The Visual and the Material in the Glocal Narratives of Historical Archives: The Fall of Tenochtitlan and its Reverberations in Malabar

Abstract

The unlikely reverberations of the fall of Tenochtitlan on Malabar (present day Kerala) is the focus of this study. Trade and religion are the twin components that makes this interlinking possible. From mapping the history of Christianity in Malabar, trade routes in ancient times, the arrival of the Portuguese and reshaping of trade and religion in Malabar, and connecting it with the Spanish arrival in Mexico, religious significance post-conquest, expansion of Spanish empire to include the Philippines, the advent of the Spanish-Manila galleons, the paper seeks to establish the Mexico – Malabar interconnectedness through the glocal world of historical archives. A brief overview of the visual and material cultures in these historical narratives also throws interesting insights into how images circulate in glocal societies.