Why am I passionate about this?

The past fascinates me because it is strange and different to the world we live in today. That is why I prefer looking at earlier centuries than contemporary times because the distant past requires an extra effort on our part to unlock how people back then made sense of their world. When I read an old chronicle on how Indigenous people spent days traveling to meet acquaintances and even strangers, it piqued my interest. Did they really need to meet face-to-face? What did traveling mean to them? The books on the list below are attempts by historians to understand the travelers of the past.


I wrote

Reciprocal Mobilities: Indigeneity and Imperialism in an Eighteenth-Century Philippine Borderland

By Mark Dizon,

Book cover of Reciprocal Mobilities: Indigeneity and Imperialism in an Eighteenth-Century Philippine Borderland

What is my book about?

When we think about imperial expansion, we usually think of European colonizers marching to and penetrating previously unconquered territories. We…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England

Mark Dizon Why did I love this book?

American Passage’s portrayal of early New England as a fluid frontier where people, goods, and information traveled is excellent.

I like how Grandjean retells the English settlement of the region in terms of how people moved and communicated with one another. She forces readers to rethink our ideas of settler colonialism. In reality, English settlements were tiny islands in a vast sea of Indian lands.

By Katherine Grandjean,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked American Passage as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

New England was built on letters. Its colonists left behind thousands of them, brittle and browning and crammed with curls of purplish script. How they were delivered, though, remains mysterious. We know surprisingly little about the way news and people traveled in early America. No postal service or newspapers existed-not until 1704 would readers be able to glean news from a "public print." But there was, in early New England, an unseen world of travelers, rumors, movement, and letters. Unearthing that early American communications frontier, American Passage retells the story of English colonization as less orderly and more precarious than…


Book cover of Borders and Freedom of Movement in the Holy Roman Empire

Mark Dizon Why did I love this book?

I like Borders and Freedom because Scholz shows a different way of interpreting political borders and territories.

Most people would think that toll stations would be located at the boundary between states. But Scholz illustrates how they were actually located well within the borders of political territories because channeling movement was far more important than maintaining fixed boundaries.

By Luca Scholz,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Borders and Freedom of Movement in the Holy Roman Empire as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the Holy Roman Empire 'no prince... can forbid men passage in the common road', wrote the English jurist John Selden. In practice, moving through one the most fractured landscapes in human history was rarely as straightforward as suggested by Selden's account of the German 'liberty of passage'.

Across the Old Reich, mobile populations-from emperors to peasants-defied attempts to channel their mobility with actions ranging from mockery to bloodshed. In this study, Luca Scholz charts this contentious ordering of movement through the lens of safe conduct, an institution that was common throughout the early modern world but became a key…


Book cover of The Comanche Empire

Mark Dizon Why did I love this book?

The Comanche Empire turns imperial history on its head. I like how Hämäläinen puts the spotlight on Comanche Indians instead of European colonizers. Indigenous people were powerful empire builders too.

I love how the book is also a story of horses, bison and how Indigenous people harnessed the resources of their environment. Horse riding and bison hunting, as much as Indigenous adaptability, were the foundation of the Comanche Empire.

By Pekka Hamalainen,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Comanche Empire as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, at the high tide of imperial struggles in North America, an indigenous empire rose to dominate the fiercely contested lands of the American Southwest, the southern Great Plains, and northern Mexico. This powerful empire, built by the Comanche Indians, eclipsed its various European rivals in military prowess, political prestige, economic power, commercial reach, and cultural influence. Yet, until now, the Comanche empire has gone unrecognized in historical accounts.This compelling and original book uncovers the lost story of the Comanches. It is a story that challenges the idea of indigenous peoples as victims of…


Book cover of Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment

Mark Dizon Why did I love this book?

While Bárbaros is a classic in borderland studies, it is not stuffy and boring at all.

The stories and details in the book give life to what happened a long time ago in distant lands. Weber shows readers how dynamic and fluid Spanish borderlands in the Americas really were. I particularly find it fascinating how the book reveals people’s flexibility in the face of seemingly rigid colonial categories.

By David J. Weber,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Bárbaros as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A majestic exploration of Bourbon Spain's efforts to come to terms with the native peoples of the Americas, from Argentina to Alaska

Two centuries after Cortes and Pizarro seized the Aztec and Inca empires, Spain's conquest of America remained unfinished. Indians retained control over most of the lands in Spain's American empire. Mounted on horseback, savvy about European ways, and often possessing firearms, independent Indians continued to find new ways to resist subjugation by Spanish soldiers and conversion by Spanish missionaries.


In this panoramic study, David J. Weber explains how late eighteenthcentury Spanish administrators tried to fashion a more enlightened…


Book cover of Unwanted Neighbours: The Mughals, the Portuguese, and Their Frontier Zones

Mark Dizon Why did I love this book?

Unwanted Neighbours is a captivating look at the frontier interactions between the Mughals and the Portuguese.

I like how Flores breaks the typical division between maritime and overland empires. The Mughal Empire was as much maritime as it was territorial, and the Portuguese maritime empire had an overland side to it as well.

The stories of cross-cultural relations in the book give texture to the past and help readers imagine the complexities of the characters in Mughal India.

By Jorge Flores,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Unwanted Neighbours as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In December 1572 the Mughal emperor Akbar arrived in the port city of Khambayat. Having been raised in distant Kabul, Akbar, in his thirty years, had never been to the ocean. Presumably anxious with the news about the Mughal military campaign in Gujarat, several Portuguese merchants in Khambayat rushed to Akbar's presence. This encounter marked the beginning of a long, complex, and unequal relationship between a continental Muslim empire that was expanding into south
India, often looking back to Central Asia, and a European Christian maritime empire whose rulers considered themselves 'kings of the sea'.

By the middle of the…


Explore my book 😀

Reciprocal Mobilities: Indigeneity and Imperialism in an Eighteenth-Century Philippine Borderland

By Mark Dizon,

Book cover of Reciprocal Mobilities: Indigeneity and Imperialism in an Eighteenth-Century Philippine Borderland

What is my book about?

When we think about imperial expansion, we usually think of European colonizers marching to and penetrating previously unconquered territories. We tend to ignore the role of Indigenous people. Conventional histories of colonialism portray independent Indigenes as immobile people fixed in their places of refuge, either hiding from colonizers or waiting to repel any foreign invasion.

However, Indigenous people moved about too. In the case of the Philippines, while Spaniards and their allies expanded and conquered frontier regions, Indigenes also moved about, visiting and raiding colonial towns. In my book, I look at colonial interactions in eighteenth-century Philippines through the lens of reciprocal mobilities. Colonial mobility cannot be separated from its Indigenous counterpart.

Book cover of American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England
Book cover of Borders and Freedom of Movement in the Holy Roman Empire
Book cover of The Comanche Empire

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Book cover of Currently Away: How Two Disenchanted People Traveled the Great Loop for Nine Months and Returned to the Start, Energized and Optimistic

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The plan was insane. The trap seemed to snap shut on Bruce and Maggie Tate, an isolation forced on them by the pandemic and America's growing political factionalism. Something had to change.

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