Viceroy Mendoza’s efforts to locate transpacific trade routes between Southeast Asia and New Spain eventually led to Spain’s colonizing of Manila, in the Philippines, in 1571. By then the so-called Manila galleon (a large square-rigged sailing vessel) trade had been going on for six years and would last for a total of 250 years.
This trade was significant because it generated tremendous wealth for the Spanish Crown and the foreign pirates who preyed on the participating treasure vessels. Before the Manila trade developed nearly all of the inhabited continents were linked together commercially with one major exception: the Americas had not established trade relations with Asia. By providing this last link, the Manila trade ushered in the modern age of economic globalization. Spanish California, whose port at Monterey was occasionally visited by the galleons, played a role in this historic occurrence. Raymond Ashley, director of the San Diego Maritime Museum, captured the significance of the Manila trade for California when he noted in 2002: “In the case of San Diego and other West coast cities, the foundation of our Pacific Rim economy was laid when the galleons established. . . a pattern of regular trade across the Pacific.”
The story of how this regular trade began reveals how Spanish California was affected by and connected to developments in New Spain, Europe, and Southeast Asia in the 1500s and afterward. While Spanish interest in Alta California lapsed in the several decades following Cabrillo’s reconnaissance, silver discoveries took place in Zacatecas and elsewhere in Mexico. Meanwhile, China needed and wanted to purchase silver coin as legal tender. Spain could not ship silver to China via the Cape Horn route around Africa as Portugal exercised the exclusive right to that seaway by a Vatican-brokered agreement. That meant that Spain needed to locate a sea route from Mexico and Peru to the Philippines, from where a lucrative trade with nearby China and the Spice Islands of Southeast Asia could be conducted.
In 1564 Spanish Commander Miguel Lopez de Legazpi established the westward route to the Philippines, seizing the port of Manila. Next, he needed to locate the eastward return
Figure 2.2 The sailing routes of Manila galleons. From Thomas W. Chin, ed., A History of the Chinese in California: A Syllabus (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1969), p. 5. Compiled by H. M. Lai. Illustrated by James B. Wong. Courtesy of the Chinese Historical Society of America (CHSA).
Route from the islands back to Mexico. Fray Andres Urdaneta, who had accompanied Legazpi, was to test the theory that a vessel could sail northeasterly until it picked up the Japanese current and westerlies and then follow the California coastline southward to Acapulco. In 1565 he commanded a vessel that completed the exhausting return voyage in 129 days. This signal event marked the opening of the Manila galleon trade, which peripherally would link California to Spain’s Pacific empire.
In order to maintain tight control over the export of New World coins and bullion (gold or silver bars), in 1593 the Spanish king decreed that with few exceptions only one galleon would sail the Pacific circuit yearly. Cargoes were not to exceed 250,000 pesos in value and profits were supposedly limited to 140 percent. However, documents reveal cargoes valued at far greater sums and profits. For example, the galleon Santa Ana departed Manila for Acapulco with gold in the amount of 600,000 pesos and 1,500,000 pesos’ worth of silks, musk (a perfume-like substance), and pearls. Profits sometimes ran as high as 400 percent. Customarily, these returning treasure vessels carried silks, spices, porcelains, wax, camphor chests, samurai swords, ivory carvings, and more. The Spanish silver coin known as a “piece of eight,” used to purchase these wares in Manila, became the first global currency in history.
The historic Manila trade was replete with dangers, particularly shipwrecks along the rugged California coast, piracy, and scurvy. Strong currents, storms, and jagged rocks from
Mendocino southward claimed a fair share of the returning galleons. One of the most notorious pirates, Englishman Thomas Cavendish, attacked the Acapulco-bound Santa Ana (mentioned above) in November 1587 off the coast of Baja California, and made off with one of the largest hauls of booty in the Age of Sail (1400s to mid-1800s). Scurvy caused numerous deaths among officers and seamen. A Frenchman aboard a galleon sailing along the California coast left this description of his plight with scurvy: “It rotted all my gums, which gave out a black and stinking blood. . . . I [used] my knife on my gums. . . . I went on deck each day. . . and holding a little mirror before me in my hand to see where it was necessary to cut. Then, when I had cut away this dead flesh and caused much black blood to flow, I rinsed my mouth and teeth with my urine, rubbing them very hard.” Often the death toll on the return voyage along the California coast reached 50 percent. Occasionally it was so high - from scurvy, starvation, and exhaustion - that no one survived aboard the vessels. These unmanned “ghost ships” floated eerily along the currents back toward Acapulco.
To make needed ship repairs, get reports on pirates, and replenish food supplies for the remaining voyage to Mexico, Spanish authorities concluded that a port along California’s coast was necessary. When English buccaneer Francis Drake reached that coast in the late 1500s, Spanish officials were made aware that Alta California was at the crossroads of a growing international rivalry for supremacy in the Pacific. Even so, the Spanish were slow to establish a California port.
World History
