Ruth Mandujano López, "Steamships Across the Pacific: Maritime Journeys between Mexico, China, and Japan, 1867–1914" (U Hong Kong Press, 2025)

About this episode

Ruth Mandujano López discusses her book on maritime journeys between Mexico, China, and Japan and their impact on transpacific connections.

How did the movement of people, goods, and ships reshape connections between Latin America and Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? In Steamships Across the Pacific: Maritime Journeys between Mexico, China, and Japan, 1867–1914 (U Hong Kong Press, 2025), Ruth Mandujano López examines this question through the lens of maritime travel. Focusing on Mexico’s participation in emerging steamship networks linking it to China and Japan, the book traces how these routes facilitated new forms of mobility, exchange, and encounter across the Pacific world. Steamships Across the Pacific is organized around specific voyages. Each chapter centers on a particular steamship journey and follows the people who traveled on the ships and observed the locations around them, including scientific voyages and chartered steamers filled with would-be immigrants. This structure allows Mandujano López to foreground the lived experience of transpacific travel, showing how these journeys were shaped by — and also shaped — larger processes of imperialism, mobility, and modernization. As such, this book will appeal to readers interested in global history, Pacific worlds, and the history of…

People in this episode

Guest: Ruth Mandujano López

Topics covered

• maritime travel
• global history
• migration
• Pacific world
• imperialism
• modernization

Keywords

• steamships
• Pacific journeys
• migration history
• Mexico
• China
• Japan
• imperialism
• modernization

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: U Hong Kong Press

Books & works: Steamships Across the Pacific: Maritime Journeys between Mexico, China, and Japan, 1867–1914

Places: Mexico, China, Japan

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