| Summary: | The West and Asia in the chronicles of the XVIIth century. China’s attraction and the adaptation of the Hispanic monarchy to the antipodes. A study on the perceptions that European visitors had of Asia during the latter part of the XVIth century and during the XVIIth century. This study focuses on the accounts of religious chroniclers, travellers and civil servants. They were frequently a conduit for news of happenings that they had experienced at first hand.They conveyed their great interest in getting to know China and its culture, and their conviction of the importance of China’s hegemony in South-East Asia, which was essential to the development of evangelization efforts as well as to commerce with that empire and other countries nearby. Emphasis is laid on the unitary conception of the empire and the necessity of valuing the conditions of the Spanish settlement in the Philippines as well as the resources developed by the Hispanic Monarchy's administrators, in order to adapt their model of government to a frontier very far from Spain where the population was less predominantly Spanish.
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