Transplantation of Asian Spices in the Spanish Empire 1518-1640

Home , Battle of Pinos, Charles Swan (pirate), Council of Portugal, Council of the Indies, Diezmo, Francisco de Mendoza

Transplantation of Asian Spices in the Spanish Empire 1518-1640:

Entrepreneurship, Empiricism, and the Crown

Omri Bassewitch Frenkel

Department of History and Classical Studies

Faculty of Arts

McGill University

Montreal

January 2017

A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the

degree of Doctor of Philosophy

2017 ii

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the way in which Crown-sponsored attempts to transplant or domesticate commercially valuable Asian spices throughout the Spanish empire generated production, circulation and institutionalization of empirical knowledge throughout Spain’s imperial domains. Although largely unsuccessful, Spaniards perceived spice transplantations as an important component of Spain’s imperial expansion during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ventures for the introduction or domestication of spices were often initiated and run by networks of settlers, entrepreneurs, officials, friars, and natural historians, who, through empirical observation and experimentation, acquired specific expertise in that field. Successful spice transplantations attracted the attention of Spain’s imperial establishments, namely the Council of the Indies and the Casa de Contratación [known also as the “House of Trade”], which, in turn, engaged colonial administrators in Spanish America and the Philippines to call upon relevant experts for information regarding spice cultivation and processing. Consequently, experiments in the introduction and cultivation of spices were conducted in private and Crown estates in Spanish

America, the Philippines and Spain, and the results thereof helped formulate Crown policies regulating spice cultivation and trade. It is maintained here that spice transplantation projects reflect an organizational culture in which policies were formed and decisions were made based on expert opinions obtained through empirical observations and experiments. Essentially, the Crown has adopted a scientific approach to direct its policies. Therefore, this study argues that as early as the 1570s, Crown establishments assessed and analyzed complex empirical evidence in variable economic, political, and diplomatic contexts, to form decisions which were perceived to bear critical consequences to Spain’s economy and its imperial expansion.

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Résumé

Cette thèse examine la manière dont la transplantation et domestication des épices asiatiques ayant une valeur commerciale dans l'empire espagnol a contribué à la production, circulation et institutionnalisation de connaissances empiriques à travers les colonies impériales de l'Espagne

Couronne-parrainée. Bien qu’éventuellement échoués, les projets de transplantation d'épices

étaient perçus par les Espagnols comme étant une composante importante de l'expansion impériale au cours des XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Les entreprises d'introduction ou de domestication des épices ont souvent été initiées et gérées par des réseaux de colons, entrepreneurs, fonctionnaires, moines et historiens naturels, qui, par l'observation empirique et l'expérimentation acquéraient une expertise dans le domaine impliqué. Les projets de transplantations d'épices réussis ont attiré l'attention des établissements impériaux de l'Espagne, notamment, le Conseil des Indes et la Casa de Contratación, qui à leur tour, ont engagé les administrateurs des colonies de l’Amérique espagnole et des Philippines à faire appel aux experts compétents dans le domaine de la culture et du développement des épices. Par conséquent, des expérimentations dans l'introduction et la culture des épices ont été menées dans les propriétés privées et les propriétés de la Couronne espagnole dans l’Amérique, les Philippines et l'Espagne, et les résultats de celles-ci ont aidé à formuler les politiques de la Couronne régissant la culture et le commerce des épices. Il est proposé ici que les projets de la transplantation des épices reflètent une culture organisationnelle où les stratégies gouvernementales étaient basées sur les opinions des experts dérivés des observations empiriques et des expérimentations. En essentiel, la Couronne a adopté une approche scientifique pour guider ces politiques. Par conséquent, cette étude soutient que, dès les années 1570, les

établissements de la Couronne espagnole évaluaient et analysaient les données empiriques complexes sous des contextes économiques, politiques, et diplomatiques variables, pour former iv les décisions aux conséquences perçues critiques pour l'économie de l'Espagne et pour son expansion impériale.

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my deep gratitude to Prof. Gwyn Campbell. Thank you for taking me under your supervision, for encouraging and guiding me through this journey, especially during the difficult moments when I was straying in the dark. I appreciate your efforts and the long hours you spent striving to improve my dissertation. Many thanks to Prof. Nicolas Dew, for whom I repeatedly had the pleasure to work as a teaching assistant. Thank you for taking part in my advisory committee, and for providing kind advice throughout my doctoral research. Thanks as well to Prof. Brian Cowan for taking part in my advisory committee, and for keeping your office door open whenever I wanted to brainstorm or needed to complain. Additionally, special thanks to Prof. Paula De Vos from San Diego State University, whose scholarship inspired my dissertation and who agreed to be on my advisory committee. Thank you for your encouragement and for your valuable comments on my chapters.

I would like to express my gratefulness to Prof. Gershon Hundert, who as a graduate advisor went out of his way to personally let me know that I was accepted into the program, and who continued to care for me ever since. This long and logistically complicated project would not have been possible without the financial assistance from McGill’s Department of History, The

Peter Cundill Fellowship in History, Abner Kingman Fellowship in Arts, and the Wolfe Fellowship in Scientific and Technological Literacy. Special thanks to Professors Jason Opal, Brian Lewis.

Griet Vankeerberghen, and Lorenz Lüthi, and again Nicolas Dew for helping me secure additional financial awards. I would like to thank Mitali Das, the Department’s Graduate and Postdoctoral

Coordinator, that helped me navigate the University’s bureaucratic maze. vi

Dr. Anna Winterbottom, I am indebted to you for spending precious time proofreading and commenting on all my dissertation chapters! I can’t imagine completing it without your tremendous help. Thank you very much, María Eugenia Osorio Oliveros, for teaching me the secrets of manuscript transcription, for helping me transcribe the untranscribable, and for being a good friend. Thank you, Geoff Wallace, for taking the trouble to obtain for me missing documents from Seville, and for being a great friend throughout the last five and a half years of a roller- coaster. It has been a privilege to be a part of the Indian Ocean World Centre community. I want to thank my fellow PhD students and the Centre’s postdocs for your support throughout the years.

I would like to thank my family: my parents, sister, and brother, who, overcoming our geographical distance, were always there for me with virtual hugs and kind words of love and support. Thank you Ima, Aba, Naama, and Idan, I miss you. Vika, Tolia, and Zhenia, my mother, father, and sister in law, thank you for accepting me into your family with open arms, and for encouraging me and believing in me. Last but not least, Liya, my partner, my friend, my love, thank you for being there for me and never doubting me. Without you this moment would never have come.

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Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii Résumé ...... iii Acknowledgments ...... v Table of Content ...... vii Table of Figures ...... ix Source Abbreviations - Archives and Sections ...... x Introduction ...... 1  Relevant Literature Review ...... 8  Chapter by Chapter ...... 15  Note on Sources ...... 17

Chapter 1: On Empire and Spices ...... 21  The Iberian Age of Exploration and the Search for Spices ...... 21  Running an Empire ...... 27  The Casa de Contratación de Indias ...... 27  The Casa de la Especiería ...... 31  The Formation of the Council of the Indies ...... 32  Juan de Ovando and his Inquiry into the Council of the Indies ...... 34  Spices in Early Modern Europe ...... 38

Chapter 2: Ginger, Pepper and Prestige: Plant Transplantation and the Philippine Project 59  Tradition Meets Need – Spanish Crop Transplantation ...... 59  Old World Spices, New World Soil ...... 62  Spice Monopolies and Exploration ...... 68  Smugglers and Circumnavigation ...... 79  The Philippines as a Transplantation Base ...... 85  Conclusion ...... 88

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Chapter 3: Bernardino del Castillo, the Mexican Experimental Botanical Garden, and the Scientific Community of Sixteenth-Century New Spain ...... 90  Exploration and Administration ...... 91  Bernardino del Castillo - Settler Extraordinaire ...... 92  Bernardino del Castillo, the Son, and Ginger Transplantation into Spain ...... 100  Bernardino del Castillo, the Son, and the Scientific Community of New Spain ..... 114  Conclusion ...... 119

Chapter 4: The Spanish Colonization of the Philippines – New Land, Old Habits ...... 120  The Colonization of the Philippine Islands ...... 121  The Spanish Philippine Economy: Natural Resources, Agriculture, and the China trade, or why cash cropping failed in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Philippines? ...... 134  Spanish Crop Introduction for Self-consumption – Between Three Continents ..... 137  The Manila Galleon Trade and its Impact on Spanish Agricultural Ventures ...... 141  Environmental and Demographic Impact of the Spanish Colonization of the Philippines...... 145  Conclusion ...... 149

Chapter 5: Cash Crop Introduction into the Philippines ...... 151  The Philippines Spice Emporia - An Unfulfilled Potential? ...... 152  The Spice Ventures of the Franciscans in the Philippines ...... 158  Manila as a Sixteenth-Century Scientific Hub...... 166  Tobacco Transplantation and Trade in late Sixteenth to mid-Seventeenth Century Philippines...... 169  Conclusion ...... 187

Conclusion ...... 190  Aftermath ...... 197

Bibliography ...... 201

Table of Figures

Fig 1.1: The Cantino Planisphere (Anonymous Portuguese, 1502). The earliest known depiction of the demarcation line drawn in the Treaty of Tordesillas...... 23

Fig 1.2 Martin Waldseemüller’s world map (1507). The first map to depict the Americas separate from Asia...... 24

Fig 1.3 Sebastian Elcano’s coat of arms ...... 25

Fig 1.4 The meridian and antemeridian as agreed on in the treaty of Tordesillas (1494), and the treaty of Zaragoza (1529) respectively...... 26

Fig 1.5 Cinnamon branch, woodcut from Acosta (1578)...... 47

Fig 1.6 Clove tree, woodcut from Acosta (1578)...... 49

Fig 1.7 Ginger, woodcut from Acosta (1578)...... 51

Fig 1.8 Nutmeg tree, woodcut from Acosta (1578)...... 53

Fig 1.9 China root, woodcut from Acosta (1578)...... 54

Fig 1.10 Tamarind branch, woodcut from Acosta (1578)...... 56

Fig 1.11 Black pepper, woodcut from Acosta (1578)...... 58

Fig 3.1 Estates owned by Bernardino del Castillo and his Sons (1536-1570)...... 94

Fig 3.2 Bernardino del Castillo’s spice transplantation network...... 99

Fig. 3.3 A drawing of a ginger root on the margin of instructions for its cultivation (1573) ...... 107

Fig 4.1 The Philippines and the Spice Islands ...... 133

Fig 5.1 Philippine tobacco diffusion, 1570s-1680s ...... 187

Fig. 6.1 A crate for the transport of live plants on board a ship from Casimiro Gómez Ortega (1779)...... 198

Fig. 6.2 Construction of a crate for the transport of live plants on board a ship, from Casimiro Gómez Ortega (1779)...... 199

Source Abbreviations - Archives and Sections

Archives in Spain

AGI - Archivo General de Indias.

 Contaduria – Contaduría  Contratacion – Casa de la Contratación  Gobierno  Buenos_Aires – Audiencia de Buenos Aires  Filipinas – Audiencia de Filipinas  Mexico – Audiencia de México  Santa_Fe – Audiencia de Santa Fe  Santo_Domingo – Audiencia de Santo-Domingo

 Indiferente – Indiferente General  Patronato -Patronato Real

AHN – Archivo Historico Nacional

 Codices – Consejo de Indias  Diversos-Colecciones - Colección Documentos de Indias

AGS – Archivo General de Simancas

 CCA - Cámara de Castilla

Archives in Mexico

AGN – Archivo General de la Nación

 General de Parte – Institutos Coloniales/Gobierno Virreinal/General de Parte (GD51)  Mercedes - Institutos Coloniales/Real Audiencia/Mercedes (GD72)  Tierras - Institutos Coloniales/Real Audiencia/Tierras (GD110) 1

Introduction

In late 1552, Francisco de Mendoza, son of the first viceroy of New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza, returned to Spain from the New World.1 Mendoza, who had also commissioned an herbal of Aztec medicinals composed in Latin, known today as the codex de la Cruz - Badiano,2 had a strong interest in economic botany.3 Sometime after his arrival, Mendoza met Nicolás Monardes, a renowned Sevillian physician, apothecary, and entrepreneur. Since the only mention of this meeting is Monardes’ account of it,4 its purpose is not entirely clear. Given the reputation of the two men, we can assume that Mendoza either sought Monardes’ expert opinion, or had interest in doing business with him.

At their meeting in sometime between 1552 and 1558, Mendoza handed Monardes fresh tubers of China root (Smilax china), a medicinal plant native to East Asia, which was considered effective in treating syphilis. Monardes was evidently surprised, as he had only previously seen the root in its dry form. Mendoza explained that these roots originated from New Spain, where they had recently been harvested. Monardes did not expect China root, usually imported into

Europe from East Asia by the Portuguese, to be cultivated in New Spain. Mendoza also disclosed

1 Francisco Javier Escudero Buendía, Francisco de Mendoza, el Indio, 1524-1563 : Protomonarca de México y Perú, comendador de Socuéllamos y capitán general de las Galeras de España (Guadalajara [Spain]: AACHE Ediciones, 2006), 144-5. 2 Titled Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis – this herbal was commissioned by Francisco de Mendoza, or perhaps even by his father, and composed in the Franciscan College in Tlaltelolco, a city in the Valley of Mexico. Mendoza the father held close ties with the indigenous doctor Martín de la Cruz, one of the Codex’s authors. See: Millie Gimmel, "Reading Medicine in the Codex De La Cruz Badiano," Journal of the History of Ideas 69, no. 2 (2008): 172, 75. 3 Economic botany was defined by Paula De Vos as “the practice of studying the botanical properties of plants that may be of use to human society and cultivating them for profit.” Paula De Vos, "The Science of Spices: Empiricism and Economic Botany in the Early Spanish Empire," Journal of World History Volume 17, no. Number 4 (2006): 400. 4 Nicolás Monardes, Dos libros, el uno trata de todas las cosas que traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales, que siruen al uso de Medicina, ... El otro libro, trata de los medicinas marauillosas que son contra todo veneno, la piedra bezaar, y la yerua escuerçonera. Con la cura de los venenados. ... Agora nueuamente copuestos por el doctor Niculoso de Monardes medico de Seuilla (Sevilla: Trugillo, Sebastian, 1565), 31r-31v. 2 to Monardes that China root was but one of several spices farmed in New Spain at that time, with the eventual goal of wholesale export to Spain.

Monardes, it appears, did not believe Mendoza’s prediction until he saw with his own eyes a contract the latter signed with the Spanish King to provide Spain with “a wholesale quantity of

Spices that had already been planted [in New Spain]” [“mucha cantidad de especería que ya tenía comenzada a poner y plantar.”] Specimens of green ginger, displayed by Mendoza, and the China root already mentioned, served Monardes as additional evidence for the advanced stage of

Mendoza’s project.5

In this dissertation, I focus on Crown-sponsored attempts to transplant Asian spices6 throughout the Spanish empire, and on efforts to locate varieties of known spices in Spain’s

Southeast Asian colony in the Philippine Islands, from the beginning of the sixteenth century until the end of the union of the Iberian Crowns in 1640. By doing so I attempt to answer the multiple questions that arise from this seemingly simple interaction between Francisco de Mendoza and

Nicolás Monardes: How important were spices in early modern Europe and for what were they used? What was the Spanish motivation for the transplantation of such plants? How, by whom and from where were spices and medicinals brought to New Spain? Into where were they transplanted and who oversaw their cultivation? What was the rationale guiding these transplantation projects and who conducted and managed transplantation experiments, and where? Were these projects

5 It seems from Monardes' account that he witnessed Mendoza's contract with the King after the meeting in which China roots were presented to him. This contract, described in detail in chapter 2, was signed in 1558 and endorsed in 1559. Ibid. 6 Asian spices will be referred here as “spices”, as early modern Spanish used the word especias mostly to describe spices of Asian origin. Medicinals coming from America were usually referred to as drugs (drogas). Thus, in the first Spanish dictionary published in 1611, cloves (clavo) and ginger (gengibre [sic.]) are described as spices, while Mechoacán, an American drug is referred to as medicinal root (raiz medicinal). Sebastian de Covarrubias Orozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española (Madrid: Luís Sánchez, imp. del Rey, 1611), 251v, 434, 543v. See also "especias", p.376 3 initiated and funded by the Crown or by private entrepreneurs? How common was the phenomenon of Asian cash crop transplantation in the sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Spanish Empire?

And where were these medicinals destined to?

Spice introduction and cultivation projects were an inherent component of Spanish colonization and empire building. Crop introduction was not an exclusively Spanish project.

Rather, it can be argued that this phenomenon goes hand in hand with the history of human migration. However, the Spanish transplantation of Asian spices is perhaps the first recorded instance in which a society endeavored to introduce plants from lands it (at least initially) did not control to newly conquered territories. Moreover, the agricultural products that resulted from such introduction projects were largely not meant to be consumed in Spain, but exported to other

Europeans markets. As such, Asian spices, rather than sugarcane, which had been introduced and cultivated in the Iberian Peninsula since Muslim times, represent the true origin of cash-crops.7

Besides the mere novelty, Asian spices’ foreign nature and their introduction to the Americas, provided the Spaniards with epistemological challenges, similarly to those they encountered when facing American flora. Therefore, the knowledge required for such introduction projects was necessarily obtained in an empirical manner.

Attempts at spice transplantation highlight Spain’s utilitarian imperial culture, which encouraged Crown institutions to collect empirical knowledge regarding the empires’ natural resources, analyze it, and utilize it in decision making processes. Such knowledge was based on the observation and experimentation of individuals, such as officials, settlers, entrepreneurs, natural historians and friars in New Spain and the Philippines. Consequently, this work explores

7 Cash crop is defined as “a crop that is grown mainly to be sold, rather than used by the people who grew it or those living in the area it is grown in.” Cambridge Dictionary. Online. “Cash Crop”. http://dictionary.cambridge.org/ Accessed on 31.3.2017. 4 the bureaucratic and social connections between these royal institutions and those involved in transplantation projects, as well as the mechanisms through which knowledge about Asian spices and methods for their transplantation and cultivation was disseminated throughout the empire.

Spices and medicinals were a low-volume high-profit commodity much sought after by early modern Europeans. Specifically, spices of Asian origin, such as cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger, featured as important components in early modern European cuisines and medicinal preparations. In the fifteenth century, Venice controlled the Mediterranean trade in such spices and was the main source of supply for markets in Europe. The desire to reach the origins of such spices and partake in the lucrative Asian-European spice trade triggered the fifteenth-century Iberian maritime voyages. The well-known outcome of these voyages was Columbus’ landing on the

Caribbean islands, and Vasco da Gama reaching India where real Indians and true spices were found. During the first decades of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese extended their hold on the sources of spices, establishing fortified factories on the Spice Islands,8 the only source of cloves and nutmeg at that time.

Subsequently, the Spanish adopted four strategies of economic botany in endeavouring to develop trade in spices: they attempted to identify local species of known spices, searched for new local plants with medicinal properties (bioprospecting) about which they learned from indigenous peoples, aspired to colonize territories in East Asia where they anticipated finding spices, and endeavoured to transplant “spices of commerce”9 from their lands of origin in East Asia to territories they controlled. While during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Spanish

8 The Spice Islands also known as the Moluccas or Maluku Islands, are a part of today’s province of Northern Maluku in Eastern Indonesia. 9 Spices such as nutmeg and cinnamon have many varieties, however, their potency and quality vary greatly. Early modern Europeans distinguished spices of high commercial value as “true spices” or “spies of commerce”. 5

Crown simultaneously employed all these strategies, their utilization changed according to geographical conditions and political circumstances.

Columbus, in believing that he had reached East Asia, sent members of his crew equipped with spice samples in an attempt to have the indigenous people they met point out locations where such plants could be found. While he was also responsible for introducing Old World crops to

America, among them food staples for subsistence and sugarcane (which was, at that time, a valuable medicinal cash crop), Columbus was not an innovator in regards to the idea of crop introduction in Spain’s overseas territories. Prior to crossing the Atlantic, both Iberian nations successfully transplanted fruit trees and sugarcane to Madeira and the Canary Islands, where they established a successful sugar plantation economy.

As early as the 1510s, Spanish settlers and the Crown showed interest in developing spice cash cropping in the Caribbean, based both on introduced Asian varieties, and on American medicinal plants, of which the Spanish learned from indigenous people. At the same time, the

Spanish Crown authorized and was among the investors in Magellan’s expedition, aimed at securing a foothold on the Spice Islands.

In the 1520s-1540s, several other expeditions were sent from Spain and New Spain across the Pacific in an attempt to establish a lasting colony in a spice-rich territory. However, evidence shows that the aim or result of at least two of them was also the acquisition of spice plants for transplantation to New Spain. In 1565, after several failed attempts, the Spanish managed to establish a permanent colony on the Philippine Islands, an archipelago located about 700 kilometers north of the Spice Islands. As was the case with the colonization of New Spain and the

Caribbean Islands, the Spanish introduced into the Philippines Old World crops and domesticated animals. This was in addition to American crops from New Spain and Asian vegetables, fruits and 6 farm animals from China and Japan, which were not traditionally consumed by Spaniards, but which complemented their diet on the Philippines.

While the Spaniards anticipated that due to the proximity of the Philippines to the

Moluccas, valuable spices were likely be readily available there, largely, their hopes did not materialize. Consequently, Spaniards in the Philippines sent seedlings of spices and medicinal plants to be planted in suitable locations in New Spain, continued to look for commercial varieties of spices on the archipelago, and attempted or proposed the transplantation of cloves and nutmeg from the Spice Islands to the Philippines. Although no large-scale spice cultivation on the archipelago developed in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, tobacco, privately introduced into the Philippines shortly after colonization, thrived both locally and as an export commodity as early as the first half of the seventeenth century.

No significant durable trade in spices was ever achieved in the Spanish empire.

Nevertheless, spices remained a focus of interest for the Spanish Crown and its subjects throughout the early modern period. Sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spanish explorers, officials, settlers, and friars in the Philippines and the Moluccas strove to locate spices; study their properties and processing methods; identify their climatic, geographical and nutritional needs; determine the feasibility of their transplantation to other Spanish controlled territories, and define their commercial value and potential markets. In New Spain, Hispaniola, and the Philippines, settlers, friars, and entrepreneurs experimented with the cultivation of such spices, but also perfected processing methods to match shipping conditions and European demand. Experiments in spice cultivation were similarly conducted by officials of the Casa de Contratación in Seville,10 and

10 The Casa de Contratación de Indias is sometimes referred to in English scholarship as the “House of Trade”. I chose to keep its Spanish title, as this establishment did not function just as a clearing house for the Indies but embodied other functions. 7 probably in other locations in Spain. Those officials were likewise responsible for evaluating market receptiveness to a variety of spice products. Subsequently, natural historians11 confirmed the verity of New Spain grown spices in their materiae medicae, published in multiple European countries, thus encouraging their sale.12 Such processes of spice introduction and assimilation required those involved to acquire specific expertise through observation, experimentation, and collaboration with one another. Consequently, protocols were established for spice transplantation from their places of origin in Southeast Asia to the Philippines, New Spain, and Spain.

From its inception in the early sixteenth century, spice transplantation and cultivation were backed by the Crown in the form of grants, stipends, monopolies, tax exemptions, and even titles, which were given to entrepreneurs and settlers who undertook such projects. However, individuals in the imperial periphery often initiated or proposed the introduction of spices. They consulted imperial establishments, such as the Council of the Indies or the Casa de Contratación, when funding was required, a monetary award expected, or to negotiate exclusive cultivation and trade rights. Once involved in transplantation projects, these peninsular establishments worked in concert with the colonial administrations in America and the Philippines, and called upon botanical experts for their opinion.13 Experiments in transplantation were conducted in fields, plots, and gardens14 in Spanish America, the Philippines and Spain, and their results were used in the

11 “Natural history” was an account of nature based on information acquired by the investigation of natural things. Harold John Cook, Matters of Exchange : Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007), 21. 12 This process was somewhat similar to the dissemination and assimilation of New World drugs in Europe as described in: T. Huguet-Termes, "New World Materia Medica in Spanish Renaissance Medicine: From Scholarly Reception to Practical Impact," Medical history 45, no. 3 (2001): 363-8. 13 Here I refer to early modern experts as defined by Eric H. Ash, "Introduction: Expertise and the Early Modern State," in Expertise : Practical Knowledge and the Early Modern State, ed. Eric H. Ash (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 4-10. 14 Londa Shciebinger stressed in Plants and Empire that early modern botanical gardens performed as “experimental stations for agriculture and way stations for plant acclimatization for domestic and global trade, rare medicaments, and cash crops.” Londa L. Schiebinger, Plants and Empire : Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004): 11. 8 formulation of Crown policies regulating the cultivation and the trade of the introduced spices throughout the Spanish empire.

Spice transplantations generated production, circulation and institutionalization of knowledge obtained through personal observation and experimentation throughout Spanish imperial domains. Such activities, as several historians have argued recently (see below), became an inherent part of the sixteenth-century Spanish imperial project, and laid the basis for the

Scientific Revolution, which has hitherto been considered as a seventeenth-century northern

European phenomenon.

Relevant Literature Review

The history of spice transplantation in the Spanish empire overlaps with several fields of historical research. In his seminal work, the Columbian Exchange, Alfred Crosby established the relationship between Spanish imperial expansion and the subsequent global dissemination of fauna and flora.

Crosby’s scholarship, central to the field of environmental history, focuses more on the ecological impact of the exchange of plants and animals between the Old and the New Worlds than on the human agency involved in that process.15 Subsequently, other scholars have explored the intentional introduction of European cash crops and domesticated animals to America and their oftentimes devastating effects on the local ecology.16 While my research does not directly engage

15 Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange : Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972). 16 David Watts, The West Indies : Patterns of Development, Culture, and Environmental Change since 1492 (Cambridge Eng.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Elinor G. K. Melville, A Plague of Sheep : Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mexico (Cambridge [England]; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1994); R.H. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860 (Cambridge University Press, 1996). 9 in environmental history, I do provide new information on the routes and networks responsible for the transplantation of spices from Asia to New Spain and the Caribbean. I also explore the manner in which European and American cash crops were introduced into the Philippines, following the

Spanish colonization of the archipelago.

The development of early modern sciences, in general, and natural history, in particular, is closely linked to the European imperial encounter with the New World. The European encounter with the previously unrecorded continent, its waterways, landscapes, peoples, and flora and fauna, and their need to generate profit from such resources, provoked an epistemological shift in the way

Europeans understood their new surroundings. If, until the end of the fifteenth century, Europeans relied on such corpuses of cosmography and natural history written by ancients as Ptolemy and

Dioscorides, in the Americas, they were obliged to observe, describe, and report the new natural phenomena they encountered there.17 In 2002, Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen summarized this change, asserting that “the desire for domination over nature and peoples and their exploitation for income is integral to the construction of a new mode of rationality.” This rationality, according to them, “stressed eye witnessing, close observation, group judgment and evaluation of information.”18 This empirical culture of information gathering and production of knowledge, argued Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Antonio Barrera-Osorio, originated in the Spanish Atlantic and was institutionalized by the Spanish Crown, through imperial establishments and governing bodies in the viceroyalties. Therefore, they maintained, the Spanish imperial policy towards

17 For more on this theme see: John Huxtable Elliott, The Old World and the New 1492-1650, The Wiles Lectures, (Cambridge Eng.: University Press, 1970); Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man : The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology, Cambridge Iberian and Latin American Studies (Cambridge, Eng. ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 18 Pamela H. Smith, Findlen, Paula, "Introduction: Commerce and the Representation of Nature," in Merchants & Marvels : Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe, ed. Pamela H. Smith, Findlen, Paula (New York, NY: Routledge, 2002), 7. 10 knowledge collection and experimentation outlined the methodology and epistemology employed later in Western science, and thus can be considered as a precursor of the Scientific Revolution.19

Cañizares-Esguerra and Barrera-Osorio’s scholarship was part of a wider discussion on the contribution of Spain to the development of Western modern science. Spanish scholars were well aware of the contributions of early modern Spaniards to the fields of cosmography, navigation, mathematics, natural science, engineering, architecture, metallurgy, mining, military technology and medicine.20 However, such achievements were hardly mentioned in English literature,21 which, until recently, either ignored the Spanish Empire, or stuck to the centuries-old narrative of the Black Legend (Leyenda Negra), according to which Spanish expansion overseas was driven by xenophobic, backward, militaristic forces.22 A possible reason for this tendency is that scientific

19 Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World : Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001); "Iberian Science in the Renaissance: Ignored How Much Longer?," Perspectives on Science 12, no. 1 (2004): 86-124; "Iberian Colonial Science," Isis 96, no. 1 (2005): 64-70; Antonio Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature : The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution, 1st ed. (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2006); "Empiricism in the Spanish Atlantic World," in Science and Empire in the Atlantic World, ed. James Delbourgo and Nicholas Dew (New York: Routledge, 2008), 177-202. 20 See for example: Francisco Guerra, Historia de la Materia Médica Hispanoamericana y Filipinas en la época colonial. Inventario crítico y bibliográfico de manuscritos (Madrid: Afrodisio Aguado, 1973); José María López Piñero, Ciencia y té cnica en la sociedad española de los siglos XVI y XVII, 1. ed. (Barcelona: Labor Universitaria, 1979); Raquel Álvarez Peláez, La Conquista de la naturaleza americana (Madrid: Consejo superior de investigaciones científicas, 1993); José Luis Fresquet Febrer, La experiencia americana y la terapéutica en los “Secretos de Chirurgia” (1567) de Pedro Arias de Benavides, Cuadernos Valencianos De Historia De La Medicina Y De La Ciencia Serie a, Monografías (Valencia: Instituto de Estudios Documentales e Históricos sobre Ciencia, Universitat de València, 1993); José Pardo Tomás and María Luz López Terrada, Las primeras noticias sobre plantas americanas en las relaciones de viajes y crónicas de Indias, 1493-1553 (Valencia: Instituto de Estudios Documentales e Históricos sobre la Ciencia, Universitat de València, C.S.I.C., 1993). However, these scholarships, as observed Cañizares-Esguerra and Paula De Vos, were oftentimes tinted in Spanish patriotism, or did not comprehend the full extent and significance of Spain’s imperial scientific endeavours. Cañizares-Esguerra, "Iberian Science in the Renaissance: Ignored How Much Longer?," 106-7; Paula De Vos, "Research, Development, and Empire: State Support of Science in the Later Spanish Empire," Colonial Latin American Review 15, no. 1 (2006): 59-60. 21 Somehow I. Bernard Cohen’s observation from 1959, regarding the effect of New World data circulating in Europe, went unnoticed: “these data not only filled the gaps in the whole description of nature on this globe, but were the source, or perhaps the occasion, of challenging ideas that upset general preconceptions.” I. Bernard Cohen, "The New World as a Source of Science for Europe " in Actes du IXe Congrè s international d'histoire des sciences, Barcelona-Madrid, 1-7 Septembre 1959 (Barcelona; Paris: Asociación para la Historia de la Ciencia Española, Universidad de Barcelona ; Hermann & Co., 1960), 98. 22 David Goodman's observant and acurate scholarship on science in Early Modern Spain was an exeption. David C. Goodman, Power and Penury : Government, Technology, and Science in Philip II's Spain (Cambridge; New York: 11 studies were scarcely published as printed books in early modern Spain. This was a result of a culture of bureaucratic secrecy fostered by the Spanish Crown, which believed that printed information was more likely to wind up in the hands of imperial rivals, but also of a more general distrust of printed media that was prevalent in Spain in that time. Both reasons led early modern

Spain to maintain a lively scribal culture of manuscripts, and a preference to circulate important knowledge that way.23

The call to include early modern Spanish science in English scholarship on the development of Western science, thus to eliminate the division between Spanish and English scholarship on the subject, culminated in a 2005 conference held in Valencia with the aim “to encourage a more balanced assessment of Iberia’s role in the history of early modern science.”24

Most of the most-prominent scholars of Spanish colonial science took part in the conference and the subsequent bilingual Spanish-English published proceedings titled Beyond the Black Legend:

Spain and the Scientific Revolution (2007). Roughly at the same time, other important monographs, articles, and edited volumes, similarly dedicated to the production and dissemination of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spanish colonial science, were published.25

Cambridge University Press, 1988); David Goodman, "The Scientific Revolution in Spain and Portugal," in The Scientific Revolution in National Context, ed. Roy Porter and Mikuláš Teich (Cambridge ; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 23 Jorge Cañizares‐Esguerra, "Introduction," in Science in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, 1500-1800, ed. Paula De Vos Daniela Bleichmar, Kristin Huffine, and Kevin Sheehan (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009), 3. 24 Víctor Navarro Brotons and William Eamon, Mas allá de la Leyenda Negra : España y la revolución científica = Beyond the Black Legend: Spain and the Scientific Revolution (Valencia: Instituto de Historia de la Ciencia y Documentación López Piñero : Universitat de Valéncia : C.S.I.C., 2007), 10. 25 See for example: Alison Sandman, "Controlling Knowledge: Navigation, Cartography, and Secrecy in the Early Modern Spanish Atlantic " in Science and Empire in the Atlantic World, ed. James Delbourgo and Nicholas Dew (New York: Routledge, 2008), 31-51; María M. Portuondo, Secret Science : Spanish Cosmography and the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Paula De Vos Daniela Bleichmar, Kristin Huffine, and Kevin Sheehan, Science in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, 1500-1800 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009); Juan José Saldaña, Science in Latin America : A History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006); Juan Pimentel, "The Iberian Vision: Science and Empire in the Framework of a Universal Monarchy, 1500-1800," Osiris 15 (2000); Daniela Bleichmar, "Books, Bodies, and Fields: Sixteenth-Century Transatlantic Encounters with New 12

Since the late 1970s, many scholars have highlighted the close connection between natural history, particularly botany, and early modern European colonial expansion. However, until recently, most related to it eighteenth-century English or French imperialism.26 This connection and its expressions in multiple colonial settings, including Spanish America, was the subject of

Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan’s edited volume, Colonial Botany, in which they asserted that “early modern botany both facilitated and profited colonialism and long-distance trade, and that the development of botany and Europe’s commercial and territorial expansion are closely associated developments.”27 When Anglophone scholars discussed economic botany in the context of the Spanish empire, they, until recently, largely ignored the ample evidence that exists of sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries Spanish activity in this field.28 However, such attitudes have changed with the publications of Antonio Barrera-Osorio, Daniela Bleichmar, and Paula De Vos, who, by laying the groundwork for an understanding of the epistemological tools and empirical practices employed by Spaniards, demonstrated that first bioprospecting and subsequently spice transplantation were practised from the start of the Spanish overseas expansion.29

World Materia Medica," in Colonial Botany : Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World, ed. Londa L. Schiebinger and Claudia Swan (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 83-99. 26 See for example: Lucile Brockway, Science and Colonial Expansion : The Role of the British Royal Botanic Gardens, Studies in Social Discontinuity (New York: Academic Press, 1979); Lucile H. Brockway, "Plant Science and Colonial Expansion: The Botanical Chess Game," in Seeds and Sovereignty : The Use and Control of Plant Genetic Resources, ed. Jack Ralph Kloppenburg and Science American Association for the Advancement of (Durham [N.C.]: Duke University Press, 1988); Richard Harry Drayton, Nature's Government : Science, Imperial Britain, and the 'Improvement' of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); E. C. Spary, "Utopia's Garden : French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution," (2000). 27 Londa L. Schiebinger and Claudia Swan, "Introduction," in Colonial Botany : Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World, ed. Londa L. Schiebinger and Claudia Swan (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 3. 28 See for example: Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, "How Derivative Was Humboldt? ," ibid., 163; Londa Schiebinger wrote that "Early conquistadores entered the Americas looking for gold and silver. By the eighteenth century, naturalists sought "green gold."Schiebinger, Plants and Empire : Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World, 7. 29 Antonio Barrera, "Local Herbs, Global Medicines. Commerce, Knowledge, and Commodities in Spanish America," in Merchants & Marvels : Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe, ed. Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen (New York, NY: Routledge, 2002); "Empire and Knowledge: Reporting from the New World," Colonial Latin American Review 15, no. 1 (2006); Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature : The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution; De Vos, "The Science of Spices: Empiricism and Economic Botany in 13

My scholarship builds on these works, specifically on that of Paula De Vos which remains the only research published in English to focus on sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries transplantation of Asian spices in the Spanish empire.30 Exploring such transplantation projects in the context of economic botany and Spanish colonial science, De Vos made two main arguments:

First, that the state-directed collection of empirical knowledge and experimentation inherent in transplantation attempts anticipated the methodological and epistemological groundwork of the

Scientific Revolution; and second that, by combining commercial interests with scientific exploration, the Spanish Crown established a colonial policy that was subsequently imitated by other European imperial powers.

While De Vos’ assertions were a starting point for this dissertation, my interrogation of fresh archival material and forgotten Spanish scholarship31 has permitted a more profound and novel exploration of the scientific, social, geopolitical, and administrative aspects of sixteenth and early seventeenth-century spice transplantation in the Spanish empire. I also pay special attention

the Early Spanish Empire."; Bleichmar, "Books, Bodies, and Fields: Sixteenth-Century Transatlantic Encounters with New World Materia Medica."; "The Trajectories of Natural Knowledge in the Spanish Empire (Ca. 1550- 1650)," in Más allá de la Leyenda Negra., ed. by Víctor Navarro Brotons; William Eamon (Valencia: Instituto de Historia de la Ciencia y Documentación López Piñero : Universitat de Valéncia : C.S.I.C., 2007), 127-34; "The Imperial Visual Archive: Images, Evidence, and Knowledge in the Early Modern Hispanic World," Colonial Latin American Review 24, no. 2 (2015). 30 Bethany Aram's recently published paper discusses briefly the transplantation of ginger into the Caribbean, but is overall focused on its trade. Bethany Aram, "Caribbean Ginger and Atlantic Trade, 1570–1648," Journal of Global History 10, no. 03 (2015). 31 See for example: Francisco de las. Barras de Aragon, " Sobre la introducción en América de vegetales útiles: Dos documentos acerca del gengibre," in Asociación española para el progreso de las ciencias, XVI congreso : Celebrado en Zaragoza durante los días 15 al 21 de diciembre de 1940 : Discursos inaugurales del congreso y de sus secciones, y varios trabajos de éstas (Madrid: Asociación Española para el Progreso de las Ciencias, 1941); María Justina Sarabia Viejo, Don Luis de Velasco, Virrey de Nueva España, 1550-1564, Publicaciones de la Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos de Sevilla (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1978); Maria Justina Sarabia Viejo, "Posibilidades de la especiería mexicana en la economía mundial del siglo XVI," in Andalucía y America en el siglo XVI: Actas de las II Jornadas de Andalucía y América, [Celebradas En La] (Universidad De Santa María De La Rábida, Marzo, 1982), ed. Bibiano Torres Ramírez, et al. (Sevilla, Huelva: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, Excma. Diputación de Huelva, 1983); Lorenzo E. López y Sebastián and Justo L. del Río Moreno, " El jengibre: Historia de un monocultivo caribeño del siglo XVI," Revista Complutense de Historia de América 18 (1992). 14 to economic botany and scientific organization in the Philippine arena (1565-1640), on which little research has hitherto been conducted. In sum, this dissertation constitutes a significant new contribution to the histories of economic botany and Spanish colonial science.

Again, while many scholars have focussed on the history of early colonial Spanish

America, few have examined the history of the early colonial Philippines. Over the last decade, renewed interest in the history of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Philippines has resulted in several important monographs,32 however, the classical scholarship of Schurtz, Phelan, De la

Costa, Cushner, and Spate remains unchallenged.33 This is problematic because these authors relied heavily on the Philippine Islands 1493-1898, a multivolume compilation of documents published in the early twentieth century, which contain many biases and multiple inaccuracies.34

Moreover, scholars have paid scant attention to the history of economic botany in the Philippines beyond the development of cash crops in the archipelago following the “Bourbon Reforms” implemented in the late eighteenth century.35 By contrast, this study augments the general understanding of Spanish Philippines in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. By

32 Luis Camara Dery, Pestilence in the Philippines : A Social History of the Filipino People, 1571-1800 (Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 2006); Linda A. Newson, Conquest and Pestilence in the Early Spanish Philippines (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2009); John N. Crossley, Hernando De Los Ríos Coronel and the Spanish Philippines in the Golden Age (Farnham, England; Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2011); Arturo Giráldez, The Age of Trade : The Manila Galleons and the Dawn of the Global Economy (2015). 33 W.L. Schurz, The Manila Galleon (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1939); John Leddy Phelan, The Hispanization of the Philippines : Spanish Aims and Filipino Responses, 1565-1700 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1959); Horacio De la Costa, The Jesuits in the Philippines, 1581-1768 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961); Nicholas P. Cushner, The Isles of the West; Early Spanish Voyages to the Philippines, 1521-1564 (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1966); Oskar Hermann Khristian Spate, The Spanish Lake (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1979). 34 Glòria Cano, "Blair and Robertson's "the Philippine Islands, 1493-1898": Scholarship or Imperialist Propaganda?," Philippine Studies 56, no. 1 (2008). 35 Maria Lourdes Diaz-Trechuelo, "The Economic Development of the Philippines in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century," ibid.11, no. 2 (1963); "Eighteenth Century Philippine Economy: Agriculture," Philippine Studies 14, no. 1 (1966); Ed C. De Jesus, The Tobacco Monopoly in the Philippines : Bureaucratic Enterprise and Social Change, 1766-1880 (Quezon City, Metro Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1980); Paula De Vos, "A Taste for Spices: Spanish Efforts at Spice Production in the Philippines," Mains’l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History Volume 41/Volume 42, no. Issue 4/Issue 1 (Fall 2005/Winter 2006). 15 highlighting the Spanish attempts at cash cropping, it specifically challenges the current perception of the Spanish Philippine economy as focused solely on the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade.

Chapter by Chapter

This study is composed of five chapters. Chapter one, an introductory chapter aimed at providing the necessary background and terminology for the subsequent four chapters, is divided into four parts. The first part investigates the early decades of Spanish exploration in the context of the geopolitical division between the Spanish and Portuguese empires, and highlights Asian spices as an important component of Spain’s motivation in promoting expansion overseas. The second part examines the imperial establishments created to manage the trade and the territories claimed by

Spain, exploring the origin, functions, and innovations of the Casa de Contratación, the Council of the Indies, and the short-lived Casa de la Especiería (1522-9). The third part analyses the history of spices, their significance and value in late medieval and early modern Europe. The fourth and last part examines the various spices the Spaniards sought to transplant from their lands of origin to territories they controlled.

In exploring the early proposals for spice transplantation to the West Indies, the second chapter demonstrates that the idea of introducing Asian cash crops to the New World was, in fact, conceived earlier than previously thought, before Magellan’s expedition and the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Through this chapter I highlight the involvement of the imperial establishment and

Crown officials in the colonies in economic botany, which was considered important for the development of Spain’s colonies. I also emphasize the existence of a network of officials, settlers, natural historians, and merchants that took part in the transplantation of East Asian spices. Finally, 16

I argue in this chapter that involvement in spice transplantation and trade provided individuals engaged in it with social prestige and status more important than any profit they might have made.

In the third chapter, I map the network of individuals involved in transplantation projects in the Philippines and New Spain, and highlight their collaboration with natural historians. In so doing, I establish the existence of transplantation nuclei in the Spanish empire, the most important of which was in Cuernavaca, a town in the Marquisate of the Valley of Oaxaca [Marquesado del

Valle de Oaxaca] in New Spain.36 Such centers were managed by crop transplantation experts who had been experimenting in importing foreign plants and cultivating them in their gardens and fields for decades. These experts were called upon by high officials in the colonies to respond to requests from imperial establishments, such as the Council of their Indies and the Casa de Contratación, to provide specimens of spices, and instructions for their transplantation, cultivation and processing.

Additionally, by identifying the milieu that dealt with spice transplantation in New Spain, including experts in medicine, cosmography, metallurgy, and cartography, this chapter strengthens the argument that, in sixteenth-century Spain, contemporaries perceived attempts to transplant spices as a scientific activity.

In the fourth chapter, I revisit the colonization of the Philippines through a “green prism.”

This provides the necessary backdrop to chapter five, which analyses crop transplantations to and from the Philippines from its colonization in 1565 to the seventeenth century. Chapter four comprises five sections. The first outlines the unique environmental, geographical, and social conditions of the Philippines and the reasons behind the Spanish colonization of the archipelago.

The second, third and fourth sections analyse, successively, early Spanish bioprospecting in the

36 A seigniorial estate in New Spain, originally given to Hernán Cortés as its first marquis in 1529. 17 islands; the variety of local crops, Chinese and Japanese imported foods, and American eatable plants introduced by the Spaniards; and the growth of the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade and how it influenced the development of cash cropping in the Philippines. The final section emphasizes the impact of early Spanish colonization on the demography and environment of the

Philippine Islands.

In the fifth chapter I explore late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Spanish attempts to both locate spices on the Philippines and introduce them from the neighbouring Molucca islands.

In so doing, I argue that a spice-based cash crop economy failed to develop in the archipelago because of economic and political reasons rather than because of unfavorable geographical or climatic conditions. Furthermore, I show that the expertise for spice cultivation in the Philippines was found among the members of the Franciscan order rather than, as in New Spain, with entrepreneurs. Finally, I explore tobacco´s introduction and acculturation as a case study for the transplantation of American crops into the Philippines. Though initially an uncommercial, private venture, due to its late sixteenth-century acclimatization in the Philippines, in the seventeenth century tobacco became an important luxury export shipped to markets throughout the Indian

Ocean World. I demonstrate that tobacco had a much more important place in late sixteenth and seventeenth-century Philippines society and economy than previously thought.

Note on Sources

This study is based on several primary sources: first and foremost, official correspondence and reports, royal decrees and instructions that circulated between Spanish bureaucrats in New Spain,

Hispaniola, and the Philippines, and the Council of the Indies and the Casa de Contratación in 18

Spain. Such missives and orders were drawn chiefly from sections in Seville’s Archivo General de Indias’s fondos37 of Indeferente General, Patronato Real, Audiencia de Mexico, Audiencia de

Filipinas, Audiencia de Santo Domingo, Audiencia de Filipinas and Audiencia de Buenos Aires. I also used the Contaduría fondo to obtain information about the content of galleon manifests, and the Casa de Contratación fondo for information on the Casa’s licensing of passengers to cross the

Atlantic to New Spain.

Transcripts of some of these documents are available in the Colección de documentos inéditos, relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de América y Oceanía, sacados de los archivos del reino, y muy especialmente del de

Indias (1864-1884)38 and Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar (1885-1923),39 published by the Ministerio de Ultramar and by the Real Academia de la Historia respectively.

The collection The Philippine Islands 1493-1898,40 compiled in 1905 by Emma Helen Blair and

James Alexander Robertson, following the American conquest of the Philippines, provides English translation to certain documents on the conquest and colonization of the Philippines. However, as noted earlier, the inaccuracies and selective nature of this collection make it less than ideal, and therefore, when possible I opted to use the original manuscripts or Spanish transcriptions.

37 In English “fonds” - an aggregation of documents that originate from the same source. 38 Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de América y Oceanía : sacados de los archivos del reino, y muy especialmente del de Indias, ed. Joaquín Francisco Pacheco, et al., 42 vols., I (Madrid: Imprenta de M. Bernaldo de Quirós, 1864-1884). 39 Colecció n de documentos iné ditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organizació n de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar, ed. Real Academia de la Historia, 25 vols., II (Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1885-1923). 40 Emma Helen Blair, Robertson, James Alexander, The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, ed. Emma Helen Blair, Robertson, James Alexander, 55 vols. (Cleveland: Arthur C. Clark, 1905). 19

Correspondence emanating from the Viceroyalty of Mexico was obtained from the Archivo

General de la Nación, Mexico City. While the relevant material found in this archive was marginal in comparison to that from the Archivo General de Indias, I still acquired key documents relating to spice cultivation in New Spain there. For information about commodity prices in New Spain I used the compilation of Mexico City’s council minutes, Actas de Cabildo del Ayuntamiento de la ciudad de Mexico.41 For Hernan Cortés’ instructions for the Saavedra expedition I used a published transcription entitled Cartas y documentos.42 In addition, I conducted research at archives in

Manila, notably those held by the Philippine National Library and the University of Santo Tomas.

Unfortunately, few of their holdings relate to the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Histories written by contemporary secular and religious chroniclers, such as Antonio de

Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, proved to be a useful source of information about plant introduction and agriculture in the Philippines.43 Valuable information about the introduction on the Philippines early economy, specifically on tobacco cultivation and trade, was obtained from sixteenth and seventeenth-century voyage accounts such as those of Francesco Carletti, Peter

Mundy, and William Dampier.44 For information on spices and drugs and their properties I used

Garcia D’Orta and Cristóbal Acosta’s Materiae medicae, which the Iberian Crowns referred to

41 Mexico City and Ignacio Bejarano, Actas de Cabildo del Ayuntamiento de la ciudad de Mexico, 55 vol. (Mexico: Ed. del "Municipio libre", 1889). 42 Hernán Cortés and Mario Hernández Sánchez-Barba, Cartas y documentos, Biblioteca Porrúa, (México,: Editorial Porrúa, 1963). 43 Antonio de Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, 1609, trans. J.S. Cummins (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 1971); Pedro Chirino, Jaume Gorriz i Abella, and José S. Arcilla, History of the Philippine Province of the Society of Jesus, 2 vols. (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2009); F. Colín, P. Chirino, and P. Pastells, Labor evangelica: ministerios apostolicos de los obreros de la Compañia de Jesus, fundacion, y progressos de su provincia en las Islas Filipinas (Barcelona: Impr. y litografía de Henrich y compañía, 1900). 44 Francesco Carletti, My Voyage around the World (New York,: Pantheon Books, 1964); Peter Mundy and Richard Carnac Temple, The Travels of Peter Mundy, in Europe and Asia 1608-1667, vol. 3 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1919); William Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World (1717) (Warwick, NY: 1500 Books, 2007). 20 when making decisions regarding management of natural resources.45 I was also assisted by

Spanish cookbooks written for the royal court during the sixteenth century.46 Finally, I also used two editions of the Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, the first dictionary in Spanish (or any European vernacular language), in order to delve into the meaning of relevant values, and to explain the manner in which they were perceived by Spaniards of the time.47

45 Garcia de Orta, Colóquios dos simples e drogas he cousas medicinais da Índia e assi dalgũas frutas achadas nella onde se tratam algũas cousas tocantes a mediçina, practica, e outras cousas boas, pera saber (Goa: Por Joannes de Endem, 1563); Garcia de Orta, Francisco Manuel de Melo Ficalho, and Clements R. Markham, Colloquies on the Simples & Drugs of India (London: H. Sotheran and Co., 1913); Cristóbal Acosta, Tractado de las drogas, y medicinas de las Indias Orientales (Burgos: M. de Victoria, 1578). 46 Ruberto de Nola, Libro de guisados manjares y potajes intitulado libro de cozina: Enel qual esta el regimiento delas casas delos reyes y grandes señores… (Logroño: Miguel de Eguia, 1529); Domingo Hernandez de Maceras, Libro del arte de cozina : en el qual se contiene el modo de guisar de comer en qualquier tiempo, ansi de carne, como de pescado, ansi de pasteles, tortas, y salsas, como de co[n]seruas, y de principios, y postres, a la usança española de nuestro tiempo (En Salamanca: En casa de Antonia Ramirez, 1607); Francisco Martínez Montiño, Arte de cozina, pasteleria, vizcocheria y conserueria (Madrid: Luis Sanchez, 1611). 47 Covarrubias Orozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española; Sebastian de Covarrubias Orozco and Benito Remigio Noydens, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española (Madrid: Melchor Sanchez, 1674). 21

Chapter 1: On Empire and Spices

While the general history of early modern Spanish exploration is well known, issues such as why the Spanish Crown decided to finance Columbus’ first Atlantic voyage, and how Spanish rivalry with Portugal created a fifteenth-sixteenth century “exploration race,” have been little researched and are much less understood. This chapter lays out the historical context for these issues. It first outlines the early history of Spanish exploration, highlighting Asian spices as an important component of Spain’s motivation in this undertaking. The second section surveys the administration created to manage the lands subsequently claimed by Spain. The third and final part examines the value, uses, and importance of the Asian spices the Spaniards sought to transplant from their lands of origin to territories they controlled.

The Iberian Age of Exploration and the Search for Spices

Current scholarship recognizes that fifteenth and early sixteenth-century European voyages of discovery were undertaken with the main goal of locating the sources of valuable Asian spices such as pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg and mace, and cloves.48 The Portuguese, who attempted to replace the Venetians as the sole suppliers of spices to Europe, were the first to launch such voyages, closely followed by the Spanish. Thus, it was direct access to the sources of those spices that drove both Portuguese navigators such as Bartolomeu Dias, who in the late 1480s reached the

Cape of the Good Hope, and Vasco de Gama, whose expedition completed the voyage around

Africa and reached the Indian Subcontinent in 1497. The search for spices was also one of the

48 See for example: Paul Freedman, "The Medieval Spice Trade," in The Oxford Handbook of Food History, ed. Jeffrey M. Pilcher (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 324; De Vos, "The Science of Spices: Empiricism and Economic Botany in the Early Spanish Empire," 399, 402-3. 22 main incentives for the Columbian voyages (1492, 1493, 1498, 1502), the world’s first circumnavigation captained by Magellan (1519-1522), and other maritime and land expeditions.49

Unsurprisingly, therefore, Columbus was intent on finding spices in the newly discovered lands he deemed to be parts of East Asia. It is evident from his Diario that the search for spices, as well as gold, was the main motivation for his voyage. In the course of Columbus’ explorations, members of his crew would show the indigenous people they encountered samples of cinnamon, pepper and other spices, brought from Castile, in the hope that they would be able to point them to local sources of these spices.50 Landing on the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola, Columbus was allegedly convinced that he had landed on islands belonging to Japan. Finding no known spices there, he declared that they would surely be found on the next newly discovered island, or that different spices he had discovered were, in fact, better than those with which Europeans were hitherto acquainted.51

Following Columbus’ return from his first voyage, the Spanish claims to the newly discovered territories were endorsed by Pope Alexander VI in a series of Papal Bulls, the most famous of which was Inter Caetera (1493). In the following year, the Treaty of Tordesillas geographically demarcated the Spanish and the Portuguese imperial spheres. A line between the two spheres was drawn along a meridian 370 nautical leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, roughly half way between these Portuguese controlled islands and the Caribbean islands of Cuba and Hispaniola, recently claimed by Spain (see Fig 1.1, 1.4 below).

49 See for example: Andrew Dalby, "Christopher Columbus, Gonzalo Pizarro, and the Search for Cinnamon," Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies 1, no. 2 (2001): 40-49. 50 Christopher Columbus et al., The Diario of Christopher Columbus's First Voyage to America, 1492-1493 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 133, 37. 51 Ibid., 299, 341. 23

Fig 1.1: The Cantino Planisphere (Anonymous Portuguese, 1502). The earliest known depiction of the demarcation line drawn in the Treaty of Tordesillas. [Public Domain]

Spanish aspirations to control the origins of the much-coveted Asian spices began to dissolve with the Portuguese circumvention of Africa and subsequent expansion towards the

Eastern Indian Ocean. The Portuguese reached the “real” India and discovered the sources of pepper in 1497. They encountered Ceylon and its cinnamon in 1505, Melaka - the bottleneck of

Asian spice trade in 1511 - and finally the Banda and Maluku Islands and their legendary nutmeg and clove plantations in 1512. In the first decade of the sixteenth century, it gradually became clear that the islands and land mass discovered by Columbus were in fact a previously unknown continent and not Asia. Amerigo Vespucci’s observations during his voyages across the Atlantic

Ocean (1499-1502) contributed to this process. The data Vespucci collected was presented in a world map drawn in 1507 by the German cartographer, Martin Waldseemüller, depicting America as a continent lying between two oceans.52 While it is doubtful whether this depiction had a basis

52 See fig 1.2 in the next page. 24 in geographical knowledge at that early stage, the perception of America as a separate continent was reinforced in 1513 with the discovery of the Pacific Ocean by Vasco Núñez de Balboa.53

Fig 1.2 Martin Waldseemüller’s world map (1507). The first map to depict the Americas separate from Asia. [Public Domain]

When Magellan’s expedition arrived in the Spice Islands in late 1521 (Magellan had earlier been killed on Mactan Island, in the Philippines), it seemed for a short while that the Spaniards might obtain a foothold in, or at least reinforce their claims to, them. The crew of the remaining two ships, the Victoria and Trinidad, established trade relations with the ruler of Tidore, one of the chief Spice Islands and a sworn enemy of the King of the neighbouring island of Ternate, and chief competitor for the spice trade, who had allied himself with the Portuguese. After several months of trading, the ships were loaded with cloves and were prepared for the voyage back to

Spain. The Victoria set sail west across the Indian Ocean and around the southern tip of Africa.

53 This narrative was recently challanged in: Martin Lehmann, "Amerigo Vespucci and His Alleged Awareness of America as a Separate Land Mass," Imago Mundi 65, no. 1 (2013). 25

The Trinidad, which was not seaworthy, remained in Tidore for repairs prior to sailing eastwards, but was captured by the Portuguese before reaching the Pacific Ocean.

In late 1522, the Victoria, the last remaining ship from Magellan’s expedition, finally arrived in San Lucar, a port city located at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, the river that flows from

Seville to the Atlantic Ocean. As the 26 tons of spices it had carried from Tidore were enough to cover the cost of the entire expedition,54 the surviving crew of twenty-one was received with great honor, and the captain, Juan Sebastian Elcano (del Cano), a commoner, was granted a coat of arms, a stipend, and other privileges. His coat of arms included a globe with the famous inscription

Primus circumdedisti me (Latin for “the first to circumnavigate me”) below it, crossed cinnamon sticks, twelve cloves and three nutmegs, and on the sides, kings who - clothed in green and white holding branches of the clove and nutmeg trees - represented the rulers of the Spice Islands (see image below).55

Fig 1.3 Sebastian Elcano’s coat of arms.

54 According to Guillemard, cloves accounted to almost 90 percent of the cargo's value, while cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, and sandalwood constituting for the remainder. F.H.H. Guillemard, The Life of Ferdinand Magellan, and the First Circumnavigation of the Globe: 1480-1521 (London; Liverpool: G. Philip & son, 1890), 310. 55 Antonio Paz y Meliá, Nobiliario de conquistadores de Indias (Madrid: M. Tello, 1892), 57-58, Lam.XLI/1. 26

Magellan’s expedition reinforced Spain’s claim that the Spice Islands fell within its portion of the hemisphere indicated in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, and thus should be under Spanish rather than Portuguese control. However, in the 1529 Treaty of Zaragoza, after Portugal had paid

350,000 ducats of gold, the Spanish agreed to withdraw its claims to the Spice Islands.56

Fig 1.4 The meridian and antemeridian as agreed on in the treaty of Tordesillas (1494), and the treaty of Zaragoza (1529) respectively. Map created by Kartenwerkstatt with the Generic Mapping Tools: http://gmt.soest.hawaii.edu/ using a public-domain dataset. Spain’s willingness to relinquish its claims was chiefly due to the heavy cost to the royal treasury of Charles V’s wars in Europe. However, it may have also been related to the fact that no route back to America across the Pacific had yet been discovered. Since the Portuguese held a Papal monopoly over navigation in the Indian Ocean and thus the route westwards to Europe around

Africa, Spanish control over the Spice Islands, without the ability to return to America across the

Pacific, was obviously problematic. Another theory maintains that when the Badajoz junta of 1524 unsuccessfully tried to establish the exact location of the antemeridian, Charles V suspected that

56 See Fig. 1.4 in the next page. 27 the Moluccas lay within the Portuguese demarcation, and therefore agreed to “sell” the islands to the Portuguese.57

The treaty of Zaragoza ended Spanish aspirations to control the Spice Islands for the next half-century, but failed to dissuade the Spaniards from participating in the global spice trade in

Asian spices and drugs. As they could not control the sources of spices, the Spanish sought to create their own especería (spicery) by transplanting valuable spices to the more accessible regions that they controlled and where they deemed those spices were likely to prosper.

Running an Empire

In the early decades of the sixteenth century, as the magnitude and size of Spain’s new territorial holdings became more evident, several administrative bodies and practices were established to manage the emerging empire.

The Casa de Contratación de Indias

In the decade that followed Columbus’ first voyage, the direction of all colonial affairs was held by Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca, a member of the Royal Council. In 1503, the Catholic Kings (as

Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile were known) established the Casa de Contratación de Indias58 in Seville to oversee all matters related to Spain’s trade with its colonies. All other

57 Francisco Guerra, "La política imperial sobre las drogas de las Indias," Revista de Indias 26 (1966): 41. 58 Literally, the House of Trade of the Indies, will interchangeably referred to as the Casa or Casa de Contratación. 28

American issues remained under Fonseca’s authority until the founding of the Council of the Indies

(Consejo de Indias) in 1524, and his subsequent death.59

The Casa de Contratación was probably modelled on its Portuguese counterpart, the Casa da Índia, which had been established in Lisbon two years earlier.60 A decree issued in 1503 defined the Spanish Casa as “a house of trade in which are present and reside certain officials in charge of all things related to that trade [with the Indies]”.61 However, unlike its Portuguese archetype, which was used primarily as the Crown’s factory, the Casa evolved to be more of a ministry that administered and regulated private trade.62

Unlike the Spanish Court and its Royal Council, the Casa had a fixed location –in the river port of Seville, from which ships set sail to, and returned from, America. In its early years, this establishment was administered by three officials: a factor (factor) in charge of its commercial activities, a treasurer (tesorero) in charge of handling its stock of merchandise, supplies and currency, and an accountant (contador) or a notary (escribano) in charge of recording everything handled by the treasurer, and the business conducted by the factor, as well as levying taxes.63 Royal decrees from 1510 and 1511 expanded the authority and responsibilities of the Casa de

Contratación and established a framework for its operation. The decrees stipulated that the

59 C. H. Haring, Trade and Navigation between Spain and the Indies in the Time of the Hapsburgs (Gloucester, Mass.: P. Smith, 1964), 21. La Casa de Contratación de Indias, referred to in English literature also as “House of Trade” or “House of Commerce”. 60 Ramón María Serrera, "La Casa de la Contratación en el Alcázar de Sevilla (1503-1717)," Minervae Baeticae, Boletín de la Real academia Sevillana de Buenas Letras No.36 (2008): 135-6. The Casa da Índia e da Guiné, established in Lisbon in 1501 to manage all overseas trade activities, evolved from its predecessor Casa da Guiné. See for example: Susannah Humble Ferreira, The Crown, the Court and the Casa Da Índia : Political Centralization in Portugal, 1479-1521 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 66-7. 61 "Una casa de contratación en que han de estar e residir ciertos oficiales que han de tener cargo de las cosas tocantes a la dicha contratación." Colecció n de documentos iné ditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organizació n de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar, ed. Real Academia de la Historia, 25 vols., vol. 5, Ii (Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadenegra, 1890), 29. 62 Haring, Trade and Navigation between Spain and the Indies in the Time of the Hapsburgs, 23, 29. 63 Colecció n de documentos iné ditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organizació n de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar, 5, 31. 29 officials of the Casa were to meet twice daily at set hours, and were to be fined for any absence.

Any decision, licence, or contract signed by the Casa was made after deliberation by its three chief officials who held joint liability for all the Casa’s activity, and were always referred to in their corporate capacity.64 The collegial nature of their work was also reflected in the royal command that a locked chest be installed in the Casa, to which three keys were issued, and in which all correspondence with the Indies was to be kept until all three officials convened to read it and respond.65

The Casa’s triumvirate was mandated to oversee all aspects of Spain’s trade with its colonies in the Indies, including:

 Inspection of ships and riggings

 Nomination of captains and notaries for each ship

 Registration and taxation of incoming merchandise

 Evaluation of the American markets and the value of exported commodities

 Enforcement of regulations regarding contraband and forbidden cargoes

 Communication with officials in the Indies and with the court

 Recording all the gold that arrived from the Indies

 Registration and licensing of travelers to the Indies

 Disposal of property of Spaniards who died in the Indies (bienes de difuntos en Indias)66

64 Trade and Navigation between Spain and the Indies in the Time of the Hapsburgs, 30. In formal letters from the king the officials are referred to as “My/Our officials who reside in the city of Seville in the House of Trade of the Indies.” (“Míos/Nuestros oficiales que residís en la ciudad de Sevilla en la casa de contraración de Indias”); Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar, 5, 211-25, 50-8. 65 Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar, 5, 254-5. 66 Ibid., 29-42, 211-25, 50-58. 30

 Maintenance of an arsenal to supply ships sailing to America67

Such tasks required the officials to develop expertise in all things related to Spain’s American colonies. Their distance from the royal court, and their joint responsibility forced them to work together to gather every piece of information available regarding the trade with the Indies, shipping, navigation, and charting. Thus, a decade following the discovery of the Americas, a community of experts in these fields developed in Seville.

However, as the trade with the New World grew, the task of supervising it became too great for the three Casa officials to handle, and in a decree issued in 1508, the Crown created the position of Chief Pilot (piloto mayor). Amerigo Vespucci, the first official appointed to this position, was charged with examining and licencing all pilots before they led ships across the

Atlantic Ocean, as well as with producing charts for the long and complicated voyage.68 Later, many additional officials were appointed to serve in the Casa. These included a ship inspector

(first appointed in 1518); a cosmographer in charge of making navigational instruments (1523); a representative of the Casa in the Atlantic port of Cádiz (1535); a fiscal lawyer (1546 - by then the

Casa enjoyed wide civil and criminal judiciary powers over all matters involving the trade with the West Indies); and a second cosmographer in charge of teaching cosmography (1552).69 With the Casa’s judicial powers (civil and criminal) covered all matters involving American commerce, a legal advisor was appointed in 1553 to protect the interest of the Royal Treasury, and from 1583-

93, three lawyers were appointed to serve in a Chamber of Justice (founded in 1583).70 In 1579, a

67 Ibid., 221. 68 Ibid., 153; Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature : The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution, 29. 69 Experiencing Nature : The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution, 36. 70 Haring, Trade and Navigation between Spain and the Indies in the Time of the Hapsburgs, 42-3; Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature : The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution, 36. 31 president was appointed to head the Casa’s activities, and in 1588 a purveyor.71 By then, the three original officials, the treasurer, factor, and accountant, acted as executive heads of departments, in which several deputies and clerks were employed.72

The Casa de la Especiería

It appears that from the start, the Crown was pleased with the organization and efficiency of

Seville’s Casa de Contratación, as the success of Magellan’s expedition triggered in 1522 the founding of a similar establishment in the form of the Casa de Contratación del comercio para la

Especiería or, in its shortened form, Casa de la Especiería (House of Trade for the Commerce of the Spicery). However, whereas the Casa de Contratación was granted an independent mandate, through the Casa de la Especiería the Crown bestowed upon La Coruña a monopoly (asiento) 73 over the trade with the Spice Islands. La Coruña, an Atlantic port city in northeastern Galicia was chosen for its natural harbor and its convenient access to northern European kingdoms, which were the continents’ main consumers of Moluccan spices.74 A royal decree granted the city rights over constructing and provisioning future expeditions to the Spice Islands.75 Similarly to the Casa of

Seville, this establishment was meant to serve as a customs house, and to manage all aspects of

71 Experiencing Nature : The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution, 36; on the role of the president of the Casa de Contrataión see: Haring, Trade and Navigation between Spain and the Indies in the Time of the Hapsburgs, 46-7. 72 Trade and Navigation between Spain and the Indies in the Time of the Hapsburgs, 33. 73 Asiento was a royal concession or a monopoly given usually to individuals, Spanish or foreigners, over commercial rights to extract, cultivate or sell certain commodities in a certain place, during a specified time, and under certain conditions. "Asiento (Concesiones Monopolizades)," in Diccionario de gobierno y legislación de Indias, ed. Manuel José de Ayala and Milagros del Vas Mingo (Madrid: Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana : Ediciones de Cultura Hispánica, 1988), 241-52. 74 István Szászdi León-Borja, "La Casa de la Contratación de Sevilla y sus hermanas indianas," in La Casa de la Contratació n y la navegació n entre España y las Indias, ed. Antonio Acosta Rodríguez, Adolfo Luis González Rodríguez, and Enriqueta Vila Vilar (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla : Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas : Fundación El Monte, 2003), 123-4. 75 Ibid., 122-5. 32 the Moluccan spice trade, such as crew registration, and the auctioning of spices arriving at the house.76 However, the Casa de la Especiería was dismantled in 1529, the year in which the Crown of Castile conceded its rights over the Moluccan Islands to Portugal in the Treaty of Zaragoza.

The Formation of the Council of the Indies

In 1524, in response to Spanish expansion in the Americas, Charles V ordered the establishment of the Real y Supremo Consejo de las Indias (Royal and Supreme Council of the Indies, or in short,

Consejo de Indias). This new council comprised selected members of the Council of Castile, and was headed by Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca. This group of councillors gradually became the king’s advisers for Indies affairs. By 1517, they were being referred to as “the Council of the Indies”, and when it was formally institutionalized, it formed the Crown’s chief advisory body for governance, trade, defence, and administration of justice in the Indies.77

In the first decades of its existence, the Council of the Indies was composed of a president, four or five councilmen, two secretaries, a Crown attorney (promotor fiscal), a clerk (relator), chief accountant (oficial de cuentas), and a courier-doorkeeper (portero).78 Unlike the officials of the Casa, who resided permanently in Seville, members of the Council of the Indies resided within the royal court, and moved seasonally with the king and his entourage from one palace to another.79

Though no formal decree was issued in that matter, the Council of the Indies held jurisdiction over the Casa de Contratación, a matter that was exercised as early as 1526 in a formal inspection

76 Ibid., 123-4. 77 John Huxtable Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World : Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006): 122. 78 Ernst Schäfer, El Consejo Real y Supremo de las Indias; su historia, organizació n y labor administrativa hasta la terminació n de la casa de Austria, vol. I (Sevilla: Imp. M. Carmona, 1935), 48-9. 79 Ibid., 67. 33

(visita) of the Casa. This inspection resulted in several changes in the Casa, including a thorough update of the Padrón Real, the official maritime chart for which the chief pilot was responsible.80

In 1542, the Crown audited the finances of the Council of the Indies and issued it with a set of instructions that not only outlined its authority, obligations, and limitations, but also reorganized the ever-growing empire under its jurisdiction.81 As a part of these reforms, issued on

November 1542, the new Viceroyalty of Peru was established, in addition to the Viceroyalty of

New Spain, established in 1535. Two new audiencias (supreme courts),82 in Lima and Guatemala-

Nicaragua, were added to the existing ones of Santo-Domingo, and Mexico, while that of Panama was abolished.83 Additionally, the Council of the Indies was ordered to oversee and enforce a portion of these decrees, known as the “New Laws” (Leyes Nuevas), which redefined the treatment of the indigenous people of America.84 Finally, the Council was placed as a court of appeal to all judicial matters relating to the Indies, and was authorized to manage the licences given for the discovery and colonization of new regions.85

80 Ibid., 80-1. 81 Ibid., 61-3. 82 Audiencia was the highest royal court of appeals within a jurisdiction, serving at the same time as a council of state to the Viceroy or Governor. Ophelia Marquez and Lillian Ramos Wold, Compilation of Colonial Spanish Terms and Document Related Phrases, (Midway City, California: SHHAR Press, 1998), http://www.somosprimos.com/spanishterms/spanishterms.htm. 83 Schäfer, El Consejo Real y Supremo de las Indias; su historia, organizació n y labor administrativa hasta la terminació n de la casa de Austria, I, 68-9. 84 The Leyes Nuevas, issued on November twentieth 1542, were meant to prevent the exploitation of the indigenous peoples of Spanish America by limiting the power of the Spanish settlers, who were granted a monopoly over certain indigenous labor, also known as encomenderos. On the New Laws see for example: Lesley Byrd Simpson, The Encomienda in New Spain; the Beginning of Spanish Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 291-326. 85 Schäfer, El Consejo Real y Supremo de las Indias; su historia, organizació n y labor administrativa hasta la terminació n de la casa de Austria, I, 69. 34

Juan de Ovando and the Reformation of Council of the Indies

With the Council of the Indies’ elevated status, and the reorganization of the Spanish possessions in the New World, the future of the government of the Indies seemed bright. However, by the mid-

1560s, separatism and unrest in the New World were widespread, doubts over the legality of the encomienda (literally: entrustment)86 system and the treatment of the indigenous people of

America were on the rise, and the Council of the Indies was drowning in corruption and incompetence.87 To tackle these problems the Crown decided to conduct a thorough inquiry into the Council of the Indies and its members.

The inspector (visitador) appointed to conduct the inquiry was the bishop Juan de Ovando, who, after four-year long investigation (1567-1571), overhauled the organization of the Council and the governing practices of the Spanish Crown over its colonies. Ovando identified two main problems. The first was that the Council members, being mostly letrados (holders of a law degree, professional civil servants) with no experience in the Indies, were not versed in matters necessary for their governance. Moreover, there existed no system of gathering and recording social, economic and political information about the New World which might guide the Council members.

Secondly, there was no coherent or comprehensive compilation of laws and decrees that the councilmen could refer to for the governance of the Indies.88

86 Encomienda was a tribute institution used in Spanish America in the sixteenth century. The Spaniards were deemed to have received Indians as an entrustment (encomienda) to protect and to Christianize them, but in return they could demand tribute (including labor). Marquez and Wold, Compilation of Colonial Spanish Terms and Document Related Phrases. See for Example: Murdo J. Macleod, "Aspects of the Internal Economy of Colonial Spanish America: Labour; Taxation; Distribution and Exchange," in The Cambridge History of Latin America:, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 222-5. 87 Stafford Poole, Juan De Ovando : Governing the Spanish Empire in the Reign of Phillip Ii (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004), 114. 88 Schäfer, El Consejo Real y Supremo de las Indias; su historia, organizació n y labor administrativa hasta la terminació n de la casa de Austria, I, 130-1; Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World : Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830, 128. 35

The reforms Ovando implemented included an attempt to codify all laws that applied to the Indies, a project that was accomplished only in 1680 with the publication of the Recopilación de las leyes de Indias (Compilation of the laws of the Indies). However, more than a hundred statutes concerning the duties, jurisdiction and structure of the Council were passed following this inspection, and the number of councilmen was increased to effectively handle legal and financial matters, information gathering and scientific knowledge.

Of the new position holders, the most important to this study was the cosmographer- chronicler (cosmógrafo-cronista), whose duties consisted of: writing the history of the Indies; collecting information about the geography and natural resources of the Indies; compiling the

“routes and navigational directions” from Spain to the Indies and within the Indies; constructing cosmographical tables indicating the longitude and latitude of locations in the Indies and the distance between them; and supervising the determination of longitude through the observation of lunar eclipses. These complicated tasks were to be accomplished using the information sent to the

Council by officials in the Indies. The office of the cosmographer-chronicler of the Indies was later divided into the two separate positions of “cosmographer” and “chronicler.”89

Additionally, the ordinances issued following Ovando’s visita, instructed the Council of the Indies’ officials to ensure that they possessed the most up-to-date knowledge about the geography, natural history, politics, church affairs , and all other matters relevant to the governance of Spain’s colonies.90 To ensure this, Ovando implemented three core measures to gather

89 Goodman, Power and Penury : Government, Technology, and Science in Philip Ii's Spain, 68-9; For the Ordenanza see: Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de América y Oceanía : sacados de los archivos del reino, y muy especialmente del de Indias, ed. Joaquín Francisco Pacheco, Francisco de Cárdenas, Luis Torres de Mendoza, Archivo General de Indias, and Ministerio de Ultramar 42 vols., vol. 16, I (Madrid: Imprenta del Hospicio, 1871), 457-9. 90 Schäfer, El Consejo Real y Supremo de las Indias; su historia, organizació n y labor administrativa hasta la terminació n de la casa de Austria, I, 135; Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature : The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution, 92. 36 knowledge about the Indies, namely, sending questionnaires, forming an encyclopedic compendium on the Indies, and sending a royal scientific expedition to the New World.

In 1569, Ovando had questionnaires sent to several jurisdictions in the Indies. These questionnaires were a key component of the inquiry and were also for the Council’s future use.

They asked for information about the provinces, navigation, expeditions and discoveries, and the governance of the Indies.91 They were also the first in a series of questionnaires that were sent to the Indies in the 1570s, culminating in a massive project, the Relaciones de Indias (“Reports of the Indies,” also known as the Relaciones Geográficas de Indias - Geographic reports of the

Indies). In 1577, two years after Ovando’s death, questionnaires were sent to officials of all levels in the viceroyalties and audiencias. They contained 50 questions regarding Spanish and indigenous settlements, geography, climate, natural resources such as minerals, plants, and animals, history, ethnography, judicial systems, economy, and military and civilian infrastructure. Among the questions were specific queries regarding native trees and plants and their comestible and medicinal uses, and the state and future potential of crops and trees transplanted from Spain to the

Indies.92

This information format was in line with that of Ovando’s second information-gathering project, the “book of descriptions of the Indies” (Libro de las Descripciones de Indias). This tome

91 Poole, Juan De Ovando : Governing the Spanish Empire in the Reign of Phillip Ii, 141; For the actual questionnaire see: Francisco de Solano, Cuestionarios para la formación de las Relaciones Geográficas de Indias : siglos XVI/XIX (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Centro de Estudios Históricos, Departamento de Historia de América, 1988), 11-15. 92 Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature : The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution, 94-6; Cedula, Instruccion y Memoria para la Formacion de las Relaciones y Descripciones de los Pueblos de Indias in: Solano, Cuestionarios para la formación de las Relaciones Geográficas de Indias : siglos XVI/XIX, 84. 37 was to be compiled by the Council of the Indies from the answers to questionnaires sent to every temporal or ecclesiastical official involved in the Indies.93

The final project related to Ovando’s reforms was the first natural history expedition sent to New Spain.94 In 1570, Philip II’s court physician, Francisco Hernández de Toledo, embarked on a six-year expedition to New Spain. According to Stafford Poole, Ovando was a good friend of

Hernández, and his deep involvement in the affairs of the Council prior to the departure of the expedition leaves little doubt that the visitador was behind this venture and the voluminous unpublished work it produced.95

By the end of Philip II’s regime, the Council of the Indies had turned into a large body composed of a president, seven to nine councilmen, an attorney, a secretary, three chroniclers, four accountants (contadores de cuentas), a fine collector (receptor), two courtroom notaries

(escribanos de cámara), two constables (alguaciles), a chief chronicler, a chief cosmographer, a chaplain, three porters, and various other notaries.96

By the second half of the sixteenth century, the Council of the Indies was the device through which the Spanish Emperor controlled his overseas possessions. As such, the council held authority over the viceroys and governors in America and the Philippines, who in turn presided over treasury and local officials and town governments. A parallel judiciary system ran from the

Council to the viceroys and the various audiencias and judicial officers. As mentioned above, the

93 Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature : The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution, 93-4; For the questionnaire see: Solano, Cuestionarios para la formación de las Relaciones Geográficas de Indias : siglos XVI/XIX, 16-74. 94 On the Hernández expedition to New Spain see chapter 3. 95 Poole, Juan De Ovando : Governing the Spanish Empire in the Reign of Phillip Ii, 142-3; See also: Goodman, Power and Penury : Government, Technology, and Science in Philip Ii's Spain, 235-8. 96 Schäfer, El Consejo Real y Supremo de las Indias; su historia, organizació n y labor administrativa hasta la terminació n de la casa de Austria, I, 119. 38

Casa de Contratción was also subject to the Council’s orders. This chain of command was maintained in the Spanish administration’s dealings with Asian spice transplantation, experimentation, and trade in America and the Philippines.

Spices in Early Modern Europe

This section surveys the Asian spices and medicinal plants discussed in subsequent chapters. My goal is to establish their medical and culinary uses, and their economic significance to early modern

Europeans in general, and Spaniards in particular. This context is necessary to understand how a certain type of commodity managed to trigger an “exploration race” among the Iberian, and, later on, Northern European empires. While in this race, the Spaniards failed to establish a permanent presence in the lands of origin of such spices. Nevertheless, they did encounter a plethora of new plants, some of which, they believed, had genuine medicinal qualities. Such drugs can be divided to two groups: medicinals found in America that the Spanish identified as varieties of known, Old

World plants; and New World plants of whose medicinal qualities the Spanish learned from indigenous peoples

New World drugs and spices did not find an immediate niche in the European market. It was only after new natural histories were published and old medical treatises updated that such medicinals began to be appreciated by Europeans. Although this process commenced as early as the 1520s in the form of reports about American drugs to the Counsel of the Indies,97 it did not mature until the second half of the sixteenth century, when physicians and apothecaries such as

97 For example see: Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature : The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution, 15-17. 39

Nicolás Monardes and Francisco Hernández began to disseminate knowledge regarding New

World medicinals.98 Even when American drugs became more popular in Spain and the rest of

Europe, Asian spices commanded superior value and status. Consequently, the Spanish attempted to transplant Asian spices and medicinals to territories they controlled and deemed suitable for their cultivation.

This section first surveys the historical background to spices in late medieval (1200-1500) and early modern European society and, subsequently, using a mosaic of sources, such as sixteenth-century Spanish and Portuguese materiae medicae and cookbooks, as well as secondary literature, examines the various uses of these spices.

As indicated earlier, current scholarship recognizes that fifteenth-century European voyages of discovery were initiated with the goal of locating the sources of valuable spices, such as pepper, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and mace.99 Until the Portuguese discovered the direct maritime route to India, the Italian city-states controlled the European trade in these spices. Venice was the most prominent city-state in this context. In the late fifteenth century, the Venetians alone imported more than 500 tons of pepper annually from the Levantine ports of Alexandria and

Beirut.100 The spice trade was a lucrative one, and pepper, the cheapest and bulkiest of spices, fetched in fifteenth-century European markets 20 to 40 percent more than it was sold for in the

98 Nicolás Monardes, a Sevillian physician, apothecary and entrepreneur, had published the three parts of his Historia Medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales (Medicinal History of the Things Taken from West India which serve in the Use of Medicine) between 1565 and 1574. Francisco Hernández de Toledo was a royal physician sent by Philip II to Mexico to head what is now considered the first natural-historical expedition to the New World (1571-1575). After Hernández’ death, the data he collected was published in 1615 as Plantas y Animales de la Nueva España y sus virtudes (Plants and Animals of New Spain and their Virtues). 99 See for example: Freedman, "The Medieval Spice Trade," 324; De Vos, "The Science of Spices: Empiricism and Economic Botany in the Early Spanish Empire," 399. 100 Paul Freedman, "Spices and Late-Medieval European Ideas of Scarcity and Value," Speculum 80, no. 4 (2005): 1214-5. 40

Levant. Expensive spices, such as cloves and nutmeg, were sold in Venice for 70 to 220 percent of their purchase price.101

It is important to note that in early modern Europe, the commercial definition of “spices”

(especias) was not limited to the modern classification reserved for condiments used to flavor food, but extended to all imported medicinal components, aromatics, dyes, and fragrances originating from plants, animals, and minerals, and other unperishable non-bulk commodities with high unit value. These spices were used as condiments, drugs, and were burned as incense in religious rituals. They were also used to color textiles, and were processed into perfumes and cosmetics.102

Thus, for medieval and early modern Europeans, sandalwood, camphor, indigo, cochineal, pastel, benzoin resin, musk, and ambergris were all considered spices. While herbs were also used as condiments and featured in medical lists of remedies, they were locally cultivated or gathered and sold in local markets, rather than imported from distant locations to be sold in urban speciality shops. Herbs were associated with poisons, witchcraft, and love potions, although their low commercial value and local origin lowered their prestige.103

For most of the twentieth century, scholars assumed that medieval and early modern

Europeans mainly used spices to preserve food, or to mask the foul smell of spoiled meat.

However, in recent decades, scientific trials established that European edible plants, such as onion, garlic, oregano, and thyme, possess better preservation qualities than most Asian spices.104

Additionally, spice prices in late medieval and early modern Europe were so much higher than

101 Ibid., 1415. 102 "The Medieval Spice Trade," 325-26. 103 Ibid., 326. 104 Stefan Halikowski Smith, "‘Profits Sprout Like Tropical Plants’: A Fresh Look at What Went Wrong with the Eurasian Spice Trade C. 1550–1800," Journal of Global History 3, no. 03 (2008): 416; See also: Paul W. Sherman and Jennifer Billing, "Darwinian Gastronomy: Why We Use Spices," BioScience 49, no. 6 (1999): 456. 41 those of meat that it was not economically viable to use them as preservatives or as a disguise for rotten meat. While at least until the sixteenth century, fresh meat was generally available to all levels of society, spices were not. The price of a pound of pepper, the cheapest spice in fifteenth- century England was equal to that of a whole pig.105

During the late medieval period, the European demand for spices was not solely motivated by the spices’ utility as condiments or medicinals: their consumption was also a display of wealth and social prestige. The high-status that spices enjoyed was due to the common perception that they were rarities of exotic origin. In some fantastic accounts, spices were said to grow in an earthly paradise, or in plantations guarded by serpents and other monsters.106 Furthermore, while appearing regularly in fifteenth and sixteenth-century cookbooks written for European elites, spices were not only used as condiments in their modern sense but also used to season wine, and were consumed on their own or along with sugar as a dessert or digestif.107

As medicinals, spices were thought to possess certain qualities in line with the system of humoral physiology that was based on the works of the second-century Greek physician Galen

(Aelius Galenus, 129AD-200/216AD). According to his theory, health consisted of a balance of four fundamental fluids or “humors” in the human body: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. These humors, it was believed, were linked to elemental qualities, having some combination of heat, moisture, coldness, or dryness. Blood was considered as a hot and moist humor, phlegm as cold and moist, yellow bile (which also appears as choler) as hot and dry, and black bile

(melancholy or sometimes just bile) as cold and dry. The imbalance or predominance of any one

105 Paul Freedman, Out of the East : Spices and the Medieval Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 4; Ken Albala, Eating Right in the Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 188. 106 Freedman, "Spices and Late-Medieval European Ideas of Scarcity and Value," 1210-13. 107 Stefan Halikowski Smith, "Demystifying a Change in Taste: Spices, Space, and Social Hierarchy in Europe, 1380-1750," The International history review. 29, no. 2 (2007): 241. 42 humor determined an individual’s “complexion”, which was continually altered by the intake of food and condiments. While humoral qualities were attributed to humans, they were also used to characterize foods and spices. Thus, in the same way a person could be described as choleric, a spice such as black pepper could be considered choler promoting.108 Hence, as drugs, spices were used to balance the humors of a patients’ body, while as condiments they were used both to flavor food, but also to balance it. If meat was considered cold and moist, spices, generally regarded as hot and dry, were considered as balancing accompaniments to a meat dish.109

It would be wrong to think that spices were consumed all over early modern Europe in a uniform manner: spice consumption varied regionally and changed over time. In the late fifteenth century and sixteenth centuries, changing fashions in Europe led to an abandonment of “medieval spices,” such as galangal, grains of paradise, and long pepper. These were substituted by cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon which were considered finer alternatives.110 This shift was followed by a relative decline in European spice consumption, both as condiments and as drugs. While the reasons for such changes have been the subject of intense academic debate, it appears that the diminution in European spice consumption is related to the direct link established by the

Portuguese between Europe and the sources of spices in the Indian Ocean World. This increased the availability of Asian spices in European markets, and made them less desirable by the

108 Albala, Eating Right in the Renaissance, 5. 109 Freedman, "The Medieval Spice Trade," 330-31. 110 Halikowski Smith, "Demystifying a Change in Taste: Spices, Space, and Social Hierarchy in Europe, 1380- 1750," 252. 43 nobility.111 The common nature of spices in Europe also “demystified” them, as they were increasingly mentioned in botanical treatises as plants rather than mystical rarities.112

It appears that while sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spaniards used cinnamon more than any other spice, the Germans, Polish, and Dutch consumed a larger quantity and variety of spices. This may have had to do with the latter’s dietary preference towards meat, and therefore, their need to complement dishes with larger amount of spices to achieve the desired humoral balance.113 Contemporary Spanish officials and entrepreneurs were well aware that the greater potential market for Asian spices was in Northern Europe rather than in the Mediterranean basin, specifically in the Spanish Netherlands, German domains, Muscovy, Poland, and England - the major end destinations of the Iberian spice trade.114

During the seventeenth century, European interest in Asian spices declined. This tendency was especially manifested in the consumption of black pepper. Its renown started to wane during the late middle ages,115 and the decline in its popularity may have been accelerated by the sixteenth century acculturation of chili pepper (gen. capsicum) in Europe.116 The fall in demand for black pepper was reflected in both Portuguese Carreira da India, and Dutch East India Company

(Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie – henceforth, VOC) cargoes. Even though pepper

111 This theory is based on: Fernand Braudel, Capitalism and Material Life, 1400-1800 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), 122. Quoted in: ; Halikowski Smith, "‘Profits Sprout Like Tropical Plants’: A Fresh Look at What Went Wrong with the Eurasian Spice Trade C. 1550–1800," 413. 112 Halikowski Smith, "Demystifying a Change in Taste: Spices, Space, and Social Hierarchy in Europe, 1380- 1750," 257. 113 Ibid., 241-2; Aram, "Caribbean Ginger and Atlantic Trade, 1570–1648," 414. 114 Aram, "Caribbean Ginger and Atlantic Trade, 1570–1648," 422; Aram, "Taste Transformed: Sugar and Spice at the Sixteenth-Century Hispano-Burgundian Court," in Global Goods and the Spanish Empire, 1492-1824 : Circulation, Resistance and Diversity, ed. Bethany Aram and Bartolomé Yun Casalilla (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 127-8; Halikowski Smith, "‘Profits Sprout Like Tropical Plants’: A Fresh Look at What Went Wrong with the Eurasian Spice Trade C. 1550–1800," 392. 115 Freedman, "Spices and Late-Medieval European Ideas of Scarcity and Value," 1215. 116 Halikowski Smith, "‘Profits Sprout Like Tropical Plants’: A Fresh Look at What Went Wrong with the Eurasian Spice Trade C. 1550–1800," 407-9. 44 constituted 85 percent by weight of returning Carreira cargoes between 1580 and 1640, it comprised less than 50 percent of the total value of spices carried, which in turn amounted to no more than 22 percent of the value of those cargoes. By contrast, cotton and silk textiles constituted less than 15 percent of such cargoes by volume but more than 60 percent by value.117 Similarly, while during the first half of the seventeenth century the VOC cargoes consisted mostly of pepper and spices, by the end of the century, the Dutch had largely replaced spices shipped to Europe with textiles.118

Thus, during the twelve decades that are subject to my research (1518-1640), the status of spices in Europe was slowly eroded. Nonetheless, they remained much in demand. Moreover, the millennia in which Europeans considered spices as precious, rare, and exotic, had a long-lasting effect on their perceived value. This had a legacy that even decreased consumption or declining economic value were slow to efface. This is evident from the very slow shift of the Portuguese and

Dutch focus away from spices as the main commodities imported from their colonies in the Indian

Ocean World. During the second half of the seventeenth century, the prestige associated with the use of spices gradually shifted to other, newly introduced, commodities, chiefly tobacco, cacao, tea and coffee. These substances, consumed between meals rather than at the table, were more suitable to the new public sphere that evolved around coffee houses at that time.119

The following section describes the spices and medicinal plants relevant to this work. This overview is based mostly on sixteenth-century Iberian materiae medicae composed by Garcia

117 James C. Boyajian, Portuguese Trade in Asia under the Habsburgs, 1580-1640 (Baltimore, Md.; London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 44-9. 118 Kristof Glamann, "Dutch-Asiatic Trade, 1620-1740" PhD Diss. (Copenhagen: Danish Science Press, 1958), 13. 119 Halikowski Smith, "Demystifying a Change in Taste: Spices, Space, and Social Hierarchy in Europe, 1380- 1750," 255-6; On the new public sphere and its relation to the consumption of these new substances See: Brian William Cowan, The Social Life of Coffee : The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005). 45

D’Orta and Cristóbal Acosta, and on cookbooks written for the Spanish nobility. As stated earlier, sixteenth-century Spanish policy makers understood that the main markets for Asian spices were located in Northern Europe rather than the Iberian Peninsula. Evidently, these officials were exposed to the above-mentioned works. Indeed, some recent scholars have asserted that the publications of D’Orta and Acosta “played a decisive role in the management of natural resources in the Iberian empires.”120

Cinnamon (canela)

The bark of the Cinnamomum verum (true cinnamon) and other species of the genus Cinnamomum such as C. burmannii.

While “true” cinnamon originated in Sri Lanka (Ceylon), other species of cinnamon were found across the Indian subcontinent.121 Garcia D’Orta, the renowned Portuguese physician and resident of Goa, reported in his Coloquios dos Simples that the Ceylon variety was considered the best cinnamon. This was certainly reflected in its price which amounted 40 times more than its cheaper substitutes.122 While today we differentiate between different species of cinnamon, notably the C. aromaticum, also known as C. cassia, and such differentiation also existed in

Medieval Europe, it was curiously dismissed by da Orta, who insisted it was the same species growing in different countries123 – a claim repeated by Cristóbal Acosta, another Portuguese

120 José Pardo Tomás, "East Indies, West Indies: Garcia Da Orta and the Spanish Treatises on Exotic Materia Medica," in Medicine, Trade and Empire : Garcia De Orta's Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India (1563) in Context, ed. Palmira Fontes da Costa (Farnham, Surrey, England ; Burlington, VT, USA: Ashgate, 2015), 198. 121 Stefan Halikowski Smith, "A List of Spices Known and Used in Europe During the Sixteenth Century, Their Provenance Common Names and Ascriptions," in Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds Essays in Honour of Kirti N. Chaudhuri, ed. Stefan Halikowski Smith and K. N. Chaudhuri (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Pub., 2011), 174. 122 Orta, Ficalho, and Markham, Colloquies on the Simples & Drugs of India, 132. 123 Ibid., 125-8. 46 physician who sojourned in India and later settled and published in Spain.124 Although his book,

Tractado de las drogas, y medicinas de las Indias Orientales, was published more than a decade after the Spanish colonization of the Philippines – where the presence of cinnamon was already known – Acosta merely summarized D’Orta’s entry on the spice, rather than revising it accordingly.

D’Orta and Acosta believed that the humoral qualities of Cinnamon were hot and dry in the third degree. Its bark was ground into powder or distilled with its fruits into oil. It was subsequently utilized to ease stomach pain and a colic, both of which were thought to be caused by cooling of the humors. It was also used as a relief for wind, to induce urination, to freshen bad breath, to comfort the heart and the stomach, and to boost the liver, spleen, brain, and nerves. It was taken to counter episodes of fainting and epilepsy, was said to improve vision, remove freckles when applied mixed with honey to the face, promote menstruation, serve as an antidote against snakebites, and to be an efficacious treatment for internal inflammation and kidney disease.125

As noted earlier, cinnamon was used extensively in the high Spanish cuisine of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. According to a late fifteenth century cookbook, the spice was used in sauces, potages, custards, desserts, meat dishes and rice dishes.126 In sixteenth-century recipes, cinnamon appeared mostly in meat, poultry, egg dishes, rice and fish dishes, and in desserts..127

Francisco Martínez Motiño, head chef at the court of Philip II, Philip III, and Philip IV used

124 Acosta, Tractado de las drogas, y medicinas de las Indias Orientales, 5-6. 125 Ibid., 14-6. 126 Ruberto de Nola, Libro de guisados manjares y potajes intitulado libro de cozina: Enel qual esta el regimiento delas casas delos reyes y grandes señores… Ruberto de Nola, a Catalan, was the head cook of King of Naples, Fernando I, son of Alfonso V of Aragon. 127 Hernandez de Maceras, Libro del arte de cozina : en el qual se contiene el modo de guisar de comer en qualquier tiempo, ansi de carne, como de pescado, ansi de pasteles, tortas, y salsas, como de co[n]seruas, y de principios, y postres, a la usança española de nuestro tiempo. Domingo Hernandez de Maceres was the cook of the Colegio Mayor de Oviedo at the University of Salamaca. 47 cinnamon mainly in poultry, fish, and egg dishes, in stuffed and stewed vegetables, in tarts and cakes, but also in meat, game, and rice dishes.128 In this era, cinnamon was either mixed with several other spices such as ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and long pepper, or added at the end of the preparation along with vinegar and sugar. During the seventeenth century, Spaniards consumed two-thirds of the cinnamon imported by the

Dutch, either in Spain or in Spanish

America.129 By then, cinnamon consumption was associated with that of Fig 1.5 Cinnamon branch, woodcut from cacao.130 Acosta (1578)

Clove (clavo)

The dried bud of Syzygium aromaticum of the family myrtaceae (myrtle).

Until the arrival of the Europeans in the Indian Ocean World, the clove tree grew exclusively on five islands in the Moluccan archipelago (Tidore, Ternate, Moti, Bacan, and

Makian). Its limited dispersion, along with a great demand for it throughout the Indian Ocean

128 Martínez Montiño, Arte de cozina, pasteleria, vizcocheria y conserueria. 129 Jonathan I. Israel, Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585-1740 (Oxford, Eng.; New York: Clarendon Press ; Oxford University Press, 1989), 251-2. 130 Marcy Norton, "Conquests of Chocolate," OAH Magazine of History 18, no. 3 (2004): 16. 48

World, made cloves extremely expensive for Europeans. Between 1512 and 1533, the Portuguese gradually gained control over the clove-producing Moluccan islands, forcing the indigenous rulers to sell the spice for the very low price of three pardaos per bahar of 500 pounds.131 The price remained low only momentarily, and in the following decades rose more than twentyfold, while it sold in Europe for roughly ten times its purchasing price in the Moluccas.132 As cloves were not prized by the Spaniards as much as cinnamon, in mid-sixteenth-century New Spain their prices were identical; both spices fetched two gold pesos per pound, a price double that of pepper but only one-third of the price of saffron.133

Cloves were dried in the sun until they had turned red-brown in color, or were conserved in vinegar and salt or in sugar - as testified by Garcia D’Orta. According to him, they were used by women in India to freshen breath, or burned and combined with nutmeg, mace, and long pepper, to induce sweating to treat scabies.134 While D’Orta did not think much of cloves as a medication,

Cristóbal Acosta classified cloves as “acute hot and dry in the third degree” on Galen’s humoral scale, and thought them a suitable drug to relieve complaints of the liver, stomach, and heart, and

131 C.R. de Silva, "The Portuguese and the Trade in Cloves in Asia During the Sixteenth Century," in Spices in the Indian Ocean World, ed. M. N. Pearson (Aldershot, Hampshire, Great Britain; Brookfield, Vt., USA: Variorum, 1996), 261-2. Pardao was a Portuguese currency roughly equivalent in its value to the Spanish Real of Eight (real de ocho). Both coins contained 25-27 grams of silver. See: Peter Borschberg The Singapore and Melaka Straits Violence, Security, and Diplomacy in the 17th Century, (Singapore: NUS Press, 2010): 340-1. David Bulbeck, Southeast Asian Exports since the 14th Century : Cloves, Pepper, Coffee, and Sugar (Leiden, Netherlands: KITLV Press, 1998), 8. 132 Southeast Asian Exports since the 14th Century : Cloves, Pepper, Coffee, and Sugar, 27. 133 Mexico City and Ignacio Bejarano, Actas de Cabildo del Ayuntamiento de la ciudad de Mexico, 55 vols., vol. 6 (1550-1561) (Mexico City, : Ed. del "Municipio libre", 1889), 215. Lunes dos de marzo de 1556 años. 134 Orta, Ficalho, and Markham, Colloquies on the Simples & Drugs of India, 219. The "Castillian itch", in Portuguese "sarna castelhana", probably scabies. Acosta refers to it as "sarna de mala calidad". See: ; Orta, Colóquios dos simples e drogas he cousas medicinais da Índia e assi dalgũas frutas achadas nella onde se tratam algũas cousas tocantes a mediçina, practica, e outras cousas boas, pera saber, 114r; Acosta, Tractado de las drogas, y medicinas de las Indias Orientales, 33. 49 to help digestion, incite urination and, when placed on the eyes, improve vision. Acosta added that in India, cloves were often chewed together with betel leaves.135

Cloves were extensively used in early modern European cuisine. Thus, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed an increase in the frequency with which cloves appeared in

European recipes, a trend reflected in the renowned French cookbook, Le Cuisinier François

(1651), in which the spice appeared in more than 40 percent of listed recipes.136 While in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, cloves were rarely included in Spanish recipes, in the late sixteenth century they increasingly appeared in those principally for meat, poultry and dessert dishes. However, they usually appeared alongside other spices such as cinnamon, ginger, pepper, and nutmeg, and were never used as commonly as in French, Italian, and Central European high cuisines.137

Fig 1.6 Clove tree, woodcut from Acosta (1578)

135 Tractado de las drogas, y medicinas de las Indias Orientales, 33. 136 Halikowski Smith, "Demystifying a Change in Taste: Spices, Space, and Social Hierarchy in Europe, 1380- 1750," 252. 137 Nola, Libro de guisados manjares y potajes intitulado libro de cozina: Enel qual esta el regimiento delas casas delos reyes y grandes señores.; Hernandez de Maceras, Libro del arte de cozina : en el qual se contiene el modo de guisar de comer en qualquier tiempo, ansi de carne, como de pescado, ansi de pasteles, tortas, y salsas, como de co[n]seruas, y de principios, y postres, a la usança española de nuestro tiempo; Martínez Montiño, Arte de cozina, pasteleria, vizcocheria y conserueria. 50

Ginger (jengibre/gengibre/xengibre)

A rhizome of Zinziber officinale, a flowering plant in the family Zingiberaceae to which turmeric, cardamom, and galangal also belong.

While ginger is thought to have originated in the Indian subcontinent, by the sixteenth century it was widely cultivated in Southeast Asia, China, and Japan. Ginger was popular in

Europe, to which it had been exported since Roman times if not earlier, mainly as a condiment and secondarily as a medicinal. Its unusual hot and moist humoral characteristics (as opposed to most other spices that were considered hot and dry) made it a more important spice for Northern

Europeans than for Southern Europeans.138 Additionally, as heat was associated with lust, and moistness with fertility and the production of sperm, ginger – which possessed both qualities – was considered an important aphrodisiac.139

As a drug, ginger was traditionally used as an antidote to poison and to the plague, and then from D’Orta’s time, it was also used to facilitate digestion.140 Additionally, according to

Acosta, ginger was prescribed to increase the appetite and “soften the belly.”141 The Sevillian apothecary, Nicolás Monardes, considered ginger to be a corrective and a vehicular drug, dispelling the bad side-effects of other medicinal components.142

Ginger did not figure as an important spice in Spain or Portugal, where it nevertheless appears to have been a regular condiment in salads and fish dishes, and was also eaten pickled in

138 Aram, "Caribbean Ginger and Atlantic Trade, 1570–1648," 415. 139 Freedman, Out of the East : Spices and the Medieval Imagination, 72. 140 Orta, Ficalho, and Markham, Colloquies on the Simples & Drugs of India, 225. 141 Acosta, Tractado de las drogas, y medicinas de las Indias Orientales, 261. 142 Nicolás Monardes, Primera y Segunda y Tercera partes de la Historia Medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales que siruen en Medicina (Sevilla: Alonso Escrivano, 1574), 99-100; See also: Aram, "Caribbean Ginger and Atlantic Trade, 1570–1648," 416. 51 vinegar.143 However, it was a sought-after commodity in Central and Northern Europe where it was used to spice drinks (of which ginger beer is a relic), desserts, and baked goods (such as gingerbread), and eaten with other spices candied in sugar as a digestif.144 In general, ginger was not considered an expensive spice, and usually it was much cheaper than pepper or the fine spices, clove, nutmeg, mace and cinnamon.

Nevertheless, the contrast between northern and southern European demand is reflected in ginger prices, which in late sixteenth-century Antwerp,

London, and Wroclaw were substantially higher

145 than in Seville or Mexico City. Fig 1.7 Ginger, woodcut from Acosta (1578)

Nutmeg and Mace (nuez moscada y macis)

Nutmeg is the seed of a tree in the genus Myristica. Mace is the dried lacy reddish covering, also called aril, of the nutmeg seed. Pulpy fruit envelopes both seed and aril.

143 Orta, Ficalho, and Markham, Colloquies on the Simples & Drugs of India, 223-5. 144 Halikowski Smith, "Demystifying a Change in Taste: Spices, Space, and Social Hierarchy in Europe, 1380- 1750," 241; "A List of Spices Known and Used in Europe During the Sixteenth Century, Their Provenance Common Names and Ascriptions," 186. 145 Aram, "Caribbean Ginger and Atlantic Trade, 1570–1648," 413-4; Richard W. Unger Robert C. Allen, "Allen - Unger Global Commodity Prices Database." http://www.gcpdb.info/. Query: "ginger prices, 1500-1650, Antwerp, London, Wroclaw". Accessed 12 Aug. 2016. ; Mexico City and Bejarano, Actas de Cabildo del Ayuntamiento de la ciudad de Mexico, 6 (1550-1561), 215. Lunes dos de marzo de 1556 años 52

The most important commercial species of nutmeg was M. fragrans, which was indigenous to the Banda Islands of the Moluccan Archipelago, in present-day Eastern Indonesia. Other species of Mystirica were found across the entire region from the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka in the

West, to the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Fiji in the East. These regions produced a nutmeg that was used locally as a condiment and medicinal, but lacked the potency and fragrance, and therefore the commercial value, of the true nutmeg of commerce M. fragrans.

According to Acosta, nutmeg was used to treat “all cold illnesses of the brain, palsy, and other passions of the nerves,” to help prevent bad breath, to improve eye sight, settle the stomach, help digestion, eradicate flatulence, bolster the liver and spleen, incite urination, and treat facial blemishes.146 Mace, according to Acosta, was distilled on the Banda Islands into an oil used to treat nerve ailments and cold related sicknesses. It was considered “hot and dry in the end of the second or in the third degree.”147

In the late Middle Ages, nutmeg and mace were used by Northern European elite to spice wines, and added to meat and poultry sauces.148 Corresponding with the shift towards “finer” spices mentioned above, both nutmeg and mace were used sparingly in fifteenth and sixteenth- century Spanish recipes, but were found in a large percentage of seventeenth- century

146 Acosta, Tractado de las drogas, y medicinas de las Indias Orientales, 37-9. 147 Ibid., 37. 148 Freedman, Out of the East : Spices and the Medieval Imagination, 21-3. 53 preparations.149 In late sixteenth century, the price of nutmeg was about three times that of black pepper, and the value of mace was about three or four times that of nutmeg.150

Fig 1.8 Nutmeg tree, woodcut from Acosta (1578)

China root (china, palo de la china)

China root constituted the rhizome of Smilax china or Smilax glabra and possibly other species of the genus Smilax, indigenous to China, Korea, Japan, Indochina, and the Philippines. Unlike other

Asian spices, which were used from ancient times in European medicine and cuisine, China root

149 Nola, Libro de guisados manjares y potajes intitulado libro de cozina: Enel qual esta el regimiento delas casas delos reyes y grandes señores...; Hernandez de Maceras, Libro del arte de cozina : en el qual se contiene el modo de guisar de comer en qualquier tiempo, ansi de carne, como de pescado, ansi de pasteles, tortas, y salsas, como de co[n]seruas, y de principios, y postres, a la usança española de nuestro tiempo; Martínez Montiño, Arte de cozina, pasteleria, vizcocheria y conserueria. 150 Halikowski Smith, "‘Profits Sprout Like Tropical Plants’: A Fresh Look at What Went Wrong with the Eurasian Spice Trade C. 1550–1800," 410; Orta, Ficalho, and Markham, Colloquies on the Simples & Drugs of India, 273; Acosta, Tractado de las drogas, y medicinas de las Indias Orientales, 37. 54 was used in Europe as a specialized medication for syphilis (mal de bubas, morbo galico). While the exact origin of syphilis is still a matter of debate, in both Europe and Asia the disease was perceived as a late fifteenth to- early sixteenth-century phenomenon. In China, syphilis was first recorded in 1502, and treated by local physicians with China root. In the following decades, aided by intra-European military campaigns, syphilis spread across Europe. Its impact was such that it was commonly considered to be a punishment from God. The Portuguese in Asia adopted the

Chinese use of China root as potent medication against syphilis, and thus shipped the root to

Europe in considerable quantities.151

However, China root was not the only known cure for syphilis. Guaiacum, a “new” drug that originated in the Antilles - where it was possibly used to treat syphilis before Europeans arrived in America - was shipped to Europe by the Spanish to treat the disease. While in the sixteenth century, China root was a valued commodity in Europe, by the seventeenth century it had been almost entirely replaced by another species of Smilax - the American

Sarsaparilla (S. ornata).152 Nicolás Monardes considered China root, Guaiacum, and Fig 1.9 China root, woodcut from Acosta Sarsaparilla as miraculous drugs efficacious in (1578)

151 A. E. Winterbottom, "Of the China Root: A Case Study of the Early Modern Circulation of Materia Medica," Social History of Medicine Social History of Medicine 28, no. 1 (2015): 23-5. 152 Ibid., 27, 33. 55 the treatment of diseases previously considered to be incurable.153 Monardes recommended the use of China root not only in cases of syphilis, but also to cure skin disorders, bodily sores, arthritis, gout, edema, melancholy, and fevers. Accordingly, he classified China root as “dry in the second degree with very little heat”.154

Tamarind (tamarindo)

Tamarind, the pulp within the fruit of the tree Tamarindus Indica, probably originated in tropical

Africa, but has long been cultivated in the Indian subcontinent. It was then gradually introduced along the tropical belt eastwards to Southeast Asia and Oceania.

By the ninth century CE, if not earlier, tamarind was imported from the Indian subcontinent into

or “Indian date.”155 In ,(تمر هندي) the Arabian Peninsula where it was referred to as tamar hindi

Europe, to which it was imported from India via Egypt, it was referred to as “Cairo.”156 It was sent from India preserved in salt, and had to be washed thoroughly before consumption.157

153 Monardes, Dos libros, el uno trata de todas las cosas que traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales, que siruen al uso de Medicina, ... El otro libro, trata de los medicinas marauillosas que son contra todo veneno, la piedra bezaar, y la yerua escuerçonera. Con la cura de los venenados. ... Agora nueuamente copuestos por el doctor Niculoso de Monardes medico de Seuilla, 24v. 154 Ibid., 34-5. 155 Acosta, Tractado de las drogas, y medicinas de las Indias Orientales, 69-70. 156 Ibid., 70-1. 157 Ibid., 68, 72. 56

Galen and other apothecaries considered tamarind as cold and dry in the second degree. According to

Acosta, water infused with tamarind was effective against burning fevers, frenzy, melancholy and other sicknesses caused by choleric and grim humours. He believed that it quenched thirst and relieved heartburn and liver complaints.158 While tamarind does not feature in Early Modern

European cuisine, D’Orta noted that the pulp was often consumed by the Portuguese in India mixed with sugar, or used instead of vinegar as a food condiment.159 Fig 1.10 Tamarind branch, woodcut from Acosta (1578)

Pepper (pimienta)

Pepper comprises the berry of Piper nigrum, a vine in the family Piperaceae, and is native to

Southern India. Black pepper is the fermented and sun-dried unripe fruit, while white pepper consists of the seed found within the berry, with the darker outer layer of the fruit removed. Pepper has been used in European medicine and cuisine since at least the first century CE. It was a prevalent, albeit expensive, ingredient in Roman cooking, and considerable resources were

158 Ibid., 72. 159 Orta, Ficalho, and Markham, Colloquies on the Simples & Drugs of India, 423. 57 invested in its importation from India via Egypt to Rome. In the only surviving Roman cookbook, pepper appears in more than 80 percent of the recipes.160

Like most other spices, pepper was considered to be very hot and dry in the third degree.

While it was reputed to possess medicinal properties, pepper was first and foremost a condiment - the most important one in Medieval Europe.161 Both the Genoese, who controlled the Levant trade in the fourteenth century, and the Venetians, who controlled it in the fifteenth century, imported large quantities of black pepper into Europe. In the mid-fourteenth century, 40 percent by value of

Genoese cargoes consisted of pepper, and in late fifteenth century, Venetians carried more than

500 tons of pepper annually from Alexandria and Beirut.162 That being said, pepper was the cheapest of the Asian spices to be imported into Europe. Ginger prices ranged from parity to three times that of black pepper and clove and nutmeg were sold anywhere from five to twenty times the price of pepper.163

By 1497, when the Portuguese established the direct trade route with India, pepper was cultivated in the Malay Peninsula, around Malacca, Sumatra, Java and the Sunda Islands in Eastern

Indonesia. However, the Portuguese considered “Malabar pepper” (from the Malabar coast of

India) the most pungent. They made it their standard pepper for export, and it constituted the greater part of the volume of their cargoes to Europe.164

While changing consumer trends in the sixteenth century decreased the prestige of pepper in Europe, demand for it did not decrease substantially. As a drug, pepper was considered a useful

160 Freedman, Out of the East : Spices and the Medieval Imagination, 26. 161 Ibid., 56-7, 76. 162 "Spices and Late-Medieval European Ideas of Scarcity and Value," 1214-15. 163 Ibid., 1214. 164 Halikowski Smith, "A List of Spices Known and Used in Europe During the Sixteenth Century, Their Provenance Common Names and Ascriptions," 207-8. See also page 5. 58 against all stomach ailments originating from cold and humidity. It was considered an effective laxative and diuretic, and was consumed to relieve flatulence, chest pain, angina, and coughing. It was also used to counter paroxysmal tremors, and to heal wild animal bites. It was said even to help remove a stillborn baby from its mother’s womb, and to treat white leprosy

(albaraços).165 In an early sixteenth-century

Spanish cookbook, pepper appears quite often in recipes for sauces for meat and poultry, potages, fish dishes, and savory pastries.166 This was in line with the contemporary belief that as a warm Fig 1.11 Black pepper, woodcut from Acosta (1578) and dry spice, pepper (like other spices) was vital in helping the digestion of cold and humid/moist meats.167 In early seventeenth-century Spanish cookbooks, pepper was most prevalent in fish dishes.168

165 Acosta, Tractado de las drogas, y medicinas de las Indias Orientales, 28-9. 166 Nola, Libro de guisados manjares y potajes intitulado libro de cozina: Enel qual esta el regimiento delas casas delos reyes y grandes señores… 167 see also: Acosta, Tractado de las drogas, y medicinas de las Indias Orientales, 28. "Y mezclada en las salsas, ayuda a dirigir las viandas." 168 Hernandez de Maceras, Libro del arte de cozina : en el qual se contiene el modo de guisar de comer en qualquier tiempo, ansi de carne, como de pescado, ansi de pasteles, tortas, y salsas, como de co[n]seruas, y de principios, y postres, a la usança española de nuestro tiempo; Martínez Montiño, Arte de cozina, pasteleria, vizcocheria y conserueria. 59

Chapter 2: Ginger, Pepper and Prestige: Plant Transplantation and the

Philippine Project

After emphasizing the close link between the sources of Asian spices and European, notably

Spanish, overseas exploration, this chapter aims to highlight three facets of sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Spanish exploration and empire building. The first is the idea that plant transplantation was an inherent component of Spanish expansion, and for economic, cultural, and religious reasons, was perceived as highly essential to the development of colonies in the Americas and the Philippines. The second was the wide involvement and interest of imperial bodies in Spain, the Americas, and the Philippines in spice transplantation projects. The final factor is that success in the transplantation of valuable plants and the profit derived from such ventures was perceived as a great service to the King, worthy of a title, official position, or land grant.

Tradition meets need – Spanish crop transplantation

The idea of transplantation was not new for the Spaniards. Foreign crops with their foreign names introduced by the Muslim conquerors who ruled parts of the Iberian Peninsula between the eighth and fifteenth centuries, have become an inseparable part of Spanish history, tradition, and collective memory. Although many crops introduced by the Muslim were abandoned and forgotten with the advancement of the Reconquista, others, such as Asiatic rice, sugarcane, citrus, hard wheat, eggplants, cotton, and indigo, were accepted by the Spaniards.169 Therefore, it is conceivable that when the Spanish and Portuguese regained control over the Iberian Peninsula,

169 Andrew M. Watson, Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World : The Diffusion of Crops and Farming Techniques, 700-1100 (Cambridge, Eng.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 21, 28-9, 45, 70-1, 145, 84-5 n.27. 60 they inherited from their Muslim predecessors both Asiatic crops and a long legacy of foreign crop transplantation and acclimatization techniques.170 Consequently, in the late fifteenth century, even prior to the Columbian voyage, the Spaniards carried sugarcane and other fruit trees, that had previously thrived in Portuguese Madeira, to the recently conquered Canary Islands. Sugar transplantation was particularly successful, and the sugar mill complex, from its financial, commercial, and organizational aspects, was fully developed in these Atlantic islands before its transfer to America.171

Indeed, crop transplantation became a core characteristic of Spanish colonization in the

New World. Columbus reported in the journal of his first voyage that the land he discovered was suitable for the cultivation of Old World crops and animal husbandry.172 In subsequent voyages,

Columbus carried a variety of domesticated animals to breed and plants to cultivate from Spain to the Islands of Hispaniola and Cuba. The most notable among these was sugarcane, which became a major crop in the Caribbean.173 Although it was evident to the Spaniards that the indigenous peoples they met enjoyed a diverse diet, they brought whatever Old World plants they were accustomed to eat with them for transplantation. While wheat, barley, grapevines, and olive trees constituted the most important among such plants, the Spanish, also transplanted to the New World legumes such as lentils, garbanzos, and broad beans; vegetables such as lettuce, escarole, edible

170 De Vos, "The Science of Spices: Empiricism and Economic Botany in the Early Spanish Empire," 405-6. 171 James Lockhart and Stuart B. Schwartz, Early Latin America : A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil (Cambridge Eng.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 27; Juan de Abreu de Galindo and George Glas, The History of the Discovery and Conquest of the Canary Islands: Translated from a Spanish Manuscript, Lately Found in the Island of Palma. With an Enquiry into the Origin of the Ancient Inhabitants. To Which Is Added, a Description of the Canary Islands, Including the Modern History of the Inhabitants., and an Account of Their Manners, Customs, Trade, &C. By Capt. George Glas. With His Life and Tragical End. On Board the Sandwich of London ; and an Account of the Apprehending, Trials, Conviction, and Execution of the Four Assassins, Perpetrators of That Horrid Crime. In Two Volumes, (Dublin: Printed for D. Chamberlaine in Dame-Street, and James Williams in Skinner-Row 1767): 124. 172 See for example Columbus' letter on his first voyage in: C. Columbus and J. Cohen, The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Penguin Books Limited, 2004), 116-17. 173 Crosby, The Columbian Exchange : Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. 61 thistles, chard, cabbage, cauliflower, artichokes, spinach, eggplant, turnips, radishes, beets, and carrots; and fruits such as quince, peaches, cherries, pomegranates, melons, mangoes, and especially, citrus fruits such as oranges, lemons, and grapefruit. They also brought domesticated animals, including horses, asses, mules, cows, pigs, goats, sheep, and barnyard fowl.174 For example, when in 1584 Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa sailed from San Lucar in Spain with several hundred colonists to establish a settlement on the shores of the straits of Magellan, he brought “live cattle, sheep, and goats for breeding and fruit trees and vines and vegetables for planting and sowing, [and other] seeds of every kind.”175

In fact, only the regions that were considered suitable for the cultivation of European plants were considered suitable for Spanish colonization. This was reflected both in geographical surveys conducted by the Spaniards and in specific questions included in the Relaciones Geográficas de

Indias, sent by the Crown in 1577 to officials in New Spain and other colonies.176 As recently argued by Rebecca Earle, the necessity to consume European food-stuffs was deeply rooted in the

Spanish belief that it was what they ate that “helped create the bodily differences that underpinned the European categories of Spaniard and Indian.” Amerindians, it was perceived, did not possess the same humoral structure as the Spanish because their nutrition was different.177

174 María de los Ángeles Pérez Samper, "The Early Modern Food Revolution: A Perspective from the Iberian Atlantic," in Global Goods and the Spanish Empire, 1492-1824: Circulation, Resistance and Diversity, ed. B. Aram and B. Yun-Casalilla (Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2014), 19. 175 Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de América y Oceanía : sacados de los archivos del reino, y muy especialmente del de Indias. Competentemente Autorizada, ed. Joaquín Francisco Pacheco, Francisco de Cárdenas y Espejo, and Luis Torres de Mendoza, 24 vols., vol. 5, I (Madrid: Ministerio de Ultramar, 1864), 364-5. 176 Rebecca Earle, The Body of the Conquistador Food, Race and the Colonial Experience in Spanish America, 1492-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 70-1. 177 Ibid., 5. 62

Additionally, as devout Catholics, Spanish migrants were obliged to bring grapevines and wheat with them to produce the wine and bread needed for their religious ceremonies.178 As early as the 1520s-1530s, specific instructions were given by high officials in New Spain ordering any

Spaniard granted rights to indigenous labor (encomienda) to plant grapevines and cultivate wheat in his allocated lands.179

The Spanish believed that their health, self-definition, and religion were closely linked to the plants and animals they used to eat in Iberia. When crossing the Atlantic, and later, the Pacific,

Spaniards wished to take whatever they could to replicate a familiar environment, capable of answering all their daily needs, with them. Over subsequent decades, plants and animals (and germs) from the Old World were introduced deliberately or unintentionally to wherever Spaniards, and later, other Europeans settled in the New World, Asia and Africa.

To conclude, the idea that plants and animals could, and should, be introduced to newly acquired lands was not an innovation linked exclusively to the colonization of America. Rather, it had been embedded in Spanish culture for centuries.

Old World Spices, New World Soil

As noted above, the motivation to transplant Old World spices to America existed even before the

Spanish conquest of Mexico. A royal decree dated September 1518, aimed at encouraging farmers to settle the West Indies, specified that monetary grants (merced)180 would be given to those who

178 Ibid., 57-8. 179 Ibid., 69-70. 180 Merced - can be defined both as an awards one received for performing certain work or service, and as a gift or a favor in the form of employment, honor, income, or title given by kings or lords to their subjects. "Merced," in Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española (1611), ed. Sebastián de Covarrubias Orozco (Madrid: Luis Sanchez, 1611), 546-7. 63 tilled the land and experimented with sowing, planting, and breeding (espiriencias de senbrar y plantar y criar). Such settlers were to be granted twenty years free of sales tax (alcabala), and all other forms of taxation apart from the church tithe (diezmo).181 Additional grants were to be bestowed upon the first farmers to successfully produce a given quota of certain agricultural crops or animal products, including silk, oil (probably olive oil), pastel (a dye plant), as well as cloves, ginger, cinnamon, or any other spice not found in the Indies.182 The background to this decree is as yet unknown, though it is possible that the seeds or bulbs of some of the spices mentioned made their way into Spanish hands via some of the considerable number of Portuguese mariners who switched their allegiance. Alternatively, the decree expressed an as yet unfulfilled desire by the

Crown to participate in the European spice trade. In all events, it is evident that the desire to transplant Asian spices to the Indies accompanied Spanish expansion into the Americas and Asia, even before Magellan’s expedition encountered the Portuguese in the Moluccas (1521) or the

Treaty of Zaragoza (1529). It is also clear that the Spanish monarchy considered that it was just a matter of time before the most profitable crops would be farmed in the Americas.

While the Spaniards were interested in transplanting Asian spices into territories under their control that appeared suitable for their cultivation, other sixteenth and seventeenth-century

European empires had a different approach to acquiring spices. The Portuguese Crown aimed at containing those spices close to their places of origin through a series of decrees. However, it found it difficult to prevent its subjects from clandestinely carrying valuable spices, such as ginger, from

181 Real Provisión dada por la Reyna Doña Juana y su hijo D. Carlos, concediendo libertades y privilegios á los labradores que pasasen á las Indias. 1518, Zaragoza, 10 Septiembre. Real Academia de la Historia (Spain), Colecció n de documentos iné ditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organizació n de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar, vol. 9 (Madrid: "Sucesores de Rivadeneyra," impresores de la real casa, 1895), 80. See also: Sarabia Viejo, "Posibilidades de la especiería mexicana en la economía mundial del siglo XVI," 394. 182 “Clavos, o gengibre, o canela o otro qual quier generode especería que al presente no ay en las dichas yslas.” Real Academia de la Historia (Spain), Colecció n de documentos iné ditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organizació n de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar, 9, 81-83. 64

East Asia to the Portuguese colonies in Africa and Brazil.183 This was recognised when, in the second half of the seventeenth century, by which time Portuguese exports of spices from Asia had markedly declined, the King of Portugal reversed those decrees to encourage spice cultivation throughout the Portuguese Empire.184

In the beginning of the seventeenth century, when Portuguese territories were subjected to the Spanish Crown as a part of the Iberian Union (1580-1640), the Dutch arrived in the eastern

Indian Ocean and started competing with the Portuguese over the trade in fine spices. Conversely to the Spanish and Portuguese, the Dutch were conducting their activities through a chartered company, the VOC (1602). As an independent company, the VOC was more equipped than the

Iberian financiers in handling problems such as uncertainty in supplies, rise in cost prices, and market fluctuations in Europe.185 After gaining control over the trade in clove and nutmeg, the

Dutch were concerned with European as well as Asian competition. Striving to eliminate all their rivals from the area of production and procurement, the Dutch responded with violence towards any other Europeans who attempted to obtain seeds or seedlings of nutmeg and cloves. These efforts prolonged the Dutch’s hegemony, and their rivals’ efforts did not bear fruit until well into the eighteenth century.186

In its short existence (1522-1529), the Casa de la Especería prepared and despatched several expeditions to try to discover a shorter and safer route than the one navigated by Magellan to the Spice Islands. Such expeditions also searched for the ship and crew left by Magellan’s

183 Halikowski Smith, "‘Profits Sprout Like Tropical Plants’: A Fresh Look at What Went Wrong with the Eurasian Spice Trade C. 1550–1800," 397-8. 184 A.J.R. Russell-Wood, The Portuguese Empire, 1415-1808: A World on the Move (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 163. 185 Om Prakash, "VOC and the Asian Spice Trade," in Spices in the Indian Ocean World, ed. M. N. Pearson (Aldershot, Hampshire, Great Britain; Brookfield, Vt., USA: Variorum, 1996), 319. 186 Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860, 169-71. 65 expedition with the aim of salvaging the goods it carried, establishing a colony, and conducting trade with indigenous populations.187 Of these expeditions, just one, led by García Jofre de Loaísa in 1525-6 reached its destination. When it finally arrived to the Spice Islands, the Portuguese, who had maintained a presence in the Moluccas since 1513, captured and imprisoned the twenty-five members of the expedition who had survived the voyage. In 1536, those imprisoned were eventually sent to Spain via Portugal on board a Portuguese ship. Among the survivors was the navigator Andrés de Urdaneta who later, as a member of the Legazpi expedition to the Philippines, recorded a valid return route across the Pacific Ocean to Acapulco in New Spain.

The only other expedition to reach the Spice Islands prior to the 1529 Treaty of Zaragoza was commissioned by Hernan Cortés in 1526. Captained by Cortés’ relative, Álvaro de Saavedra

Cerón, it sailed from the Pacific coast of Mexico in 1527. The Crown had ordered Cortés to built a small fleet, sail to the Moluccas, and report about the fate of Magellan’s men and the Loaisa expedition. It did not accord him monopoly rights over the spice trade, which had already been allocated to the city of La Coruña through the Casa de la Especería.188 Nevertheless, wishing to maximise possible profits from such a costly and risky venture, Cortès ordered Saavedra to make a discrete collection of spice trees and plants, and laid down careful instructions regarding their safe transportation by ship back to New Spain. He further stipulated that the expedition should gather as much knowledge as possible about the conditions in which the plants grew and the ways they should be cultivated:

187 Título de Capitán general de la Armada y Gobernador de las islas de Maluco, expedido por el Emperador al Comendador Loaisa. 5 April, 1525, Instrucción que dió S. M. á Diego de Covarrubias para el cargo de factor general... 23 May 1525 in: Martín Fernández de Navarrette, Colecció n de los viajes y descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los españoles desde fines del siglo XV: Con varios documentos iné ditos concernientes á la historia de la marina castellana y de los establecimientos españoles en Indias (Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1829-1837), Tomo V, 207-10, 20-22. 188 Cédula del Emperador á Hernan Cortés para que despache desde los puertos de la costa occidental de Nueva- España algunas embarcaciones al Maluco para saber el paradero de las que fueron con Magallanes y Loaisa. in: ibid., 440-41. 66

 You will endeavour to discover which parts of the said islands or mainland possess

the greater quantities of spices and other drugs, and where they are most traded; and

if possible, you will form a settlement there that is secure for you and the members

of your expedition.

 You will diligently endeavour to understand the methods used by the indigenous

people in these regions when cultivating the trees that spices grow on, and collect

information on every kind of spice; and I know, you will work in the utmost secrecy

to send some of these plants by ship, ensuring that they are planted in soil in leather

bags [botas], or in any other manner you see fit so they arrive in a healthy-enough

condition to be successfully planted here [in New Spain], and you shall appoint

other people to supervise this process, to ensure that the plants arrive in a condition

that allows them to be planted here; and if you manage to acquire a slave or other

native of the land who knows how to treat these plants and take care of them

(curarlas), you shall send them with the [plants] – on condition that they are able

to do so voluntarily or [are so authorised by] the Lord of the land, because otherwise

you would make them resentful (hacerles desabrimiento), and this must not be

allowed in any way, as our lord [the King] wills it, [as] this can be achieved without

risk on the part of the land (se pueda hacer sin riesgo de parte de la tierra); and if

you cannot have such a person, you shall send a most detailed report (relación) on

the manner in which these trees should be handled, as an experiment will be

conducted here [in New Spain] to examine whether they can yield fruit (para que

acá se haga experiencia de ver si se dan en la tierra). And if the indigenous people

have noticed that you have taken these plants, make them understand that you send 67

them for me to observe their nature (la manera de ellas), and not for any other

reason, so that they don’t take any offence.189

This document constitutes the earliest evidence of a planned Spanish transplantation of

Asian Spices to the Americas. As noted, it included detailed instructions regarding the way the trees should be transported, the importance of gathering information on the local methods of cultivation, and the desirability that such plants be accompanied to New Spain by indigenous

Moluccans skilled in techniques of tending spice trees. Cortés ordered that, should such people be unavailable, Saavedra send back a most detailed report specifying the conditions in which those spice plants should be handled, that is, to provide the necessary knowledge for their experimental transplantation in New Spain.190

To keep his plans secret, and to ensure the precious plants were being taking care off,

Cortés ordered Saavedra, once he had reached New Spain, to alert Francisco Cortés, his nephew, or Francisco Maldonado, one of his confidants, of his plans. Saavedra was instructed that once he had docked he should have the spice trees taken ashore and replanted by his men who were to be provided with all the relevant information regarding the optimum conditions for the plants;

“whether they require humid or arid soil, be irrigated or not, planted in the mountains, or on the plains, and all other particular necessary conditions.”191

In the end, Saavedra’s expedition fared no better than that of Loaísa. Two of his ships disappeared during a storm, and the other vessels reached the Moluccan island of Tidore where they reinforced the Spanish stronghold, held by men from the Magellan and Loaísa expeditions.

189 Instrucción dada por Hernan Cortés a Alvaro de Saavedra Cerón para el viaje de las islas de Moluco, 28.5.1527 in: Cortés and Hernández Sánchez-Barba, Cartas y documentos, 380. (My translation). 190 Ibid., 381. 191 Ibid.; Regarding Cortés' ties with the two see: C. Harvey Gardiner, Martín López, Conquistador Citizen of Mexico (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1958), 84, 116. 68

However, Saavedra failed to navigate back to New Spain and in 1529 perished at sea. Nevertheless, it can be argued that in this document, Cortés established the basic provisions required for spice transplantation: how to ensure the survival of the plants aboard ship, acquire the information required for their cultivation, and successfully nurture the plants after they had reached their destination.

Spice Monopolies and Exploration

In the period from 1530 to 1550, the Spanish adopted three tactics in their attempt to gain control over the Asian spice trade. The first was to locate islands in the general neighbourhood of the

Moluccas that lay outside the area designated to Portuguese domination. The intention was for the

Spanish Crown to later lay claim to any such islands that they found. The second was to relocate the cultivation of Moluccan spices to Spanish-controlled lands. The third was to grant exclusive rights to private entrepreneurs to cultivate these spices in lands the Crown planned to settle. In all cases, the projects were often initiated by private individuals and conducted at their own cost, albeit with Crown approval and the granting of royal privileges and titles that could be cashed should the project be successful. The silver deposits in Zacatecas and Potosí had yet to be discovered, so it appears that the ultimate goal of the Spanish Crown was to obtain wealth and honor through participating in the Asian-European spice trade, rather than to impose control over where Asian spices originated. Spice cultivation in Spanish controlled territories, if successful, might provide sufficient funds for Spanish expansion in Europe and the New World. At the same time, for the entrepreneurs involved, this venture was a relatively fast and safe way to accumulate wealth, and elevate their status once they returned to Spain through the purchase of an entailed 69 property (mayorazgo)192 or a place at court – aspirations described in detail by Murdo J.

Macleod.193

*****

In 1535, Juan Pacheco, the Portuguese Commander and Knight of the Order of Alcantara, proposed to the Council of the Indies to organize an expedition to the “South Sea [Pacific Ocean], the Spice

Islands and other parts” in order to discover islands or mainland within Spanish demarcation where there were spices. Pacheco, who planned to sail from the Pacific coast of New Spain in ships purchased at his own cost,194 was summoned before the Council, which subsequently recommended that the Crown support his project.195 In early 1536, the Crown signed a formal document promising Pacheco, his heirs and successors, the rights to one-fifth of the value of any spices he found, up to a yearly value of 4000 ducats, and the title of governor of the territory where the spices grew. Additionally, he was to be given the title of gentil hombre de nuestra casa,196 and an annual stipend of 100 thousands maravedis (about 3000 silver reals197). For his part, Pacheco promised to sail to New Spain that very year (1536), and set out to cross the Pacific not later than

192 Mayorazgo was an entailed property, or a property usually connected to permanent noble title that could not be traded, sold or be disposed off. See: Grace E. Coolidge, Guardianship, Gender and the Nobility in Early Modern Spain (Farnham, Surrey, England; Boston: Ashgate, 2011), 37-40. 193 Murdo J. MacLeod, Spanish Central America; a Socioeconomic History, 1520-1720 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 46-47. 194 Memorial de Juan Pacheco: Maluco, 1535-12-22, AGI Patronato,46,R.3. 195 Consulta del Consejo de Indias, 1535-12-22, AGI,Indiferente,737,N.42. 196 Gentil hombre de nuestra casa – gentleman in waiting of the knight class, a part of the royal entourage in public, religious and ceremonial functions. Second in the palatine hierarchy to the gentil hombre de boca. Diccionario de la lengua española, (Madrid: Real Academia Española, 2012).Value: gentilhombre. 197 Currency conversion is based on the table found at: Paul E. Hoffman, The Spanish Crown and the Defense of the Caribbean, 1535-1585 : Precedent, Patrimonialism, and Royal Parsimony (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), 255. 70

June 1538.198 Following this agreement, the Crown issued a series of decrees and provisions relating to the project, such as letters of recommendation for Juan Pacheco, and orders to officials in New Spain, the viceroy included, to provide Pacheco with all the help he required.199

Sometime in 1537, Pacheco’s plans changed, as in the summer of 1538 he was granted a licence to sail through the Straits of Magellan (rather than via New Spain), and the time limit for his voyage was extended to the end of 1538.200 As there is no further evidence about this initiative, we should assume that Pacheco’s expedition never materialised. However, the project is significant as it underscores two important elements in the attitude of the Spanish Crown. The first is that the

Crown used private initiative and funds to advance its ambition to discover, colonize and control trade in spice-rich regions. The second is that, at a time when the Crown rarely granted noble titles as a reward, it did so to entrepreneurs who it considered to possess the necessary knowledge and background to discover spice bearing territories. Thus, while explorers such as Pedro de Mendoza, the conquistador and adelantado201 of Río de La Plata, were promised titles should their expeditions prove successful, Juan Pacheco was granted the title gentil hombre de nuestra casa, without even setting sail.202

198 Real Cédula, Madrid, 1536-2-24, AGI,Indiferente,536,L.YY1,F.17-21V ; For a subscription see: Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y colonización de las posesiones españolas en América y Oceanía, sacados, en su mayor parte, del real archivo de Indias ed. Joaquín Francisco Pacheco, Francisco de Cárdenas, Luis Torres de Mendoza, Archivo General de Indias, and Ministerio de Ultramar 42 vols., vol. 22, I (Madrid: Hernández, 1874), 145-53. 199 The said decrees and provisions are found in AGI,Indiferente,536,L.YY1, folios 15-35. 200 Real cédula 1537-8-31 AGI,Indiferente,536,L.YY1,F.34-34V ; ibid. 201 Adelantado – a title held by Spanish nobles charged with conquering, pacifying, and administering a region outside the jurisdiction of an existing viceroy or audiencia, in exchange for funding and organizing the initial exploration. It endowed the recipient with the right to administer civil and criminal law within the newly conquered territory, the right to communicate directly with the Council of the Indies, nominate judges and other officials, and other privileges. "Adelantado," in Diccionario de gobierno y legislación de Indias, ed. Manuel Josef de Ayala and Marta Milagros del Vas Mingo (Madrid: Ediciones de Cultura Hispánica, 1988), vol.1, p.13-14. 202 Regarding the scarcity of reward title-granting see: Marta Milagros del Vas Mingo, "Las ordenanzas de 1573, sus antecedentes y consecuencias," Quinto centenario 8 (1985): 91. 71

In another case, sometime in 1536, Gregorio de Pesquera Rosa, a citizen of Burgos, requested from Queen Juana the right to cultivate spices in an area stretching 270 kilometers along the coast and 550 kilometers inland, between La Cananea and Rio Santa Catalina (in the present- day state of Sao Paulo, Brazil). In a series of agreements, followed by royal decrees, made between

August and September 1536,203 De Pesquera was granted the rights he requested along with a twenty-year monopoly over “the first kind of spice [cultivated] in such quantities, and saleable among Christians for the same price as those imported from India into the Kingdom of

Portugal.”204 Additionally, he was promised the title of governor with hereditary rights to the said territory, and the authority to recruit indigenous people to work on his farms as long as they were fed and fairly paid. In return, Pesquera was to finance both the expedition and the costs of founding the new colony.205 Should Pesquera fail to cultivate spices in the territory specified, uncultivated lands in other part of the Indies and the right to employ the local indigenous population would be granted to him.206

De Pesquera’s initiative, like that of Pacheco, never materialized. All of the documents mentioned above were later cancelled by the King and are marked with the words “this agreement was ripped off by his Majesty” (“esta capitulacíon rasgo Su Magestad”). The reason for the royal annulation is unclear. However, as noted by the Argentinian scholar, Enrique De Gandia, it might have been related to internal Spanish politics. At first, the queen accepted De Pesquera’s initiative as means of guarding against Portuguese advances in the Americas. However, as De Pesquera’s

203 The nine documents relating to this case can be found in: AGI, Buenos_Aires,1,L.1,F.78V-91R. 204 Capitulaciones con Gregorio de Pesquera Rosa, 1536-8-21, AGI,Bueanos_Aires,1,L.1,F.78V-83R ; Transcribed in: Argentina and Estanislao Severo Zeballos, Argentine Republic Arbitration Upon a Part of the National Territory of Misiones Disputed by the United States of Brazil: Argentine Evidence Laid before the President of the United States of America (New York: S. Figueroa, printer, 1893), 135. 205 Argentine Republic Arbitration Upon a Part of the National Territory of Misiones Disputed by the United States of Brazil: Argentine Evidence Laid before the President of the United States of America, 136-37. 206 Ibid., 137. 72 territory fell within the borders of the governorship given earlier to Pedro de Mendoza, the Spanish king eventually rejected it to prevent the irregularity of overlapping governorships.207

The significance of this second unrealized project is threefold: to begin with, it highlights spice transplantation and cultivation as an incentive for entrepreneurs such as Pesquera to colonize

“barren”, uncultivated lands, with otherwise no natural resources or other attractive features.

Secondly, as with the decree of 1518 mentioned earlier, the Spanish Crown used the possibility of a lucrative spice cultivation venture in the Americas to attract settlers and entrepreneurs to strategic places it wished to populate and exploit. Finally, the fact that Pesquera and the Crown were negotiating specific terms for the foundation of a colony that was to be based on spice cultivation in the Americas, and the option he was given to exchange lands should his spice crop fail in the original territory, might indicate that the Spanish had already acquired the seeds of some Asian spices. However, as other past and future endeavours demonstrate, the asiento that Pesquera was granted may have been of a speculative nature, rather than one based on a proven ability to undertake such transplantation.

Another example of the Spanish Crown’s speculative policy regarding spice transplantation to Spanish America was the asiento it granted in 1538 to Juan de Oribe (also spelled Orive). The contract with Oribe specified the sorts of spices or valuable plants that the Spanish Crown desired to be cultivated. These included pepper, malagueta pepper, “meni pepper” (pimienta de mení), cloves, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, sandalwood, lacquer tree, benzoin, indigo (añil), and eaglewood.208 Except for Malageuta, which is probably the African spice, “grains of paradise,”

207 Enrique de Gandía, Gregorio de Pesquera; Un proyecto ignorado de gobernación en la costa del Brasil (1536) (Buenos Aires: Cabaut, 1935), 29-30, 36-37. 208 “Pimienta y malagueta y pimienta de mení y clavo y canela y jengibre y nuez moscada y sándalo y lacar y menguy y añil y águila.” Orden sobre solicitud de Juan de Oribe, Toledo, 1538-12-6, AGI Santo_Domingo,868,L.1,F.152V-153R. 73 and añil, which usually referred to the American specie of the dye indigo, all the above-mentioned plants have Asian origins.209

Oribe was allowed to use any vacant lands (tierras baldías) in the islands of Hispaniola,

San Juan (Puerto Rico), Cuba, and the province of Tierra Firme (present-day Panama), or other parts of the [West] Indies suitable for the cultivation of such crops.210 As with Gregorio de

Pesquera Rosa, Oribe was granted a monopoly over spice cultivation on the condition that he, and not the royal treasury, paid for all the costs involved in the project. This monopoly was given to

Oribe and his heirs in perpetuity, and orders were sent to the audiencia of Santo Domingo, the governor of Cuba, and other officials in Puerto Rico and mainland Central America instructing the recipients to provide Oribe with all the land, water and other assistance he deemed necessary.211

Oribe had to produce a minimum quantity of spices of a certain quality to maintain his monopoly over the provision of spices to Spain. Additionally, half of the profits of the venture were to go to the Royal treasury, and the other half to Oribe, who was required every two years to provide the Council of the Indies with a full report on the project.212 It is safe to assume that the reports Oribe were required to send served to provide both an overview of his activities in light of the monopoly agreement, and knowledge about spice transplantation methods that would be useful for subsequent transplantation ventures.

209 I could not identify the spice pimienta de meni. Lacar is most likely Toxicodendron vernicifluum, or Chinese lacquer tree. Mengui and águila were identified respectively by Víctor Manuel Patiño as Styrax benzoin, an Indonesian resinous tree, and eaglewood tree (Aquilaria agallocha Robx.), aromatic resinous tree found in parts of Asia and Oceania. Víctor Manuel Patiño, Plantas cultivadas y animales domésticos en América Equinoccial, (Cali: Imprenta Departamental, 1969), http://www.banrepcultural.org/blaavirtual/historia/puti/indice.htm. Capitulo V. 210 AGI Santo_Domingo,868,L.1,F.152V-153R. 211 Ibid. 212 Real cédula conteniendo la capitulación con Juan de Oribe para que pueda cultivar especiería en la Isla Española, San Juan, Cuba y Tierra Tirme, o donde mejor pueda, bajo las condiciones que se expresan., Toledo, 1538-12-6, AGI Indiferente,423,L.18F.189R-189V, ; Also transcribed in: Vicente de Cadenas y Vicent and Castro Instituto Salazar y, Carlos I de Castilla, señor de las Indias (Madrid: Hidalguía, 1988), 249; AGI, Santo_Domingo,868,L.1,F.152V-153R. 74

While the origins of Oribe’s project are yet to be revealed, it is possible that news of Andrés de Urdaneta and other Spaniards’ return to Iberia in June 1536 after their marooning on the Spice

Islands triggered renewed interest in spice transplantation projects. One of the voyagers may well have returned with spice seeds or rhizomes to be sown in Mexico or Spain, and this may have initiated one or more of the above-mentioned projects. However, as no further information is available about the spice asiento of Juan de Oribe, it probably never came to fruition. Nevertheless, the terms of this monopoly reflect a Crown policy of using spice transplantation as an incentive for colonization as long as private entrepreneurs were willing to finance it. While the nature of such asientos, offered by or given to entrepreneurs, may have been no more than speculative, it surely aimed at encouraging individuals to partake in the Spanish imperial effort through developing a viable economy where natural resources were scarce, and at the same time, to compete with Portugal over the Asian-European spice trade.

*****

It appears that the next spice cultivation monopoly was granted two decades later, in 1558, to Francisco de Mendoza, son of Antonio de Mendoza, the first viceroy of New Spain. The history of this asiento has been examined by several previous scholars but never, as discussed here, in the full context of royal policy towards plant transplantation and its strong connection with the

Philippines. 213 What differentiates Mendoza’s venture from previous asientos is that, at least partially, it bore fruit.

The administrative elite of New Spain and other parts of the Indies displayed consistent interest in developing profitable cash crops within their territories - as demonstrated by Antonio

213 Sarabia Viejo, "Posibilidades de la especiería mexicana en la economía mundial del siglo XVI," 396-400; De Vos, "The Science of Spices: Empiricism and Economic Botany in the Early Spanish Empire," 417-20. 75 de Mendoza, and his son Francisco. Antonio de Mendoza’s interest in crop cultivation may have been reflected in his instructions to the Villalobos expedition that in 1542 sailed from the west coast of New Spain to establish a settlement in the Philippine Islands (then called las Islas del

Poniente). Although he gave no detailed instructions for the transplantation of spices, such as those that Cortés gave Saavedra, he did instruct Villalobos to collect specimens of all the products that grew in the lands he explored.214

However, like the Loaysa and Saavedra expeditions, the one led by Villalobos ended in disaster. It reached Tidore, one of the Spice islands, but failed either to establish a permanent self- sufficient colony in the Philippines or find the return trans-Pacific route to New Spain. Instead,

Villalobos was forced to agree to evacuate Tidore and to surrender to the Portuguese on Ternate.

While Villalobos himself died in prison on the island of Amboyna in 1546, his surviving crew members were sent as prisoners to Goa. From there they sailed to Lisbon, where they arrived in

August 1548, returning to Spain later that year.215

Nevertheless, in 1558, following negotiations between Francisco de Mendoza and the

Crown that held in secrecy to prevent Portugal from learning about the forthcoming competition,

Mendoza was granted two separate monopolies over spice cultivation in New Spain - one for pepper, cinnamon, and cloves, and the other for ginger, sandalwood, and china root.216 These asientos gave him de facto control over spice cultivation throughout the Spanish Empire. Should

214 “Ansimismo embiareis muestra de todas las cosas de la tierra que pudieredes haver que en ella se crian.” Colecció n de documentos iné ditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organizació n de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar, ed. Real Academia de la Historia, 25 vols., vol. 2, (Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1886), 36; Quoted also in: "The Science of Spices: Empiricism and Economic Botany in the Early Spanish Empire," 417. 215 Cushner, The Isles of the West; Early Spanish Voyages to the Philippines, 1521-1564, 53-55. 216 Propuestas y condiciones de Francisco de Mendoza para cultivar pimienta, clavo, canela, jenjibre y sándalo en España o Nueva España y lo que asienta el Rey, Valladolid, 1558, AGS,CCA,DIV,46,23. China root, in Spanish China, can be identified as both smilax china and smilax glabra, and was considered a cure for syphilis. See: Winterbottom, "Of the China Root: A Case Study of the Early Modern Circulation of Materia Medica," 23. 76 his projects succeed, the profit was to be divided between him and the Crown in the following manner: equal parts on any proceeds from ginger, sandalwood, china root, and two-thirds to the

Crown and one-third to Mendoza of any profits generated of the cultivation of pepper, cinnamon, and cloves. The Crown granted Mendoza all necessary land, pack animals and indigenous labour, and agreed to cover all costs associated with planting. Additionally, Mendoza was to be employed as a Royal factor (salary unknown), and could nominate two aides with an annual salary of 300 pesos. Provided he initiated the project within the space of six years, Mendoza and his heirs were to be granted a permanent monopoly over the trade in the above spices, which they could sell free of taxes other than customs duty (almojarifazgo) for a period of thirty years. However, the Crown reserved the right to buy Mendoza’s share of the pepper-cinnamon-clove monopoly for an annual fee of 50 thousand ducats (more than 500 thousand silver reals)!217

The asiento conditions may seem extraordinary, and indeed the Council of the Indies was dubious about them. In an critical opinion from 1559, the Council outlined several scenarios for the outcome of the first asiento of pepper, cinnamon, and cloves – all of which were unfavorable for the royal treasury. It claimed that these spices could never thrive in New Spain, or any other part of the West Indies, since their region of origin was characterised by very different climatic and geographical conditions (es de diferente temple y calidad.) They predicted that in the unlikely event that the plants survived the costly process of transplantation, they would yield very little, rendering the project futile. Further, the council stated that, in the unlikely case that the spices prospered in New Spain, giving Mendoza and his heirs one third of the profits from their sale would undermine the viability of the project for the Crown.218

217 AGS,CCA,DIV,46,23. See also: Sarabia Viejo, "Posibilidades de la especiería mexicana en la economía mundial del siglo XVI," 397-98; Currency conversion is based on the table in: Hoffman, The Spanish Crown and the Defense of the Caribbean, 1535-1585 : Precedent, Patrimonialism, and Royal Parsimony, 255. 218 Consulta del Consejo de Indias, 1559-3-21, AGI,Indiferente,738,N.47, Doc. a; AGS,CCA,DIV,46,23. 77

The Council also noted the possible illegality of allocating undefined lands for the project, as well as the infringement upon the rights of the Indigenous people who were anticipated to be forcefully recruited to work on the spice plantations. The council members evoked the ill fate of a previous pastel asiento given to two Germans, Micer Enerique and Alberto Cuon to illustrate their arguments.219 This asiento, granted in 1537, produced very limited pastel of relatively poor quality. It seems that the reasons for the failure of pastel cultivation in New Spain were tied to epidemics, local authorities’ indifference, unfavourable appraisals of the product, and above all, constant shortage in manual workforce.220

Regarding the second asiento given to Mendoza, the council claimed that it was understood from returning travelers that, by the late 1550s, ginger had, in fact, been thriving in

New Spain for some years. Therefore, it seemed very unreasonable to the Council that the Crown would settle on only half of the future profits of this monopoly, while maintaining two-thirds of the future profits from the less probable monopoly over pepper, cinnamon, and cloves.221

Later that year, disregarding the Council’s arguments, Philip II endorsed the asientos of

Francisco Mendoza. Yet, Mendoza, had little success before his untimely death in 1563.222

Although ginger thrived in New Spain, and samples of fresh ginger were sent to Spain in the late

219 AGI,Indiferente,738,N.47. 220 Jean-Pierre Berthe, "El cultivo del "pastel" en Nueva España," Historia Mexicana 9, no. 3 (1960): 357, 360-61; See also: Antonio Barrera-Osorio, "Science and Empire in the Atlantic World," in Science and Empire in the Atlantic World, ed. James Delbourgo and Nicholas Dew (New York: Routledge, 2008), 182-83. 221 AGI,Indiferente,738,N.47. 222 According to Nicolás Monardes, Mendoza indeed planted in New Spain “cloves, pepper, ginger, and other spices” brought of the East Indies, however this project was terminated with Mendoza’s death, and ginger was the only remaining Asian spice cultivated in New Spain. This part appears in the later editions of Monardes’ materia medica (1574, 1580), but does not appear in the first edition (1565). Monardes, Primera y Segunda y Tercera partes de la Historia Medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales que siruen en Medicina, 99v; Historia Medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales que sirven en Medicina. Tratado de la piedra bezaar y de la yerva esuerconera. Dialogo de las grandezas del hierro y des sus virtudes medicinales. Tratado de la nieve y del bever frio etc. (Seville: Diaz, 1580), 81v. 78

1550s or early 1560s,223 the profits derived from its sale did not justify investment in its cultivation.

In 1561 a royal decree passed the rights over ginger cultivation from Mendoza to Bernardino del

Castillo, a former member of Hernan Cortés’ household, and a respectable conquistador and settler in his own right.224 However, three years later, Castillo asked to relinquish these rights to free up his land for the cultivation of rhubarb from Turkey (sent to New Spain from Marseilles via

Seville).225

China root was also acclimatized in New Spain. The Sevillian physician, apothecary and entrepreneur, Nicolás Monardesm testified in his Historia Natural that in Seville he met Mendoza who, to his amazement, had brought fresh rhizomes of china root with him from New Spain.226

Monardes thought it outrageous that China root should be cultivated in the West Indies, as commonly it is brought from the East Indies by the Portuguese.227 However, Mendoza’s China root did not enjoy an enduring market, as the American genera of the smilax species (to which

China root belongs), also known as sarsaparilla, were perceived as having the same medicinal qualities. Sarsaparilla subsequently substituted China root in the European drug market.228 Since nothing is known about the outcome of sandalwood cultivation or trade, we can assume that if it was ever transplanted into New Spain, it failed to prosper there.

223 Monardes witnesed "green ginger" from New Spain before the publication of the following book. Dos libros, el uno trata de todas las cosas que traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales, que siruen al uso de Medicina, ... El otro libro, trata de los medicinas marauillosas que son contra todo veneno, la piedra bezaar, y la yerua escuerçonera. Con la cura de los venenados. ... Agora nueuamente copuestos por el doctor Niculoso de Monardes medico de Seuilla, 31v. 224 The story of Bernardino del Castillo will be told in the next chapter. 225 Sarabia Viejo, "Posibilidades de la especiería mexicana en la economía mundial del siglo XVI," 400. 226 Monardes, Primera y Segunda y Tercera partes de la Historia Medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales que siruen en Medicina, 16r-16v; Also quoted in: De Vos, "The Science of Spices: Empiricism and Economic Botany in the Early Spanish Empire," 419. 227 Monardes, Primera y Segunda y Tercera partes de la Historia Medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales que siruen en Medicina, 16r. 228 Winterbottom, "Of the China Root: A Case Study of the Early Modern Circulation of Materia Medica," 33. 79

While Mendoza’s transplantation project was economically unviable, the circumstances that led to its inception are of great interest to us as they shed light on the network of officials in

New Spain involved in it. These officials, remote from the prying eyes of the imperial centre, dealt with the project in chiefly clandestine ways. It is entirely possible that Mendoza negotiated the terms of his monopoly without revealing to the Crown officials in Spain the fact that he had already acquired the capability to grow at least some of the plants mentioned in it. This might well explain the favourable terms of the asientos discussed by the Council of the Indies a year after they were granted to him.

Smugglers and Circumnavigation

The unfortunate outcome of the Villalobos expedition led scholars to dismiss the possibility that it could have been the source of the spices Francisco de Mendoza later planted in New Spain.229 But, as will be shown here, one of the survivors of this expedition was the source of the seedlings and bulbs Mendoza obtained before negotiating the terms of his asiento. This transplantation project also highlights the extent of Spanish efforts to realize the idea of developing a viable spice cash- crop economy in the West Indies, and the social currency and rewards that could be obtained by successful individuals. As earlier noted, awards and titles offered by the Crown, and the conditions of the monopolies granted to individuals involved in spice related exploration and transplantation, were very generous, frequently exceeding those given to explorers and colonizers not involved in such ventures.

The Philippine Islands were eventually settled in 1565 by Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, a

Basque explorer and former official in New Spain. Several veterans of previous expeditions were

229 De Vos, "The Science of Spices: Empiricism and Economic Botany in the Early Spanish Empire," 417; Sarabia Viejo, "Posibilidades de la especiería mexicana en la economía mundial del siglo XVI," 395. 80 recruited to take part in Legazpi’s expedition. One of them was the aforementioned pilot, (by then, an Augustinian monk) Andrés de Urdaneta. Another was Guido de Lavezaris,230 a former accountant of the Villalobos expedition, who was recruited to serve as the treasurer of the Legazpi expedition. Lavezaris had an exceptionally long career in the Indies that started as early as 1536.231

Three years after Lavezaris arrived in New Spain, he invested and participated in the Coronado

Expedition (1540-42) and, several months after his return, joined the Villalobos expedition in which he invested (and lost) the rest of his property.232 Sometime in the mid-1540s he was captured by the Portuguese and incarcerated in their stronghold of Ternate. Eventually the Portuguese sent him and other surviving Spaniards back to Spain, where he arrived in 1548. A year later, he continued to New Spain where he briefly served as a law ranking official, but it appears that in

1552 he returned to Spain.233 Sometime in 1556 or 1557, Lavezaris sailed to New Spain once again, taking his household with him, which by then included more than ten black slaves, several

Indians and mestizos, and multiple of his and his wife’s relatives..234 In 1558, he participated as a pilot on an expedition to the coast of Florida, and in the following year, he was assigned to a

230 Spelled also as Lavezariis, Labaçeres, Lavezares, Labezares, Las Bazares, Las Baçares. 231 Luis de Lavezaris, 1536-7-4, AGI,Contratacíon,5536,L.4,F.67R(1). The name Luis as appear in the AGI title is a mistake and should be read as Guido. The lineage described in the document matches that of Lavezaris; Lavezaris was given license to sail to the Indies with slaves in 1531, five years before he sailed there. Real cédula a Guido de Labazares [sic por Lavezaris], dándole licencia para pasar a Indias dos esclavos negros, para servicio personal., 1531-3-11 AGI Indiferente,422,L.15,F.18R(5). 232 R. Flint and S. C. Flint, "Guido De Lavezariis the Life of a Financier of the Coronado and Villalobos Expeditions," New Mex. Hist. Rev. New Mexico Historical Review 86, no. 1 (2011): 4-5. 233 José Miguel Romero de Solís, Andariegos y pobladores : Nueva España y Nueva Galicia : Siglo XVI (Zamora, Michoacán; Colima; México [City]: El Colegio de Michoacán ; Archivo Histórico del Municipio de Colima : Universidad de Colima ; Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artas, 2001), 260-1. See also a recommendation in Lavezaris’ favor written by the Augustinian friar Nicolás de Witte to the Spanish emperor. Cª de recomendación a favor de Guido Lavezaris, México, 1552-7-15 AHN,Diversos-Colecciones,23,N.64, 234 Real Cédula, Valladolid, 1556-5-13, AGI,Indiferente,1965,L.13,F.116V ; Real Cédula, Valladolid, 1556-5-6, AGI,Indiferente,1965,L.13,F.114R-114V ; Real cédula concediendo licencia a Guido de Lavezaris de 8 esclavos, Valladolid, 1556-5-22, AGI,Indiferente,425,L.23,F.230V(1) ; Real Cédula, Valladolid, 1556-5-22, AGI,Indiferente,1965,L.13,F.118R ; Real Cédula, Valladolid, 1556-12-18, AGI,Indiferente,1965,L.13,F.258V ; Real Cédula, Valladolid, 1557-5-25, AGI,Indiferente,1965,L.13,F.360V. 81 planned expedition to the Philippines. He was then sent to the Pacific port of Navidad to supervise the construction of the expedition ships.235

The royal instructions sent to the Viceroy of New Spain, Louis de Velasco, specified that

Legazpi’s vessels were not to enter the Moluccas nor any other region within the Portuguese demarcated zone. Rather, they were to sail to the Philippines and other areas within Spanish zones where it was believed that spices grew. Following this, they were to send samples of any spices found back to New Spain.236

In one of the first letters sent in 1565 from the newly-established colony on the island of

Cebu, expedition officials reported that they had not yet discovered spices, but had found gold, cinnamon, and beeswax.237 Guido de Lavezaris also sent a personal letter to the king in which he asked for a grant, or merced, for his loyal service. In this letter, he detailed his participation in the

Villalobos expedition and the meticulous report he composed about it, the expedition he had led to the coast of Florida in 1558, and his participation in the lengthy preparations for the Legazpi expedition, and his current role as its treasurer. However, his main justification for requesting the grant was that he had been the person responsible for bringing the ginger and pepper that was to be farmed in New Spain:

Also as Your Majesty is well-aware, when I was passing through India, I brought

with me pepper and ginger which I took from India with great risk of the ordinances

and penalties that the serene King of Portugal [issued], according to which

235 Marciano R. De Borja, Basques in the Philippines (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2005), 32; Romero de Solís, Andariegos y pobladores : Nueva España y Nueva Galicia : Siglo XVI, 260-1. 236 Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar, 2, 95-96; See also: Cushner, The Isles of the West; Early Spanish Voyages to the Philippines, 1521-1564, 59-60. 237 Carta de los oficiales reales sobre sucesos desde su llegada, 1565, AGI Filipinas,29,N.3. 82

transgressors are inviolably to be executed. The pepper was lost, and [of] the ginger

today there is a large quantity in your New Spain, and all of it came from the root I

brought there.238

Lavezaris testified that, when in New Spain, he had given Francisco de Mendoza the surviving ginger rhizome and possibly other spice plants. However, it seems that the transaction between the two did not leave Lavezaris content. While he thought that he had entered a partnership with

Mendoza, the latter had perceived the situation differently:

with zeal for your kingdoms to enjoy great profit and for the common benefit, I

contacted Don Francisco de Mendoza [to] contract with Your Highness so I would

receive from Your Lordship some compensation (merced), of the profits that

resulted from the ginger. [However,] Don Francisco dealt for himself [for his behalf

only] and not for me, as it should have been done, thus he received the merced [I

deserved] for my service, without having [himself] put [in any] work [or] industry.

Additionally, I sent [invested in the venture] three hundred pesos de minas which

he had benefited from as well.239

Whereas Lavezaris saw himself as the architect of this transplantation project, Mendoza did not treat him as an equal partner, and was unwilling to include Lavezaris in his dealings with the

Crown. This exclusion not only deprived Lavezaris of any expected profits but also of the social

238 Carta de Guido de Lavezaris sobre descubrimientos, 1565-5-30 AGI,Filipinas,34,N.2. [Demás de esto como a Vuestra Majestad es notorio cuando pesé de la India traje pimienta y jengibre sáquelo de la India con grandísimo riesgo por las ordenanzas y penas que el serenísimo rey de Portugal opuesto las cuales inviolablemente se ejecutan de los transgresores. La pimienta se perdió y del jengibre hoy en día hay mucha cantidad en vuestra Nueva España y todo procedido de la raíz que yo traje a fin]. 239 Ibid. 83 currency that would have accompanied such a deal. At the end of the letter, Lavezaris asked that the royal treasury pay him back the three hundred pesos he invested in Mendoza’s venture. On top of that, Lavezaris requested from the monarch nothing less than the reinstitution of the rights

(derechos) over the cultivation and trade in ginger.240 This plea was repeated in two more missives sent from Cebu Island in 1567.241

While his partnership with Mendoza was the apparent basis for Lavezaris’ request, the rationale behind it was entrenched within the Spanish concept of intellectual property rights that recognized individuals as the sole owners, usually for a limited time, of a technology they developed.242 Such rights are known to have been given to inventors of diving bells, fishing instruments, shipping equipment, navigational instruments such as bilge pumps and compasses, improvements in the design of mills, and to developers of technologies used for extraction of precious metals.243 However, recognition of an “inventor” was also granted to individuals that succeeded in cultivation and extraction of valuable drugs and dyes. Antonio de Villasante, a resident of Hispaniola, who in the mid-1520s secured a Royal monopoly on the cultivation and trade in a drug extracted from the newly discovered balsam tree of Santo Domingo,244 was referred to as the “Inventor del balsamo” (inventor of balsam).245 Similarly, the entrepreneur Pedro de

Ledesma, who in the 1560’s improved the extraction method of dye from indigo plants in Yucatan, was later referred to as “primero inventor” (first inventor), and the Crown granted him exclusive

240 Ibid. 241 Carta de Lavezaris sobre situación en Islas de Poniente, Cebu, 1567-7-25, AGI,Filipinas,34,N.4 ; Carta de Lavezaris sobre Portugueses del Maluco, Cebú, 1567-7-25 AGI,Filipinas,29N.4. 242 On the medieval roots of the right of intellectual property see for example: William Eamon, "From the Secrets of Nature to Public Knowledge: The Origins of the Concept of Openness in Science," Minerva : A Review of Science, Learning and Policy 23, no. 3 (1985): 327-33. 243 Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature : The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution, 57-74, for details see Apendix 2, tables 4-8, 141-4. 244 For the complete history of the “invention” of the Santo-Domingo balsam see: ibid., 15-23. 245 Entrega de mirra a Franco Leardo y Pedro Benito de Baginiana, Ocaña, 1531-4-4, AGI,Indiferente,1961,L.2,F.49R-49V, 84 rights on his innovation..246Guido de Lavezaris wished to be recognized as the inventor of ginger in New Spain in this same manner.

Lavezaris’ involvement in spice transplantation as a member of the Villalobos expedition was known to his contemporaries. Sixteenth and seventeenth-century essayists, such as Fray Juan de Torquemada, mentioned him in relation to spice transplantation in New Spain: “and Guido de

Labazeres [sic.], of him it is said that he took out of there [India] ginger with great secrecy and caution.”247 Turquemada writes that Lavezaris brought the ginger to Spain and from there to New

Spain (an action that might have involved further clandestine activities on his part), where it was planted in Quauhnahuac (Cuernavaca), in the orchard of Bernardino del Castillo. According to him, this was the origin of the large quantity that at his time was being farmed in the Caribbean

Islands, especially in Santo Domingo, from where it was sent to Spain.248

While the ginger brought to New Spain by Guido Lavezaris was considered by most of his contemporaries as the source of the ginger cultivated in sixteenth-century Hispaniola and Puerto

Rico, modern scholars demonstrate that, in fact, the Caribbean originated elsewhere and was probably of another strain. It appears that in 1564, more than a decade after Bernardino del Castillo started farming ginger in New Spain, Rodrigo Peláez, a Santo Domingo official and entrepreneur,

246 “Esto empezó a beneficiar aquí uno que se llama Ledesma y como a primero inventor se le hizo merced que nadie lo pudiese usar sino el”. Carta del Virrey Martín Enríquez, 1572-9-22, AGI,Mexico,19,N.90, 247 Juan de Torquemada, Monarquía Indiana = de los veinte y un libros rituales y monarquía indiana, con el origen y guerras de los Indios Occidentales, de sus poblazones, descubrimiento, conquista, conversión y otras cosas maravillosas de la mesma tierra (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 1975), Vol. 2, 362; Also Quoted in: Salvador Toscano, " Una empresa renacentista de España: La introducción de cultivos y animales domésticos en Mexicó," Cuadernos Americanos 5 (1946): 157-58; Similar description of events, probably taken from Monarquia Indiana, is also found in: Diego Muñoz Camargo and Lorenzo Boturini Benaducci, Fragmentos de historia mexicana pertenecientes en gran parte a la provincia de Tlaxcala, descubierto en otro tiempo por el caballero Boturini (Tlaxcala: Tip. del Gobierno del Estado, 1870), 199. 248 Torquemada, Monarquía Indiana = de los veinte y un libros rituales y monarquía indiana, con el origen y guerras de los Indios Occidentales, de sus poblazones, descubrimiento, conquista, conversión y otras cosas maravillosas de la mesma tierra, Vol.2, 362-63; On ginger cultivation and trade in Puerto Rico see also: Juana Gil- Bermejo García, Panorama histórico de la agricultura en Puerto Rico (Sevilla: [Escuela de Estudios Hispano- Americanos], 1970), 141-49. 85 received a small quantity of ginger rhizome from the Portuguese colony, São Tomé, in the Gulf of

Guinea.249 Initially he planted the ginger in his garden, but gradually, Peláez succeeded in amassing enough rhizomes to transfer to his fields, where in the 1570s, the ginger thrived.250

The Philippines as a Transplantation Base

Once the Spanish were established in the Philippines, the islands were used as a base to locate and ship spices and other East Asian plants across the Pacific Ocean. They were to be sold and transplanted into New Spain, which held advantages over the Philippines in available labor and in its shorter distance to potential markets. It is therefore hardly surprising that Guido de Lavezaris was involved in these projects: In a letter dated 1567, he reported the discovery on the island of

Mindanao of “a great quantity of cinnamon and in such abundance, that it is understood that there are mountains full of it.” He also offered to establish a town at that place to facilitate the extraction of the valuable spice.251 In a missive sent in 1569, bearing news of a Portuguese attack on the

Spanish colony in Cebú, Lavezaris mentions he had despatched a ship that sailed from the

Philippines in 1567 with “several tamarind trees and ginger roots to be planted in the most fertile parts of New Spain.” He added that in 1569 he had similarly sent to New Spain “roots of pepper”

(unas raíces de pimienta).252 Lavezaris dispatched additional “green cargos” in 1573 and 1574, the first comprising cinnamon and pepper plants, and the second comprising cinnamon, round and

249 López y Sebastián and Río Moreno, "El jengibre: Historia de un monocultivo caribeño del siglo XVI.," 70; Aram, "Caribbean Ginger and Atlantic Trade, 1570–1648," 421. 250 "Caribbean Ginger and Atlantic Trade, 1570–1648," 421. 251 “Grandisima cantidad de canela y en tanta abundancia que se entiende estar las montes llenos de ella.”AGI,Filipinas,29N.4. 252 Carta de Lavezaris sobre ataque de Portugueses a Cebú, 1569-6-5, AGI,Filipinas,29,N.9, 86 long pepper (Piper longum), and china root. On both occasions, he also sent large quantities of cinnamon for sale in New Spain on behalf of the Royal treasury.253

The renowned naturalist Francisco Hernández de Toledo, who sojourned in New Spain between 1571 and 1577, mentioned in his writings that tamarind trees grew in the port town of

Acapulco and in Cuernavaca.254 While Acapulco was the port of entry for the Manila galleons,

Cuernavaca – a stop on the road from Acapulco to Mexico City – was where the ginger carried by

Lavezaris following his return to New Spain after the Villalobos expedition was cultivated.

It is unclear if Lavezaris’ request for merced was immediately answered. Following the death of Miguel López de Legazpi in 1572, he was nominated as interim governor and captain general of the Philippines but the following year, feeling that this position lacked security, he wrote to the king asking that it be made permanent. As justification, he emphasised that for over forty years he had rendered loyal service to the Crown in the Indies, even sending “useful plants from that land” (the Philippines) at his own cost.255 In 1577, Philip II finally awarded Guido de

Lavezaris, by then in his seventies, the long expected merced. He was nominated as the camp master of the Philippines, and the encomiendas that had been taken from him during the inquiry into his tenure as a governor (visita) were returned to him.256

Lavezaris died in 1581. A year before his death, Philip II enforced his claim to the

Portuguese throne, and thus began the 60-year “Union of the Crowns.” Although Portugal and its dominions were politically subjected to the Spanish Crown, their trade remained independent. This

253 Carta de Guido de Lavezaris sobre Camarines, Paracale, Etc, Manila, 1574-7-30 AGI,Filipinas,6,R.2,N.21 ; Carta de Guido de Lavezaris dando cuenta de sus servicios, Manila, 1573-6-29, AGI,Filipinas,6,R.2,N.15, 254 Francisco Hernández, and Francisco Ximénez, Quatro libros de la naturaleza, y virtudes de las plantas, y animales que estan recevidos en el uso de medicina en la Nueva España, y la methodo, y correccion, y preparacion, que para administrallas se requiere con lo que el Doctor Francisco Hernandez escrivio en lengua latina (En Mexico: en casa de la viuda de Diego Lopez Davalos, 1615), 36r-36v. 255 Carta de Lavezaris pidiendo mercedes por sus servicios, Manila, 1573-7-27 AGI,Filipinas,29,N.13, doc.1. 256 Concesión de mercedes a Guido de Lavezaris, San Martin de la Vega, 1577-4-29, AGI,Filipinas,339,L.1,F.79V- 80R. 87 policy was implemented by the Spanish Crown to prevent the collapse of the trade-dependant

Portuguese empire. Therefore, at least in the early years of the union, the desire to transplant spices from the Philippines to New Spain did not wane.

In 1584, Juan Bautista Román, royal factor of the Philippines, suggested in a detailed letter to the king that pepper be transplanted to the warm provinces of New Spain and the Caribbean where “it will be possible to plant [it] in the same manner as the ginger that Guido de la Vecares

[sic.] brought to Española, where it is now more abundant than in its region of origin.”257 The justification for this project, maintained Román, was that New Spain was much closer to Europe than the East Indies, there would be no need to involve the Portuguese, and the location of the best pepper was, according to Roman, in the Philippines. He perceived this project as having a good chance of succeeding, claiming that since the pepper plant was an ivy and not a tree, the time necessary to develop its cultivation in the West Indies would be relatively brief. Pepper, he believed, would grow well in Tierra Firme, Española, Puerto Rico, Cuba and Jamaica, as all had warm climates similar to that of the Philippines, the source of pepper. At the same time, Román maintained, there was little hope for cloves which had withered whenever transplanted from the

Moluccas to elsewhere. This was, he stated, because the clove tree was a wild plant that only grew near volcanoes.258

It is obvious that projects for the transplantation of spices from the Philippines to New

Spain were of foremost importance. Not only were they present in missives reporting urgent news from the archipelago, but also, great attention and effort was made to secure their transport on

257 Capítulo de carta de Román sobre trasplantar especias, 1584-6-22, AGI,Filipinas,29,N.48. 258 Ibid.; On the patriotic nature of proposals sent from the peripheries to the metropolis see: Jorge Cañizares- Esguerra, Nature, Empire, and Nation : Explorations of the History of Science in the Iberian World (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006), 7-13. 88 board the galleons sailing back to New Spain - a voyage that often took six months, and sometimes ended in disaster due to the lack of drinking water and food.259

Conclusion

During the first half of the seventeenth century, additional proposals for spice and drug transplantation, and orders to implement them, circulated between the Philippines, New Spain, and

Spain. One proposed the Philippines as the ideal place to cultivate nutmeg, another suggested the transplantation of cloves to New Spain.260 Some royal decrees ordered the introduction of spices to provinces as remote as Rio de la Plata and Paraguay. These latter projects were not exclusive to

Asian or European spices, drugs, and dyes, but also included American plants such as nopal (on which the cochineal insect lives). 261

For the Spanish, spices were more than just a “low volume, high profit” commodity.

Controlling a portion of the spice trade was also a matter of prestige to the Spanish Crown as it meant success in obtaining what their Portuguese neighbours had long possessed. Therefore, colonizing a land in which spices grew was perceived as a highly-desired goal. If no such lands were available, transplanting spices to other Spanish controlled territories, perceived as suitable for their cultivation, was an alternative solution. However, as demonstrated above, such plans existed in tandem with the aspiration to control the original sources of spices. Moreover, in the earlier proposals, there was little correlation between the goals of the project and the botanical resources needed for its success.

259 On the conditions on board the Manila Galleons see: William Lytle Schurz, The Manila Galleon (New-York: E.P. Dutton, 1959). 260 De Vos, "The Science of Spices: Empiricism and Economic Botany in the Early Spanish Empire," 421, 14. 261 Real cédula a Don Diego de Góngora, gobernador y capitán general de las Provincias del Río de la Plata, 1619- 11-1, AGI,Buenos_Aires,2,L.5,F.128V-129V; Real cédula a Manuel de Frías, gobernador y capitán general de las Provincias Del Paraguay, 1619-11-1, AGI,Buenos_Aires,2,L.5,F.130R-131R. 89

If spices were an ideal commodity, elevated above more mundane articles of trade, those who helped obtain them were “Midas touched” with the essence of pepper and cinnamon, or the tanginess of ginger and nutmeg. Involvement in spice cultivation or trade meant performance of a beneficial service to the Crown, and therefore was rewarded with tokens of prestige and gratification.

Additionally, at least in the case of Guido de Lavezaris and the transplantation of ginger to

New Spain, the personnel involved established a network in which the role of each member was more or less defined. Such members were considered experts in their field, and generally took part in these activities for most of their adult lives.

Spanish imperial authorities, from governors and viceroys to the Council of the Indies and the King, were all vitally interested in the transplantation of spices. Sixteenth-century Spanish writers of natural history frequently mentioned such projects and some were actively involved in them through correspondence and the exchange of specimens. The Council of the Indies was charged with collecting and processing information about spice cultivation, such as the benefits accruing from medicinal plants and spices, instructions on how to grow them, and the outcome of transplantation experiments. The Council sent detailed inquiries to Spanish authorities in the colonies who subsequently referred them to the people involved in these projects for their expert opinion. This theme will be further developed in the next chapter.

Chapter 3: Bernardino del Castillo, the Mexican Experimental Botanical

Garden, and the Scientific Community of Sixteenth-Century New Spain

As noted in the previous chapter, sixteenth-century Spaniards expressed great interest in transplanting valuable crops they discovered from their places of origin to other territories controlled by them. Preference was given to transplantation to territories adjacent to the Atlantic ports of New Spain and the Caribbean which enjoyed good shipping links to Spain. This in turn facilitated access to European markets, thus rendering the trade in the transplanted crop more profitable. The process of plant transplantation within the Spanish empire and its subsequent cultivation, mainly in New Spain, was far from being a random one. It was initiated and controlled by a relatively small network of officials and private entrepreneurs who followed a clear rationale when making decisions regarding the transplantation and cultivation of spices and medicinals.

Over time, these individuals became experts in their respective fields, and gained considerable reputations. Consequently, they were consulted by the imperial establishments involved in the experimentation and management of transplanting Asian and American medicinals from New

Spain and the Caribbean Islands to Spain itself.

Through the examination of missives and correspondence between the Council of the

Indies, the Casa de Contratación, and officials and entrepreneurs in the colonies, this chapter will follow the ventures of those involved in the cultivation of Asian spices and medicinals in New

Spain, and examine the methods and rationale they employed when transplanting plants.

Subsequently, it will describe the protocol used by these bureaucratic bodies in planning the transplantation of economic crops. Additionally, it will reveal the nature of the proto-scientific network of officials, entrepreneurs, doctors, and essayists in New Spain, which was connected to plant transplantation and other projects initiated by the Counsel of the Indies. 91

Overall, this chapter suggests that while some practices in crop transplantation may be considered precursors of scientific experimentation, the great innovation in what is referred to as

“Spanish Colonial Science” lay in individual specialization, the institutionalization of knowledge, and the collaboration between experts and royal institutions in the acquisition and utilization of that knowledge. It also reveals that the fields and orchards of Bernardino del Castillo in

Cuernavaca, a town within the Marquisate of the Valley of Oaxaca, formed a sixteenth-century center for the cultivation of valuable transplanted Asian and European crops, and was thus arguably one of the world’s first experimental botanical gardens.

Exploration and Administration

It has been argued before that large-scale sixteenth-century Spanish exploration triggered the need to decide on accepted methods, knowledge transfer mechanisms, and controlling establishments to standardize activities such as navigation and cartography.262 Transformative organization and regulation were applied also to astronomical measurements, and mining and metallurgy techniques.263

The Spanish used new practices to define, catalogue, and manage the flora and fauna they discovered in the Indies. The new species could not be found in the old treatises used by Spanish apothecaries and natural historians. While Diocorides, Theophrastus’ classical materiae medicae and the writings of later Arab naturalists included six hundred plants, many more were reported by natural historians coming back from New Spain. The royal physician, Francisco Hernandez,

262 Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature : The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution, 29-32. 263 See for example: Goodman, "The Scientific Revolution in Spain and Portugal," 167,71. 92 after a six-year journey in New Spain (1571-1577) recorded more than three thousand New World plant species in his encyclopedic work.264

As indicated in the previous chapter, the Spanish interest in New World medicinal plants originated in their quest to obtain access to the precious trade in Asian spices. Therefore, it is unsurprising that in tandem with their efforts to discover new drugs, they sought to transplant

Asian spices to locations that they believed were suitable for their cultivation. However, less anticipated is the fact that Spanish doctors and apothecaries, such as Hernandez, and Monardes, indiscriminately included Old World plants found in the New World along with flora endemic to the Indies in their writings.265 The explanation for this trend is that early modern Europeans perceived nature as a conglomerate of commodities or objects that were essential to their survival.266 Therefore, when describing the New World, the writers’ emphasis was inclusive and utilitarian: if a plant had a potential economic value, it was worth writing about it. This trend led to the description of Asian plants that have been transplanted into America as a part of the materia medica of the West Indies.

Bernardino del Castillo – Settler Extraordinaire

Bernardino del Castillo, a native of the town of Torrijos, in the kingdom of Toledo, arrived in New

Spain in 1525. In his subsequent petition for a royal grant (merced), del Castillo testified that since his arrival he had lived in Cuernavaca, in the household of the renowned conquistador, Hernan

Cortés, who held the title of the Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca (el marques del valle de Oaxaca).

264 Cañizares-Esguerra, Nature, Empire, and Nation : Explorations of the History of Science in the Iberian World, 8. 265 The most obvious example is ginger, included in the works of Hernandez, Monardes, and others. 266 See for example: Barrera, "Local Herbs, Global Medicines. Commerce, Knowledge, and Commodities in Spanish America," 163. 93

A citizen (vecino) of Mexico City, de Castillo was one of the first settlers to cultivate land and build a sugar mill within its jurisdiction.267 In the following decade and a half, del Castillo maintained a close relationship with Cortés, and forged ties with another two of the most prominent figures in New Spain: Francisco de Orduña, the conquistador and governor of Guatemala, whose daughter, Inés de Velasco, he married; and Antonio de Mendoza, the first viceroy of New Spain, alongside whom he fought.268

Sometime in the late 1520s or early 1530s, Bernardino del Castillo was nominated Cortés’ mayordomo (steward), charged with the management of his lands. In 1534-35, he took part in

Cortés’ expedition to California, a service for which he was rewarded in 1536 with a plot of land

“with its trees, stones, and waters” in the vicinity of Cuernavaca.269 On the plot, which was three caballerias270 in area and which he called Amanalco, del Castillo built a sugar mill.271 His then- elevated status may have been the reason for his brother, Martín, to seek a licence to immigrate to

New Spain in the same year.272

In 1541 or 1542, del Castillo answered Antonio de Mendoza’s call for arms and joined the

Spanish forces fighting an indigenous rebellion in a conflict that became known as the Mixtan

War. He was rewarded for his valor in the battlefield with a small plot in the outskirts of Coyoacán

267 “E que es de los primeros que cultivaron la tierra, e que hizo ingenio de azúcar en la provincial de esta ciudad.” Cited in: Fernando B. Sandoval, La industria del azú car en Nueva España (México,: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Historia, 1951), 30n. 268 Méritos: Bernardino del Castillo y otro: Nueva España, 1584, AGI,Patronato,78A,N.1,R.2, Doc. 2, p.1. Imagen 11. 269 François G. Chevalier and François Chevalier, "El Marquesado del Valle: Reflejos Medievales," Historia Mexicana 1, no. 1 (1951): 53-4. 270 Caballería is an old land measurement equal to 42.795 Hectares or about 0.428 square kilometer. Each caballería was divided to 12 fanegas, and each fanega to 50,784 varas. see:United States. Bureau of Foreign Commerce, Reports from the Consuls of the United States (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1887), 531. 271 Ward J. Barrett, Sugar Hacienda of the Marqueses del Valle (Minneapolis, MN, USA: University of Minnesota Press, 1970), 110; Sandoval, La industria del azú car en Nueva España, 30-1. 272 Martín Del Castillo, 1536, AGI,Contratacion,5536,L.4,F.28V(3). Unfortunately, no other information regarding Martín Del Castillo is to be found. 94 in 1543.273 Furthermore, through his marriage to the daughter of Francisco de Orduña, sometime in the 1540s, Bernardino del Castillo was granted three halves of the encomiendas of Igualapa,

Ometepec, and Xochistlahuaca, which formed part of his wife’s dowry. Gonzalo Hernandez de

Herrera, a son of another settler (poblador), held the other sections of these encomiendas. By the

1560s, the lands were re-divided, and Castillo remained with the entire encomienda of Igualapa.274

Fig 3.1 Estates owned by Bernardino del Castillo and his sons (1536-1570)

273 AGI,Patronato,78A,N.1,R.2. This plot of land may have been granted earlier to Bernardino del Castillo by Hernán Cortés, if so, the event described may have been a formal confirmation this grant. See: Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España, ed. Real Academia de la Historia, 113 vols., vol. 4 (Madrid: Academia de la Historia, 1842), 265. 274 AGI,Patronato,78A,N.1,R.2. (Imagen 3); Robert Himmerich y Valencia, The Encomenderos of New Spain, 1521- 1555 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991), 208. Peter Gerhard, A Guide to the Historical Geography of New Spain, Cambridge Latin American Studies, (Cambridge Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 149-50. 95

In 1550, del Castillo’s name was also tied with a land in the outskirts of Huatusco, and with another estate of a caballeria and a half in the valley of Toluca, granted to him and his sons, Bernardino and Juan, by the Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza.275

His relations with these three magnates not only provided del Castillo with substantial property, but also elevated his standing to that of a de facto hidalgo. This allowed him to form, without formal ties of patronage, relations with other people of status. Additionally, Hernan Cortés and Antonio de Mendoza shared del Castillo’s fascination with transplanting Asian spices to New

Spain. As demonstrated in the previous chapter, as early 1527, Cortés showed particular interest in transplanting spices from the Spice Islands to New Spain. However, such aspirations only materialized at the end of the 1540s or in the early 1550s, by Francisco de Mendoza, the viceroy’s son. This initiative began as a collaboration between Francisco de Mendoza and Guido de

Lavezaris, who supplied seeds or tubers of ginger and china root, and Bernardino del Castillo, who made the land on which the spices were transplanted available, and provided the necessary labor and agricultural expertise.

In the following decades, Bernardino del Castillo established a reputation as an expert in the cultivation of foreign crops, especially those of Asian and American origin that possessed medicinal properties. His ties with Francisco de Mendoza suggest that he may also have been involved in the transplantation of sandalwood, china root, pepper, cinnamon, and cloves in New

Spain, the cultivation and trade of which Mendoza had a monopoly. However, the evidence shows

275 De un sitio para ganado mayor. Persona que recibe: Bernardino Castillo. Guatusco., 1550, AGN,Mercedes,Vol. 3, fs. 115. ; De una estancia. Persona que recibe: Bernardino Castillo. Toluca., Cholula, 1550, AGN,Mercedes,Vol. 3, fs. 214 vta., In 1565, Juan del Castillo and Bernardino del Castillo (the son) received additional plots of land in the vicinity of San Juan Chapultepec. See: Un solar. Persna que recibe: Bernardino Del Castillo. San Juan; Un solar. Persna que recibe: Juan del Castillo, San Juan., 1565, AGN,Mercedes,Vol.8, fs.100. See Fig. 3.1 for a map of the del Castillo family estates. 96 that, unlike ginger, their transplantation was unsuccessful in the long term.276 The monopoly over cultivation and trade in ginger, was in fact, transferred to Bernardino del Castillo in 1561, two years before Francisco de Mendoza´s untimely death.

The conditions of the monopoly included an annual stipend of 300 pesos of gold (pesos de oro de minas) that were then the equivalent of about 4000 silver reales.277 Nevertheless, it appears that ginger was not a very profitable crop, as in 1564 Castillo requested permission to clear his lands of ginger to plant “rhubarb from Turkey that arrived in Seville via Marseille.”278 His request was declined, and subsequently, del Castillo cultivated ginger in ever-greater quantities. Half of the ginger harvested in 1566 was meant to be sold in New Spain, and most of the remainder was reserved for planting. Yet, a small quantity of dried, pickled, and preserved ginger was sent to the

Casa de Contratacíon to be evaluated as to whether it might satisfy demand in the markets of

Spain and Flanders, and to see if it was worth shipping from New Spain.279

Additionally, it is evident from the writings of several doctors and surgeons that sojourned in New Spain in the 1550s-1570s that del Castillo also found a way to cultivate both medicinal crops.280 The earliest evidence for this derives from the surgeon Pedro Arias de Benavides, who arrived in Mexico sometime between 1545 and 1550.281 He claimed that del Castillo’s rhubarb was

276 Consulta sobre el asiento de especias en Nueva España, 1565, AGI,Patronato,182,R.16. Also quoted in: Sarabia Viejo, "Posibilidades de la especiería mexicana en la economía mundial del siglo XVI," 399. 277 "Posibilidades de la especiería mexicana en la economía mundial del siglo XVI," 400., For the conversion of gold and silver pesos see: Hoffman, The Spanish Crown and the Defense of the Caribbean, 1535-1585 : Precedent, Patrimonialism, and Royal Parsimony, 255. Table 29. 278 Sarabia Viejo, "Posibilidades de la especiería mexicana en la economía mundial del siglo XVI," 400. 279 Although Francisco de Mendoza passed away in 1563, his connection with Bernardino del Castillo was still mentioned: “El gengibre que está a cargo el beneficiarlo de Bernardino del Castillo de que se hizo compañía con Don Francisco de Mendoza general de las galeras.” Carta del Marqués de Falces Virrey de la Nueva España, 1567- 3-23, AGI,Indiferente,1624,R.3,N.9. 280 The references to Bernardino del Castillo in the following three medical texts appear in: Germán Somolinos d'Ardois and José Miranda, Vida y obra de Francisco Hernández. Precedida de España y Nueva España en la época de Felipe II (México: Universidad Nacional de México, 1960), 200-1. 281 Fresquet Febrer, La experiencia americana y la terapéutica en los “Secretos de Chirurgia” (1567) de Pedro Arias de Benavides, 30. 97 superior and more potent owing to its freshness, unlike the rhubarb found in chemist’s shops in

Spain.282 Again, when Francisco Hernández visited Mexico, he stayed for more than a year in a convent in Cuernavaca and inspected both foreign and local medical plants that grew in the area closely. Among those plants was the famous rhubarb of Cuernavaca “that could be found in abundance thanks to the dedication of Bernardino del Castillo.”283 Finally, the surgeon Alonso

López de Hinojosos, a contemporary of Hernández that sojourned in Mexico between 1564 and

1578,284 mentioned Bernardino del Castillo in his writings three times, each time in relation to the rhubarb he cultivated in his garden in Cuernavaca.285 Also, “Rhubarb from Mexico,” most likely also from the fields of Bernardino del Castillo, appeared on the manifest of the galleon Espititu

Santo, which sailed from Acapulco to the Philippines in 1570 under the list of drugs destined for the Spanish settlement in Cebu. On the same list also appeared the term “Castilian Rhubarb,” which signifies that both products were used in New Spain at the same time.286

Del Castillo was not interested solely in Asian medicinal plants, he also transplanted

American and European foodstuff and drugs into his lands. Hernández reported that the mamey sapote (pouteria sapota) was transplanted from Haiti to New Spain “thanks to the diligence of

Bernardino del Castillo, men of arms and an honest man, in whose famous quauhnahuacense

[Cuernavaca] garden [he] takes care to reproduce it in an impeccable way.”287 In 1550, Bernardino

282 Pedro Arias de Benavides, Secretos de chirurgia, especial de las enfermedades de morbo gálico y lamparones y mirrarchia, (Valladolid: Francisco Fernandez de Cordova, 1567), 21v-22r. 283 Francisco Hernández et al., Historia de las plantas de Nueva España, (México: Impr. Universitaria, 1942), http://www.ibiologia.unam.mx/plantasnuevaespana/pdf/historia_de_las_plantas_II_3.pdf. Tomo II, Libro Tercero, Capitulacion CLXXX. 284 B.O. Skaarup, Anatomy and Anatomists in Early Modern Spain (Farnham, Surrey, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015), 211. 285 Alonso López de Hinojosos, Summa y recopilacion de cirugia : Con un arte para sangrar, y examen de barberos (Mexico: P. Balli, 1595), 161v, 62r, 90v. 286 AGI,Contaduría,1196, 287 “Nace en regiones cálidas, Como la isla de Haití, y comenzó a introducirse en Nueva España gracias a la diligencia de Bernardino del Castillo. Varón militar y probo en cuya famosa huerta quauhnahuacense cuidamos de 98 del Castillo was likewise linked to cacao cultivation on a plot in Iguala through his connections to the same Gonzalo Hernandez de Herrera as mentioned above.288 While most records mention

Bernardino’s aptitude in cultivating “foreign” crops, it seems that, first and foremost, he was renowned for his skill in transplanting “many trees of Spain.”289

These same literary sources, besides indicating that Bernardino del Castillo was cultivating rhubarb, ginger, and other crops, provide us with vital information about the character and activities of this resourceful man: Hernández referred to him as “a worthy man whose famous work is commendable, [and he was] skilled and valorous in his youth in fighting enemies, [and] diligent in old age until his last moments in the planting and cultivation of all kinds of rare and foreign plants.”290 Another account relates the abundance of rhubarb in New Spain to del Castillo’s

“curious diligence”, and states that “until his final hours he was occupied with extraordinary diligence in inquiring and cultivating all exquisite plants, with great solicitude, and at his own cost.”291 Benavides ascribed similar attributes to del Castillo by referring to him as “the most curious man in planting the things that are found in those lands.”292 Benavides described him as a generous man who shared with others whatever medicinal plants he planted or obtained, without asking for anything in return. Not that he required financial compensation: the sugar-mill owned by del Castillo generated an annual income of more than seven thousand gold ducats (about 77

reproducirlo con el pincel”. Hernández et al., Historia de las plantas de Nueva España. Capitulo CXLV, p.275. This plant was probably native also to Mexico. 288 Iguala.- Bernardino del Castillo contra Gonzalo Hernandez de Herrera, sobre una huerta. Juris. Iguala, Gro., 1550, AGN,Tierras,Vol. 14. 1ª PARTE, exp. 1, fs. 131. 289 ”Y con mucho aprovechamiento de aquella tierra por la particular diligencia y curiosidad que tuvo en plantar muchos árboles de España.”.AGI,Patronato,78A,N.1,R.2. 290 ”Varón cuya insigne labor es digna de elogio, diestro y valeroso en sus juventudes para combater a los enemigos, y diligentísimo en la vejez, hasta sus últimos momentos, en la siembra y cultivo de toda suerte de plantas raras y extranjeras.“ Historia de las plantas de Nueva España. Tomo II, Libro Tercero, Capitulacion CLXXX. 291 Hernández, Ximénez, and Viuda de Diego López, Quatro libros de la naturaleza, y virtudes de las plantas, y animales que estan recevidos en el uso de medicina en la Nueva España, y la methodo, y correccion, y preparacion, que para administrallas se requiere con lo que el Doctor Francisco Hernandez escrivio en lengua latina, 119v. 292 Benavides, Secretos de chirurgia, especial de las enfermedades de morbo gálico y lamparones y mirrarchia, 21v. 99 thousand reales of silver) that covered the costs of his experiments in the cultivation of medicinal plants.293

Fig 3.2 Bernardino del Castillo’s spice transplantation network

It is obvious that del Castillo was highly esteemed by most, if not all, natural historians and medical essayists who visited New Spain during his lifetime. Though Hernández probably did not have the opportunity to meet Bernardino del Castillo – as the latter died in the same year that the former arrived in New Spain – he probably met del Castillo’s son, of whom more will be told in the following pages. Conversely, it is certain that Benavides not only met but also collaborated with del Castillo: once back in Spain, Benavides sent del Castillo a barrel with seeds of fruits from his

293 Ibid., 23r-23v. 100 hometown of Toro, in the province of Zamora, so that the latter could attempt to cultivate them in his land in Cuernavaca.294 That kind of exchange may be taken as an indicator of an actual friendship between the two, and the costly shipment, valued at thirty ducats, may have been a token of gratitude offered by Benavides for the generosity del Castillo bestowed upon him in supplying him with all the medicinal plants he cultivated at no cost.295

A visit to Bernardino del Castillo’s garden in Cuernavaca was a must for any man of medicine sojourning or living in New Spain. Furthermore, the exchange between Bernardino del

Castillo, his son, and Spanish doctors such as Benavides and Hernández was almost certainly not sporadic but a regular collaboration within a defined community. In essence, what I would like to argue for here is the existence of a “scientific network” in the sixteenth-century Spanish Empire, one of the core interests of which was the transplantation and cultivation of medicinal plants.

Bernardino del Castillo, an expert in his field, was driven also by non-economic motives. He was curious, meticulous, and inquisitive, and he constantly experimented in transplanting and cultivating Asian, European, and American crops, some of which were medicinals, in his garden in Cuernavaca, and possibly in other plots he possessed in Igualapa and elsewhere.

Bernardino del Castillo, the Son, and Ginger Transplantation into Spain

Bernardino del Castillo died in either 1570 or 1571. However, his passing did not terminate the

Asian spice transplantation projects he had started, and the knowledge he accumulated in several decades of experiments was not lost. His son and namesake continued his legacy for thirty more

294 Ibid., 23r. 295 Ibid., 23r-23v; Fresquet Febrer, La experiencia americana y la terapéutica en los “Secretos de Chirurgia” (1567) de Pedro Arias de Benavides, 46. 101 years from the family land in Cuernavaca, and, like his father, he was considered an expert in his field. This continuity is illustrated in the events described in the following pages. While at the macro level they reflect the ways that plant transplantation projects were conceived, managed, and monitored throughout the Spanish empire, at the micro level they shed more light on Bernardino del Castillo, his son, and the importance of their experimental ventures. These agricultural experiments and other botanical trials conducted in New Spain, Hispaniola, and Spain, were, in fact, a part of a larger imperial experimental culture in economic botany, in which empirical methods were also used in market testing. The Council of the Indies then used the collected data to form imperial economic policies - with substantial financial consequences.

The case surveyed here is an experiment in transplanting ginger from New Spain to Spain in the early 1570s. It was a matter of a strategic importance to Spain, the government of which was keen on exploring every possible source of income to keep its empire running. Often, reports involving the transplantation of ginger appeared alongside other subjects of obvious strategic importance, such as artillery manufacture, silver mining (and procuring the mercury required for its amalgamation), and colonies’ requests for reinforcements or supplies. The Council of the Indies initiated and managed the ginger transplantation trial with the goal of supplying European markets with ginger products and to compete with the Portuguese, who at the time enjoyed a monopoly over ginger imports to Europe from their trading posts in India and the eastern Indian Ocean

World.296

296 Parts of this project have already been explored by some scholars: Sarabia Viejo, "Posibilidades de la especiería mexicana en la economía mundial del siglo XVI," 401-2; De Vos, "The Science of Spices: Empiricism and Economic Botany in the Early Spanish Empire," 424-26; And recently in: Aram, "Caribbean Ginger and Atlantic Trade, 1570–1648," 423. 102

The ginger project occupied the minds of officials on both sides of the Spanish Atlantic for over four years (1570-1574), when dozens of missives on the subject were exchanged between the

Council of the Indies, the Casa de Contratacíon, the Viceroy of New Spain, and the audiencia of

Santo Domingo. While other scholars have touched on the issue, they have not done so in any depth. Sarabia-Viejo, who focused on ginger cultivation in her paper on the economic aspects of spice transplantation in the Spanish empire, concluded that although these projects were the result of existing incentives in both Seville and New Spain, they possessed little financial viability. De

Vos is concerned with the development of empirical-scientific culture in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spanish empire. Lastly, Aram, is occupied specifically with the ginger cultivated in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, and the imperial policies regarding its importation into

Spain. By contrast this chapter, through a detailed study of about 25 of the above communiqués, reveals for the first time the precise role of each of the imperial bodies involved in these experiments, and the extent to which they influenced decision-making and policy-formation in the sixteenth-century Spanish world.

Sometime in late 1570 or early 1571, the Council of the Indies requested the Viceroy of

New Spain to send fresh ginger specimens, along with instructions about their cultivation, to the

Casa de Contratacíon in Seville so that experts there could experiment in transplanting the precious root in Spain. Consequently, in May 1571, the Viceroy shipped two boxes of “green ginger” (jengibre verde), together with directions as to how best to grow them in Spain, and an offer to send more ginger if the Spanish Crown so wished.297 The instructions emphasised four main points: which region of Castile was perceived to be the most suitable for ginger’s cultivation

(“land where there are oranges and sugarcane, such as the Kingdom of Valencia and on the coast

297 Carta del Virrey Martín Enríquez, Mexico 1571-5-4, AGI,Mexico,19,N.65. 103 of Granada where Amería, Mortil and Salobreña”); how to prepare the roots for planting; at which times of the year they should be planted and harvested; and how to process them.298 The Council of the Indies ordered that the ginger specimens were to be planted by the Casa officials in several suitable “sites and gardens” in Seville, and that a report detailing the results of the experiment was to be sent to the Viceroy of New Spain.299 Later missives include a letter from the Viceroy to the

Council complaining that he had yet to receive any report regarding ginger’s cultivation in Spain, and the Council’s response, which had its officials who monitored the trial repeat the order to the

Casa to send the report to New Spain.300

At roughly the same time, the Council discovered that ginger was extensively farmed on

Hispaniola. As far as we know, the monopoly (asiento) over ginger cultivation was then still held by Bernardino del Castillo’s son, which would have made its cultivation in Hispaniola illegal.

Given this, it is surprising that, rather than reprimand the officials of Santo Domingo for breaking the monopoly, the Council encouraged them to extend its cultivation. They requested that ginger specimens and a report about their cultivation be sent to the Casa de Contratación aboard the next ship destined for Seville.301 A reason for this concession may have been that, as noted in the previous chapter, the ginger of Santo Domingo was of a different strain from that cultivated in

New Spain.302 The report requested from Santo Domingo officials was to include details about

“the way in which you sow and cultivate ginger in that island [Hispaniola], and at what time of

298 "Tierra donde se dan naranjas y caña de azúcar, como es el reino de Valencia y en la costa de Granada donde es Almería, Motril y Salobreña)." Capitulo del carta del Virrey, Mexico, 1571-5-4, AGI,Santa_Fe,187,L.1,n.353. Also transcribed in ; Sarabia Viejo, "Posibilidades de la especiería mexicana en la economía mundial del siglo XVI," 405. 299 Jengibre procedente de Nueva España, San Lorenzo, 1573-3-29, AGI,Indiferente,1956,L.1,F.67R-67V; Jengibre procedente de Nueva España, San Lorenzo, 1573-3-29, AGI,Indiferente,1956,L.1,F.67V-68R; Carta del Virrey Martín Enríquez, 1572-5-30, AGI,Mexico,19,N.74 ; AGI,Mexico,19,N.90. 300 AGI,Indiferente,1956,L.1,F.67V-68R; AGI,Indiferente,L.1,F.67R-67V. 301 Cultivo y comercio del jengibre en la Isla Española, San Lorenzo, 1573-3-11, AGI,Santo_Domingo,868,L.3,F.5R. 302 Aram, "Caribbean Ginger and Atlantic Trade, 1570–1648," 421-2. 104 year, in what manner, and in what type and climate of land it is done, and the way it could be cultivated in these kingdoms [Spain].”303 Consequently, the report was to be sent also to the

Council of the Indies, perhaps in order that it might oversee the experiment.304

In mid-April 1573, the officials of the Casa de Contratación finally sent their first report to the Council of the Indies regarding attempts to cultivate ginger in and around the city of Seville.

The ginger was planted in five gardens and haciendas of royal and private ownership: in the Royal gardens of Alcázar, in Benazuza (a hacienda located eighteen kilometers west of Seville), in gardens in the estates of Luis Perez and the Condado de Castellar (both of which were in the outskirts of the city), and in gardens in the estate of Bento Baez (a Portuguese slave merchant based in Seville whose estate was nine kilometers northeast of the Seville).305 While the Alcázar of Seville is known to have functioned as an initial test site for acclimatization of American plants in Spain,306 the other locations were recommended by “two Sevillian gardeners” for their preferable location and the quality of their soil.307

The Casa’s report indicated that the signs were encouraging at the beginning of the experiment: the ginger seemed to thrive, and was harvested when reeds of about “four fingers”

303 "La forma que se tiene en sembrar y beneficiar el jengibre en esa isla, y en qué tiempos y cómo y en qué calidad y temple de tierra se hace y de la manera que se podría beneficiar en estos reinos." Sobre el cultivo del jengibre en la Isla Española, Pardo, 1573-4-8, AGI,Santo_Domingo,868,L.3,F.5V-6R. 304 Ibid. 305 Casa de la Contratación al Rey, Sevile, 1573-4-17, AGI,Contratacion,5168 ; Cited in: Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero, "La Casa de la Contratación y el comercio de Española: Azúcar, tabaco y otros productos exportables," in La Casa de la Contratació n y la navegació n entre España y las Indias, ed. Adolfo Luis Antonio González Rodríguez, Vila Vilar, Enriqueta (Seville, Spain: Universidad de Sevilla : Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas : Fundación El Monte, 2003), 517-8; Respuesta a los oficiales de la Casa de la Contratación, Madrid, 1573-4-29, AGI,Indiferente,1956,L.1,F.100V-102V. 306 Regarding the role of the Alcázar gardens of Seville as an experimental site for the introduction of American plants see: Fabio López Lázaro, "Sweet Food of Knowledge: Botany, Food, and Empire in the Early Modern Spanish Kingdoms," in At the Table : Metaphorical and Material Cultures of Food in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Timothy J. Tomasik and Juliann M. Vitullo (Turnhout; Abingdon: Brepols ; Marston [distributor], 2007), 14-5. 307 Gutiérrez Escudero, "La Casa de la Contratación y el comercio de Española: Azúcar, tabaco y otros productos exportables," 517-8. 105 grew out of the roots. However, some of these roots rotted, and while others grew fresh stalks, they also eventually perished. By the time the report was composed, not a single root remained alive in any of the planting sites.308 The Council of the Indies ordered the officials of Casa de

Contratación to report these results to both the Viceroy of New Spain and officials in Hispaniola.

The latter were to carefully examine the ways in which the methods and results of the experiments in Spain compared to local methods of cultivating ginger, and to send the results of their examination to the Casa’s officials.309

In tandem with these events, the Council requested the Viceroy of New Spain to send an additional quantity of fresh ginger and more extensive cultivation instructions to the Casa de

Contratación. However, the viceroy indicated in his response, dated May 1572, that the request came at a period of the year unsuitable for harvesting ginger.310 Indeed, the shipment of ginger would need to wait until the following spring.311 Accordingly, in March 1573, twelve crates of fresh ginger and a new set of instructions for its cultivation, by far the most detailed yet composed, were sent from New Spain to Seville.312

It was no coincidence that these instructions were written by Bernardino del Castillo, the son, as his family possessed expertise in the cultivation of Asian crops, including ginger. As the instructions were much the same, though more detailed, as those sent previously by the Viceroy to the Council of the Indies, it is safe to conclude that both were originally dictated by del Castillo.

It appears from the instructions that the Council’s request was composed in the form of a

308 “Nació en todas partes y siendo las cañas de poco más de cuatro dedos en alto se sacaron y algunas raicés se podrecieron y otras habían tornado a echar segunda vez las mismas cañas y se acabaron de consumir sin que en ninguna parte haya quedado cosa alguna.” AGI,Indiferente,1956,L.1,F.100V-102V. 309 Ibid. 310 Carta del Virrey Martín Enríquez 1572-5-30, AGI,Mexico,19,N.87; AGI,Mexico,19,N.74. 311 Carta del Virrey Martín Enríquez, 1572-12-6, AGI,Mexico,19,N.97. 312 Carta del Virrey Martín Enríquez, 1573-3-16, AGI,Mexico,19,N.102. 106 questionnaire. In effect, the viceroy sent the Council’s request to Felipe de Arellano, governor of the State of the Marquisate of the Valley of Oaxaca, who, in turn, visited the garden of the

Amanalco sugar mill to personally hand the questionnaire to del Castillo.313

Its unique characteristics make this report worthy of further exploration. It was written after an order from the Council of the Indies to the Viceroy and officials of New Spain to personally go to where ginger was being farmed for the King’s estate (veáis el fruto que de ello podrá resultar a nuestra hacienda). They were to write a report for the Council, which would use it to draw up a policy regarding the cultivation of ginger and the monopoly over its cultivation.314 The officials were ordered to witness first-hand the fields in which ginger was cultivated, and to procure a testimony from Bernardino del Castillo, the son, and from Diego Serrano. The subsequent report sent to the Council stated that both del Castillo and Serrano managed the cultivation of ginger in the family gardens in Cuernavaca, and had “the experience that is required to plant and cultivate it.”315

The instructions comprised a questionnaire, most likely composed by the officials of the

Casa de Contratación, that were to plant it later in Seville. The questions ranged from general queries about the soil appropriate for ginger cultivation, and the season in which it should be planted and harvested, to very specific inquiries regarding the application of manure, the space required between plants, the correct method of processing ginger after it was harvested, and how

313 Sobre el beneficio del jengibre, Cuernavaca, 1573-2-8, AGI,Mexico,99,R.4. Transcribed in Sarabia Viejo, "Posibilidades de la especiería mexicana en la economía mundial del siglo XVI," 407-11. See also: Francisco de las Barras y de Aragón, " Sobre el cultivo del Jengibre en Nueva España (Siglo XVI)," Las Ciencias 13, no. 3 (1948). 314 “nos enviéis aviso de ello al nuestro consejo de las Indias para que conforme a ello proveamos cerca de ello y de la capitulación que con el dicho Don Francisco de Mendoza mandamos firmar en lo tocante al dicho jengibre lo que con venga”. Real cédula a Martín Enríquez, Virrey de Nueva España, y a los oficiales reales para que vean el fruto que podrá resultar del beneficio del jengibre para proveer sobre la capitulación tomada con Francisco de Mendoza, 1572-5-18, AGI,Mexico,1090,L.7,F.86V-87V. 315 “Tienen experiencia de lo que se requiere para plantallo e beneficiallo”, AGI,Mexico,99,R.4. 107 to prepare bulbs for planting to ensure a subsequent crop. Other questions dealt with the economic botany of ginger, such as the right way to pack fresh ginger before shipping it for transplantation to Spain, the quantity of ginger required for a crop of 100 arrobas,316 and whether ginger would yield a bigger crop if left in the ground for a second year. The final clause of the survey inquired if there were any secrets concerning the planting or cultivating of ginger that had not been previously mentioned (si tiene otro secreto alguno para su planta e beneficio).317 Such a question minimised the risk of missing out potentially important details that not included in the questionnaire.

Bernardino del Castillo and Diego Serrano answered the questionnaire fully, providing detailed instructions about ginger planting and cultivation in Spain. They also included a rare drawing of a ginger bulb (see picture below) in the margin of the page to help convey the right size and shape of a bulb when it was ready to be replanted.318

Fig. 3.3 A drawing of a ginger root on the margin of instructions for its cultivation (1573)

316 Arroba – unit of dry measure of about 25 pounds. The arroba was the fourth part of the 100 pounds’ quintal. 317 AGI,Mexico,99,R.4. 318 Ibid. 108

Subsequently, the Council of the Indies gave the officials of the Casa the responsibility of choosing sites in “the cities and parts of Spain where the land has the necessary qualities”319 for ginger cultivation, and ordered them to distribute both the ginger and instructions for its cultivation to the officials managing each planting site. Since the best time of the year to plant ginger in Spain was yet undetermined, those officials were to send accounts of the cultivation of ginger to the

Casa, which in turn would forward the information to the Council of the Indies.320 Through an analysis of these reports, the Council hoped that the planting season could be determined in the future.

There is substantial evidence to suggest that this experiment was not confined to fresh ginger and its transplantation in Spain. It was, in effect, part of a multifaceted investigation about the economic value of ginger throughout the Spanish Empire, which was undertaken to determine the most suitable locations for ginger cultivation and the crop’s most potentially-profitable markets. As a part of this complex process, in the beginning of 1572, thirteen arrobas and fifteen pounds of dried ginger (jengibre curado) were sent from New Spain to Seville to test its market value. Grown and processed in New Spain according to the agreement made by the Crown and

Francisco de Mendoza, this product was similar to the dried ginger imported contemporaneously from Portuguese India (“de la manera que viene lo de la India de Portugal”).321 The Council of the Indies ordered the officials of the Casa de la Contratcíon to give feedback to their colleagues in New Spain regarding the selling price of dried ginger, so that the latter could cultivate and

319 Beneficio del jengibre, Madrid, 1573-11-11, AGI,Indiferente,1956,L.1,F.160V. 320 Ibid. 321 AGI,Mexico,1090,L.7,F.86V-87V. 109 process it accordingly.322 This was probably a direct continuation of the 1566 investigation, when del Castillo the elder sent processed ginger in several forms (dried, candied, and in vinegar) to the

Casa so that its officials could determine which was the preferred product in the Iberian markets.323

Perhaps the 1572 shipment of dried ginger indicates that this product was in more demand than vinegar preserved or candied ginger.

In May 1573, the Council of the Indies wrote to the officials of the Casa and the officials of New Spain that they were aware that a report about the profit made from sales of ginger in New

Spain had been sent to the Casa de Contratación. As the Council wished to conclude whether it would be best to sell the ginger in New Spain or have it sent to Spain, the Casa officials were requested to send to the Council copies of the correspondence with the officials of New Spain, and to report the results of the sale of the dried ginger that had arrived from New Spain the year before.324

It appears that there was little demand for ginger in New Spain and, accordingly, upon the second shipment of fresh ginger, the Viceroy of New Spain informed the Council of the Indies that little profit could be expected from its sale there.325 A few months later, having read the report written by the Casa officials about the sale of dried ginger in Spain, the Viceroy added:

I maintain that this trade [in ginger] is of little importance to the royal estate, as

according to the report about the value [of the ginger] that was taken there [to

Spain], there will be more costs than the actual returns [principal].326

322 Ibid. 323 This trial is described in pages 6-7. 324 Beneficio del jengibre, Madrid, 1573-5-26, AGI,Indiferente,1956,L.1,F.107V. 325 AGI,Mexico,19,N.102. 326 Carta del Virrey Martín Enríquez, Mexico, 1573-10-10, AGI,Mexico,19,N.112. 110

The Viceroy stressed again that there was hardly any profit to be made from the sale of ginger in

New Spain. The reason for this, he noted, was both Spaniards and Indians in New Spain preferred other spices.327 These “other spices” were most likely drugs produced from endemic plants used in forms of indigenous medicine, such as Michoacán root,328 sarsaparilla, and guayacán (Guaiacum officinale). By the 1570s, Spanish settlers in new Spain commonly used such medicinal plants, which were gradually perceived as legitimate medications by Spanish experts in both New Spain and the Iberian Peninsula.329

To counter such trends, the Viceroy suggested to the Council that they terminate the shared monopoly held by the royal estate and Bernardino del Castillo and allow everyone who so wished to cultivate ginger (Será bien abrir la mano para que generalmente todos los que quisieren lo puedan beneficiar.)330 Conceivably, the Viceroy argued, there would be a greater supply of ginger, and more would be shipped to Spain. In Spain, the ginger would still be subject to customs but its price would decrease overall. This way, he continued, any financial damage suffered would be incurred by Portugal (as the main supplier of ginger to Europe at that time) and not to the Spanish

Crown.331

The Council of the Indies heeded the Viceroy of New Spain’s advice, annulled the monopoly, and opened up ginger cultivation in the Indies and its export to Spain to all Spanish subjects, subject to the customs duties (almojarifazgo) present at that time. Orders regarding this

327 “En esta tierra no se gastara casi nada porque en ella hay otras especias de que los españoles e Indios se aprovechan.” Ibid. 328 Michoacán root, a purgative, likely Impomaea jalapa. See: Bleichmar, "Books, Bodies, and Fields: Sixteenth- Century Transatlantic Encounters with New World Materia Medica," 88. 329 See for example the use of "Michoacan root" in: Bleichmar, "Books, Bodies, and Fields: Sixteenth-Century Transatlantic Encounters with New World Materia Medica," 87-9; For guayacán and sarsaparilla see: Carlos Viesca Trevino et al., "La vision europea de las plantas medicinales del Nuevo Mundo. La obra del doctor Nicolas Monardes," Gaceta médica de México 125, no. 9/10 (1989). 330 AGI,Mexico,19,N.112. 331 Ibid. 111 change in policy issued in April and May 1574 were acknowledged by the Viceroy of New Spain and the Audiencia of Santo Domingo later that year.332

The decision to terminate the royal monopoly over ginger did not immediately halt the transplantation experiments. In April 1574, the very same month the Council decided to lift the monopoly over its cultivation, fresh, and perhaps also dried ginger, along with cultivating instructions, were sent from Santo Domingo to the Council of the Indies, then in Madrid, where they arrived in July 1574.333 Even though it is not mentioned who wrote these instructions, it is probably safe to assume that Rodrigo Peláez, mentioned in the previous chapter, had a hand in providing the information. In a 1577 request for merced, Peláez testified that he “took great care in obtaining records and reports (memorias e relaciones) on the manner in which ginger was cultivated in Portuguese India,”334 while also “doing many experiments over the course of eight years until [he] could achieve the form and order required and necessary to cultivate it.”335

The Council immediately forwarded the ginger and cultivating instructions to the Casa the

Contratción in Seville, asking to be notified about the condition in which the ginger arrived in

Seville. Additionally, the Council requested a detailed report about,

332 Almojarifazgo sobre el jengibre en Santo Domingo, San Lorenzo, 1574-4-6, AGI,Santo_Domingo,868,L.3,F.34R-34V. ; Carta del Virrey Martín Enríquez, Mexico, 1574-10-23, AGI,Mexico,19,N.142. ; See also: Diccionario de gobierno y legislación de Indias. U (Uni-Xen), "Xenjibre", AHN,Codices,L.751,233R. 333 Respuesta a carta de los oficiales reales de 16.IV.1574, Madrid, 1574-7-25 AGI,Santo_Domingo,868,L.3,F.37V ; The instructions for ginger cultivation in Hispaniola, dated 11, April 1574 are found in: Barras de Aragon, " Sobre la introducción en América de vegetales útiles: Dos documentos acerca del gengibre," 234-35. 334 AGI,Santo Domingo,13,r.2,n.41 quoted in: López y Sebastián and Río Moreno, " El jengibre: Historia de un monocultivo caribeño del siglo XVI.," 70. 335 AGI,Santo_Domingo,79,R.3, doc.107ª. ‘Información hecha en la real audiencia de Santo Domingo a pedimiento de Rodrigo Peláez’, 30 May 1577. Quoted in: Aram, "Caribbean Ginger and Atlantic Trade, 1570–1648," 421. 112

the results with which earlier shipments of ginger had been cultivated, where and

how the highest quality was grown, the type of soil in which it best grew and yielded

most, and other experiments made concerning the plant.336

However, as the trail of extant documentary evidence regarding this series of experiments stops here, we can assume that following the Council of the Indies’ decision to encourage the cultivation of ginger in the Caribbean, where it grew best, and to levy customs on it rather than try to control its cultivation and trade, the interest in such trials diminished.

As the price of sugar was lower than that of ginger, the lifting of the monopoly over ginger cultivation resulted in a substantial shift from sugar to ginger farming in the islands of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico.337 Such massive quantities of ginger were shipped to Spain that ginger prices eventually dropped to the point where its cultivation became unprofitable. In 1599, in an attempt to prevent the ginger trade from collapsing and sugar prices from skyrocketing, the Council of the

Indies limited ginger cultivation to Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. As this measure proved insufficient, the Council in 1607 forbade sugar mill owners from planting ginger so that that they were forced to focus uniquely on sugar cultivation.338 These orders were effective in preventing the collapse of the ginger trade, and subsequently ginger and sugar cultivations coexisted in the

Caribbean. By then, Northern European markets, such as Hamburg and Amsterdam, were saturated

336 Órdenes a los oficiales de la Casa de la Contratación, Madrid, 1574-7-29 AGI,Indiferente,1956,L.1,F.217R- 217V. 337 De Vos, "The Science of Spices: Empiricism and Economic Botany in the Early Spanish Empire," 423; Gil- Bermejo García, Panorama histórico de la agricultura en Puerto Rico, 148. On page 141, Bermejo-Gil sites Barras de Aragon op.cit. who erronously claimed that ginger was exported from Hispaniola to Seville as early as 1547. This claim was not backed with evidence. 338 De Vos, "The Science of Spices: Empiricism and Economic Botany in the Early Spanish Empire," 424. 113 with ginger, originating from India, China, Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico, as well as from the

Portuguese colonies in São Tomé and Bahia (in present day Brazil).339

The history of ginger cultivation and trade experiments in America and Spain typifies the economic-botanical research the Council of Indies was conducting at that time. Such experiments, involving attempts to evaluate the best locations for the cultivation and sale of valuable crops were not confined to ginger only. At the time when officials were sending ginger from the gardens of

Bernardino del Castillo to Seville, so others were despatching tamarind seeds from Cuernavaca

(probably from the del Castillo’s farms as well), and indigo seeds from Yucatan where they had been thriving for some time. As was the case with ginger, the Council of the Indies both decided to experiment with tamarind and indigo, and supervised their cultivation. Again, the seeds of both were sent with instructions (relaciones) for their cultivation, and received, by the same imperial bodies in New Spain and Seville.340

Such transplantation projects are, I argue, a reflection of an organizational-scientific culture in which policies were formed and decisions made based on expert opinions derived from empirical observation and experimentation. These were carefully assessed and analyzed in a context of variable political, economic, diplomatic, and technological trends within an ever- changing global empire.

339 Halikowski Smith, "‘Profits Sprout Like Tropical Plants’: A Fresh Look at What Went Wrong with the Eurasian Spice Trade C. 1550–1800," 397-8; Cook, Matters of Exchange : Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age, 141. 340 Regarding transplantation of indigo (añil) to Spain see: AGI,Mexico,19,N.74; AGI,Mexico,19,N.90; AGI,Mexico,19,N.97; Real cédula, 1573-2-6, AGI,Indiferente,427,L.29,F.2V-3R. Regarding the transplantation of Tamarind see: AGI,Mexico,19,N.102. 114

Bernardino del Castillo, the Son, and the Scientific Community of New Spain

In 1595, when the Spanish royal treasury was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy for the third time in Philip II’s (r. 1556–98) reign, the king established a commission within the Council of the

Indies to study how to increase the profit derived from the colonies. Between 1596 and 1604, this commission, known as la Junta de Hacienda de Indias (the Committee of the Treasury of the

Indies) studied important colonial economic issues such as resource management, corruption, native labor, taxation, commerce, smuggling and contraband, potential revenue from agricultural products and monopolies.341 The success of ginger cultivation in New Spain and the Caribbean prompted the Junta de Hacienda to re-examine the old monopolies over spice and dye cultivation given to individuals in the West Indies, and to inquire whether other Asian spices, previously transplanted to New Spain, could have prospered there: “as if the other seeds have been sown and thrived like the ginger, it would be a matter of great substance and profit to the royal treasury and universal commerce.”342 Sarabia-Viejo and De Vos have both published studies of this inquiry,343 but their works lack reference to newly discovered evidence linking it to a scientific network in

New Spain that was employed in this investigation.

In March 1597, the Junta de Hacienda composed a formal council (consulta) in which it suggested that the Viceroy of New Spain be requested to conduct an investigation into the outcome of experiments in the cultivation of ginger, China root, sandalwood, pepper, cinnamon, and cloves,

341 José María González Ferrando, " Una ayuda indirecta a la introduccion de la «partida doble» en la Real Hacienda de Indias: La Real Cedula de 18 de agosto de 1596 sobre libros de cuentas," reviespafinacont Revista Española de Financiación y Contabilidad 23, no. 80 (1994): 648 footnote 2. 342 Consulta del Consejo de Indias. Junta de Hacienda, Madrid, 1597-3-27, AGI,Indiferente,744,N.170. ; A similar statement appears in the royal decree composed six months following the inquiry, see: Real cédula, San Lorenzo, 1597-10-11, AGI,Indiferente,606,L.2,F.55-55V. Those asientos, described in detail in the previous chapter, were divided in two: one was over the cultivation of ginger, china root, and sandalwood, the other was over pepper, cinnamon, and cloves. 343 Sarabia Viejo, "Posibilidades de la especiería mexicana en la economía mundial del siglo XVI," 403; De Vos, "The Science of Spices: Empiricism and Economic Botany in the Early Spanish Empire," 420. 115 over the trade in which Don Francisco de Mendoza had in 1558 received asientos. The Junta inquired as to why attempts to grow each of the above-named plants had succeeded or failed. It also suggested that the Viceroy and others directly associated with the experiments be asked to write detailed reports about them.344 It further suggested that research be conducted into the outcome of asientos over the cultivation of pastel and saffron in New Spain granted to German entrepreneurs in 1537, and an unidentified asiento over the cultivation of Cañafístula in

Hispaniola.345

Such a request might appear strange given that more than three decades earlier the Council had declared that the asiento for the cultivation of pepper, cinnamon, and cloves in New Spain was unviable. The officials of the Council maintained then that the land, being of “different climate and quality,” was unsuitable for the cultivation of the said spices.346 Similarly, the asientos over pastel and saffron were declared unsuccessful by the Council as early as 1559.347 While it can be speculated that this knowledge was lost to the Council over the years, perhaps the Junta de

Hacienda de Indias had resurfaced the old monopolies over spice cultivation as a part of a thorough overhaul of every financial prospect in the economy of the West Indies, a course of action triggered by the dire financial situation in the royal treasury.

The inquiry proposed by the Junta de Hacienda was followed by a royal decree of October

1597, in which the Council of the Indies ordered the Viceroy of New Spain, the Count of

Monterrey, to thoroughly investigate the outcome of the said transplantation projects. As the

344 AGI,Indiferente,744,N.170. 345 Ibid.Cañafístula – probably cassia grandis, a tree native to the Caribbean, whose fruit was used as a purgative. See: Halikowski Smith, "A List of Spices Known and Used in Europe During the Sixteenth Century, Their Provenance Common Names and Ascriptions," 169-70. 346 AGI,Patronato,182,R.16. 347 AGI,Indiferente,738,N.47. See previous chapter for more details. 116

Council did not even know if Mendoza had undertaken the cultivation of any spice other than ginger, its members were sceptical that the investigation would yield positive results. Therefore, it requested the Viceroy to conduct his investigation with great discretion and care: “as it should be understood [if other seeds but ginger were sown and what has become of them], we commission you and order you that upon reception of this dispatch, you shall assert with much care, skill, and diligence, if the said Don Francisco de Mendoza, in accordance with those monopolies of which a copy was sent to you, dealt with such seedlings and plantings [other than ginger], and if he had, how and because of what reason it was discontinued.”348

The viceroy was then requested to inform the Council of his findings, whatever those may be, in the “most detailed way”. If evidence for the cultivation of the spices was discovered after all, he was ordered to report “if it is possible to treat what was sown and planted, and in which land, and in what climate, and where, and how would it be possible to bring [export to Spain] the seeds and the fruit these cultivations would yield.”349

The Viceroy of New Spain, who received this letter at the end of May 1598, acknowledged it in mid-June of the same year, but provided no further information.350 As many decades had passed since the events being investigated, the Council’s request was not simple to fulfill. It first had to be determined who might have the knowledge and expertise to provide the requested information. Once this was done, the viceroy ordered the royal notary of the Indies, Alonso Pardo, to obtain sworn testimonies regarding the condition of the cultivation of the said spices in New

Spain from those “people that his lordship [the viceroy] had been informed [that] have some

348 AGI,Indiferente,606,L.2,F.55-55V. 349 "os informaréis asimismo muy particularmente si se podría tratar de que se sembrasen y plantasen y en que tierra y en que temple y de adonde y como se podrían llevar las semillas y la utilidad que de estas granjerías podrían resultar." in: ibid. 350 Carta del Virrey Conde de Monterrey, Mexico, 1598-6-15, AGI,Mexico,24,n.15. 117 knowledge of that [subject].”351 These were no other than: “Fray Agustin Farfán of the order of

San Agustin, Gonazalo Gomez de Cervantes, Gabriel de Hanse, Bernardino del Castillo, and

Francisco Dominguez cosmographer of his majesty.” 352

While there is no need to present Bernardino del Castillo’s credentials, the others were a part of a well-defined scientific community that existed in the Mexico City at that time: Fray

Agustin Farfán was a notable doctor and writer of several medicine books, among them Tratado

Breve de Anathomia y Chirugia (1576), and Tractado Breve de Medicina y de todas las enfermedades (1592).353 His treatises reflect Farfán’s propensity for the use of indigenous medicinal plants, such Michoacán root, metlaliztic,354 and tobacco, the qualities of which he learned from Nahua medicine men.355 Gonazalo Gomez de Cervantes, was a metallurgist and an important essayist who wrote about issues of governance and natural resources, such as silver and cochineal.356 Francisco Domínguez de Ocampo was a Portuguese cosmographer who was assigned to Francisco Hernandez’s expedition of the 1570s. He was involved in geographical surveys of

351 Para que Alonso Pardo tome sus declaraciones juradas a ciertas personas que aquí se expresan; Sobre indormar a Su Majestad de las simientas de agenjibre, clavo y canela, Mexico, 1599-5-25, AGN,General de Parte,Vol. 5, exp.160. 352 Ibid. 353 Juan Comas, José Luis Fresquet Febrer, and José María López Piñero, El mestizaje cultural y la medicina novohispana del siglo XVI (Valencia: Instituto de Estudios Documentales e Históricos sobre la Ciencia, Universitat de València-C.S.I.C., 1996), 101-02. 354 Metlaliztic – another purgative root, probably one or more of the plants Commelina pallida, Commelina difusa, or Commelina erecta. See: Manuel Galeote, "Nombres indígenas de plantas americanas en los tratados científicos de Fray Agustín Farfán," Boletín de Filología, Vol. 36 (1997): 141. 355 José Pardo-Tomás, "Pluralismo médico y medicina de la conversión: Fray Agustín Farfán y los agustinos en Nueva España, 1533-1610". Hispania Vol. 74 no. 248 (2014): 767-8. 356 Howard Francis Cline and John B. Glass, Handbook of Middle American Indians. Volume 13, Part Two Volume 13, Part Two (2015), 82-3. Not much is known about Gonzalo Gómez de Cervantes and today he is remembered for his Memorial de Don Gonçalo Gomez de Cervantes del modo de vivir que tienen los indos, y del beneficio de las minas de la plata, y de la cochinella, and the illustrated apendix Relación de [lo] que toca la Grana Cochinilla. These documents are available online, see: http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectid=3027127&partid =1 118

New Spain, astronomical observations, and metallurgical research.357 There is no information about Gabriel de Hanse, although his German name might indicate that he may have had some connection to the German entrepreneurs involved in the old asientos of the 1530s.

In addition to sworn testimonies about the current status of their cultivation, this group of people was also asked for opinions on whether it was advisable to try sowing the seeds of these spices again (“Los cuales den su parecer en lo que toca así será conveniente tratarse de nuevo el sembrarse las dichas semillas.)358 Their responses were to include the advantages and disadvantages of such a venture, so the Viceroy would be able to “satisfy His Majesty and send a report the way he ordered.”359 Essentially, these proto-scientists were asked to provide a hypothesis based on their experience and knowledge in ways that concerned the utility or futility of such a project. Their opinions were of great magnitude, as the decision that was to be made accordingly would have been of serious financial consequence.

Though the transplantation of foreign crops was not the main interest of most of the men mentioned in the order, they had some knowledge about it and other similar scientific subjects (or at least they would have known someone with such knowledge) as a part of a technical-medical network. The existence of such a proto-scientific milieu was also evident in the 1584 observation of a lunar eclipse in Mexico City. The observation was led by a cosmographer from Valencia,

Jaime Juan, the Royal Armourer, Cristóbal Gudiel, with the participation of the above-mentioned

Francisco Domínguez de Ocampo and Agustín Farfán.360

357 Goodman, Power and Penury : Government, Technology, and Science in Philip II's Spain, 66-7; Portuondo, Secret Science : Spanish Cosmography and the New World, 89, 91, 94. 358 AGN,General de Parte,Vol. 5, exp.160. 359 Ibid. 360 Serge Gruzinski, What Time Is It There? : America and Islam at the Dawn of Modern Times (Cambridge; Malden, MA: Polity, 2010), 42; Portuondo, Secret Science : Spanish Cosmography and the New World, 91. See also: Planos de un eclipse de luna en México, Mexico 1584, AGI,Patronato,183,N.1,R.13. 119

Conclusion

During the sixteenth century, New Spain was the home of multiple attempts to transplant Asian spices and medicinals. These trials were a result of collaboration between private entrepreneurs and high level officials, as well as, to some extent, natural-historians and doctors. Despite being initiated by individuals, the transplantation of high value crops was encouraged and, in some cases, monitored by the Imperial establishments in Spain. While the general motivation of these transplantation projects was profit, entrepreneurs took great pride in their work, and their interest in the cultivation of medicinals went beyond the revenue expected from sales.

As experimentation in the transplantation of Asian plants required expertise, farming lands, and business connections, the number of people involved in it was limited to a few specialists, the most prominent being Bernardino del Castillo the elder, and his son and namesake. As recognized experts in their field, they were a part of a proto-scientific milieu that existed in the Spanish Empire in the sixteenth century. As members of these proto-scientific networks, they were not only contacted and consulted by their peers, but also called upon to provide an expert opinion regarding the transplantation and cultivation of spices by imperial bodies such as the Viceroyalty of New

Spain, the Council of the Indies, and the House of Trade. Such requests were framed as a set of questions composed by the interested party. Information from the reports collected from these experts was synthesized and processed by the said imperial establishments, and used in elaborating policies that often had significant strategic or financial implications. This mechanism allowed the

Council of the Indies to initiate and control transplantation projects, such as the trial of ginger cultivation conducted in Spain with the aid of knowledge collected from experts in New Spain,

Hispaniola, and in the Casa de Contratación in Seville.

120

Chapter 4: The Spanish Colonization of the Philippines –

New Land, Old Habits

In the previous chapters, I described the motivation, organization, and social and scientific aspects of the transplantation of high value crops, such as spices and medicinals from Asia, particularly from the Philippine Islands, to New Spain. I also explored the complex networks of private entrepreneurs, officials, and imperial establishments involved in the transplantation of such plants.

This chapter take us away from New Spain and across the Pacific Ocean to the Philippines.

It comprises five main sections. The first will outline the unique environmental, geographical, and social conditions in the Philippines and the reasons behind the Spanish colonization of the archipelago. The second section will explore the inception of crop transplantation projects. The third will examine Spanish culinary culture in the early colonial Philippines. This section will underline variety of local crops, Chinese and Japanese imported foods, and American edible plants introduced by the Spaniards. The fourth section will survey the development of the Manila-

Acapulco Galleon Trade and the way it might have affected the future development of cash cropping in the Philippines. The final section will emphasize the impact of the early Spanish colonization on the demography and environment of the Philippine Islands. This chapter will provide the necessary backdrop to chapter five which discusses crop transplantation into and from the Philippines after its eventual colonization in 1565 up to the seventeenth century.

Although the last decade has seen a revival of scholarly interest in Spanish colonial

Philippines, the literature on sixteenth and seventeenth-century Philippines is still very limited. As mentioned in the introduction, students of colonial Philippines still rely on a handful of classic studies such as Schurz’ The Manila Galleon, first published in 1939, and John Leddy Phelan’s The

Hispanization of the Philippines (1959), or on works composed by religious scholars focusing on 121 the histories of their orders, notably de la Costa’s 1961 tome, The Jesuits in the Philippines 1581-

1768. While recent scholarship that includes Linda Newson’s Conquest and Pestilence in Early

Spanish Philippines, John Crossley’s Hernando del los Rios Coronel and the Spanish Philippines in the Golden Age, and Arturo Giraldez’ The Age of Trade, bring a welcome breath of fresh air, more research is needed to further our understanding of early colonial Spanish Philippines.

While I am not about to revolutionize the narrative of the initial colonization of the

Philippines, I would like to direct the existing sources towards an explanation for the reasons for the particular structure of the early Spanish colonial economy. This account will attempt to clarify why the Spaniards in the sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Philippines based their economy on the trade in Chinese goods, rather than on cash crop cultivation and the spice trade.

The Colonization of the Philippine Islands

In early sixteenth century, Spain began to expand its sphere of influence beyond the Americas.

Motivated by competition with Portugal for world hegemony, the Asian spice trade, and the desire to convert the people of China to Christianity, Spain attempted to establish a foothold in the Spice

Islands. Following the Magellan Expedition (1519-22), a series of expeditions was sent from Spain and from the west coast of New Spain to settle the islands, as their vicinity to the Portuguese- controlled Moluccas was seen as a sign that they too might be blessed with valuable spices.361

While the Spaniards managed to sail westbound across the Pacific, unfavorable winds and currents made the eastbound route back to New Spain almost impossible to find. The result was that survivors of the Magellan Expedition and the later Loaisa (1525-6) and Saavedra (1527-29)

361 For a detailed description of these expeditions see chapters one and two. 122 expeditions accumulated in the Moluccan island of Tidore, where a Spanish stronghold had been established. However, in the 1529 treaty of Zaragoza, in which the Spanish and Portuguese Crowns agreed on the demarcation line separating their spheres of influence in the Eastern Hemisphere, the King of Spain also ceded the Moluccas to Portugal. This made the Spanish presence in the

Spice Islands illegal, and those Spaniards found there were sent back to Iberia in 1536 aboard a

Portuguese ship.

These initial expeditions that focused on obtaining a Spanish foothold in the Moluccas did not attempt to establish a colony. Rather, they aimed to create a stronghold from which the

Spaniards planned to compete with the Portuguese in the precious spice trade. By contrast, the expedition ordered in 1542 by the viceroy of New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza, and led by Ruy

López de Villalobos, aspired to establish a permanent settlement in the Las Islas del Poniente, later known as the Philippines. After successfully navigating the Pacific Ocean, the expedition arrived in the Philippines in January 1543. A month later, the Spaniards arrived in Sarangani, a small island south of Mindanao. They were short of supplies and attempted to acquire them from a native settlement on the island. The natives resisted, but lost the battle and fled the island for Mindanao.

The Spaniards found a quantity of Chinese porcelain, musk, and a small amount of gold in

Sarangani.362 In attempting to establish a colony on this island, Villalobos ordered his men to plant corn. This was done twice, but no corn came out of these trials (“Pasado esto hizo el General que todos sembrasen maíz, lo cual se sembró dos veces y no nació.”) However, these attempts drew many objections from the expedition’s men, most of them soldiers, as reported by García de

Escalante Alvarado, the royal factor of the expedition:

362 García de Escalante Alvarado and Carlos Martínez Shaw, Relación del viaje que hizo desde Nueva España a las Islas del Poniente, después Filipinas, Ruy López de Villalobos (Santander: Servicio de Publicaciones, Universidad de Cantabria, 1999), 43-45. 123

“This irritated them all and they said they did not come to plant but to conquer, and it is

better to get the supplies found in the place, and later look for others in other places, they

would rather die in war, fighting, than on this island of hunger”363

The significance of this report is manifold: firstly, it provides rare evidence of an early attempt to transplant American crops into the Philippines. While there is no explanation for why corn rather than wheat was planted in Sarangani, we can assume that the Spaniards thought it would be better- suited to the Philippine climate than European grains. Additionally, it is interesting to see how quickly the Spanish adapted to corn. Villalobos, who had arrived in New Spain only seven years before leading the expedition to the Philippines, put his trust in the American crop to sustain his crew of several hundred in a new and unfamiliar land.

Secondly, it is evident that the Spaniards, who risked the long voyage from New Spain to the Philippines without knowing whether they would ever return to any center of Spanish civilization, were not satisfied with a humble beginning as settlers. This social tension would later become one of the shaping forces of the Spanish Philippines, once it had been permanently settled in the second half of the sixteenth century.

Finally, unlike the societies encountered by the Spanish conquistadores in the Aztec empire, Filipino societies did not produce significant surplus of food or tradeable goods. While they conducted trade with Southeast Asian merchants, exchanging wax, honey, jungle products, and some gold for porcelain ware, spices, and other products, this was done on a relatively small scale. This fact made the Spanish encroachment on Filipino food production devastating for the indigenous people of the Philippines, and provided only a sporadic supply source for the invaders.

363 Ibid., 46. 124

Although the Spaniards reported that some tradable commodities, such as cinnamon, ginger, beeswax and gold, were found in Mindanao and the Visayan Islands,364 the prospects for exploiting these resources seemed bleak without the establishment of a permanent colony or the navigational knowledge to sail back to New Spain.

By the summer of 1543, Villalobos and his men had exhausted their supplies and were forced to abandon the tiny island in search of provisions. However, as they were unable to establish amicable relations with the natives on the islands that they visited or to secure sufficient supplies by force, Villalobos turned to the Portuguese-controlled Moluccas for relief. At that point, the expedition leaders turned away from their original aim of founding a colony in the Philippines to exploiting the rivalry between the renegade kings of two of the Spice Islands and the Portuguese.

This transition was designed to secure allies and status. Between 1543 and 1545, Villalobos despatched three ships with a mission to sail back to New Spain to request reinforcements and supplies. However, none succeeded in finding an eastward route across the Pacific. Eventually,

Villalobos negotiated the return of his surviving crew members to Europe aboard Portuguese ships via India. Some, including Guido de Lavezaris (see chapter 2) accepted the offer, eventually reaching Portugal in August 1548, but many decided to stay in the Moluccas and serve the

Portuguese.365

In 1559, Philip II ordered the Viceroy of New Spain to prepare an expedition with the aim of establishing a permanent settlement in the Philippines. Not wanting to repeat previous failures, the Spanish authorities in New Spain spent five years preparing, building ships in the Pacific port of Navidad, gathering arms and munitions, and recruiting able men. Miguel López de Legazpi was

364 Ibid., 61. 365 Ibid., 20-24. 125 appointed the General and adelantado366 of the expedition. Experienced officials and naval officers, some of whom had participated in previous trans-Pacific voyages, occupied other leading positions.

The armada left Navidad on November 20th 1564, and reached the Philippine island of

Cebu on February 13th 1565. There, the Spaniards encountered Cebuano settlements, but Legazpi, like his predecessor Villalobos, struggled to secure provisions for his 500 men.367 Naturally,

Spanish accounts generally depict the Spaniards as fair and peaceful, and the natives as warlike and treacherous. However, close reading of such accounts makes it clear that the natives had little choice but to provide the Spaniards with whatever food they had (usually in return for some trinkets such as beads and cloth). According to their accounts, the Spanish attempted to negotiate peace with the local tribes of southern Cebu through interpreters they had brought with them, and with the help of Bruneian merchants trading in Cebu whose junk they captured. Such attempts failed and the Spaniards forcefully seized provisions. This was despite protests by local chiefs that culminated in a short battle and Spanish occupation of Villa de San Miguel, a Cebuano village. In mid-1565, this Cebuano village became the first permanent Spanish colony in the Philippines.368

Subsequently, Cebuano datus (nobles and princes) and chiefs from neighbouring islands made peace with the Spanish and pledged allegiance to Spain. However, while armed resistance decreased, Filipinos employed other forms of resistance, such as stalling when asked to supply the

Spaniards with provisions, or refusing to plant any crops whatsoever, and thus depriving the

366 Adelantado - A title bestowed by the Spanish Crown upon a conquistador, granting him the right to become a governor and justice of a region he was charged with conquering, in exchange for funding and organizing the initial explorations, settlement, and pacification of the target area. 367 Blair, The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 2; 113-14. 368 Ibid., Vol.2; 114-15; Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, 1609, 54-55. 126

Spaniards of their food source. 369 To avoid food shortages, Legazpi sent missions to neighbouring islands, which returned with several boatloads of rice acquired through tribute collection and trade.370 However, securing sufficient provisions remained a problem for the Spaniards in Cebu because the indigenous population carried food deep into the interior to escape Spanish tribute collection missions.371

In general, indigenous Cebu society was not what the Spaniards expected. As most

Spanish officials to the Philippines had previously served in New Spain, their point of reference was either Spanish or Aztec communities that possessed similar hierarchical structures, imperial establishments, and taxation systems. Both also built big cities and invested in public works. By contrast, the geographical characteristics of the Philippine archipelago contributed to the formation of highly dispersed, decentralised, and ethnically diverse communities. As a result, the Spaniards were often bewildered by the customs and actions of the different Filipino communities they encountered. This was, for example, reflected in a description of the Philippine Islands sent by

Legazpi to the King.372 Legazpi concluded that the lack of food surpluses in the region was due to the laziness and slothfulness of the indigenous population, who produced only sufficient provisions to live from day to day. He also commented about local forms of servitude, which had more in common with debt peonage, indentured labor and sharecropping than the slavery practiced by early modern Europeans and applied by the Spanish to captives taken in “just wars.”373 Legazpi and

369 Letter from Fray Diego de Herrera to Felipe II; 1569; Blair, The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol.3; 69-70. 370 Ibid., Vol.2; 141, 46-7. 371 Letter from Fray Diego de Herrera to Felipe II; 1569; ibid., Vol.3; 70. 372 While the AGI document is not dated, a copy from the Archivo General de Simancas, quoted in Blair an Robinson’s The Philippine Islands appears to have been composed in 1569. 373 On this issue see: Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe's Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 87-88. 127 other officials interpreted local forms of bondage as an indication of the Filipino inability to control their slaves:

The land is fertile and abundant in the supplies used here. If ever there is shortage

in some places, this is because [the Filipinos] are the laziest people in the world.

When the natives leave their villages to go to war or for other occasions, [they do

so] without planting or cultivating [the land]. Moreover, they have little control

over their slaves, content with what is necessary for the present, and are always

prepared to steal what their neighbors possess, rather than work, sow, and cultivate

their own lands.374

Legazpi’s inability to understand Filipino culture led him to believe that they lived without rules or authority. Whereas Filipino villages, or barangays, were indeed small political entities, and seldom formed alliances under a single leader, they possessed clear social structures. Generally,

Filipino villagers were divided into four distinguishable classes: the chieftain and his family, the maharlikas or nobles, free men called timaguas, and a complex stratum of all those who were bound in some form of servitude to those above them in the social order.375

The Spanish were not alone in their inability to understand foreign cultures. All early modern Europeans suffered from the same disadvantages. Their mindsets and language tools,

374 “La tierra es fértil y abundante de los bastimentos que acá se usan, y si algunas veces tienen falta en algunas partes es por ser muy haraganes la gente si la hay en el mundo. O por están los naturales remontados de sus pueblos por guerra o por otras ocasiones y no sembrar ni cultivar y también como en sus esclavos tienen tampoco dominio conténtense con solo lo que les es necesario de presente y siempre están más aparejados para robar lo que tienen sus vecinos que no a trabajar y sembrar y cultivar sus propias tierras.” Descripción Islas Filipinas, Cebu, AGI,Patronato,24,R.38. 375 Patricio Hidalgo Nuchera, Encomienda, tributo y trabajo en Filipinas (1570-1608), (Madrid; Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 1995) pp.209-210. 128 developed in response to European culture, were totally inadequate when faced with alien decentralised societies such as existed in the Philippines.376

As a part of the instructions given to Legazpi in 1564, before he sailed from Mexico the

Philippines, he was ordered to send samples of drugs and spices back to New Spain, and to observe the commerce of the country and the value of all tradeable commodities.377 He gleaned information about the role of the archipelago in regional commerce largely from Bruneian traders. Chinese iron, tin, porcelain, copper bells, benzoin, Indian colored blankets (mantas pintadas), iron cookware, spear tips, knifes and other trinkets were brought from Brunei and subsequently traded in the Visayan Islands for gold, slaves, “certain shells that are used as currency in Siam and Patani”, beeswax, and white blankets.378 Moro379 junks from Luzon arrived in the Mindanao port of Butuan, bringing with them similar commodities and exchanging them for gold, slaves and beeswax.

However, the large Chinese junks that carried Chinese commodities to Luzon and Brunei were not suitable for navigation within the archipelago.380

Spanish officials identified the chief tradable commodities in the Visayan Islands and

Mindanao to be cinnamon, beeswax, and gold, and, as early as 1565, samples of these goods were acquired through trade and sent to New Spain.381 Additionally, long pepper (Piper longum) and

376 Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man : The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology, 5-6, 11-12. 377 Instruccion á Miguel Lopez de Legzpi Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar, 2, 185-6. 378 Ibid., 289-90. 379 The Spaniards referred to the Muslimss of Southeast Asia as “moros”, after the Moors that dominated the Iberian Peninsula before the Reconquista. 380 Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar, 2, 291-92. For a complete survey of the pre-Spanish trade system in Southeast Asia see: Kenneth R. Hall, "Local and International Trade and Traders in the Straits of Melaka Region: 600-1500," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 47, no. 2 (2004). 381 Carta que escribieron los oficiales de las Islas del Poniente á la Real Audiencia de Nueva España Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar, 2, 359-65. 129 round pepper (Piper nigrum) were spotted as well, but these were not cultivated by the natives.382

Nevertheless, Legazpi lamented that although a large quantity of gold was exported from the

Visayan Islands every year, the local people only worked the islands mines sporadically, or, alternatively, gave foreign merchants the right to work them for certain periods of time in exchange for commodities. Should those mines be worked carefully by the Spaniards, he claimed, they would yield great quantities of gold all-year-around.383

Following customary practice, the Spanish proclaimed every island the expedition landed on as a territory of his Majesty, Philip II. This was achieved through the composition of an official document called a “testimony of taking possession” (testimonio de toma de posesión) composed by the expedition notary. This document included a description of the events that led to the proclamation, and a testimony of the official regarding the successful completion of the required ceremony of possession. In her seminal work, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640, Patricia Seed describes the Spanish ceremony of possession as constituting a speech, known as Requirimiento (Requirement), read aloud to New World natives.

In reality, it was an ultimatum for the natives to acknowledge the superiority of Christianity and

Spanish domination or to face war.384

While such protocol, demanding that indigenous people immediately submit to Spain and adopt Christianity, was widely practiced by the Spaniards in the New World, this was not the case in the Philippine Islands. Indeed, in multiple declarations of possession, it was clearly stated that the Spanish strove to form alliances with the native chieftains, an act that appears to have been an important element of the Spanish right for the possession of a territory. Additionally, there were

382 Blair, The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol.34; 224, 85. 383 AGI,Patronato,24,R.38. 384 Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe's Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640, 69-71. 130 certain ceremonies that had to be performed to signal “true possession” of territory. In the

“Testimony of Possession of Çibabao”,385 an officer named Anders de Ibarra followed the local chief to a riverside cove:

He strolled from one end to another, cut branches, pulled weeds, threw stones,

and performed other acts and ceremonies to signal [the seizure of] true

possession, as is necessary on such occasions. These actions were conducted

calmly and peacefully with the consent of all those present, and with the

objection of no one.386

Similar ceremonies were conducted on the Marshal Islands, Mariana Islands, Bohol, Leyte,

Mindoro, and others.387 While these rituals warrant further research, they may have been related to ceremonies of possession previously reserved by the Spanish to claim uninhabited territory where speech was not required.388

Spanish possession of the Visayan Islands did not go unchallenged. In late 1568, a

Portuguese squadron from the Moluccas approached the fledgling settlement of San Miguel carrying missives accusing the Spaniards of invading the Portuguese sphere of influence west of the antemeridian drawn in the 1529 Treaty of Zaragoza. The Spanish and the Portuguese deliberated on this subject for some weeks without resolving the issue. While the Portuguese claimed that their fellow Iberians were encroaching on their territory, the Spaniards tried to stall.

385 This is the old name of the Visayan island of Samar. 386 Testimonio de toma de posesióm de Çibabao; Colecció n de documentos iné ditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organizació n de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar, 2, 351-55. This is a transcription of the AGI document: PATRONATO,23,R.18. 387 Colecció n de documentos iné ditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organizació n de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar, ed. Real Academia de la Historia, 25 vols., vol. 3, Ii (Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1887), 76-88; Posesión de Martín de Goiti de las Islas de Lubán y Otras, 1570, AGI,Patronato,24,N.15, 388 Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe's Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640, 67. 131

This led to a Portuguese attack on the San Miguel and Filipino communities that were friendly to the Spaniards. However, without any concluding results, the Portuguese returned to the Moluccas in early 1569.389

In the second half of 1569, realizing their fragile position in Cebu, with constant problems of food scarcity and exposure to a Portuguese naval blockade, the Spaniards decided to shift their base to the island of Panay. The new location provided a better food source and was less vulnerable to attack. However, the Spanish were not content to remain there. They aspired to reach the rich island of Luzon and the port city of Maynila, of which they had heard rumors through traders. In mid-1570, an expedition composed of Spanish forces and Cebuano auxiliaries sailed north towards

Luzon. After a short skirmish with indigenous people in Mindoro, the force arrived in Maynila, then a major city of the Muslim kingdom of the same name. There, at least according to the formal account, the Spanish officials were received by the local sovereigns, Raja Matanda and Raja

Solayman, with whom they made a pact of friendship. However, several days later, these rulers attacked the Spanish force, an action anticipated by the Spaniards who overwhelmed the much larger Filipino forces and burned the city of Maynila to the ground.390

In comparison with Cebu and Panay, the Spaniards were enthusiastic about Luzon – notably praising its fertility, its dense population, and the presence of Chinese and Japanese merchants. Their reports prompted Legazpi to move his seat to Luzon, and, in mid-1571, the

Spanish founded the city of Manila over the remains of the burned city. Subsequently, most of the

Spaniards on Panay and Cebu travelled to Luzon and settled in Manila. As the city became the

389 Letter from Miguel López de Lagzpi to the Marques de Falces; Blair, The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol.3; 44-53. For the complete negotiation correspondence between the sides see: Negotiations between Legazpi and Pereira regarding the Spanish Settlement in Cebu; ibid., Vol.2; 244-329. 390 Relation of the Voyage to Luzon; ibid., Vol.3; 73-104. 132 focus of Spanish immigration into the archipelago, other foreign settlers, especially the Chinese, began to flock to the city, participating in trade and serving as artisans, servants, and small-scale farmers.391 While prior to the Spanish conquest of Luzon, encomiendas were allocated in Cebu, with the foundation of Manila, the native population around the city was also allocated into encomiendas, most of them belonging to the Crown.

Perhaps most importantly, Manila became a trade center in which Chinese goods, especially textiles, were exchanged for silver that was mined in New Spain and Peru and shipped from Acapulco over the Pacific Ocean on board Spanish galleons. Chinese goods were shipped back to New Spain on the same ships, and fetched high prices in the growing markets of Spanish

America. The ships that took part in the annual voyage between Acapulco and Manila were called naos de China, or the Manila Galleons. This shipping route existed from 1565 until 1815 when the

Mexican War of Independence put an end to its 350 years of existence.392 This silver for silk trade connected the economies of Asia, America, and Europe, and signaled the emergence of early modern globalization. It also became Manila’s raison d’être, and fundamentally shaped Spanish colonial society in the Philippines.

391 See: Loucille Chia, "The Butcher, the Baker and the Carpenter: Chinese Sojourners in the Spanish Philippines and Their Impact on Southern Fujian (Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries)," Journal of the Economic & Social History of the Orient 49, no. 4 (2006). Pedro Chirino, Relation of the Philipine Islands; Blair, The Philippine Islands 1493- 1898, Vol.12; 191-2. 392 For the classic narrative of the Manila Galleon see: Schurz, The Manila Galleon. This narrative was recently revised by Arturo Giráldez in: Giráldez, The Age of Trade : The Manila Galleons and the Dawn of the Global Economy. 133

Fig 4.1 The Philippines and the Spice Islands 134

The Spanish Philippine Economy: Natural Resources, Agriculture, and the China trade, or

why Cash-Cropping Failed in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Philippines?

Initial Spanish optimism that they would discover valuable natural resources in the Philippines gradually turned to disappointment. Although gold mines and placers393 were found in many islands, the local population never worked them regularly, and possessed only small quantities of the precious metal. Beeswax was a valuable commodity, but was exploited in insufficient quantity to justify or to sustain the newly founded colony. As mentioned earlier, cinnamon, mostly from the island of Mindanao, seemed to be a promising trade prospect, at least initially, and as early as

1567, quantities of the spice were sent to New Spain.394 Amazed with the massive amounts of the spice and its negligible price, Legazpi declared that Mindanao cinnamon would suffice to supply

“all Christendom.”395 Legazpi’s successor, Guido de Lavezaris echoed this statement in 1573, saying that “there is no more need for His Majesty’s kingdoms and seigniories to buy cinnamon from the Portuguese as from these lands it is possible to bring a greater quantity than can be sold in Europe, providing there are ships”.396 In the 1570s, some Mindanao cinnamon was shipped from

New Spain to Seville where it was landed, sorted, and sold by the Casa de Contratacíon. Other products of the Philippines, such as gold, beeswax, and cotton blankets, along with silk products, crockery, hand fans, writing desks and trunks from China, were also shipped to Spain.397

393 A Placer is a deposit of sand or gravel in the bed of a river or lake, containing particles of valuable minerals. 394 AGI,Filipinas,34,N.4; Carta de Legazpi sobre falta de socorro y envío de canela, 1568-6-26, AGI,Filipinas,6,R.1,N.9. 395 Blair, The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol.2, p.236. 396 AGI,Filipinas,6,R.2,N.15. 397 Mandamiento del Consejo de Indias a Catalina de Mendoza, viuda del secretario Ochoa de Luyando, para que entregue a Diego de Burgos, boticario del Rey, dos cajas de canela procedentes de las Islas de Poniente que están en su poder., Madrid, 1570-8-22, AGI,Indiferente,426,L.25,F.76R(1) ; Canela procedente de Filipinas, Madrid, 1574-9- 27 AGI,Indiferente,1956,L.1,F.229R ; Spain and Ministerio de Fomento, Cartas De Indias. India. Madrid, Impr. De M.G. Hernandez, 1877 (Guadalajara, Mex.1970), Vol.1 p.293, 328; Carta del Virrey Martin Enríquez, 1576, AGI,Mexico,19,N.175. 135

However, by the early 1580s, shipments of cinnamon from Mindanao on board the Manila galleon had all but ceased.398 Until now, scholars have provided no real explanation for the

Spaniards abandoning cinnamon as a major exportable commodity only fifteen years after it was discovered in Mindanao.399 Nevertheless, there are several possible reasons for them doing so.

Cinnamon prices in Spain skyrocketed from the late 1550s to the mid-1560s – which may well have provided a major incentive for the Legazpi expedition. However, in 1567, the year news of the availability of cinnamon in the Philippines reached Spain, cinnamon prices dropped to their previous level and remained low until 1640, the year in which the Portuguese monarchy regained the independence it had lost to Spain in 1580. Although Portugal and Spain’s commerce was allegedly distinct, the correlation between the low prices of cinnamon in Spain throughout the

“Union of the Crowns”, and their subsequent rise when the dynastic merger collapsed cannot be ignored.400 Therefore, the low volume of cinnamon shipments from the Philippines to Spain after

1580 may have been the result of better Spanish access to imported Portuguese cinnamon.

While cinnamon was a valued commodity that fetched prices similar to cloves in New

Spain’s markets,401 the organization of an ongoing trans-Pacific trade in the Mindanao product faced a number of difficulties. Although, as early as 1571, the region where cinnamon trees grew on Mindanao was declared to be a Crown encomienda,402 the Spaniards struggled to maintain their undermanned garrisons there against raids from the Sultanate of Maguindanao. Additionally, in

398 An exception was a shipment of cinnamon from Mindanao to New Spain in 1599 destined for the American markets; Blair, The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, vol.11, p.108-9. 399 A gap exists between the early reports about Mindanao cinnamon and the 18th century reports of trade in cinnamon bought from the Dutch. See for example: Francisco Mallari, "The Mindanao Cinnamon," Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society 2, no. 4 (1974): 192. 400 I used here the data of cinnamon prices in Andalusia, as Seville was the entry port for the cargos arriving from America. Earl J. Hamilton, American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501-1650 (New York: Octagon Books, 1965), 335-39, 58-68, 233-4. 401 According to a price list from 1552. Mexico City and Bejarano, Actas de Cabildo del Ayuntamiento de la ciudad de Mexico, 6 (1550-1561), 64. 402 Blair, The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol.34; p. 306-7. 136 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they often failed in their attempts to subdue and pacify local Mindanao people, and never fully controlled the island until the nineteenth century.403

Another reason for the fluctuation in the trade in Mindanao cinnamon was because it was a different variety to Ceylonese cinnamon which was the standard variety in the cinnamon trade.404

Indeed, either because of its natural characteristics, or due to poor processing, or both, Mindanao cinnamon was not as well received in Spain as the cinnamon that the Portuguese shipped to

Europe.405 This is evident from an order issued in 1575 by the Council of the Indies to the Governor of the Philippines complaining of the inferior quality of Mindanao cinnamon, and instructing him to pay greater attention to the manner and timing of its cultivation and harvesting.406 Nevertheless, three years later, a shipment of more than four-and-a-half tons of cinnamon from the Philippines to New Spain was declared to be of inferior quality.407 Consequently, the same governor, Francisco de Sande, issued the following instructions to the leader of an expedition to Mindanao in 1578:

You must especially secure information regarding cinnamon, to ascertain if it is

found along the river, or if one must go to Cavite for it, and why it is not as good

as that which the Portuguese take to Castile. You shall ascertain how they cut and

strip it from the tree, and if it is of importance that it dries on the tree, or in what

other manner it should be treated; for I have been told that that which has been

403 Giráldez, The Age of Trade : The Manila Galleons and the Dawn of the Global Economy, 85-88. 404 Schurz, The Manila Galleon, 47. 405 On the bitter characteristics of the Mindanao cinnamon see: Diaz-Trechuelo, "Eighteenth Century Philippine Economy: Agriculture," 71-3; De Vos, "A Taste for Spices: Spanish Efforts at Spice Production in the Philippines," 39. 406 Orden de enviar la canela en mejores condiciones, Villaseca, 1575-4-27, AGI,Filipinas,339,L.1,F.70R-70V. 407 Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento: Indice general de los papeles del Consejo de Indias, ed. Real Academia de la Historia, 25 vols., vol. 14, Ii (Madrid: Revista del Arch., Bibl. y Museos, 1923), 284. 137

obtained from these districts in the past has not been good, and has not a good sale

in Spain.408

Following the report from the Council of the Indies, the Spanish governor ordered an investigation into the processing of cinnamon in Mindanao with the aim of improving its quality for the Spanish market. This procedure marked the implementation of an empirical approach to the cultivation and handling of crops such as cinnamon. Personal testimony constituted a significant part of such an investigation that aimed to raise the value of a commodity so that it met the demands of the Council of the Indies.

The third reason why the commercial potential of cinnamon was not realised in the

Philippines pertains to the Spanish colony’s relationship with China. Within seven years of the

Spanish arrival in the Philippines, trade with China played a crucial role in shaping the economic structure of the Spanish colony. The revenue obtained through the sale of Chinese silk products, porcelain, and other manufactured goods was higher and more stable than the cinnamon trade. This led the Spanish to concentrate on trading Chinese commodities more than on developing the trade in Mindanao cinnamon.

Spanish Crop Introduction for Self-Consumption - Between Three Continents

As they had done before when colonizing America, the Spanish brought both food crop seeds and domesticated animals with them to the Philippines. However, while Columbus and his successors brought only Iberian food staples with them to New Spain, the Spanish carried to the Philippines

408 Blair, The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol.4; 178-9. 138 both European and American edible plants. Such plants were not only necessary for their survival in a foreign land, they also embodied Spanish cultural heritage and religious belief.

Upon arriving in the Philippines, the Spanish discovered very different food production and consumption patterns to the ones they were used to. The main staple in the Philippines was rice, a plant with which the Spaniards were familiar, as it was an important staple in their homeland.409 However, the Spanish marvelled at the coconut, a plant they had not previously encountered and which was widely exploited for its coconut meat and water content, and the production of oil, vinegar, and wine.410 Additionally, nutrition in the Philippines was based on millet, yams (often confused by the Spanish with sweet potatoes),411 sago, beans, bananas and plantains, fish, pork, chickens, boars, venison and water buffalo (carabao).412

Traces of European edible plants are found in the cargo manifests of the galleons that sailed from Acapulco to Manila in the late 1560s and early 1570s, however often it is impossible to know whether these seeds or live animals were loaded on the ship to provide food reserves for the long voyage, or to serve Spanish settlers in the Philippines. Certainly, items such as wheat, “new corn”, and “live pigs” were a part of the cargo of the San Pedro, one of the ships in Legazpi’s expedition.413

409 Carolyn A. Nadeau, Food Matters : Alonso Quijano's Diet and the Discourse of Food in Early Modern Spain (Toronto: Universit of Toronto Press, 2015), 9. 410 Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar, 2, 457-58. 411 On that see: William Henry Scott, Barangay : Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society (Quezon City, Manila, Philippines: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1994), 42-3. 412 Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar, 2, 264-6; Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, 1609, 251. See also: Scott, Barangay : Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society, 36-41, 180-82. 413 AGI,Contaduría,1196. 139

The Spanish planted such staples as soon as was possible. This was done not only to promote self-subsistence but probably to prevent the seeds from spoiling after the long voyage, and to check if the land was fertile. For example, when the Cebuano village was conquered in 1565 and the first Spanish settlement, San Miguel,414 was founded on its remains, Legazpi instructed his men to start cultivating the land. Another possible reason for sowing the seeds right after the battle may have been to signify possession over the land. Legazpi claimed that the land was very fertile and that four days after the battle the “Castilian seeds” had already sprouted.415.

Several chroniclers have indicated that by the end of the sixteenth century, the Spaniards – and probably the Chinese who settled in Manila – had introduced a wide variety of European and

American edible plants into the Philippines. According to the Jesuit Pedro Chirino, whose work was published in Rome in 1604, and the official and chronicler, Antonio de Morga, whose writings were published in Mexico in 1609, American endemic plants such as papaya, guava and pineapple were so abundant in the Philippines that they were considered local fruits.416 That may signify a very early and successful Spanish transplantation of those plants into the Philippines. At the same time, according to Domingo de Salazar, Manila’s first bishop, a quantity of pineapple was being annually shipped to Manila from China.417 Its extensive cultivation in China reinforces an earlier time of introduction to the Philippines from which it was likely transplanted to Southern China.

414 This settlement was later named Villa del Santisimo Nombre de Jesús after an icon of the child Jesus found in one of the native houses. It is believed that this icon was brought by Magellan to Cebu where it was given as a present in 1521. 415 Blair, The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol.2, 214. 416 Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, 1609, 251, 54; Chirino, Gorriz i Abella, and Arcilla, History of the Philippine Province of the Society of Jesus, Vol.1; 80. 417 Relation by Salazar, Blair, The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol.7; 34. 140

Even though the origin of some imported plants seems to have been forgotten, the successful attempts to transplant others – usually European trees the fruits of which were much desired by the Spanish settlers – were meticulously recorded by chroniclers such as De Morga:

Attempts have been made to plant olives and quinces and other fruit-trees from

Spain, but so far without success, except with pomegranates and grape vines, which

give fruit the second year and bear plenty of very fine grapes three times yearly.

Some fig trees have also taken well.418

However, several attempts to transplant crops, while initially showing signs of success, failed in the long term. As noted by De Morga: “Vegetables of all kinds do well and are abundant, but they do not seed and it is always necessary to bring in seeds from Castile, China or Japan.”419

Such problems persisted at least until the 1650s, leading observers to comment that, in the

Philippines, after the second or third year, the seeds degenerated (porque acá a segundo o tercero año degeneran). Consequently, seeds were shipped every few years from Japan, China, and New Spain to sustain the cultivation of such crops.420 Similarly, although wheat was introduced and first cultivated in the Philippines in the 1560s, its seeds were infertile, and, at least until the 1650s, it was still necessary to import seeds from China and Japan to secure future crops.421

Francisco Colín, a seventeenth-century Jesuit and historian, stated that Castilian plants such as vines and fig trees, when introduced into the Philippines, were fertile in their first year,

418 Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, 1609, 254. 419 Ibid. 420 Colín, Chirino, and Pastells, Labor evangelica: ministerios apostolicos de los obreros de la Compañia de Jesus, fundacion, y progressos de su provincia en las Islas Filipinas, Tomo 1; 99. 421 W. E. Retana, Archivo Del Bibliófilo Filipino : Recopilación De Documentos Históricos, Científicos, Literarios Y Políticos, Y Estudios Bibliográficos (Madrid: [Impr. de la viuda de M. Minuesa de los Rios], 1895), 42. 141 but gradually bore unwholesome fruit, and failed thereafter. That, he claimed, was caused by the quality of the earth, only the topsoil of which was fertile, and the climate, as the lack of cold weather prevented the roots of introduced plants from deepening, and the absence of snow and frost caused the plant to be unhealthy.422 It is not known whether Colín’s views affected future attempts at transplantation into the Philippines.

By the mid-seventeenth century, the Spaniards had also imported melons, radishes, cabbages, lettuce, onion, and garlic from Spain, China, and Japan into the Philippines. They had also introduced the sweet potato from Mexico, and other American crops, such as jicama. By that time, maize had become a staple food in some parts of the Philippines and the Moluccan

Islands.423

The Manila Galleon Trade and its Impact on Spanish Agricultural Ventures

After settling in Manila, the Spaniards had access to both locally produced provisions and a variety of foodstuffs imported chiefly from China. However, provisions were a secondary component of the cargos landed by the many Chinese ships that annually arrived in Manila. They carried mostly silk products that were manufactured, often specifically to meet Spanish demand, in Southeastern

China. These silk articles were exchanged in Manila for silver that the Spanish extracted from their mines in New Spain and Peru, and shipped on the yearly galleons that sailed from Acapulco to

Manila.

422 Colín, Chirino, and Pastells, Labor evangelica: ministerios apostolicos de los obreros de la Compañia de Jesus, fundacion, y progressos de su provincia en las Islas Filipinas, Tomo 1; 47. 423 Jicama - (Pachyrhizus erosus) an edible tubrous root of a native Mexican vine. Retana, Archivo Del Bibliófilo Filipino : Recopilación De Documentos Históricos, Científicos, Literarios Y Políticos, Y Estudios Bibliográficos, Vol.1; 41; Colín, Chirino, and Pastells, Labor evangelica: ministerios apostolicos de los obreros de la Compañia de Jesus, fundacion, y progressos de su provincia en las Islas Filipinas, Tomo 1; 98-99. 142

When Legazpi set out to colonize the Philippines, the Spanish did not realize that the economic basis of their new colony would be the trade with China. However, once they arrived in the archipelago and discovered the workings of a regional trade system that incorporated also

China, Japan, and the Maluku Islands, they began to grasp the strategic importance of the

Philippines. Nevertheless, only the concurrence of certain economic and political trends in New

Spain and China allowed this trade to develop in a manner that sustained high profitability at least until the 1640s.

The first of these was a change in China’s international maritime trade. In 1567, the Ming

(1368-1644) lifted a two-century-old imperial ban on foreign trade by sea, allowing merchants from port cities in Fujian and Guangdong provinces to trade without facing legal sanctions.424 At approximately the same time, the Chinese economy experienced increased demand for silver.

Without going into too much detail, in the second half of the sixteenth century, there was steady rise in demand for silver in China caused by the consolidation of several taxes, previously paid in kind or labour, into one tax levied in silver. This monetary restructuring was known as the “single whip” tax reform.425 As a result, the silver-gold conversion rate in China became much higher than in Japan, Mexico, India, or Europe – which increased the Spanish silver peso de ocho buying value of Chinese commodities. A further factor that influenced Chinese trade with Manila was the diminishing power of pirates, who had previously roamed coastal South China and the South China

Sea almost unhindered. This made maritime trade safer and more profitable for Chinese

424 Richard Von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune Money and Monetary Policy in China, 1000-1700 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1996), 118. 425 Ibid., 161. 143 merchants.426 As a result of all the above factors, the price of Chinese commodities available for sail in Manila was more competitive than they had been before.

While the colonization of the Philippines and the discovery of the way to sail back to New

Spain across the Pacific were mandatory for the commencement of the silver-silk trade with China, other late-sixteenth century factors were essential for the rise of this commerce. The discovery of silver deposits in Potosí paired with the invention of the “patio process”, which enabled the extraction of silver from low grade ores through mercury amalgamation, for example, resulted in a silver-mining boom.427 Additionally, the rise of a merchant class in the viceroyalties of New

Spain and Peru created an extensive demand for luxuries, amongst them silk. Although silk was produced in Spain and Mexico, when purchased with American silver, Chinese silk was discovered to be cheaper and of better quality, and therefore became an item of great demand among the new colonial elite.428

These conditions permitted the development of a very lucrative trade for both sides, and soon after Manila was founded, Chinese ships inundated the new colony with silk products:

and the goods they [the Chinese] usually bring with them for sale to the Spaniards,

are bundles of crude silk of the thickness of two cabezas and other silk of lesser

quality, soft and unspun; these are white and of all other colours, in small skeins [a

loosely coiled length of yarn or thread wound on a reel]; they also bring quantities

of velvet, some plain, some embroidered with all sorts of fancy work, colours and

426 Kwan Wai So, Japanese Piracy in Ming China During the Sixteenth Century (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1975), 154-55. 427 Regarding the patio process see: John J. TePaske and Kendall W. Brown, A New World of Gold and Silver (Leiden, Netherlands; Boston: Brill, 2010), 72. 428 Henry Arthur Francis Kamen, Spain's Road to Empire : The Making of a World Power, 1492-1763 (London: Allen Lane, 2002), 291; Louisa Schell Hoberman, Mexico's Merchant Elite, 1590-1660 : Silver, State, and Society (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 214-5. 144

patterns. Others have a [back]ground of gold overlaid with gold embroidery; there

are stuffs [fabrics] and light brocades of gold and silver woven into silks of different

colours and patterns; quantities of gold and silver wound in skeins over thread and

silk.429

While most valuable Chinese commodities were re-shipped to New Spain, the remainder cargo, consisting of supplies, was sold in Manila or distributed to other Spanish settlements and garrisons in the Philippines. These less valuable items included foodstuffs, such as dried ham, fruit preserves, flour, fresh fruits, hogs and fowl, domesticated animals such as mules, horses, songbirds and parrots, furniture, tools, and military provisions such as lead, saltpeter and gunpowder.430 The annual trade in foodstuffs, tools, and supplies affected the patterns of Spanish colonization in the archipelago. As the Chinese supplied wheat and other staples that composed the traditional diet of the Spanish, the latter felt it less urgent to develop local cultivation of European crops.

Spanish migration to the Philippines was significantly smaller than that to the Americas.

Until the 1630s, less than 4000 Spaniards arrived to settle in the archipelago, and from then until the end of the seventeenth century, only 45 immigrants annually crossed the Pacific.431 From the beginning of the colonization of the Philippines until at least the mid-seventeenth century, around half of the Spaniards who settled in the Philippines were soldiers or officials, most of whom were stationed in and around Manila. Most of these preferred, whenever possible, to participate in the thriving galleon trade than engage in agricultural activities.432

429 Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, 1609, 305-06. 430 Ibid., 305-6. 431 Antonio García-Abásolo, "Population Movement in the Spanish Pacific During the 17th Century: Travellers from Spain to the Philippines," Revista española del Pacífico 19-20 (2006/2007): 144-5. 432 "The Private Environment of the Spaniards in the Philippines," Philippine Studies 44, no. 3 (1996): 352-3. 145

Settler families formed a minority of Spanish settlers in sixteenth-century Philippines, and only in 1578 (about 100 families) and 1590 (about 20 families) were a substantial number of them recruited.433 The other group to arrive in the Philippines in substantial numbers was the clergy, whose members amounted to 18 percent of the passengers arriving in Manila from 1571-99, and more than 40 percent of those arriving between 1600 and 1625.434 Settler families and members of the clergy had the capacity and will to oversee agricultural activities in the countryside, and as will be described in the next chapter, were also responsible for the transplantation of some Asian and

American crops to the Islands.

Environmental and Demographic Impact of the Spanish Colonization of the Philippines

While the native demographic collapse and environmental change following the Spanish colonization of the New World have been well documented, scholarship on the impact of the

Spanish colonization of the Philippines is scarce. As this chapter is mostly concerned with the reasons for the late development of cash-cropping in the Philippines, I will provide here only a short survey on this subject.

Over the last decade, scholars such as Luis Camara Dery and Linda A. Newson have argued that the Spanish colonization of the Philippines was disastrous for the Philippines’ native populations.435 This is contrary to previous scholarship from the 1950s to 1960s that claimed that the Spanish “encounter” with the Philippines was relatively “easy” on the local population and did

433 Antonio Francisco García-Abásolo, " El poblamiento Español de Filipinas," in España y el Pacífico, ed. Antonio Francisco García-Abásolo (Córdoba: Asociación Española de Estudios del Pacífico, 1997), 146-7. 434 Ibid., 145. 435 Dery, Pestilence in the Philippines : A Social History of the Filipino People, 1571-1800; Linda A. Newson, Conquest & Pestilence in the Early Spanish Philippines (Manila: Ateneo de Manila Univ. Press, 2011). 146 not alter their life in a substantial way.436 Whereas the question of the demography of early colonial

Philippines has been examined in the scholarship mentioned above, specific research on sixteenth and seventeenth-century environmental trends in the Philippines is limited to the scholarship of

Greg Bankoff.437

In his The Hispanization of the Philippines, Phelan argues that Filipino societies were not exposed to new pathogens when the Spanish arrived because the two groups shared the same Old

World disease pool. This distinguishes Filipino societies from those of indigenous Mexicans, which were decimated by their contact with the Spanish.438 Additionally, he claimed that the absence of large-scale mining or agricultural projects in the Philippines resulted in a relatively mild pressure on the local population compared with the colonization of Spanish America, which was characterized by mass indigenous labor mobilization.439 Nevertheless, and somewhat paradoxically, he concluded that although the Spanish “ruthlessly exploited the material and human resources of the Islands,” the only time in which the Spanish were responsible for substantial depopulation of the indigenous societies in the archipelago was during the Hispano-

Dutch War (1609-48). This conflict, according to Phelan, pressured the Spaniards into further encroachment on Filipino societies through various forms of forced labor, taxation and food confiscation, which resulted in widespread starvation.440

436 Phelan, The Hispanization of the Philippines : Spanish Aims and Filipino Responses, 1565-1700; M. N. Pearson, "The Spanish 'Impact' on the Philippines, 1565-1770," jeconsocihistori Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 12, no. 2 (1969). 437 For example, see: Greg Bankoff, " Forests and Development - Almost an Embarrassment of Riches: Changing Attitudes to the Forests in the Spanish Philippines," in A History of Natural Resources in Asia : The Wealth of Nature, ed. Greg Bankoff and P. Boomgaard (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); "One Island Too Many: Reappraising the Extent of Deforestation in the Philippines Prior to 1946," YJHGE Journal of Historical Geography 33, no. 2 (2007). 438 Phelan, The Hispanization of the Philippines : Spanish Aims and Filipino Responses, 1565-1700, 107. 439 Ibid., 106, 13. 440 Ibid., 99. 147

Regarding the environmental changes that followed colonization, Phelan acknowledged that, by 1606, at least two dozen ranches of more than 1000 head of cattle, some of them having more than 4000 head, existed within the archdiocese of Manila.441 Moreover, by the 1900s, hundreds of American plants and weeds had been voluntarily or involuntarily introduced into

Luzon. However, as the discipline of Environmental History had not yet emerged when his book was published, Phelan, lacking understanding of such an ecological impact, perceived these trends more as “complimenting changes” rather than devastating ones.442 In a similar fashion, Pearson argued that: “during the first two centuries of their rule the Spanish caused no important structural changes in the economic or political aspects of Filipino life.”443

Recent developments in Social History, Historical Anthropology, Environmental History and Historical Geography have challenged these kinds of claims. The extensive scholarship on early Colonial Spanish America has demonstrated how resettlement, forced migration, coerced labor, involuntary religious conversion, and other conquest-related phenomena greatly affected indigenous communities in the short and long term. I am convinced that more historical research directed at the social impact of the Spanish colonization of the Philippines will prove that it was all too similar to the Spanish conquest of America.

Filipino scholar, Luis Camara Dery, recently claimed that the three-and-a-half centuries of

Spanish rule in the Philippines were harmful to the indigenous societies of the archipelago, destroying much local initiative and industry. Citing a plethora of primary sources containing evidence of the violent nature of Spanish colonization in the Philippines, he argued that harsh

441 On the impact and magnitude of cattle farming see also: Nicholas P. Cushner, University Yale, and Studies Southeast Asia, Landed Estates in the Colonial Philippines (New Haven; Detroit, Mich.: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1976), 37-9; Newson, Conquest & Pestilence in the Early Spanish Philippines, 83. 442 Phelan, The Hispanization of the Philippines : Spanish Aims and Filipino Responses, 1565-1700, 110-1. 443 Pearson, "The Spanish 'Impact' on the Philippines, 1565-1770," 183. 148 colonial policies, such as labor quotas, food quotas, forced displacement into controlled settlements and the extortion practised by Spanish officials transformed the land and its people in less than one generation after European arrival in the archipelago.444

While agreeing with Phelan, that the Hispano-Dutch War had a substantial negative demographic impact in the Philippines, Linda Newson claims that population levels suffered a greater decline in the early Spanish period (1565-1609) than had previously been assumed.445 Her meticulous and evidence-heavy research concludes that the Spanish were not better conquerors or rulers in the Philippines than in America, and that the Filipinos where not immune to all Old-

World diseases. Rather, low population density, geographical dispersion, and the Filipino nucleus social organization, combined with the few opportunities for wealth creation, limited Spanish immigration, and thus prevented the decimation of the indigenous population experienced in

Spanish America.446 Nevertheless, Newson claims that between 1565 and 1600, the population of

Luzon and the of the Visayan Islands had declined by a staggering 36 percent.447

Deforestation was probably one of the most visible impacts the Spanish had in the

Philippines. While Filipino societies built their houses from light materials, such as bamboo and nipa palm leaves, the Spaniards used timber to construct houses, churches, and other public buildings. In addition, they felled large numbers of trees to build ships: it is estimated that 2000 mature trees were required to construct a single galleon. The manpower required for this work was immense and large quotas of forced labor, known as corte de madera, were extracted from the

444 Dery, Pestilence in the Philippines : A Social History of the Filipino People, 1571-1800, 213. 445 Newson, Conquest & Pestilence in the Early Spanish Philippines, 3. 446 Ibid., 258-9. 447 Ibid., 254. 149

Filipino population. These labor exactions were so onerous they resulted in several revolts in the first half of the seventeenth century.448

In sum, recent scholarship has made it clear that the Spanish colonization of the Philippines resulted in considerable depopulation, and adversely affected Filipino social structure, productivity and culture. However, further research is required to assess the impact of the Spanish colonization on the ecology of the Philippines. While it is safe to assume it was more harmful than previously thought, further investigation is required, notably in gauging the environmental consequences of the introduction of new flora, fauna and bacteria.

Conclusion

The Spanish colonization of the Philippines differed much from that of New Spain. However, this was not due to a change pattern of conquest and colonization on the Spaniards’ side: they imported much of the same colonial structure and policies they employed in New Spain into the archipelago.

They maintained control over the population that they exploited through institutions such as the encomienda and other forms of coerced labor, and the enforcement of food and resource quotas.

Contrary to the traditional historical viewpoint, the Spanish conquest of the archipelago did not result in a demographic calamity, due chiefly to the geography of the Philippines, low population density, and the spatial organization of the Filipino societies. While the native population was not immune to Old World diseases, the predominance of relatively small communities dispersed throughout the archipelago limited the scope of epidemics. Also, although the Spaniards were not benevolent conquistadores, the scarcity of available natural resources and

448 Bankoff, "One Island Too Many: Reappraising the Extent of Deforestation in the Philippines Prior to 1946," 318- 9; " Forests and Development - Almost an Embarrassment of Riches: Changing Attitudes to the Forests in the Spanish Philippines," 105-6. 150 the distance from New Spain limited Spanish immigration into the Philippines, thus reducing the possible harmful impact on the islands and their inhabitants.

However, the characteristics of the Spanish colonization of the Philippines were also shaped by the external factors that led to the development of the Manila-Acapulco trade in Chinese goods. By the 1580s, this trade became the dominant field of Spanish investment, diverting potential investment from other sectors, including the production of low-volume high-return cash crops such as spices and medicinals.

From the beginning of the colonization of the Philippines, the Spaniards endeavoured to utilize the natural resources they found on the islands. Attempts were made to trade for gold and beeswax, and trials were conducted in harvesting and exporting the local variety of cinnamon found on the island of Mindanao. For their food supplies, the Spanish relied chiefly on the agricultural produce of indigenous communities and provisions imported from China and Japan.

However, they also introduced edible plants into the Philippines. These included grapevine, wheat, quince, pomegranate and fig trees, all of which represented important elements of the Iberian cultural and religious heritage, and American plants such as corn, guava, sweet potato and jicama, brought from New Spain.

The next chapter will deal with sixteenth and seventeenth-century attempts made by the

Spaniards to diversify the Philippine economy through the development of a viable cash-cropping sector.

151

Chapter 5: Cash Crop Introduction into the Philippines

As described in the previous chapters, the Spanish actively experimented with the introduction of valuable cash crops into New Spain and Spain during the sixteenth century. However, very little is known about such activities in the Philippine context. Scholars have mostly focused on attempts to develop cash crops in the Philippines following the Bourbon Reforms implemented in the second half of the eighteenth century, which aimed to develop the colonial economy in Spanish

America and the Philippines. This goal prompted officials in the Philippines to list the agricultural and natural resources of the archipelago. These officials listed spice cultivation, along with the exploitation of minerals, as possessing unfulfilled potential. Subsequently, private entrepreneurs made extensive trials in cultivating the Mindanao and Ceylon varieties of cinnamon.449

Scholars have long acknowledged that potentially valuable cash crops such as corn, tobacco and cacao were introduced into the archipelago as early as the 1570s.450 However, none has attempted to follow the institutional backing for this introduction, the manner in which resources were invested in it, or the experimental culture employed. Only recently, as a part of her seminal work, “The Science of Spices”, has Paula De Vos explored spice transplantation projects that officials and ecclesiastics initiated in the Philippines. Nevertheless, as will be demonstrated here, some Spanish settlers aspired to develop a cash crop economy from the beginning of the colonization of the archipelago by either introducing or identifying potentially viable high-value low-volume crops for export to Europe. Additionally, they strove to use local plants, either by

449 Diaz-Trechuelo, "The Economic Development of the Philippines in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century," 200; De Vos, "A Taste for Spices: Spanish Efforts at Spice Production in the Philippines," 35. 450 De Jesus, The Tobacco Monopoly in the Philippines : Bureaucratic Enterprise and Social Change, 1766-1880, 2- 3; J.E. Spencer, "Rise of Maize as a Major Crop Plant in the Philippines " in Agriculture, Resource Exploitation, and Environmental Change: An Expanding World, Vol.2., edited by Helen Wheatley, 13-28 (Aldershot, Hampshire, Great Britain; Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum, 1997), 16-17; De la Costa, The Jesuits in the Philippines, 1581-1768, 248- 9, 511-2. 152 incorporating them into the local economy or by sending them to other places in the Spanish empire where they might thrive. However, as suggested in the previous chapter, the geographical and social conditions of the Philippines, along with the colonial culture and economy that developed around Manila in the sixteenth century, either deterred or deferred most initiatives for the cultivation of foreign cash crops in the archipelago.

This chapter examines the history of spice transplantation initiatives in the Philippines to explore the social motivations for crop transplantation and the culture of experimentation in colonial botany in early modern Spanish society. With these aims in mind, the first part of the chapter will deal with projects formulated by Spanish officials in Manila for the transplantation of

Asian and New World plants into the Philippines. The second part surveys tobacco transplantation and use in, and export from, the Philippines between the late sixteenth and late seventeenth centuries. As a well-known example of an imported American cash crop, tobacco provides an apt case study. Although its transplantation into the Philippines was unplanned, it was farmed in the archipelago soon after the arrival of the Spaniards, widely consumed by both the Spanish and native populations of the islands, and even exported, albeit in small quantities, throughout the

Indian Ocean World. Finally, this chapter will compare the nature of crop transplantation projects in the Philippines with those suggested for New Spain.

The Philippines Spice Emporia – An Unfulfilled Potential?

As discussed in previous chapters, the Spaniards made efforts to locate viable natural resources on the Philippines. As the Moluccas and Banda Islands were known as sources for cloves and nutmeg 153 respectively, it was considered likely that valuable spices would also be found in the neighbouring

Philippine Archipelago.

Soon after they first reached the Philippines, the Spanish realized that the prospects of profiting from a trade in precious spices there were bleak. The colonizers thus looked for alternative sources of profit. Whereas the conventional narrative highlights the early reliance of the Spanish on the silver for silk trade with China, it fails adequately to stress that the Spanish also introduced cash crops into the islands as early as the 1570s. Governor Francisco de Sande, in a report probably dated 1577, declared that land in the archipelago was fertile and highly suitable for planting crops and for grazing cattle. Sugar and indigo industries might also be established in the islands, he claimed.451 When the Council of the Indies received the report it endorsed these suggestions.452

While cattle raising was widely practiced by the early seventeenth century, at least in the environs of Manila, there is little evidence of significant sugar or indigo cultivation until much later. Sugarcane was cultivated in the Philippines long before the arrival of the Spaniards, but was used by the Filipinos solely in the form of syrup.453 Thus, at least until the end of the sixteenth century, Chinese merchants brought sugar for cooking and preservation to Manila. However, by the mid-seventeenth century, sugarcane was being processed into sugar in sufficient quantity to

451 “En todas estas islas hay muy buenas tierras para todo lo que en ellas se sembrare e pasto de ganado e ingenio de azúcar y añil.” Relación Del Estado De Filipinas, Manila, 1577, AGI,Patronato,24,N.40. 452 The Council of the Indies used to endorse and highlight important details in these long reports, signifying key points or issues to be followed up on. Francisco de Sande, Relation and description of the Phelipinas Islands, in: Blair, The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol.4, 118. 453 John A. Larkin, Sugar and the Origins of Modern Philippine Society, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993): 20-22; See also: Chirino, Gorriz i Abella, and Arcilla, History of the Philippine Province of the Society of Jesus, Vol.1; 80-81. 154 permit limited sales to the English East India Company.454 Also, some members of the Chinese community in the Philippines manufactured dye from indigo (Indigofera tinctoria), which grew wild in the archipelago. Even so, the dye resulting from this process was mostly for domestic use, and the Spanish made no attempt to either cultivate or process it until the second half of the eighteenth century.455

The intention to develop a cash crop economy in the Philippines may also have been reflected in royal decrees ordering the promotion of agriculture and husbandry, and the discovery and utilization of mines.456 However, it seems that by the 1580s, the focus of economic attention had switched wholesale to the China trade. This drew the attention of the Council of the Indies which, in decrees in the late 1580s and early 1590s, called for settlers and farmers to be sent to settle the Islands because “not everyone can be a merchant, and a lot of riches and prosperity are promised by a new land that no one has enjoyed so far.”457 The Council, concerned about what it considered to be an over reliance on the China trade, wanted to diversify the economy and promote agricultural production in the Philippines.458

Nevertheless, it was difficult to attract farmers to the Philippines and even harder to ensure that they chose to continue their lives there as farmers and not abandon their vocation. By 1602, little had improved, causing the Council of the Indies to issue another decree ordering the Viceroy

454 Larkin, Sugar and the Origins of Modern Philippine Society, 23; For more information on early English-Spanish trade in Manila see: Serafin D. Quiason, English Country Trade with the Philippines, 1644-1765 (Quezon City,: University of the Philippines Press, 1966). 455 Diaz-Trechuelo, "Eighteenth Century Philippine Economy: Agriculture," 98. 456 see for example: Respuesta a Los Oficiales Reales De Filipinas, Madrid, 1574-4-21 AGI,Filipinas,339,L.1,F.45R-46R. 457 “no todos han de ser mercaderes y es mucha la riqueza y prosperidad que promete tierra tan nueva que ha sido desfrutada.” Orden De Llevar Cien Nuevos Pobladores, El Escorial, 1589-8-9, AGI,Filipinas,339,L.1,F.389v-390V. 458 Orden De Promover La Agricultura Y Ganadería En Filipinas, El Escorial, 1590-7-11 AGI,Filipinas,339,L.1,F.442V-443R. 155 of New Spain to send farmers to the Philippines.459 The Viceroy, however, was unhappy with the situation in the Philippines and, claiming that the governor was uninterested in diversifying the economy, refused to obey. Additionally, he maintained that a decree forcing farmers to maintain their vocation was necessary to guarantee that once they arrived in the archipelago, Spanish farmers would not turn to trade.460 The main concern of the Council of the Indies and the Viceroy of New Spain was the lack of sustainable agriculture in the Philippines, the obstacles to them

(noted above) were as applicable to the development of cash-crops in the archipelago.

The Union of the Spanish and Portuguese Crowns that occurred between 1580 and 1640 posed another challenge to the development of cash crop agriculture in the Philippines. After the

Spanish Crown assumed control over the Portugal and its overseas possessions, Philip II declared that a clear division was to be maintained between the territories, the navigation rights, and the trade of the two empires. However, in Southeast Asia the division between the empires was less than clear, and as Portuguese Maluku became a colony under the administration of the Spanish

Philippines, the Spaniards renewed their interest in the Spice Islands. This was reflected in expeditions that left Manila in the 1580s and 1590s that attempted to regain control over portions of the Maluku Islands that the Portuguese and their Tidore allies had lost to Ternate.461 While these attempts were generally unsuccessful, they created a precedent for Spanish military involvement in the Moluccas. The arrival of the Dutch to the region in 1599, and their alliance with the king of

Ternate, reinforced the need for Portuguese-Spanish military collaboration.462

459 Orden De Enviar Labradores a Filipinas, Zamora, 1602-2-16, AGI,Filipinas,329,L.1,F.41V-42R. 460 Carta Del Virrey Conde De Monterrey, México, 1602-12-12 AGI,Mexico,25,N.20. 461 Leonard Y. Andaya, The World of Maluku : Eastern Indonesia in the Early Modern Period (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993), 40, 137. 462 For the historical background of the Spanish involvement in the Moluccas see: Manuel Lobato, "The Moluccan Archipelago and Eastern Indonesia in the Second Half of the 16th Century in the Light of Portuguese and Spanish Accounts," in Proceedings of the International Colloquium on the Portuguese and the Pacific : University of 156

However, while the Portuguese were content to receive Spanish military aid, they were opposed to Spanish participation in the Moluccan spice trade, claiming that the Islands were on their side of the demarcation line drawn up in the 1529 Treaty of Zaragoza.463 This situation changed in 1605 when Dutch forces seized the Portuguese fortresses on Tidore and Ambon – both important clove production centers. While the Dutch had insufficient manpower to maintain their presence on Tidore, they established a factory on Ternate, thus ending the century-old Portuguese monopoly over the clove trade. The Portuguese could not muster a force big enough to retake

Tidore and approached the Spanish governor of the Philippines for help. In 1606, Spanish forces conquered Ternate, exiling the royal family to Manila, and reinstalling the Portuguese on Tidore.464

The Spanish victory in Ternate and the Spanish presence in the Moluccas led the Council of the Indies to rethink the best way to conduct the clove trade.465 The Council inaugurated an inquiry to make the decision. It dispatched letters to the governor and audiencia of the Philippines and to the Viceroy of New Spain, ordering them to “consult with those most versed, disinterested, and zealous” to find the best way to benefit and administer the trade in cloves gathered on Ternate.

They were instructed to suggest the route by which cloves should reach Spain and Portugal with the least possible risk and expense to generate the most possible profit for the royal exchequer. In the meantime, the Council ordered that clove trade should continue to be conducted by way of

Portuguese India.466

California, Santa Barbara, October 1993, ed. Francis A. Dutra and João Camilo dos Santos (Santa Barbara, CA: Center for Portuguese Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1995). 38-63. 463 Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, 1609, 146. 464 The Spanish narrative for these events is found in: ibid., 232-327. 465 The following correspondence was eronously believed to be a proposal to tranplant cloves from the Moluccas to New Spain via the Philippines. However, the relevant vocabulary that appears in all spice transplantation proposals is absent here. De Vos, "The Science of Spices: Empiricism and Economic Botany in the Early Spanish Empire," 421. 466 Petición De Informe Sobre El Clavo De Terrenate, El Pardo, 1607-11-17, AGI,Filipinas,329,L.2,F.60R-60V; Petición De Informe Sobre El Clavo De Terrenate, El Pardo, 1607-11-17 AGI,Filipinas,329,L.2,F.61R-61V; For the 157

For some years, the issue of the clove trade continued to occupy the Council of the Indies.

This led to the formation in 1609 of a special committee composed of members of the Council of the Indies and Council of Portugal to address this delicate issue.467 A year later, following the committee’s recommendation, the Council of the Indies advised the King to keep the clove trade as a monopoly of Portuguese India. This would, argued the Council, profit the Royal Treasury of

Spain most, as the Portuguese had managed the trade for many years and possessed the knowledge and means to conduct it through their bases in India.468 Following the Council’s decision, cloves from the Spice Islands were first brought to Manila, and from there shipped west through the

Portuguese Indian Ocean trading posts. However, the Spanish officials in Manila were not happy with the Council’s decision, and attempted to gain control over the clove trade by suggesting that its course be diverted eastwards to New Spain. This was reflected in multiple proposals sent from

Manila to the Council of the Indies over the following decades.469

While officially the Manileños were not allowed to ship cloves and other spices on board the Manila galleons to New Spain,470 smuggling and contraband trade in such commodities were prevalent. From a 1637 testimony, it seems that cloves shipped on board the galleons supplied the entire demand of New Spain.471 Additionally, Spanish officials and members of the religious

Viceroy acknowledgment see: Carta Del Virrey Luis De Velasco, El Joven, México, 1608-6-23 AGI,Mexico,27,N.52. 467 Minuta De Consulta Sobre Contratación Del Clavo De Terrenate, Madrid, 1609-1-10, AGI,Filipinas,1,n.118, The Council of Portugal (Consejo de Portugal) was formed in 1582 by Philip II to administer the Portuguese empire on behalf of the Spanish Crown. 468 Consultas Sobre Terrenate / Consulta Del Consejo De Indias Analizando Los Puntos De La Consulta Del De Portugal Respecto a Demarcación De Las Molucas, Considera Que Es Castellana Y Respecto a La Conducción Del Clavo Propone Dejarla a Portugal. Madrid, 26 De Junio De 1610., Madrid, 1611-7-14 AGI,Filipinas,1,N.135. 469 See for example: Carta De Niño De Távora Sobre Materias De Hacienda Cavite, 1629-8-1 AGI,Filipinas,8,R.1,N.7. 470 Petición De Informe Sobre Comercio De Filipinas, Madrid, 1660-3-20 AGI,Filipinas,341,L.7,F.6V-7V. 471 Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de América y Oceanía : sacados de los archivos del reino, y muy especialmente del de Indias, ed. J.F. Pacheco, et al., 42 vols., vol. 6, I (Madrid Imprenta Española, 1866), 396. 158 orders often made formal requests to ship cloves on their behalves from the Moluccas and Manila via Goa to Spain.472 Spanish involvement in the Moluccan clove trade is clear from the 1618 testimony of a representative for the Philippines at the Spanish court. He stated: “in the Philippines three riches are abundant: the gold mines [of Igorot], the cloves of Moluccas, and the commerce with China and Japan.”473

Although further research on the Spanish presence in the Moluccas and involvement in clove trade is needed, it appears that in general, the Spanish in Manila enjoyed access to cloves from Spanish controlled Ternate. This situation lasted from the 1606 conquest of Ternate up to the end of the Iberian Union in 1640, and possibly until the end of the Spanish presence in the

Moluccas in 1662. The obstacle the Spanish in Manila faced, it seems, was not procuring cloves, but rather shipping them legally, profitably and safely to the markets of New Spain and Europe.

The Spice Ventures of the Franciscans in the Philippines

During the first decades of the seventeenth century, Spanish officials in the Philippines were fully occupied with the silver-silk trade and gaining easy access to cloves. They thus showed little interest in transplanting the spice from the Moluccas to the Philippines. However, during roughly the same period, Franciscan friars stationed in the Philippines were involved in such transplantation projects. Additionally, in the 1620s to 1630s, they were involved in attempts to domesticate wild nutmeg found in the Philippines, and, later, in a proposal to import and cultivate cloves and nutmeg from the Moluccas and Banda islands. As these are the only occasions in the

472 See for example: Petición Del Jesuíta Francisco De Otazo De Socorro Para Filipinas, Manila, 1618-12-12 (Probable), AGI,Filipinas,80,N.15 imagen 45/48. 473 Peticiónes De Martín Castaño Sobre Enviar Socorro a Filipinas, 1618-12-12 (Probable), AGI,Filipinas,27,N.107, 159 first half of the seventeenth century in which such activity left a documentary trail, it is essential to understand the Franciscan motivation for spice transplantation at the time.

After the Franciscans’ arrival in the Philippines in 1578, they, like the other Catholic orders in the archipelago, faced difficulties in securing financial backing from the colony’s governors.

This is reflected in archival records that contain multiple pleas by the order’s members sent to the

Council of the Indies for alms (limosnas), and orders from the Council to the governors of the

Philippines instructing them to honor those requests.474 The natural venue for the Franciscans to raise money would have been through the Manila-Acapulco trade, but the superiors of religious orders usually frowned on participation by their members in such commerce.

Nevertheless, the lack of other funding sources triggered a theological debate regarding the involvement of members of the religious orders in commercial endeavours, particularly in the

Manila –Acapulco galleon trade.475 While this debate has been documented mainly in the Jesuit sphere, it is likely that other orders present in the Philippines shared the same concerns about allowing missionaries to take part in the Manila-Acapulco trade, even if the goal was to finance their charitable establishments and activities on the Islands. The core debate revolved around the speculative nature of this business, and the fact that no actual work was performed by the friars to gain profits. One of the solutions the Jesuits offered was to allow the trade in a specific commodity provided that its value was increased through labor performed by members of the religious order.476

474 For example see: Petición Del Franciscano Pedro Matías De Prórroga De Limosna De Vino Y Aceite, Madrid (probably), 1607-3-8, AGI,Filipinas,79,N.67, ; Consulta Sobre Prórroga De Vino Y Aceite a Los Franciscanos De Filipinas, Madrid, 1607-3-13 AGI,Filipinas,1,N.81. 475 See: Nicholas P. Cushner, "Merchants and Missionaries: A Theologian’s View of the Clerical Involvement in the Galleon Trade," The Hispanic American Historical Review 47, no. 3 (1967). 476 Ibid., 367. 160

While we do not know if the Franciscans in the Philippines also debated these issues, involvement in trade was probably hard to justify as a worthy occupation for friars. This may have been the reason for their interest in finding alternative ways to finance their charitable works, such as the development of viable spice agriculture in the Philippines.

It appears that sometime during the 1620s, Franciscan friars acquired pots with clove seedlings from Ternate, which were then planted in various villages with different climates in the

Philippines. Only two of these seedlings, planted in the village of Mahayhay (present day Majayjay in the province of Laguna), prospered.477 A contemporary source claimed that they bore flower buds (cloves) that were as good as those of Ternate, and added that the first crop was sent to the then governor Juan Cerezo de Salamanca (gov. 1633-1635). However, for an unknown reason, these trees were lost soon afterwards, and thereafter there existed no clove trees in the

Philippines.478

The outcome of this experiment, and the fact that at least for several decades no other trials in cultivating Moluccan cloves on the Philippines followed, are evidence for the indifference of

Spanish officials to developing clove-tree plantations in the archipelago. It seems that the initially positive results of the Franciscan attempt to transplant the precious spice on the island of Luzon did not prompt the royal financial backing necessary for the maintenance of such a project.

477 It takes about seven years for a clove seed to grow into a flower-bearing tree. Cloves are the sun-dried flowers of the clove tree. 478 "De Therrenate tarxeron nuestros frailes en una maceta un almácigo de pies de clavo; transplantáronse en diferentes temples y pueblos; lográronse dos pies en el pueblo de Mahayhay, y llegaron a dar fruto; y era tan bueno del clavo, como el del Therrenate. El primer fruto que se cogió se embió al gobernador de estas islas, D. Juan Zereço: después se perdieron estos dos árboles, y assi no a quedado ninguno en el reyno." Anonymous, "Entrada de la seráphica religión de nuestro P. S. Francisco en las Islas Philipinas. Manuscrito anónimo de 1649," in Archivo del bibliófilo Filipino: Recopilación de documentos históricos, científicos, literarios y políticos, y estudios bibliográficos, ed. W. E. Retana (Madrid: Viuda de M. Minuesa de los Rios, 1895), 42; Found also in: Blair, The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol.35, 302-3. 161

While clove cultivation was arguably an unattractive undertaking for Spanish administrators in Manila during the 1620s, the same cannot be said about nutmeg. By 1621, Dutch

East Indies Company (VOC) forces had gained total control over the Banda islands, the only known source for the true nutmeg of commerce. Thereafter, they monopolized the global trade in this spice. However, although the Portuguese never militarily controlled the Banda Islands, they did secure a good portion of the nutmeg trade by controlling its flow through their stronghold in

Malacca.479 Therefore, when in 1622 the Spanish Governor of the Philippines, Alonso Fajardo de

Tenza, informed the Council of the Indies of the discovery of nutmeg trees in the Philippines, the response he received was very enthusiastic.

In an August 1622 report on various issues of governance, de Tenza informed the Council that a Franciscan friar named Pedro de la Cruz had discovered “what was later confirmed by others to be a large quantity of nutmeg growing in these [Igorot] mountains [of northern Luzon]”.480

Those familiar with Moluccan nutmeg who examined the local fruit, found it very similar to that of the Moluccas. 481 However, while the nut and mace of both types of the spice were identical, the aroma produced by Filipino nutmeg did not equal that of the Moluccan variety. Spanish experts asserted that the reason for this was that nutmeg in the Philippines grew wild, while that in the

Spice Islands had long been subject to human cultivation in plantations.482 They suggested that the local nutmeg be similarly cultivated to ascertain if it had potential commercial value. As this was

479 M. A. P. Meilink-Roelofsz and Amsterdam Universiteit van, "Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago between 1500 and About 1630" PhD Diss. (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1962), 159-62. 480 Carta De Fajardo De Tenza Sobre Asuntos De Gobierno, Manila, 1622-8-20 AGI,Filipinas,7,R.5,N.67. As this close appears after a report on the gold mines of the Igorot people, “these mountains” may refer to the Igorot Mountains of northern Luzon. 481 The author most likely misassigned the source of the nutmeg of commerce to the Moluccas instead of the Banda Islands. However, the Banda Islands were sporadically considered to be a vassalage of Ternate, one of the Moluccas Islands. see: John Villiers, "Trade and Society in the Banda Islands in the Sixteenth Century," modeasiastud Modern Asian Studies 15, no. 4 (1981): 730. 482 AGI,Filipinas,7,R.5,N.67. 162 an issue of high economic and strategic importance, the Governor assured the Council that any news about this experiment would be reported to the King.483

In its response of 1623, the Council encouraged the governor to continue with the experiment, and ordered him to send a sample of the nutmeg to officials in New Spain, who were to retain some specimens to examine and cultivate, and then forward other examples to Spain.484

A year later, having yet to receive news concerning the experiment or specimens sent from Manila, the Council reiterated to de Tenza that he “take great care in understanding whether the nutmeg trees found on the mountains of Luzon are of as good quality and value as those of the Moluccas”, and urged him to continue with the experiment, and report on its outcome.485

While in Manila, expectations regarding nutmeg were high, the investigation that took place in the Philippines over the following four years did not have positive results. In 1625, interim governor Fernando de Silva (his predecessor de Tenza died in 1624), reported to the Council that, as the nutmeg was still of the wild variety, it was of no particular value or importance. However, he promised to learn how the tree could be cultivated, so he could perform the experiment suggested earlier.486

A year later, the incoming governor, Juan Niño de Távora reported to the Council that the said nutmeg had been examined and compared to a sample brought from Ternate. The nutmeg tree had been transplanted to a location where it was adjusting to its new habitat, and had yet to bear fruit. The Governor expressed his doubts that it could yield valuable fruit as he thought the tree to

483 Ibid. 484 Respuesta a Fajardo De Tenza Sobre Asuntos De Gobierno, Madrid, 1623-10-9 AGI,Filipinas,329,L.3,F.19V- 21V; See the Council of the Indies endorsment in the margin in: AGI,Filipinas,7,R.5,N.67. 485 Respuesta a Tenza Sobre Asuntos De Gobierno, Madrid, 1624-11-27 AGI,Filipinas,329,L.3,F.55V-58V. 486 Carta De Fernando De Silva Sobre Asuntos De Gobierno, Manila, 1625-8-4 AGI,Filipinas,7,R.6,N.83. 163 be of a wild variety.487 The documentary trail disappears with the response of the Council of the

Indies, in which its members declared that they were not satisfied with the governor’s opinion.

They thus ordered him to send an official report of the comparison made between the nutmeg found in Luzon and that of the Moluccas.488

Although the final results of the experiment were unavailable, the Jesuit Francisco Colín mentioned in his work, Labor Evangelica, published in 1663, that, during the conquest of the

Igorot region in 1623, the Spanish came across many wild nutmeg trees.489This information might suggest that the experiment indicated that the nutmeg found in the area did not possess any commercial value.

Botanists have currently identified about 175 species of the genus myristica, 20 of which are native to the Philippines.490 Only the nutmeg that originated in the Banda Islands, the myristica fragrans, is considered a commercially valuable spice, although a few other species are cultivated in East and South Asia for local medicinal and ornamental uses. The existence of many varieties of nutmeg trees was mentioned in Garcia da Orta’s writings, and therefore was known to

Europeans from at least the mid-sixteenth century.491 It is likely that the Spaniards shared this knowledge, and that they suspected that the nutmeg discovered on the Philippines would eventually be categorized as another species of what they referred to as “wild” (silvestre) nutmeg.

487 Carta De Niño De Távora Sobre Minas, Nuez Moscada, Piloto, Manila, 1626-7-20, AGI,Filipinas,20,R.20,N.138. 488 Respuesta a Niño De Távora Sobre Asuntos De Gobierno, Madrid, 1627-9-3 AGI,Filipinas,329,L.3,F.128V- 133R. 489 Colín, Chirino, and Pastells, Labor evangelica: ministerios apostolicos de los obreros de la Compañia de Jesus, fundacion, y progressos de su provincia en las Islas Filipinas, Libro 1, Capitulo 5, 23. 490 W. J. J. O. de Wilde, P. F. Stevens, and Malesiana Foundation Flora, Myristicaceae (Leiden, Pays-Bas: Nationaal Herbarium Nederland, 2000), 373-5. 491 Villiers, "Trade and Society in the Banda Islands in the Sixteenth Century," 726. 164

This may explain the somewhat pessimistic tone present in the reports sent by the Manila officials to the Council of the Indies.

Essentially, the experiment Spanish officials and Franciscan friars performed in Luzon was an attempt to domesticate a species of nutmeg tree to determine whether it would yield a commercially viable nut when cultivated. The Council of the Indies ordered that specimens of wild nut be sent from the Philippines to New Spain, where it would be examined before being forwarded to Spain to be re-examined, probably by the experts of the Casa de Contratación. Throughout, comparisons were made between the wild nutmeg and the cultivated nutmeg of commerce, a test that was most likely repeated when the cultivated local nutmeg bore fruit.

Although this was not a transplantation project per se, the way the Council of the Indies undertook this experiment in domestication had much in common with the ways they tested other introduced spices. These include: the importance they placed upon personal testimony; the insistence on many experts’ opinions; close monitoring by the Council of the Indies; and continuous investigation, in this case, during the administration of three different governors.

Iberian control over the clove trade declined over the subsequent decades, while that of the

Dutch quickly increased. Although the Spanish managed to slow Dutch expansion in the Moluccas, it could not prevent the VOC from establishing a lasting presence on the islands of Ternate and

Ambon. This, and the monopoly the Dutch held by then over the Bandanese nutmeg trade, appears to explain why the following 1639 proposal to transplant clove and nutmeg into the Philippines enjoyed instant approval in Spain.

From the limited information available, it appears that the Franciscan order in the

Philippines sent one of its friars, Fray Juan de Arriola, to lobby at the Council of the Indies in 165

Spain to send more friars to Cochin China.492 Reaching Spain sometime before the end of 1639,

Arriola also handed the Council a memorandum (memorial) and dispatches regarding issues of governance in the Philippines, among them the introduction of Moluccan spices into the

Philippines. The memorandum was delivered through a better known fellow Franciscan, Fray

Martín Lobo, who added a recommendation and testimony for Arriola’s character.493 It was probably no coincidence that Fray Martín Lobo, a gifted cosmographer, mathematician, and engineer, had previously composed treatises proposing the introduction of plants from all over the world into Guatemala, and the construction of a canal between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.494

As a famous polymath, who previously engaged in crop transplantation, his endorsement of

Ariolla’s memorial surely assisted in its consideration by the Council.

In any case, the memorandum was forwarded to the Council of the Indies, whose members were ordered by the King to consider Arriola’s proposals. While the document composed by the

Franciscans has not survived, the response of the Council of the Indies suggests that much of the content of the memorandum comprised recommendations on how to deal with the emerging Dutch dominance over the spice trade (“y hechos señores de toda la especería”).495

Although the Moluccan spice trade was declared by the Council of the Indies to be the responsibility of the Council of Portugal, evidently it was the pretext for Arriola’s other proposals.

Amongst these was the transplantation of precious spices to the Spanish-controlled Philippines.496

Arriola asserted that some of the Philippine Islands were suitable for the introduction and farming

492 Petición De Juan De Arriola De Licencia Para Volver a Filipinas, Madrid, 1639-11-29, AGI,Filipinas,5,N.493. 493 Real Decreto Para Que Se Vea Memorial De Juan De Arriola, Madrid, 1639-10-8 AGI,Filipinas,4,N.22. 494 J.M.B. de Souza et al., Biblioteca hispano americana setentrional (Amecameca, Mexico: Tip. del Colegio Católico, 1883), 175. 495 Consulta Sobre Propuestas De Juan De Arriola Madrid, 1639-11-16 AGI,Filipinas,2,N.31. 496 Ibid. 166 of nutmeg and cloves which, it was believed, would produce as good a harvest as those in the

Moluccas. While the members of Council of the Indies rejected all the other of Arriola’s proposals, they favored this transplantation project, advising that the Governor of the Philippines should confer with “practical and experienced people” to decide what land would be suitable for the cultivation of these spices.497 A month later, royal decree backed this consultation by ordering the governor to commence with the project.498

It is very plausible that Arriola’s proposal to the Council of the Indies to transplant cloves and nutmeg into the Philippines was based on expertise accumulated by the Franciscans in the

Philippines. The friars, having experimented on the transplantation of cloves and having taken part in the attempt to domesticate wild nutmeg, had sufficient empirical knowledge to approach the

Council of the Indies with their suggestions. While surely such a project would not have been assigned to the order alone, their expertise would most likely have been called upon. Their participation would have contributed to their reputation, and may also have resulted in enough revenue to maintain their charitable work in the Archipelago and beyond. Further investigation is warranted to explain why Franciscan friars, rather than members of other religious orders, were involved in the introduction and cultivation of spices in the Philippines.

Manila as a Sixteenth Century Scientific Hub

The proto-scientific community in Mexico City, the members of which were summoned to observe and report an eclipse, was also called upon when the Council of the Indies attempted to

497 Ibid. 498 "Os mando que confiriéndolo con personas platicas y de experiencia lo dispongáis de suerte que se consiga y entable si fuere posible en todas las partes donde la dispersión de la tierra diere lugar para ello." Orden Sobre Cultivar Nuez Moscada Y Clavo En Filipinas, Madrid, 1639-12-16, AGI,Filipinas,330,L.4,F.132R-132V, 167 clarify the status of spice cultivation in New Spain. A similar network persisted also in Manila,

although its members were mostly local officials and friars, rather than court appointed men of

science. Resourceful individuals with extensive knowledge in navigation, cosmography, mathematics, astronomy, and botany served and worked in the Philippines from the first decades of Spanish colonization. Among them were figures such as Fray Martín de Rada, Jaime Juan, and

Guido de Lavezaris. De Rada, an Augustinian friar, mathematician and cosmographer, undertook

observations and astronomical calculations to determine precisely where the division between

Portuguese and Spanish zones in Asia lay. He was versed in Chinese and wrote a book titled Art

and Vocabulary of the Chinese Language.499 Juan was cosmographer and geographer, who

participated in the 1584 eclipse observation in New Spain (see chapter 3). Juan arrived in the

Philippines with his calculation books three years later, but died of sickness shortly after his

arrival.500 Lastly, Lavezaris, a member of Legazpi’s expedition, was a pilot, accountant, treasurer, governor, and, as described in earlier chapters, was an expert for the transplantation of

Asian spice plants into New Spain.

The experience these men accumulated and their writings were not lost with their passing, but were carried on by the likes of Hernando de los Ríos Coronel501 and Juan Bautista Román. The former was renowned as a mathematician, navigator, and inventor. The latter was the Royal factor in the Philippines who, as noted in chapter 2, wished to continue the transplantation trials initiated by Guido de Lavezaris. He also composed an opinion paper in which he described the Indian Ocean trade routes, and proposed that Spain should take over the Moluccan spice trade, shipping the

499 Crossley, Hernando De Los Ríos Coronel and the Spanish Philippines in the Golden Age, 8-9; José Antonio Cervera, "Misioneros En Filipinas Y Su Relación Con La Ciencia En China: Fray Juan Cobo Y Su Libro Shi Lu," Llull 20 (1997): 493. 500 Crossley, Hernando De Los Ríos Coronel and the Spanish Philippines in the Golden Age, 33, 71. 501 Ibid., 71-2, 187; Portuondo, Secret Science : Spanish Cosmography and the New World, 92. 168 precious cargos to Iberia via Manila and Panama.502 As mentioned above, this idea was debated again in the early decades of the seventeenth century.

While Coronel’s writings and inventions mostly concerned navigation, when serving as the

Philippines’ advocate (prucorador general) in Madrid, he also made several proposals unrelated to his formal vocation. One, in which he suggested sending specimens of an especially high- yielding Chinese variety of silkworm to Spain, was similar in language and nature to the transplantation proposals discussed above. These silkworms, Coronel claimed, wove a much larger cocoon of purer thread than those known in Spain, and bred in Lanquín (Nanjing), at a latitude of

40° N, which had a climate similar to that of Spain.503 More than a year later, the Council of the

Indies issued a decree to the governor of the Philippines, ordering him to obtain a specimen of such a silkworm, and send it to Spain along with instructions as to “the manner in which it is being reared in China.”504

Coronel was also involved in the nomination of Juan de Segura Manrique as chief cosmographer of the Philippines. Before Manrique was appointed, he was examined by Andrés

García de Céspedes, chief cosmographer of the Casa de Contratación. In 1609, he left Spain for the Philippines where he served for over a decade.505 During at least three of those years, Alonso

Flores, another mathematician and cosmographer, worked in Manila alongside Manrique and

Coronel. The Council of the Indies sent Flores to the Philippines via the Cape of the Good Hope so he could make observations and draw up navigation charts of the route, which had not been

502 Relación De J. B. Román Sobre Importancia Del Maluco, Manila, 1582-6-12 AGI,Filipinas,29,N.38, 503 "En la China se puede traer una semila de seda que es muy fecunda y hacen los gusanos de ella los capullos tan grandes como este que aqui...y allá se cria en tierra del temple de España que es en Lanquín en altura de cuarenta grados." Petición De Ríos Coronel Sobre Variedad De Seda De China, Madrid (probable), 1609-1-24, AGI,Filipinas,27,N.72, Nanjin is located on latitude 32 degrees North. 504 Orden Que Enviar a España Semilla De Seda China, Madrid, 1610-11-1, AGI,FIlipinas,329,L.2,F.118R-118V, 505 Crossley, Hernando De Los Ríos Coronel and the Spanish Philippines in the Golden Age, 34; In that matter see: Petición De Juan De Segura Manrique De Licencia Para Nueva España, Manila, 1620-4-2, AGI,Filipinas,5,N.216, 169 navigated by Spaniards until then.506 Although the nature of their collaboration in the Philippines is unknown, the three were members of a group of experts that tested a new compass in Spain in the late 1610s, and their prior collaboration would probably have inclined them to again collaborate in the Philippines.507

While this issue warrants further research, it is safe to assume that the proto-scientific collaboration in Manila was extensive, persistent, and included individuals who were also involved in the transplantation of spices and medicinal plants into the Philippines, and from the Archipelago to New Spain. The presence in Manila of experts in mathematics, navigation, and other disciplines, certainly promoted the development of an empirical culture among the colony’s elite.

Consequently, when conducting experiments and making decisions regarding spice transplantation, officials and friars in the Philippines, their counterparts in New Spain, and experts in the Council of the Indies and the Casa de Contratación collaborated utilizing the same terminology, and employing identical methods.

Tobacco Transplantation and Trade in late Sixteenth to mid-Seventeenth-century

Philippines

This section analyses the introduction and assimilation of tobacco in the Philippines. The general scholarly assumption is that friars, probably of the Franciscan order, carried tobacco plants or seeds from New Spain to the Philippines sometime between 1575 and 1580.508 It appears that the

506 Hernando De Los Ríos Coronel and the Spanish Philippines in the Golden Age, 33-4. 507 Ibid., 33-4, 94-5. 508 Carol Benedict, Golden-Silk Smoke a History of Tobacco in China, 1550-2010 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 19; L.C. Goodrich, "Early Prohibitions of Tobacco in China and Manchuria," Journal of the American Oriental Society 58, no. 4 (1938): 648. The assumption that the Franciscans introduced tobacco to the Philippines appears in several sources, however, I could not find any documental evidence to support this claim. 170 transplantation of this plant, unlike that of spices and medicinal plants, was neither planned nor deliberated. Tobacco’s introduction into the Philippines was haphazard, owing to its being carried from New Spain by individuals for their personal consumption or for medicinal purposes, rather than with the intention to cultivate it as a cash crop. Nevertheless, tobacco cultivation became widespread throughout the Archipelago. Tobacco’s long-term success alongside the haphazard nature of its introduction in this context puts its history in the Philippines at odds with the history of valuable spices, such as nutmeg and cloves. Moreover, soon after tobacco’s transplantation to the Islands, it was introduced into many Asian countries. Tobacco also continued to be traded as a luxury commodity, consumed by elite Europeans and Asians throughout most of the Indian Ocean

World and beyond.

We here focus on the transculturation of tobacco in the Philippines. 509 In his seminal work,

Cuban Counterpoint, Fernando Ortíz outlined five factors that have had a decisive influence on the history and commercial variability of tobacco: 1) the nature of tobacco as an article of pleasure, vice, and luxury. 2) Each make/type of tobacco (Havana cigars is the example Ortíz gives) is unique, and therefore cannot be replaced. 3) The use of tobacco is subject to the influence of caprice and fashion. 4) Despite its nonessential and frivolous nature, its use is as widespread as if it were an article of great importance. 5) Tobacco is a product that can be taxed.510 As will be demonstrated here, these factors are highly relevant to the physical and social transplantation of tobacco into the Philippines.

509 The term transculturation was coined by Fernando Ortíz to express the highly complex and varied phenomena that were the result of the transmutation of culture that have taken place in Cuba. Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint, trans. Harriet De Onís; Tobacco and Sugar (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1947), 98. 510 Ibid., 71. 171

Tobacco’s successful acclimatization in the Philippines (and to a large extent, throughout the Indian Ocean World) was not only due to its addictive nature, but also because the societies that adopted its use incorporated it into their traditional system of using local substances such as the betel quid. In Marcy Norton’s seminal text, Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of

Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World, the author argues that although the original

Amerindian ritual element of tobacco consumption was diluted when brought to Europe, the

Spanish maintained the significance of partaking of it in social settings.511 Similarly, the Spaniards did not transmit such a context across the Pacific Ocean. The Filipinos picked up on the social context of tobacco use and incorporated it alongside their traditional local substances into their pre-existing ceremonies.

*****

While other American cash crops, such as cacao, were successfully introduced into the Philippines, no other American plant made such an impact on the local economy, society, and culture, as tobacco. Europeans encountered the perennial herbaceous American plant, Nicotiana tabacum,512 for the first time in late 1492, in the Caribbean, when indigenous islanders offered it to Columbus as a present. Tobacco smoking had an important place in the Amerindian culture as a medicinal component, an intoxicating substance and a “food for the spirits” in shamanistic rituals. While, generally speaking, the Spanish were slow to adopt “Indian” foodstuffs and other substances,

511 Marcy Norton, Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), 9-12. 512 Nicotiana Tabacum is one and by far the most common of the two species used to produce tobacco. The other one, Nicotiana rustica, is less likely to have been cultivated in the tropical climate of the Caribbean and the Philippines. 172 tobacco’s strong link to Amerindian religious rites made it even harder for them to approve of its use.513

By the 1570s, tobacco was still surrounded by religious and cultural controversy. But, following the publication of Nicolás Monardes’ Segunda parte del libro des las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales (1571), the strange “Indian” herb was accepted as a part of the

Spanish materia medica. Monardes was an avid advocate of learning about drugs from indigenous peoples, and insisted that tobacco should not be prohibited simply because of its social and religious roles in Amerindian culture. He went on to compare the Amerindian social use of tobacco to the East Indian social use of opium and cannabis, both of which were accepted medicines in

Spain. Monardes claimed that while the social use of such drugs was dangerous and corrupting, their medicinal use was necessary and acceptable.514

The addictive nature of tobacco soon prevented its confinement to the apothecary’s shelf, and, by Monardes’ time, it was smoked by Spaniards in both the New and the Old Worlds. At the end of the sixteenth century, the Spanish elite still perceived tobacco’s social use as barbaric, heathen and dangerous, and the social smoker was deemed to be vulnerable to Satan planting delusions in his head when under the influence of unrestrained tobacco use.515 This attitude was also reflected in the Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, the first comprehensive dictionary composed in any European language. In its first edition of 1611, the term “tabaco” was not included.516 It appeared in the second addition of 1674, when it was erroneously described as an old herb noted in Pliny’s Historia Naturalis. Additionally, the dictionary stated that tobacco was

513 Sander L. Gilman and Xun Zhou, Smoke : A Global History of Smoking (London: Reaktion Books, 2004), 9. 514 Monardes, Primera y Segunda y Tercera partes de la Historia Medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales que siruen en Medicina, 49. 515 Norton, Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World, 105, 18-21. 516 Sebastián de Covarrubias Orozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española (Madrid: Luis Sanchez, 1611). 173 associated with the Devil, who, it claimed, was the first to discover this harmful and addictive plant.517

This initial negative attitude towards tobacco was echoed in the Spanish attitude to yerba mate, a plant that originated in Paraguay, where the native Guaraní people brewed it in hot water, and drunk it from a hollow gourd with a straw. Yerba contains caffeine, and soon after the Spanish started using it, many of them developed an addiction that led them to consume it multiple times a day, significantly more than did the Guaraní. The yerba became an important component of the local Paraguayan economy, and by the end of the sixteenth century was also very popular in

Buenos Aires and other colonies in South America. So addictive did yerba prove to Spanish settlers that many sold all their belongings to feed their habit, and thus became hopelessly indebted.

Consequently, yerba and its consumption was criticized by the secular and religious elites as a vice and bad habit – one that often made people miss mass.518

Up to the late sixteenth century, tobacco was viewed as a non-commercial crop, and was grown mostly in household gardens rather than on large plots of land.519 The lingering controversy surrounding its consumption, along with its low economic viability, may explain why in the 1570s tobacco was introduced into the Philippines not as a cash crop, but rather as a medicinal plant or for the personal use of addicts.

By the 1580s, the economy of recently-founded Spanish Manila was very much based on the manpower of its ever-growing Chinese community. While most Chinese were artisans,

517 S. de Covarrubias, "Tabaco," in Parte Primera [y segunda] del Tesoro de la lengua castellana o espanola, compuesto por el licenciado Don Sebastian de Covarrubias Orozco,... anadido por... P. Benito Remigio Noydens (Madrid: Melchor Sanchez, 1674), vol.2, 181. 518 Adalberto López, "The Economics of Yerba Mate in Seventeenth-Century South America," Agricultural History 48, no. 4 (1974): 497-8. 519 Norton, Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World, 148-50. 174 merchants, shopkeepers and domestic workers, others worked as small-scale farmers and household gardeners. A Spanish official in Manila, Antonio de Morga reported on this trend: “Of course it is true that without these Sangleyes [i.e. the Chinese in Manila] the city could not continue nor be maintained, for they are skilled in every trade, are very hard workers and satisfied with moderate wages.”520 Friars employed some Chinese in their agrarian enterprises near Manila,521 and, if tobacco was among the plants grown, such workers probably sent tobacco seeds back to their homeland. This may well explain tobacco’s early diffusion in East Asia, a subject that will be discussed shortly.

While, prior to the introduction of tobacco, no addictive substances except alcohol were used on a regular basis in Spain, the situation was very different in the Philippines, where before the Spanish arrival, indigenous people commonly consumed chewed a combination of betel leaf

(Buyo), areca nut (Bonga) and quicklime made of burnt shells (this combination is known as the betel quid).522 Once assembled and chewed, the betel quid possesses stimulating effects that are comparable to those of nicotine, and also results in a red residue which is spat out by the user.

Although the custom of betel chewing has never been widely popular among non-Asians, it has long been commonly consumed by peoples indigenous to the Indian Ocean World where, in the early modern period, many Europeans also used it on a regular basis.

520 Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, 1609, 314; On the role of the Chinese in the Phlippines economy see: Chia, "The Butcher, the Baker and the Carpenter: Chinese Sojourners in the Spanish Philippines and Their Impact on Southern Fujian (Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries)." 521 Letters to Felipe III, Miguel de Benavides, July 5 and 6 1603 Blair, The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol.12, p.109. 522 The betel leaf (Piper betle) contains anticeptic and muscle relaxant compounds, the areca (Areca catechu) contains an alkaloide stimulant, and the quicklime helps the absorption of the alcaloide. For more information see: Dawn Rooney, Betel Chewing Traditions in South-East Asia (Kuala Lumpur; New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 16-23. 175

By the end of the sixteenth century, betel chewing had become popular among the

Spaniards in the Philippines. As a result, the habit was noted by every chronicler and observer sojourning in Manila. For example, de Morga reported: “What is indeed apparent to all is that it

[betel] is used by natives and Spaniards, by seculars and religious, by men and women.”523

Interestingly, de Morga compared the ceremonial serving of betel quid in the Philippines to that of chocolate in New Spain. In his 1604 report on the Philippines, the Jesuit Pedro Chirino added:

It is very pungent, and for the living is a notable stimulant, also strengthening the

teeth, hardening the gums, and sweetening the breath. Consequently, both

Spaniards and Indians make much use of it, and always carry it in their mouth, as

they use the coca in Piru [sic.].524

In his later work, History of the Philippine Province of the Society of Jesus, Chirino compared the ritualistic serving of the betel quid to that of tea served by the Chinese or Japanese. The addictive nature of betel chewing he compared to that of tobacco chewing: “there are people, even of our nation, who always keep it in the mouth, as others tobacco.”525 The Italian traveller Francesco

Carletti, who visited the Philippines in 1596-7, credited the betel quid with medicinal qualities as a digestive aid, an aphrodisiac, and as a substance that strengthens the gums and sweetens the breath. However, he did not fail to mention its addictive nature: “The Spaniards, both men and women, also chew it and always have it in their mouths, because once one has had it he cannot do

523 Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, 1609, 259. 524 Pedro Chirino, Relation of the Philippine Islands, 1604, chapter xxxiii, in: Blair, The Philippine Islands 1493- 1898, Vol.12, p.302-3; For the original Spanish version see: Pedro Chirino, Relacion de las Islas Filipinas i de lo que en ellas an trabaiado los padres de la Compañia de Jesus (Rome: Estevan Paulino, 1604), 75. "Y que a los vivos sustenta mucho, conforta la dentura, aprieta las enzias, y da bien olor al aliéto, y así los indios, y aun españoles la usan mucho, y la traen siempre rn la boca, como la coca en el Piru." 525 Chirino, Gorriz i Abella, and Arcilla, History of the Philippine Province of the Society of Jesus, vol.2, p.391. 176 without it.”526 That did not prevent Carletti from experiencing the betel quid several times and reported: “feeling a satisfaction and strengthening of my stomach which gave me more vigor than wine.” He also mentioned that it is the custom among Filipinos to offer the buyo to friends and visitors, similarly to wine’s role among Europeans.527

Europeans considered that betel quid had characteristics that were similar to New World substances such as chocolate, coca, and tobacco, and fulfilled in the Philippines a ceremonial role comparable with that of wine in Europe, chocolate in the Americas, and tea in East Asia. In some places in the Americas, tobacco or coca were combined with lime and chewed to enhance the substance’s effect on the body. Additionally, betel chewing in the Philippines and tobacco consumption in America possessed similar social and ceremonial roles. Perhaps, precisely because of betel’s role in ritualistic offering in the Philippines, one tobacco fulfilled in the Americas, the

Spaniards were quick to adopt it. Once the initial cultural barrier was removed, betel’s availability facilitated the prevalence of its use among the Philippines’ Spanish community. Such pervasiveness was probably further augmented by the Philippines’ distance from any European society that might frown upon its use. Betel chewing by Europeans has not hitherto been studied in any depth, and further investigation is needed to determine why, as with yerba, its use was confined to the regional colonial sphere, whereas tobacco crossed oceans and had great success in

Spain and Europe.528

526 Carletti, My Voyage around the World, 87-8. Carletti also reported here his on personal experience chewing the betel quid. 527 Ibid., 88. 528 Recently it has been suggested by Stefan Halikowsky Smith that betel quid never took off in Europe due to its “strong stimulative effect” that did not conform with the emergent culture of “sobering indulgence”. Halikowski Smith, "Demystifying a Change in Taste: Spices, Space, and Social Hierarchy in Europe, 1380-1750," 256. However, I believe the need to consume the betel leaf fresh (as opposed to tobacco), or the red residue produced in the process of chewing the areca nut, may have deterred Europeans from importing the habit to Europe. 177

While betel quid use was widely recorded in late sixteenth-century Philippines, there are no Spanish references for the existence of tobacco in the Philippines in this period. That might be either because tobacco did not seem out of the ordinary in the colonial sphere at that time, or due to the poor condition of the archives in Manila. Fortunately, the existence of many literate cultures in the East Asia region close to the Philippines, and the diffusion of tobacco shortly after its arrival in the archipelago provided alternative testimonies to its earlier arrival there. For example, in the early seventeenth century, Yao Lu, a Chinese essayist from Fujian province, wrote that the tobacco that was at that time thriving in the coastal area of Zhangzhou, Fujian, had originated in Luzon:

There is a plant called tan-pa-ku, produced in Luzon... You take fire and light one

end and put the other end in your mouth. The smoke goes down your throat through

the pipe. It can make one tipsy, but it can [likewise] keep one clear of malaria.

People have brought it to Chang-chou [Fukien] and planted it, and now there is

more there than in Luzon, and it is exported and sold to that country.529

Zhangzhou area was the place of origin of most of the Chinese that settled in sixteenth-century

Manila. As noted, through working as agricultural laborers for Spanish friars, the Chinese were exposed to crops brought and transplanted by the Spaniards into the Philippines. By the turn of the sixteenth century, tobacco from Manila was transplanted not only into mainland China but also to

Japan, into which it was introduced by Franciscan friars.530 Although the manner of the introduction is not known, the Philippines were probably the origin of the tobacco introduced in

529 Goodrich, "Early Prohibitions of Tobacco in China and Manchuria," 648-9. 530 Barnabas Tatsuya Suzuki, "Tobacco Culture in Japan," in Smoke : A Global History of Smoking, ed. Sander L Gilman and Xun Zhou (London: Reaktion Books, 2004), 77-8. Franciscan friars brought tobacco seeds to Japan in 1601. However, most likely tobacco was introduced into Japan by Portuguese traders as early as the 1570s. 178

Java at the beginning of the seventeenth century.531 As tobacco was mostly cultivated by the

Chinese in mid-seventeenth-century Batavia and its environs,532 it is possible that they were also responsible for its introduction to the Dutch colony.

From around the 1610s, tobacco starts to appear in Spanish Philippine sources, along with familiar descriptions of the social impacts related to its use: fire hazards, taxation, and addiction.

By the early seventeenth century, tobacco was widely smoked by seamen aboard the Manila galleons. In 1617, after a ship sailing from Manila arrived in Acapulco ablaze, the president of the

Casa de Contratacíon wrote to the secretary of the Council of the Indies warning of the risk of smoking aboard galleons: seven crew members lost their lives in the fire that resulted from seamen smoking in the crowded hull.533 The tobacco that ignited the fire was probably acquired in Manila, as it is very unlikely that any precious herb would have remained in the possession of the seamen after the long voyage from Acapulco to Manila. An unattended cigar was also the cause of a fire in 1628 that consumed much of the city of Cebu, along with the local Augustine convent. The event was described by the Augustinian chronicler, Juan de Medina, who exclaimed in frustration that: “It [the fire] originated from some tobacco; cursed be it, and the harm that that infernal plant has brought, which must have come from hell.”534

By the 1620s, tobacco was clearly an important component of the local Philippine economy. Accordingly, the mid-seventeenth century Jesuit chronicler, Francisco Colín, maintained that tobacco was one of the major crops of Cebu, an island where no rice could be

531 Anthony Reid, "From Betel-Chewing to Tobacco-Smoking in Indonesia," The Journal of Asian Studies 44, no. 3 (1985): 535-6. 532 Tania Li, Transforming the Indonesian Uplands : Marginality, Power, and Production, Studies in Environmental Anthropology, (Singapore: Harwood Academic Publishers : Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1999), 52-3. 533 Carta de Francisco de Tejada sobre restos de la armada, Sevilla, 1617-12-12, AGI,Filipinas,200,N.260. 534 Juan de Medina, History of the Augustinian Order in the Filipinas Islands, in: Blair, The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol.24, p.145-6. 179 cultivated.535 From that time, tobacco use was closely linked to that of betel: both were highly profitable, yet also harmful and addictive substances.

In January 1624, following a request from Spanish friars in Nagasaki to establish a seminary in Manila to train missionaries destined for Japan, the Governor of the Philippines, Don

Alonso Fajardo assigned the project to the Jesuits in Manila. The Governor gave them a plot of land near the fortifications of Manila, and to fund the project, established, without the King’s permission, a royal monopoly on the sale of betel leaf, areca nut, and tobacco. The right to farm the tax on the sale of these narcotics was bestowed on the administrators of the Jesuit College.536

However, the tax caused the market price of the three commodities to more than double, much to the disgruntlement of consumers – almost everyone in and around Manila. Even priests declaimed the monopoly (estanco) and the inconveniences it created for both natives and Spaniards.537

To everyone’s relief, in July 1624, following the death of Governor Fajardo, Manila’s high court (audiencia) reversed the royal decree he had issued. While initially an old royal decree forbidding the construction of stone buildings in the vicinity of the wall was used to abolish the said monopoly,538 the nullification was reiterated when the Council of the Indies endorsed their decision stating that such a monopoly was profitable enough to sustain twenty seminaries.539 In

1636 and again in 1642, the Governor of the Philippines resurrected the idea of a narcotics

535 Colín, Chirino, and Pastells, Labor evangelica: ministerios apostolicos de los obreros de la Compañia de Jesus, fundacion, y progressos de su provincia en las Islas Filipinas, Vol.1, p.39. 536 Testimonio de provisión de la audiencia anulando seminario, Manila, 1624-8-5, AGI,Filipinas,7,R.5,N.76. 537 Carta de los oficiales reales sobre varios asuntos, Manila, 1624-8-10, AGI,Filipinas,30,N.3. 538 Ibid. 539 Orden a Távora sobre el estanco de la hierba de buyo, Madrid, 1625-11-21, AGI,Filipinas,329,L.3,F.85R-87R; Respuesta a los oficiales reales de las Islas Filipinas, Madrid, 1625-11-21, AGI,Filipinas,L.3,F.87R-90R; See also: De la Costa, The Jesuits in the Philippines, 1581-1768, 370-1. 180 monopoly, but was successfully resisted by the Council of the Indies on the grounds that it was detrimental to Filipinos.540

Nevertheless, tobacco remained an important substance for Spaniards in the Philippines, and gradually acquired a central role in native Filipino society. By the end of the seventeenth century, it was widely cultivated, traded and smoked from Cagayan in northern Luzon to

Mindanao. The Cagayan Valley people exchanged tobacco, along with iron, cloth, wine and salt with the mountainous Igorot people from whom they acquired gold and wax.541

Before the arrival of tobacco, various Filipino societies used betel quid in ritualistic offerings to a guest or a stranger, while in some regions, such as the Visayan Islands, it was also associated with courtship rituals and rites of passage.542 Tobacco gradually became incorporated into the same rituals, as for instance in Mindanao, by the late seventeenth century. One social custom of the time was for local Muslim woman, even married ones, to engage in platonic relationships called pagally with male strangers, whom they invited to their house (in the case of married women with the husband’s permission), where he received a free offering of tobacco or betel, and additionally, in return for a fee, was lodged, fed and served drinks.543

Tobacco became so entrenched in Filipino everyday life that, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Augustinian Friar Gaspar de San Agustin wrote that even the most modest

Filipino was content if he possessed a bamboo hut, rice sufficient for a few days, some small fish,

540 Carta del cabildo secular de Manila sobre varios asuntos, Manila, 1636-6-27 AGI,Filipinas,7,N.214; Petición de Juan Grau sobre suprimir estancos, 1642-5-28 (Probable), AGI,Filipinas,28,N.19; Orden de no hacer estanco en el buyo y bonga, Madrid, 1638-10-2 AGI,Filipinas,330,L.4,F.95V-96R; Desaparición del estanco del buyo, bonga y tabaco, Madrid, 1641-7-10 AGI,Filipinas,340,L.5,F.81V-83R. 541 Newson, Conquest and Pestilence in the Early Spanish Philippines, 209. 542 Scott, Barangay : Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society, 49. 543 Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World (1717), 275-6. 181 and a couple of leaves of tobacco.544 The inclusion of tobacco (rather than betel) among such basic needs implies that in some regions, tobacco may have gradually replaced the role that betel had before the arrival of the Spaniards. As such, tobacco also slipped into Filipino folklore, in the form of a somewhat harmless tree demon, the kapre, described as a tall dark figure, hiding in old trees, smoking a big cigar or pipe. The name kapre is probably derived from the Arabic word kafir, imported by the Spaniards and Portuguese into the Indian Ocean World to describe black slaves.

Further research is necessary to explain the association of a Filipino legendary creature with tobacco and the word “kafir”, both of which postdate the Spanish arrival to the archipelago.545

Although the use of tobacco was widespread, the Manileños’ ambivalence towards it continued well into the 1630s. In 1636, Governor Corcuera proclaimed an act establishing a convalescent ward for soldiers and mariners near the Spanish hospital in Manila. The ward was deemed necessary since military men released from hospital were described as having:

little health and strength - some returning to their own houses, and some to those of

others, where because of the little or no comfort, and the poor and injurious food,

with wine, tobacco, buyo (betel), and other similar things, and the continual

temptations to associate with women of evil life, they relapse, so that their sickness

has no cure.546

Corcuera was the same governor to establish a government monopoly over the sale of betel, areca, and tobacco, selling the rights to farm the tax in these two different occasions.

544 Gaspar de San Agustin, Letter on the Filipinos, 1720, in: Blair, The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol.40, p.260. 545 Dean Spruill Fansler, Filipino Popular Tales (Hatboro, Pa.,: Folklore Associates, 1965), 33; Fletcher Gardner, "Philippine (Tagalog) Superstitions," The Journal of American Folklore 19, no. 74 (1906): 201. 546 Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera, Letter to Felipe IV, 1636, in: Blair, The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol.26, p.283-4. 182

In the first decades of the seventeenth century, Philippine tobacco appears to have become a sought after commodity in overseas markets, including in New Spain. When Peter Mundi, a seventeenth-century English traveller, sojourned in Macao in 1636, he was invited by the captain of a visiting Spanish galleon to spend the night aboard the vessel. The following morning, he was served hot chocolate for the first time in his life, an event he did not fail to record in his journal.

More importantly, Mundy also described the ship’s cargo: “Shee brought From Mannilla about 9 or 10 tunnes off Cloves (sent thither From the Molluccaes), allsoe some Diers wood and Mannilla tabacco.”547 The emphasis on “Manila Tobacco”, rather than just “tobacco”, might imply that by then it had become a regional brand name, carrying an assurance of superior quality. Clearly this was not an isolated incident, as in the mid-to-late seventeenth century, Manila tobacco began to appear in other locations in the Indian Ocean World and in Spanish colonies in the Pacific basin.

In 1641, proud of the local product, the governor of the Philippines sent two chests of

Manila cigars to his superior, the viceroy of New Spain.548 By at least 1669, Manila tobacco had also found its way to Melaka, aboard a Chinese junk. At that time, Melaka was under Dutch control, and had no official trade relations with Spanish Manila, therefore, the Chinese captain pretended to have arrived from Johor. Even though the Dutch discovered the true origin of the junk, they allowed the sale of its precious cargo.549

In 1686, William Dampier, a seventeenth-century English explorer and corsair, came across Manila tobacco while anchoring in Guam, where, 50 pounds of Manila tobacco were obtained by the ship’s Captain, Charles Swan, from a Spanish priest he took as a hostage.550 Guam,

547 Mundy and Temple, The Travels of Peter Mundy, in Europe and Asia 1608-1667, 3 251-2. 548 Spate, The Spanish Lake, 222. 549 Ruurdje Laarhoven, Pino Wittermans, Elizabeth, "From Blockade to Trade: Early Dutch Relations with Manila, 1600-1750," Philippine Studies 33, no. 4 (1985): 499. 550 Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World (1717), 256-7. 183 then one of the Islas de los Ladrones, was a Spanish colony and a regular stop for the Manila galleons. Dampier must have been sure of the origin of this tobacco, as in another section of his journal he described the prevalence of tobacco consumption in the Island of Mindanao, pointing out the differences between the Mindanao and Manila types of tobacco. He believed that although

Manila tobacco was lighter and more pleasant to smoke, the Mindanao variety was as good if not better. He added that whereas one Spanish peso could buy 40 to 50 leaves of Manila tobacco in the English factory of Fort St. George (today’s Chennai), in Mindandao, the same amount could purchase more than ten pounds of local tobacco. Dampier acknowledged that Manila tobacco, much lighter in color than that of Mindanao, was processed in a particular way:

The Manila Tobacco is of a bright yellow colour, of an indifferent size, not strong,

but pleasant to smoak [sic.]. The Spaniards at Manila are very curious about this

Tobacco, having a peculiar way of making it up neatly in the leaf. For they take two

little sticks, each about a foot long, and flat, and placing the stalks of the Tobacco

leaves in a row, 40 or 50 of them between the two sticks, they bind them hard

together, so that the leaves hang dangling down.551

However, he still attributed the difference in price to the business savvy of the Spanish in

Manila, and the lack of it among the people of Mindanao. He added that the Dutch, sailing from their strongholds in the Moluccas regularly bought locally produced tobacco in Mindanao552 even

551 W. Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World (London: J. Knapton, 1699), 333. 552 Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World (1717), 280-1. 184 though, from long before Dampier’s time, tobacco was cultivated in Bacan Island, just south of the Moluccas.553

Again, from the mid-1680s, “Manila tobacco” began to appear regularly in the manifests of English ships heading from Manila to Fort St. George. Thus in 1686, a Hindu merchant wrote to one of the factors in Fort St. George: "I have occasion for 10 or 12 mounds554 of Manila tobacco which I desire your honour to supply me with by the first conveyance."555 Another missive indicates that this request was fulfilled immediately, a proof that the English factory in Fort St.

George had some stock of Manila tobacco at that time.556 Indeed, by the mid-seventeenth century, tobacco was farmed and consumed all over East, Southeast and South Asia. Therefore, it might seem odd that English merchants in the Indian subcontinent would go through the trouble to freight expensive tobacco across the Indian Ocean. However, it appears that Manila tobacco possessed unique qualities that justified its price and the effort necessary to obtain it.

Two factors may have contributed to the high esteem of Manila tobacco. The first was the ideal conditions found on Luzon for its cultivation. As Fernando Ortíz’s work suggests, Manila tobacco had a singular taste that was considered superior to that of other known tobaccos, and had a reputation in the Indian Ocean World and beyond similar to that enjoyed today by Cuban cigars in the Americas and Europe. In other words, it became a brand name amongst smokers. As, the

553 Colín, Chirino, and Pastells, Labor evangelica: ministerios apostolicos de los obreros de la Compañia de Jesus, fundacion, y progressos de su provincia en las Islas Filipinas, Vol.1, p.109. 554 Maund was a unit of mass used in the Indian subcontinent. In Fort St. George, 20 maund equalled one candy (heavier measurement) of 500 lb. Therfore, a maund equalled 25lb. or 11.34 kg. Charles Lockyer, An Account of the Trade in India: Containing Rules for Good Government in Trade, Price Courants, and Tables: With Descriptions of Fort St. George, Acheen, Malacca, Condore, Canton, Anjengo, Muskat, Gombroon, Surat, Goa, Carwar, Telichery, Panola, Calicut, the Cape of Good-Hope, and St. Helena (London: Printed for the author, and sold by S. Crouch, 1711), 8-9. 555 Record Office Madras, Letters to Fort St. George, 1686-1687 (Madras: Printed by the Superintendent, Govt. Press, 1919), p.130. Record No.132; See also: Quiason, English Country Trade with the Philippines, 1644-1765, 47. 556 Madras, Letters to Fort St. George, 1686-1687, p.144. Record No.147. 185

Jesuit, Colín, stated: “The tobacco came [to the Philippines] from abroad, but yields so much and

[is] of such good quality, that it is taken to New Spain and other places.”557

The second factor to have contributed to the success of “Manila tobacco” was the process employed by Spaniards in and around Manila to cure the tobacco. As noted by Dampier, Manila tobacco was lighter in color and taste than the Mindanao equivalent. Whereas tobacco seeds were disseminated all over the Indian Ocean, the Spanish may have kept their curing techniques a secret.

In the early seventeenth century, English merchants heard about the special curing process employed by the Spaniards, and sought to acquire that knowledge.558 This may have been reflected in the observation made by an early seventeenth-century English official in India that: “They sowe

[sic] tobacco in abundance; but know not how to cure and make it strong, as those in the Westerne

[sic.] India [i.e. the West Indies].”559

Manila tobacco became a major cash crop at the end of the eighteenth century, and a long- lasting state monopoly was put on its sale in 1782.560 However, as demonstrated here, as early as the first decades of the seventeenth century, tobacco grown in the archipelago, and especially in

Luzon, became not only an important commodity within the regional Philippine market, but also a luxury export commodity across the Indian Ocean World. This may imply that the early

Philippine colonial economy was more diverse than previously thought, and included substantial agricultural exports to various destinations in the Indian Ocean World, including other European

557 "El tabaco vino de fuera, pero se da tanto, y tan bueno que lo llevan a la nueva España, y otras partes". Colín, Chirino, and Pastells, Labor evangelica: ministerios apostolicos de los obreros de la Compañia de Jesus, fundacion, y progressos de su provincia en las Islas Filipinas, Vol.1, p.99. 558 Jordan Goodman, Tobacco in History : The Cultures of Dependence (London; New York: Routledge, 1993), 136- 7. 559 William Foster, Early Travels in India, 1583-1619 (London, New York etc.: H. Milford, Oxford university press, 1921), 299. 560 See: De Jesus, The Tobacco Monopoly in the Philippines : Bureaucratic Enterprise and Social Change, 1766- 1880. 186 colonies. Likewise, it is evident that tobacco was not the only herbal stimulant used by the

Spaniards in the Philippines. From the turn of the sixteenth century and well into the seventeenth century, if not later, Spaniards and Filipinos used tobacco and betel simultaneously. Further research on the history of betel quid use by early modern Spanish and other European colonial societies in Asia is required.

Seemingly, not all transplantations of economic crops in the Spanish Empire were a part of a clear and planned project. In the sixteenth century, tobacco, unlike clove, cinnamon, ginger, or pepper, was perceived as a non-commercial crop, thus, its transplantation from America to the

Philippines was probably a private venture rather than a deliberate commercial initiative.

Created by the author using Natural Earth data in QGIS

Fig 5.1 Philippine tobacco diffusion 1570s-1680s 187

Conclusion

In this chapter I have endeavored to provide a survey of plant introduction and transplantation in the sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Philippines. Like their countrymen in New Spain, when attempting to transplant cash crops into the Philippines, the Spanish planned, experimented, and collaborated with imperial establishments. The motivation for, and implementation of, such projects were closely linked to economic, social, and political conditions in the Archipelago and its region. These factors, rather than environmental conditions, were most decisive for the success of such projects. While colonial administrators and officials, together with entrepreneurs and physicians, were primarily responsible for these projects in New Spain, friars, notably Franciscans, also played a major role in implementing such schemes in the Philippines – and they may have had different motives for so doing.

Whereas the transplantation of medicinals, such as ginger, china root, and tamarind into

New Spain was successful, the early seventeenth century introduction of Moluccan spices into the

Philippines was not. A major reason for this failure was the lack of motivation among Spanish officials and entrepreneurs to develop a cash crop economy in the Archipelago. As long as such incentives existed in New Spain, entrepreneurs invested in the necessary infrastructure required for the acclimatization of Asian spice and medicinal plants. However, in the Philippines, Spanish entrepreneurs and officials invested in the galleon trade rather than in agricultural ventures.

When colonizing new territories, the Spanish constantly sought tradeable commodities.

Since the Philippines were near the Moluccas, they considered it highly likely that they would discover high quality spices in the archipelago. The process of experimentation, collaboration, and calling on expert opinion involved in such bio-prospecting, was identical to that employed when transplanting plants. 188

In contrast to the introduction of spices to the Philippines, the transplantation of tobacco and probably many other New and Old World plants, did not involve an orchestrated project. At the time of its introduction into the Philippines, tobacco did not feature as a valuable economic crop. It was rather carried there as a medicinal, or for the personal use of individuals who had become accustomed to it while in New Spain. When in the Philippines, tobacco went through a second process of transculturation, and was assimilated into Filipino culture. There, this substance possessed social roles similar to that of the betel quid, with which it was later combined. While it is unknown when the Filipinos or the Spaniards in the Philippines began to chew tobacco as a component of the betel quid, several indications suggest a rather early date. The ceremonial serving of tobacco in tandem with betel leaf and areca nut, and the combined taxation imposed on those three substances, may imply that the inclusion of tobacco in the betel quid was an early seventeenth century phenomenon.

While today Manila cigars do not possess the global market enjoyed by their Cuban counterparts, in seventeenth-century Asia they were sought-after and expensive commodities. The climate and soil conditions of the Philippines, along with the curing techniques the Spaniards employed, made Manila tobacco a unique brand assuring unparalleled quality and flavor. These characteristics justified its high price, and its success in regions where tobacco was successfully cultivated.

The planned transplantation of spices, and the incidental introduction of tobacco into the

Philippines were both associated with members of the Franciscan order in the Philippines. While

Spanish imperial authorities participated in spice transplantation projects shortly after their inception, their involvement in the tobacco trade in the Philippines occurred once it had proven to 189 be profitable. The histories of these orchestrated and unintentional transplantations represent the parallel trajectories of plant introduction in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spanish expansion.

190

Conclusion

Historian Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra recently asserted in the introduction to the edited volume

Science in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires (2009) that:

Contrary to common opinion, America did not yield gilded treasures but green

ones: naturalists, doctors, apothecaries, and merchants helped identify new dyes,

stimulants, pharmaceuticals, woods, and spices, creating new fortunes and

economies across the Atlantic561

While bioprospecting, as described by Cañizares-Esguerra, was central to the Spanish imperial effort, I argue here that so were attempts to introduce Asian spices into Spanish America, the

Philippines and Spain. Interest in transplanting spice plants from their Asian places of origin into the Spanish empire was a phenomenon that commenced in 1518, if not earlier, and continued throughout the sixteenth and most of the seventeenth century.

Since Portuguese expansion into the Indian Ocean World (where spices originated) occurred roughly in the same decades as Spanish expansion into the New World, the plants from which Asian spices were produced as found in their natural habitat were foreign to sixteenth- century Spaniards, just as newly discovered American medicinals and drugs were. The first botanical knowledge about spices such as cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and ginger reached Spain through the accounts of explorers such as Pigafetta, the chronicler of Magellan’s Expedition,562 or through the publication of materiae medicae, which were composed by natural historians such as

Garcia da Orta, Cristoál Acosta, and Nicolás Monardes. Subsequently, empirical practices such as

561 Cañizares‐Esguerra, "Introduction," 2. 562 De Vos, "The Science of Spices: Empiricism and Economic Botany in the Early Spanish Empire," 411-2. 191 eye witnessing, close observation, experimentation, and group judgment and evaluation of information, which were developed and institutionalize as a consequence of the Spanish encounter with American flora, were likewise employed by Spaniards in their attempts to develop profitable spice plantations in suitable locations within territories they controlled.

The Spanish, and subsequently, other Europeans, considered transplantation projects to be of paramount importance to their imperial enterprise. However, most transplantation projects were not initiated by the Spanish Crown, but by settlers, officials, entrepreneurs, and friars in the colonies, and later involved networks that also included peninsular physicians, natural historians, and merchants. Rather than itself becoming directly involved, the Spanish Crown granted selected individuals exclusive cultivation and trade rights, supported their ventures with stipends, and allocated to them land and labor. Always short in funds, Spanish monarchs, such as Philip II, preferred to limit their investment in such ventures, opting rather to derive profits from future returns, taxation and customs duties. Thus, except for Hernández’ expedition (1571-5), the Spanish

Crown’s sole significant direct involvement in economic botany until the eighteenth century,563 projects to transplant spices or cultivate and export American medicinals were managed by the

Crown through concessions.

The Spanish imperial system considered that the knowledge or technology required for the transplantation, cultivation, and processing of natural resources constituted intellectual property, and as such, the developer or inventor should hold an exclusive patent on his invention for a limited time. Antonio Barrera-Osorio asserted that such a system emerged “within a context of economic

563 In the vast literature regarding this expedition one can find claims that Francisco Hernández de Toledo was in fact sent to New Spain as a form of exile. See: Carmen Benito-Vessels, "Hernández in México: Exile and Censorship? ," in Searching for the Secrets of Nature: The Life and Works of Dr. Francisco Hernández, ed. S. Varey, R. Chabrán, and D.B. Weiner (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000). 192 profits and political usefulness” that encouraged the development of new technologies, as long as they produced profits for their inventor and the royal treasury. Additionally, he claimed that they occurred “within a context of a legal framework of protection that made possible a system of investment in new technologies and competition among inventor-entrepreneurs.”564

Possibly, it is due to the unusual manner by which the Spanish Crown was involved in spice transplantation projects that conventional histories have failed to realise the full historical significance of spice transplantation in the context of both Spanish imperial culture and early modern economic botany (and thus the development of Western science). In 2007, one scholar commented that, in the sixteenth century, the Spanish Crown had a “hands-off” approach towards botanical exploration. However, this assessment was largely speculative. While accurately recognizing that, “under the early Spanish Habsburg, personal, entrepreneurial energies rather than governmental dictates accounted for the development of agricultural knowledge”, he dismissed the Crown’s means of support to such projects as aberrations, stating that, “the crown’s tepid enthusiasm for micromanaging botanical exchanges shows up as well in its general lack of commitment to the emerging science of botany, but with several significant exceptions.”565

Moreover, Henry Kamen, a prominent scholar of the Spanish Empire, has not only argued that spice transplantation, and therefore economic botany, cannot be referred to as “science”, he also clearly failed to recognize spices’ true role in early modern Europe. As recently as 2010, he asserted:

Spain never became noted for its science, but the king had an extraordinary interest

in the subject. His fascination for medicine and medicinal plants is well known, and

564 Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature : The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution, 57. 565 Lázaro, "Sweet Food of Knowledge: Botany, Food, and Empire in the Early Modern Spanish Kingdoms," 13-14. 193

from 1557 he encouraged the importation and cultivation of ginger and other spices

of possible medical value. Herbs and spices entered within the bounds of his

curiosity, but there were two great obstacles to their diffusion which the king never

overcame and that in the long run dictated that Spain be a country without exotic

herbs. In the first place, Spain had almost no access to Asian spices, which were

largely within the ambit of the Portuguese empire. When he became king of

Portugal in 1580 Philip made an attempt to intervene in the spice trade, but there is

no record of him achieving any success. The second reason for his failure was the

inability of oriental flavours to find favour with the Spanish diet. Even today, most

Spaniards avoid Asian spices, and tolerate them only if relatively mild. Some have

suggested that spice imports to Spain increased significantly under Philip, but there

is no credible evidence for this. In all the information about Spanish eating habits

in early modern times, there is no indication that many spices were consumed. Nor

is it likely that Seville was a major point of entry to Europe for Asian spices. Even

less credible is the suggestion that the importation, and growing of such spices

‘highlights [sic] the scientific culture of Spain under Philip II’. Science is normally

associated with research, philosophy and experiment, not with cuisine.566

Such assertions were likely the consequence of the authors’ reliance on partial evidence, but mostly their unfamiliarity with recent scholarship identifying the unique characteristics of early

566 Henry Kamen, The Escorial : Art and Power in the Renaissance, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010): 112. See also footnote 103 to this chapter in which Kamen asks: “This author [Paula De Vos sic.] states [in “The Science of Spices” sic.], at p. 423, that in the 1580s ‘two million pounds of ginger reached Seville annually’, but I seriously doubt whether this is true. Moreover, as Robert W. Allen and Ken Albala point out in their Food in Early Modern Europe, Westport, Connecticut, 2003, p. 46: ‘fresh ginger would never have lasted on the lengthy voyage from India’. Who consumed the ginger? Certainly not the Spaniards. The medicinal uses of ginger were important, but if the ginger did not arrive fresh, how was it processed?” 194 colonial science of the sixteenth century.567 As demonstrated in chapters 2, 3, and 5, the Spanish

Crown encouraged spice transplantation throughout the Spanish Empire provided that it served royal economic and political goals. This was achieved by granting monopolies, grants, lands, and titles. While such projects often commenced as an individual venture (and it should be noted that many, if not the majority, of the individuals concerned were Crown officials), royal participation in them was inevitable. The chief consumers of spices were not Spanish, but Northern Europeans, such as the English, Dutch, Germans, and Polish. Direct commerce with those markets was impossible, as the Spanish mercantile system obliged shipments to go through the Atlantic ports of Spain. Thus, monopolies over the spice trade had to be negotiated with the Crown, which, in turn, allowed the Council of the Indies to direct spice production and trade. Such policy making was based on experiments and reports produced by officials in Spanish America and the

Philippines, and by the Casa de Contratación in Spain.

As this thesis has demonstrated, spice transplantation was carried out in a highly empirical fashion. Attempts to transplant spices into territories controlled by Spain required expertise that was acquired through observation, personal testimony, experimentation, and systematic analysis.

Such attempts cannot be defined as anything else but economic botany. Moreover, spices played a highly significant role in early modern Europe. They were used for cooking, which accounted for beliefs in their medicinal properties and humoral characteristics (usually “hot” and “dry”) - with the result that they were more popular in colder countries than in the Iberian Peninsula. Spices were in such high demand in Europe that they formed the main incentive for early modern

567 See for example: Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature : The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution. 195

European exploration. Spices sustained the Portuguese empire, and were later responsible for the rise and fall of the Dutch empire.

As scholars of early modern European empires have been asserting for the last decade, the need of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Europeans to accurately describe new phenomena encountered in the New and Indian Ocean Worlds, and their necessity to communicate accurately about matters of intercontinental commerce, contributed to the rise of an empirical-scientific culture in Europe. Natural history was the “big science” of early modern Europe. This science owed its origins not to philosophic thinking, but to European exploration and trade.568 Since sixteenth and seventeenth-century natural history concentrated on the utilitarian and beneficial qualities of plants, animals, and minerals, Spanish economic botany should be recognized as early modern natural science.

To conclude, when an introduced spice was cultivated successfully, the Crown, through its imperial establishments – the Casa de Contratación, the Council of the Indies, the viceroyalties, and the audiencias – administered its further propagation and trade. This involved these bodies conducting and comparing experiments, and continually verifying the resultant information.

Consequently, the Council of the Indies used such information to decide where spices should be cultivated, the best way to ship them back to Spain, in what way they should be processed to meet market standards, and how they should be taxed. In other words, spice transplantation projects reflected an organizational culture in which decisions were made based on expert opinions obtained through empirical observations and experimentation. Essentially, the Spanish Crown, by

568 Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature : The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution; Cook, Matters of Exchange : Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age; Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity : Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). 196 proxy of the Council of the Indies, incorporated an empirical approach into its policy forming processes, alongside political, economic, and diplomatic considerations.

Although the legacy of spice transplantation has been largely forgotten by historians, this thesis demonstrates that it played a fundamental role in Spain’s imperial culture of empirical inquiry and circulation of knowledge, from its inception until at least the mid-seventeenth century.

Sixteenth to early seventeenth-century Spanish explorers, settlers, officials, entrepreneurs, friars, physicians, and natural historians showed great interest in developing spice plantations in the

Spanish empire. While the motivation for such undertaking was largely economic, spices, like precious metals, conveyed prestige, and the individuals and political entities involved in their cultivation and trade enjoyed an elevated status.

Whereas this work sheds light on the phenomenon of Asian spice transplantation in the sixteenth to mid-seventeenth-century Spanish Empire, some questions remain open and warrant further investigation. Since the chronological scope of my dissertation is limited to 1640, the year in which Portugal regained its independence from the Spanish Crown, it would be beneficial to explore late seventeenth-century spice transplantation initiatives considering this geopolitical change. This would be important to elucidate the re-emergence of Crown interest in such projects in the late eighteenth century. While this research focused on Crown sponsored attempts at spice transplantation, members of religious orders were also independently involved in the introduction of cash-crops throughout the Spanish Empire. Therefore, an examination of the role of the religious orders in transplantation activities is pertinent. Finally, as the Portuguese, English, and Dutch were also implicated in crop and spice introduction during the early modern period, a comparative study of the agents and mechanisms employed by each empire in plant transplantation projects will surely benefit the histories of science and colonialism. 197

Aftermath

In 1779, Casimiro Gómez Ortega, the renowned botanist, physician and director of the Royal

Botanical Garden in Madrid, composed a manual entitled Instructions for the most secure and economical way to transport live plants by sea and land to the most distant countries: appendix on the method to dry plants in order to form herbariums [Instrucción sobre el modo más seguro y económico de transportar plantas vivas por mar y tierra á los paises más distantes: añádese el método de desecar las plantas para formar herbarios]. The Crown published and circulated this volume all over the Spanish empire at a time when Spain actively sought to utilize natural resources throughout its domains, and financed botanical expeditions to survey them in search of valuable plants to be brought back to Spain.569 Such plants were to be transplanted into botanical gardens for research purposes, and those deemed of economic value were to be planted in the most suitable soil for their subsequent commercial cultivation. In a list of plants required for transplantation to Spain, Gómez Ortega listed first quinine, which was in much demand for treating diseases, but then cinnamon from Sri Lanka, pepper from the Malabar coast, cloves from

Amboina, and nutmeg from the Banda Islands.570

569 Daniela Bleichmar, "A Visible and Useful Empire : Visual Culture and Colonial Natural History in the Eighteenth-Century Spanish World," in Science in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, 1500-1800., ed. Daniela Bleichmar, Paula De Vos, Kristin Huffine, and Kevin Sheehan (Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press: 2009), 295. A copy of this manual is still found in the Spanish Document Section at the National Archives of the Philippines in Manila. 570 Casimiro Gómez Ortega, Instrucción sobre el modo más seguro y económico de transportar plantas vivas por mar y tierra á los paises más distantes : añádese el método de desecar las plantas para formar herbarios (Madrid: Por D. Joachin Ibarra, Impresor de Cámara de S.M., 1779), 39-40. 198

Gómez Ortega, a fellow of the Royal Society

of London and a member of the Paris based

Académie royale des sciences, lived in a world

where science was no longer a state secret.

However, by then, Spain was no longer a

frontrunner in economic botany; the Dutch still

controlled the spice trade, and the British and

French were successfully focusing on new

types of “green gold”, such as coffee and tea.

Therefore, Gómez Ortega considered

experimentation with the transplantation of

cash crops for their commercial cultivation to

Fig. 6.1 A crate for the transport of live be an absolute necessity for the imperial plants on board a ship from Casimiro Gómez Ortega (1779). economy. He claimed that natural products, unlike minerals, were an infinite source of revenue for the empire.571 This sentiment was famously expressed in a letter he wrote to the president of the Council of the Indies in 1777, in which he stated that “twelve naturalists and as many chemists or mineralogists scattered around the

[Spanish] states would yield through their pilgrimages a greater utility than a hundred thousand men fighting to add more provinces to the Spanish empire.”572

571 Bleichmar, "A Visible and Useful Empire : Visual Culture and Colonial Natural History in the Eighteenth- Century Spanish World," 295. 572 Report sent by Casimiro Gómez Ortega to Joseph de Gálvez (23 February 1777), quoted in: Francisco Javier Puerto Sarmiento, Ciencia de cámara : Casimiro Gómez Ortega, 1741-1818, el científico cortesano (Madrid: Consejo superior de investigaciones científicas, 1992), 155-6. Mentioned also in; Bleichmar, "A Visible and Useful Empire : Visual Culture and Colonial Natural History in the Eighteenth-Century Spanish World," 295. 199

As examples of the utility of plant introduction, Gómez Ortega mentioned the numerous crops, such as sugarcane, date palm, carob, eggplants, and watermelons that were successfully introduced to Spain by the Muslims. Next, he cited crops of American origin, namely, potato, corn, tomato, chili, and guaiacum, brought to Iberia following the conquest of New Spain.573 Then he turned to the recent transplantation of Moluccan cloves and nutmeg to La Réunion, and France’s experiments with coffee cultivation in the botanical garden in Paris, and its eventual successful introduction to Martinique. The British, he added, were experimenting with tea cultivation in an attempt to break the costly Chinese monopoly on the tea supply to Great Britain. Likewise, rhubarb was being introduced into fields around London, an experiment that was no doubt to bear fruit.574

Fig. 6.2 Construction of a crate for the transport of live plants on board a ship, from Casimiro Gómez Ortega (1779).

Gómez Ortega did not mention the sixteenth and seventeenth-century spice transplantation into Spanish America, Spain, and the Philippines, probably because none of the spices introduced into the Spanish Empire (including ginger, which was cultivated widely in the Caribbean for

573 Gómez Ortega, Instrucción sobre el modo más seguro y económico de transportar plantas vivas por mar y tierra á los paises más distantes : añádese el método de desecar las plantas para formar herbarios, 2-3. 574 Ibid., 4-7. 200 several decades) had a long-lasting economic success. However, the legacy of those attempts is evident in his manual in references to persistent experimentation by clergymen in the cultivation of foreign crops in church gardens in Spain, or to ginger as an example of a tuber that keep well when transported in dry sand.575

575 Ibid., 4, 9, 25. 201

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