Trade route
Once or twice a year Spanish galleons sailed from Manila to Acapulco, heading north past Japan to catch the westerlies, and came back along about 13°N by way of Guam. American silver bought Chinese silk and porcelain and Asian spices, which mule trains carried on across Mexico to Veracruz.
The Manila galleon trade route was a Spanish trade route linking the Philippines in the Spanish East Indies to Mexico (New Spain), across the Pacific Ocean, in use from 1565 to 1815. This route was plied by sailing ships or galleons i.e. the Manila galleons (Spanish: Galeón de Manila; Tagalog: Galeon ng Maynila) that made one or two round-trip voyages per year between Manila and Acapulco.
The route was inaugurated in 1565 after the Augustinian friar and navigator Andrés de Urdaneta pioneered the tornaviaje or return route from the Philippines to Mexico. Urdaneta and Alonso de Arellano made the first successful round trips that year, by taking advantage of the Kuroshio Current. The galleons set sail from Cavite, in Manila Bay, at the end of June or the first week of July, sailing through the northern Pacific and reaching Acapulco in March to April of the next calendar year. The return route from Acapulco passes through lower latitudes closer to the equator, stopping over in the Marianas, then sailing onwards through the San Bernardino Strait off Cape Espiritu Santo in Samar and then to Manila Bay and anchoring again off Cavite by June or July. The trade using "Urdaneta's route" lasted until 1815, when the Mexican War of Independence broke out. The majority of these galleons were built and loaded in shipyards in Cavite, utilizing native hardwoods like the Philippine teak, with sails produced in Ilocos, and with the rigging and cordage made from salt-resistant Manila hemp. The vast majority of the galleon's crew consisted of Filipino natives; many of whom were farmers, street children, or vagrants press-ganged into service as sailors. The officers and other skilled crew were usually Spaniards (a high percentage of whom were of Basque descent). The galleons were state vessels and thus the cost of their construction and upkeep was borne by the Spanish Crown.
The galleons mostly carried cargoes of Chinese and other Asian luxury goods in exchange for New World silver. Silver prices in Asia were substantially higher than in America, leading to an arbitrage opportunity for the Manila galleon. Every space of the galleons was packed tightly with cargo, even spaces outside the holds like the decks, cabins, and magazines. In extreme cases, they towed barges filled with more goods. While this resulted in slow passage (which sometimes resulted in shipwrecks or turning back), the profit margins were so high that it was commonly practiced. These goods included Indian ivory and precious stones, Chinese silk and porcelain, cloves from the Moluccas islands, cinnamon, ginger, lacquers, tapestries and perfumes from all over Asia. In addition, slaves (collectively known as "chinos") from various parts of Asia (mainly slaves bought from the Portuguese slave markets and Muslim captives from the Spanish–Moro conflict) were also transported from the Manila slave markets to Mexico. Free indigenous Filipinos also migrated to Mexico via the galleons (including galleon crew that jumped ship), comprising the majority of free Asian settlers ("chinos libres") in Mexico, particularly in regions near the terminal ports of the Manila galleons. The route also fostered cultural exchanges that shaped the identities and the culture of the countries involved.
The Manila galleons were also known colloquially in New Spain as La Nao de China ("The China Ship") because they carried mostly Chinese goods shipped from Manila. The Manila Galleon route was an early instance of globalization, representing a trade route from Asia that crossed to the Americas, thereby connecting all the world's continents in global silver trade.
In 2015, the Philippines and Mexico began preparations for the nomination of the Manila–Acapulco Galleon Trade Route in the UNESCO World Heritage List with backing from Spain, which has also suggested the tri-national nomination of the archives on the Manila–Acapulco Galleons in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.
Spain's presence in the Philippines came from a desire to compete with Portugal for control of the spice trade. Between 1500 and 1530, the Portuguese crown worked to replace Middle Eastern and Venetian traders as the principal transporter of lucrative spices, conquering Goa in 1510 and making contact with the Maluku Islands in modern Indonesia in 1515. In 1521, a Spanish expedition led by Ferdinand Magellan sailed west across the Pacific using the westward trade winds. The expedition discovered the Mariana Islands and the Philippines and claimed them for Spain. Although Magellan was killed by natives commanded by Lapulapu during the battle of Mactan in the Philippines, one of his ships, the Victoria, made it back to Spain by continuing westward.
To settle and trade with these islands from the Americas, an eastward maritime return path was necessary. The Trinidad, which tried this a few years later, failed. In 1529, Álvaro de Saavedra Cerón also tried sailing east from the Philippines, but could not find "westerlies" across the Pacific. In 1543, Bernardo de la Torre also failed. In 1542, however, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo helped pave the way by sailing north from Mexico to explore the Pacific coast, reaching just north of the 38th parallel at the Russian River. The frustration of these failures is shown in a letter sent in 1552 from Portuguese Goa by the Spanish missionary Francis Xavier to Simão Rodrigues asking that no more fleets attempt the New Spain–East Asia route, lest they be lost.
Despite prior failures navigator Andrés de Urdaneta effectively persuaded Spanish officials in New Spain that a Philippines–Mexico trade route was preferable to other alternatives. He argued against direct trade between Spain and the Philippines through the Strait of Magellan on the basis that climate would make passage through the strait possible only during summer and that therefore ships would need to stay the winter in a more northern port. His preference for Mexico rather than for the shorter overland route through Darién is thought to have been due to his links to Pedro de Alvarado.
The Manila–Acapulco galleon trade finally began when Spanish navigators Alonso de Arellano and Andrés de Urdaneta discovered the eastward return route in 1565. Sailing as part of the expedition commanded by Miguel López de Legazpi to conquer the Philippines in 1564, Urdaneta was given the task of finding a return route. Reasoning that the trade winds of the Pacific might move in a gyre as the Atlantic winds did, they sailed north, going all the way to the 38th parallel north, off the east coast of Japan, before catching the westerlies that would take them back across the Pacific. He commanded a vessel which completed the eastward voyage in 129 days; this marked the opening of the Manila galleon trade.
Reaching the west coast of North America, Urdaneta's ship, the San Pedro, hit the coast near Santa Catalina Island, California, then followed the shoreline south to San Blas and later to Acapulco, arriving on October 8, 1565. Most of his crew died on the long initial voyage, for which they had not sufficiently provisioned. Arellano, who had taken a more southerly route, had already arrived.
The English privateer Francis Drake also reached the California coast, in 1579. After capturing a Spanish ship heading for Manila, Drake turned north, hoping to meet another Spanish treasure ship coming south on its return from Manila to Acapulco. He failed in that regard, but staked an English claim somewhere on the northern California coast. Although the ship's log and other records were lost, the officially accepted location is now called Drakes Bay, on Point Reyes south of Cape Mendocino.
By the 18th century, it was understood that a less northerly track was sufficient when nearing the North American coast, and galleon navigators steered well clear of the rocky and often fogbound northern and central California coast. According to historian William Lytle Schurz, "They generally made their landfall well down the coast, somewhere between Point Conception and Cape San Lucas ... After all, these were preeminently merchant ships, and the business of exploration lay outside their field, though chance discoveries were welcomed".
The first motivation for land exploration of present-day California was to scout out possible way stations for the seaworn Manila galleons on the last leg of their journey. Early proposals came to little, but in 1769, the Portola expedition established ports at San Diego and Monterey (which became the administrative center of Alta California), providing safe harbors for returning Manila galleons.
Despite annual galleons sailing along the coast from 1565-1769, no ships discovered the Golden Gate and San Francisco Bay, due to factors such as fog, ships avoiding sailing close to shore, and hills making the coast look continuous from a distance.
In 1587 Spaniards discovered Morro Bay, far south of San Francisco. In 1594 they discovered Drake's Bay north of San Francisco and Monterey Bay south of it. Galleons stopped in Monterey prior to California's Spanish settlement in 1769; however, visits became regular between 1777 and 1794 because the Crown ordered the galleon to stop in Monterey. Monterey was about two months and three weeks out from Manila in the 18th century, and the galleon tended to stop there 40 days before arriving in Acapulco.
Trade with Ming China via Manila served as a major source of revenue for the Spanish Empire and as a fundamental source of income for Spanish colonists in the Philippine Islands. Galleons used for the trade between East and West were crafted by Filipino artisans. Until 1593, two or more ships would set sail annually from each port. The Manila trade became so lucrative that Seville merchants petitioned king Philip II of Spain to protect the monopoly of the Casa de Contratación based in Seville. This led to the passing of a decree in 1593 that set a limit of two ships sailing each year from either port, with one kept in reserve in Acapulco and one in Manila. An "armada", or armed escort of galleons, was also approved. Due to official attempts to control the galleon trade, contraband and understating of ships' cargoes became widespread.
The galleon trade was supplied by merchants largely from port areas of Fujian, such as Quanzhou, as depicted in the Selden Map, and Yuegang (the old port of Haicheng in Zhangzhou, Fujian), who traveled to Manila to sell the Spaniards spices, porcelain, ivory, lacquerware, processed silk cloth and other valuable commodities. Cargoes varied from one voyage to another but often included goods from all over Asia: jade, wax, gunpowder and silk from China; amber, cotton and rugs from India; spices from Indonesia and Malaysia; and a variety of goods from Japan, the Spanish part of the so-called Nanban trade, including Japanese fans, chests, screens, porcelain and lacquerware.
In addition, slaves of various origins, including East Africa, Portuguese India, the Muslim sultanates of Southeast Asia, and the Spanish Philippines, were transported from Manila and sold in New Spain. African slaves were categorized as negros or cafres while all slaves of Asian origin were called chinos. The lack of detailed records makes it difficult to estimate the total number of slaves transported or the proportions of slaves from each region.
Galleons transported goods to be sold in the Americas, namely in New Spain and Peru, as well as in European markets. East Asia trading primarily functioned on a silver standard due to Ming China's use of silver ingots as a medium of exchange. As such, goods were mostly bought with silver mined from New Spain and Potosí.
The cargoes arrived in Acapulco and were transported by land across Mexico. Mule trains would carry the goods along the China Road from Acapulco first to the administrative center of Mexico City, then on to the port of Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico, where they were loaded onto the Spanish treasure fleet bound for Spain. The transport of goods overland by porters, the housing of travelers and sailors at inns by innkeepers, and the stocking of long voyages with food and supplies provided by haciendas before departing Acapulco helped to stimulate the economy of New Spain.
The trade of goods and exchanges of people were not limited to Mexico and the Philippines, since Guatemala, Panama, Ecuador, and Peru also served as supplementary streams to the main one between Mexico and Philippines.
Around 80% of the goods shipped back from Acapulco to Manila were crops from the Americas – silver, cochineal, seeds, sweet potato, maize, tomato, tobacco, chickpeas, chocolate and cocoa, watermelon seeds, vines, and fig trees. The remaining 20% were goods transshipped from Europe and North Africa such as wine and olive oil, and metal goods such as weapons, knobs and spurs.
This Pacific route was the alternative to the trip west across the Indian Ocean, and around the Cape of Good Hope, which was reserved to Portugal according to the Treaty of Tordesillas. It also avoided stopping over at ports controlled by competing powers such as Portugal and the Netherlands.
From the early days of exploration, the Spanish knew that the American continent was much narrower across the Panamanian isthmus than across Mexico. They tried to establish a regular land crossing there, but the thick jungle and tropical diseases such as yellow fever and malaria made it impractical.
It took at least four months to sail across the Pacific Ocean from Manila to Acapulco, and the galleons were the main link between the Philippines and the viceregal capital at Mexico City and thence to Spain itself. Many of the so-called "Kastilas" or Spaniards in the Philippines were actually of Mexican descent, and the Hispanic culture of the Philippines is influenced by Spanish and Mexican culture in particular. Soldiers and settlers recruited from Mexico and Peru also gathered in Acapulco before they were sent to settle at the presidios of the Philippines. Even after the galleon era, and at the time when Mexico finally gained its independence, the two nations still continued to trade, except for a brief lull during the Spanish–American War.
In Manila, the safety of ocean crossings was commended to the virgin Nuestra Señora de la Soledad de Porta Vaga in masses held by the Archbishop of Manila. If the expedition was successful the voyagers would go to La Ermita (the church) to pay homage and offer gold, gems or jewelry from Hispanic countries to the image of the virgin. So it came to be that the virgin was named the "Queen of the Galleons".
Economic shocks due to the arrival of Spanish-American silver in China were among the factors that led to the end of the Ming dynasty.
In 1740, as part of the administrative changes of the Bourbon Reforms, the Spanish crown began allowing the use of registered ships or navíos de registro in the Pacific. These ships traveled solo, outside the convoy system of the galleons. While these solo voyages would not immediately replace the galleon system, they were more efficient and better able to avoid being captured by the Royal Navy of Great Britain.
In 1813, the Cortes of Cádiz decreed the suppression of the route and the following year, with the end of the Peninsular War, Ferdinand VII of Spain ratified the dissolution. The last ship to reach Manila was the San Fernando or Magallanes, which arrived empty, as its cargo had been requisitioned in Mexico.
The Manila–Acapulco galleon trade ended in 1815, a few years before Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821. After this, the Spanish Crown took direct control of the Philippines and governed directly from Madrid. Sea transport became easier in the mid-19th century after the invention of steam powered ships and the opening of the Suez Canal, which reduced the travel time from Spain to the Philippines to 40 days.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Manila galleon”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.