Ryan D. Crewe

I am a historian of Latin American, transpacific, and early modern global history. My research examines the power dynamics of early colonialism, which laid the foundations for the structural injustices prevalent today. I am especially interested in connecting and comparing histories of resilience and resistance to colonialism across continents and oceans. Researching for my book, The Mexican Mission: Indigenous Reconstitution and Mendicant Enterprise (Cambridge, 2019), revealed to me the myriad ways in which Indigenous communities kept themselves together amid some of the greatest disruptions imaginable: brutal wars of colonial invasion, a series of catastrophic epidemics, and systems of economic exploitation that exacerbated the effects of both. My book examines the complex, often torturous ways communities struggled over how to meet epochal challenges, as well as how their resilience shaped an emerging colonial regime. Currently, I am studying these processes on a transpacific and global scale. I have been researching how Spanish American colonial experiences clashed with the tolerance of maritime Asian port cities in Manila, as well as how American experience became a liability for Spanish missionaries in Asia. My current project examines the interventions of the Spanish settler colony in Mexico in the global conflict over spices in the Moluccas in the 1520s-1540s, a history that connects wars of colonial conquest in the Americas with struggles over resources and peoples in Maritime Asia.

My teaching builds upon and grows out of this research. I love to work with students as they learn about the worlds peoples in the Americas and beyond made before and during colonization, in courses on colonial Latin America (ETST 3350), and Oceans in History (HIST 4622). In other courses, we face the long-term consequences and duration of colonial power structures: the Modern Latin America survey (HIST 3460) traces the ongoing struggles for liberation across the continent, Modern Mexico (ETST 4411) witnesses the creative ways people have struggled against authoritarian regimes, Latin American Social Revolutions (HIST 4415) introduces students to a wide array of revolutionary movements and strategies that have made global history, and in Mexico and the US: People and Politics on the Border (HIST 4412), we recognize the shared histories and futures of communities along the border.

Ph.D. in History, Yale University (2009)

M.A. in History, Yale University (2003)

B.A. in History, University of California at Davis (2000)

Academia.edu profile: https://ucdenver.academia.edu/RyanCrewe

The Mexican Mission: Indigenous Reconstruction and Mendicant Enterprise in New

Spain, 1521-1600 (Latin American Studies Series, Cambridge University Press, 2019)).

https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/cudenver/detail.action?docID=5797329

• Honorable Mention, Bolton-Johnson Prize for Best Book in Latin American History (2021); Honorable Mention, María Elena Martínez Prize for Best Book in Mexican History (2021)

Articles and Book Chapters

“The Troubles of Global Civitas: Segregation and Convivencia in Colonial Manila, 1580- 1700.” Cheiron, no. 1, (2022), pp. 148-173.

“Monsoonal Missions: Spanish Missionary efforts among Asian Trade Diasporas, 1570-1650.” In Hélène Vu Thanh and Inês Zupanov eds. Trade and Finance in Global Missions (16^th- 18^th Centuries) (Brill, 2021), pp. 151-83.

“Occult Cosmopolitanism: Convivencia and Ethno-Religious Exclusion in Manila, 1590-1650.” In Jos Gommans and Ariel Lopez eds. Philippine Confluence: Iberian, Chinese, and Islamic Currents, c. 1500-1800 (Leiden University Press, 2020), pp. 55-73.

“A Moluccan Crypto-Muslim before the Transpacific Inquisition (1623–1645).” In

Cristina Lee and Ricardo Padrón, eds. The Spanish Pacific, 1521-1815: A Reader of Primary Sources (Amsterdam University Press, 2020), pp. 171-89.

“Bautizando el colonialismo: las políticas de conversión en México después de la Conquista,” Historia Mexicana, vol. 68, no. 3 (2019), pp. 943-1000.

“Building in the Shadow of Death: Monastery Construction and the Politics of Community Reconstitution in Sixteenth-Century Mexico.” The Americas, vol. 75, no. 3 (2018), pp. 489-523.

“Connecting the Indies: The Hispano-Asian Pacific World in Early Modern Global History.” Revista Estudos Históricos, vol. 30, no. 60 (2017), pp. 17-34.

“Transpacific Mestizo: Religion and Caste in the Worlds of a Moluccan Prisoner of the Mexican Inquisition,” Itinerario, vol. 39, no. 3 (2016), pp. 463-485.

“Pacific Purgatory: Spanish Dominicans, Chinese Sangleys, and the Entanglement of Mission and Commerce in Manila, 1580-1620.” Journal of Early Modern History, vol. 19 (2015), pp. 337-365.

“Brave New Spain: An Irishman’s plot for Mexican Independence, 1642.” Past and Present, no. 207 (2010), pp. 53–87.

Colonial Latin America (ETST/ HIST 3350)

Modern Latin America (HIST 3460)

Modern Mexico (ETST/ HIST 4411)

Mexico and the US: People and Politics on the Border (HIST 4412)

Latin American Social Revolutions (HIST 4415)

Oceans in History (HIST 4622)