This course analyzes a sampling of cross-cultural encounters in the Spanish Pacific, from the early sixteenth-century ‘Magellan Exchange’ to the end of the Manila-Galleon Trade in 1815. During this time Spanish explorers, settlers, and missionaries came into contact with Filipinos, Pacific islanders, sub-Saharan Africans, Asian peoples, mestizos, and Amerindians. To understand these varying cultural interactions, this seminar takes a comparative approach by drawing upon episodes of intercultural exchange from along the Pacific coast of the Americas, the Philippine archipelago, and the islands of Micronesia. The larger goal of weekly discussions is to consider how exploration, conquest, disease, conversion, trade, and slavery shaped Spanish descriptions of difference and the emergence of multiethnic societies in the Pacific Rim. Close attention to regional peculiarities and larger transpacific patterns will illuminate the ways in which local peoples shaped colonial societies in the “Spanish Lake.”