Galleon Trade and Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas: Shownotes

Images are in the public domain, retrieved from Wikipedia.

After every episode, we hope to lead our listeners and readers to the primary sources we used and other relevant sources we mentioned in the episode. These materials could be useful for students and teachers alike, or even for the usual history buff who’d like to deep dive into the historical materials themselves.

We started the episode with an introduction:

The Spaniards had to find a way to maximize the benefits from their Asian colony, the Philippines. But their dominion in Asia was too far from their more profitable colonies in the Americas. The journey between these two is long and perilous. Through discovering a return route from the Philippines and eastward, across the Pacific, to the Americas, the Galleon Trade was born. The Galleon trade was an annual venture that brought the luxuries of Asia in exchange with the treasures of America. But how did the Philippines figure into this story? And could the Galleon trade be perceived as the birth of globalization?

And the primary source we used is Antonio De Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas. This is publicly available online; see the button below.

Primary Source Quotes from the Episode

On the Philippines having good timber for shipbuilding:

“The land is well shaded in all parts by trees of different kinds, and fruit-trees which beautify it throughout the year, both along the shore and inland among the plains and mountains. It is very full of large and small rivers, of good fresh water, which flow into the sea. All of them are navigable, and abound in all kinds of fish, which are very pleasant to the taste. For the above reason there is a large supply of lumber, which is cut and sawed, dragged to the rivers, and brought down, by the natives. This lumber is very useful for houses and buildings, and for the construction of small and large vessels. Many very straight thick trees, light and pliable, are found, which are used as masts for ships and galleons. Consequently, vessels of any size may be fitted with masts from these trees, made of one piece of timber, without its being necessary to splice them or make them of different pieces. For the hulls of the ships, the keels, futtock-timbers, top-timbers, and any other kinds of supports and braces, compass-timbers, transoms, knees small and large, and rudders, all sorts of good timber...”

On Chinese junks and products arriving in the Philippines:

“A considerable number of junks (which are large vessels) generally come from Great China to Manila, laden with merchandise. Every year thirty or even forty ships are wont to come, and although they do not come together, in the form of a trading and war fleet, still they do come in groups with the monsoon and settled weather, which is generally at the new moon in March. They make their voyage to the city of Manila in fifteen or twenty days, sell their merchandise, and return in good season.

The merchandise that they generally bring and sell to the Spaniards consists of raw silk in bundles, of the fineness of two strands, and other silk of poorer quality; fine untwisted silk, white and of all colors, wound in small skeins; quantities of velvets, some plain, and some embroidered in all sorts of figures, colors, and fashions—others with body of gold, and embroidered with gold; woven stuffs and brocades, of gold and silver upon silk of various colors and patterns; quantities of gold and silver thread in skeins over thread and silk—but the glitter of all the gold and silver is false, and only on paper; damasks, satins, taffetans, gorvaranes, picotes, and other cloths of all colors, some finer and better than others; a quantity of linen made from grass, called lencesuelo; and white cotton cloth of different kinds and qualities, for all uses.”

On manning the galleon ships:

“In the vessels and fleets of large vessels for the Nueva España line, the ships that are sent carry a general, admiral, masters, boatswains, commissaries, stewards, alguacils, sergeants of marine artillery [condestables], artillerymen, sailors, pilots and their assistants, common seamen, carpenters, calkers, and coopers, all in his Majesty's pay, on the account of Nueva España, from whose royal treasury they are paid. All that is necessary for this navigation is supplied there. Their provisions and appointments are made by the viceroy; and this has hitherto pertained to him, even though the ships may have been constructed in the Filipinas. They sail thence with their cargo of merchandise for Nueva España, and return thence to the Filipinas with the reinforcements of soldiers and supplies, and whatever else is necessary for the camp, besides passengers and religious, and the money proceeding from the investments and merchandise. The merchants and businessmen form the bulk of the residents of the islands, because of the great amount of merchandise brought there—outside of native products—from China, Japan, Maluco, Malaca, Siam, Camboja, Borneo, and other districts. They invest in this merchandise and export it annually in the vessels that sail to Nueva España, and at times to Japan, where great profits are made from raw silk. Thence on the return to Manila are brought the proceeds, which hitherto have resulted in large and splendid profits.”

Scholarly works mentioned in the episode and other works for further reading

Note: Most of these are not publicly available, unfortunately. You may check your local library for access, or from your usual sources. You know.

Peter Gordon and Juan Jose Morales, 2017. The Silver Way: China, Spanish America and the Birth of Globalisation, 1565–1815. The book has a companion site with some interesting materials on the Galleon Trade: La Ruta de la Plata: China, Spanish America, and the Birth of Globalization, 1565–1815.

Ambeth Ocampo, 1998. Rizal’s Morga and Views of Philippine History. For some context on Morga’s Sucesos and why Rizal chose to annotate said work.

Katharine Bjork, 1998. The Link that Kept the Philippines Spanish: Mexican Merchant Interests and the Manila Trade, 1571-1815. An interesting article on how the Philippines was maintained as a colony through Mexico.

Leslie Bauzon, 1984. Deficit Government: Mexico and the Philippine Situado, 1606-1804. What’s the deal with the real situado, and how the Philippines’ funds were sourced from the Manila-Acapulco trade.

Benito Legarda, 1999. After the Galleons: Foreign Trade, Economic Change and Entrepreneurship in the Nineteenth-Century Philippines. What happened after the end of the Galleon Trade in 1815? Legarda’s book investigates the cash crop economy and the country’s domestic exports, which fueled the economy in the nineteenth century.

This is a short list and definitely not representative of the available scholarship available out there, but we hope these works could be useful to introduce someone to the Galleon Trade. See you in the next one!