Century Genoese Manuscript

This chapter introduces the section of a sixteenth-century Genoese manuscript, still unpublished, that describes China and its neighboring regions and sheds light on the alliance between Genoa’s mercantile aristocracy and the Spanish crown, situating it within the broader dynamics of the South China Sea during the transition from Ming to Qing. Adopting a micro-historical perspective combined with the history of objects and the mediation of Chinese sources, the study connects a local context to the increasingly globalized economy in which cosmopolitan communities animated key Asian ports. The manuscript highlights Genoa’s strong interest in intelligence gathered from missionaries and the Chinese community in the Philippines, as well as its ambitions to access East Indies markets. The final section focuses on references to fruits and foods contained in the manuscript: far from trivial, these elements provide a starting point for reflecting on global exchanges, as demonstrated by the diffusion of descriptions of these exotic foods in both Western and Chinese sources, here compared. Their circulation across languages and contexts mirrors the dynamics of maritime trade, offering a fresh perspective on well-studied phenomena.