Making the First Global Trade Route: the Southeast Asian Foundations
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MAKING THE FIRST GLOBAL TRADE ROUTE: THE SOUTHEAST ASIAN FOUNDATIONS OF THE ACAPULCO-MANILA GALLEON TRADE, 1519 - 1650 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAIʻI AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HISTORY AUGUST 2014 By Andrew Christian Peterson Dissertation Committee: Matthew Romaniello, Chairperson Fabio López-Lázaro Vina Lanzona Kieko Matteson Cynthia Franklin Keywords: Manila Galleon, Philippines, Pacific Ocean, Indios, Spanish Empire ©Andrew Christian Peterson, 2014 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, thanks are due to those I have worked with at the University of Hawaii, including professors Matthew Romaniello, Kieko Matteson, Vina Lanzona, Fabio López-Lázaro, Cynthia Franklin, Leonard Andaya, and the late Jerry Bentley. Jerry Bentley and his world history program were what lured me to study at UH and my years working under him, while few, were tremendously rewarding. The World History program at Hawaii proved to be a dynamic intellectual community that aided me in more ways that can be counted. My interest in the Acapulco-Manila galleon trade began back in 2007 at San Diego State University while working under David Christian and Paula De Vos, both of whom helped me set the groundwork for this study as an MA thesis. Researching this project would not have been possible without the resources made available to me by the staff of the Ayer Collection at the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois. Thanks are also due to the staff members of the Pacific Collection at the University of Hawaii’s Hamilton Library, the Hatcher Graduate Library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and the Latin American Collection at the University of Florida. ii ABSTRACT This study examines the means by which the Acapulco-Manila galleon trade was established and maintained in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Conducting annual voyages between the ports of Acapulco in New Spain and Manila in the Philippines required a tremendous amount of supporting infrastructure, namely labor and an ample supply of timber and other shipbuilding materials. Previous studies of the galleon trade have overwhelmingly focused on the commercial aspects of the trade while foregoing any consideration of the logistical challenges of sailing across the world’s largest ocean in the early modern era. It is the conclusion of this study that while the merchants and trade goods of East Asia were crucial to the trans-Pacific trade, the galleons themselves were built and maintained within the Philippines, using locally sourced building materials and laborers, as well as the skill of indigenous craftsmen and seafarers. It was not just Spaniards and Chinese traders coming together to trade at Manila, but also many thousands of Indio laborers working to support the trade as well. The vast array of necessary human and environmental resources that was readily available in the Philippines will be shown to have been a part of a thriving Southeast Asian maritime seafaring community, the foundations of which came to form the supporting structure of Spain’s trans-Pacific endeavors. This dissertation revisits the creation of the Acapulco-Manila galleon trade with consideration given to the Indios of the Philippines, the resources of greater Southeast Asia, and the global context in which the trade developed iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………………...ii Abstract …………………………………………………………………………............iii List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………...vi Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………...1 Defining Key Terms ……………………………………………………………20 Historiographical Considerations and Contexts ………………………………..36 Outline and Contents of the Work…………………………...………………….56 Chapter 1 - Southeast Asian Dynamism and Spanish Dependency: The Foundations of Spain’s Colonial Presence in Southeast Asia …………………64 The Context of Southeast Asian Commercial development …………………...71 Traditions of Shipbuilding and Seafaring ……………………………………...77 The Importance of Asian Labor ………………………………………………..85 The Environment of the Philippines: Timber, Hemp, and Rice ………………..91 Conclusion: Europeans in an Asian World? ………………………………..….96 Chapter 2 - By Way of Spain: The Limits of Iberian Seafaring in the Early Sixteenth Century……………………………………………………….100 European Shipbuilding and Asian Influences…………………………………106 Shipbuilding in Spain in the Era of Magellan…………………………………114 The Experiences, of Magellan, Loaísa, Cabot, and Garcia……………………121 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………….143 iv Chapter 3 - By Way of New Spain: Shipbuilding in Mexico and the Failures of Saavedra, Villalobos, and Grijalva ………………………………..145 Building Pacific Fleets in New Spain………………………………………….149 The Experiences of Villalobos, Saavedra, and Grijalva ………………………166 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………….178 Chapter 4 - Indio Labor and Philippine Timber: The Foundation of the Manila Acapulco Galleon Trade …………………………………………..181 Labor, Shipbuilding, and the Colonial Order in the Philippines ………….......190 The Environmental Resources of the Philippine Archipelago………………...207 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………….224 Chapter 5 - Onto the Sea ……………………………………………………………...230 Indios at Sea in Asia …………………………………………………………..238 The Demands of Seaborne Warfare …………………………………………..245 Indios aboard the Manila Galleons and Across the Pacific……………………258 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………..272 Conclusion – The Galleon Trade in World History…………………………………...275 A Note on Sources……………………………………………………………………..285 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………...290 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. The Philippines …………………………………………………………….10 Figure 2. Maritime Southeast Asia ………………………………………………….104 Figure 3. The Spice Islands (Moluccas) …………………………………………….140 Figure 4. The Tehuantepec Passage ………………………………………………...158 Figure 5. The Manila Galleon Trade Route ………………………………………...185 vi INTRODUCTION From 1571 to 1815 merchants and mariners in the Philippines and in New Spain maintained a regular, if tenuous, trans-Pacific connection by way of direct annual voyages between the ports of Manila and Acapulco, thus forging the last link in an emerging global network of commerce and exchange that extended across all the world’s major oceans and waterways. With the establishment of Spain’s first Asian trade entrepôt at Manila in 1571, colonial American markets became directly connected to the already rich and developed commercial networks of East and Southeast Asia. With the new Philippine base serving as a gateway, millions of pesos of New World silver were ferried across the Pacific each year to Manila and were ultimately absorbed by the expansive and dynamic Asian world-economy. In exchange for this substantial outflow of specie, the Manila Galleons returned to New Spain laden with spices, porcelains, and other Asian goods that were highly valued in American and European markets. These commercial aspects of the galleon trade were instrumental in forging the early modern global economy and have been thoroughly studied in world history scholarship. However, commerce and trade have overshadowed the equally important movement of humans and materials between Southeast Asia and the Americas. The central role the native “Indios” of the Philippines played in the creation and maintenance of the galleon trade has also been overlooked. This study, by revealing the extent to which the galleon trade was built upon the toils of indigenous laborers and natural resources of the Philippine archipelago, attempts to ameliorate the standard commercially oriented narrative of the Acapulco-Manila galleon trade. 1 The foundation of the sixteenth-century trans-Pacific trade will be revealed to be largely Asian- based, not just in a commercial sense as many recent world historians have aptly proven, but in a logistical sense as well. Spain’s indigenous subjects in the Philippines (Indios) served vital roles as shipbuilders and seafarers and had just as much a hand in creating Spain’s Pacific empire as did the exchange of silver and silk. For much of its nearly 250-year existence, the Acapulco-Manila galleon trade served as the only direct channel by which Spain’s possessions in remote Southeast Asia received the missionaries, royal orders, settlers, and various colonial officials that “kept the Philippines Spanish,” to use the works of Katherine Bjork.1 The Manila galleons were the essential vehicles by which the Spanish empire maintained its hold over Manila. At the same time these galleons served a commercial function of genuine world historical significance. By connecting Spain’s New World territories with the markets and goods of Asia, the Acapulco-Manila galleon trade developed into a major conduit of commerce in its own right. It has been this commercial aspect of the Manila galleons that has garnered so much scholarly attention of late, particularly regarding the galleons’ role in the global exchange of silver for silks, porcelains, spices, and other luxury goods of East and Southeast Asia.2 To pay for these highly sought-after items the 1 Katherine Bjork, “The Link that Kept the Philippines Spanish: Mexican Merchant Interests and the Manila Trade, 1571 – 1815,” Journal of World History 9 (1998): 25 – 50. 2 Some examples of recent scholarship on this silver trade include, Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez, “Born Again: Globalization’s Sixteenth Century Origins (Asian/Global Versus European Dynamics),” Pacific Economic Review 13 (2008): 359-387; Flynn and Giráldez, “Born with a ‘Silver Spoon’: