The Manila Galleon,Macao and international maritime and commercial relations,1500–1700

The state of affairs: Communities left at their faith

Maritime and commercial relations were integral to the process of globalization. Initially formed at local and regional levels, these transactions reached global dimensions as soon as certain agents assumed a decisive role in carrying goods, people, ideas and knowledge overseas. The main actors in this drama were Asians (mainly Chinese, Japanese, Philippine, Malaysian) and Europeans (Portuguese and Castilian), with the Dutch and English appearing only as challengers and rivals. Even though these contacts and transfers reflect profound change in Europe’s consumption habits and culture, ⁷ they were just as important in their impacts on existing convergences and divergences in Southeast Asia. If Europeans encountered a world of long-time connections which, at times, they found difficult to enter, it is also true that Asians were obliged by their own will, or by imposition, to adapt to the rhythms and demands of their new partners. Besides, numerous operations carried out by Europeans were oriented towards a specific region, where they acted as middlemen between Asian trading parties, with some choosing to settle there, becoming locals and participants in Asia’s destinies. Maritime and commercial activity played a key role in this process, ⁸ with shipping at its core, ⁹ as the case of Macao clearly demonstrates.

In 1639, more than a few concerned reports were sent from Macao to the Crown. Far away from Madrid (and Lisbon), and in desperation, members of the Senate Chamber and the city’s clergy addressed Philip III of Portugal and asked him for help although they probably knew their appeals would come to nothing. In these documents, the Macanese elites complained about problems caused by Jesuit missionaries in Japan, who persisted with their missionary work in defiance of a ban issued by Japanese authorities in the late sixteenth century. This resulted in the Portuguese being expelled from Japan and threatened with severe punishment if they tried to return. On more than one occasion ambassadors sent by Macao were arrested, and hostages as well as diplomats, who carried the burden of resolving the problem caused by the missionaries’ activities, were summarily executed. The preachers’ actions precipitated Japanese hostility towards the Portuguese, with Macao’s laments inferring that this was an extremely vulnerable community, defined by its faith and helpless against strategies devised elsewhere. This was, above all, due to its great distance from Portugal and the Estado da Índia (State of India) under which the city was administrated.

Closer to Castilian overseas domains – and this was an advantage for their projects and commercial ventures – Macao had to adjust to the complexity of the routes and surrounding circuits that the Portuguese Crown never managed to cover, much less to secure and protect. This appears to be usual in the first global age: with exceptions, control over overseas trade by the central authorities was constantly precarious, which paved the way for individual initiatives and ventures. Besides geographical distance, internal strife in India during the late sixteenth century, driven as it was by uninterrupted wars, undermined by its officials’ incompetence and affected by its elites’ ambition and confrontation, emerged as a problem for Europeans. It was a period of decay and corruption, intrigue and scandal, political agendas and widespread speculation, where everything had a price and personal claims were disguised as official directions. Thus, individual and group plots crippled authority, the functioning of administrative and economic systems, and had consequences on the remotest parts of Asia, obliging ports and merchants to devise their own ventures and to use their own means to survive and eventually succeed.

Moreover, these were days of intermittent government, and of growing difficulties in overseas navigation on all passages despite the efforts of viceroys and governors to organize annual armadas to the Straits of Sunda, Malacca and Singapore that would patrol all the routes that linked this complex geography. Trouble intensified after the Dutch arrived and pounced on Portuguese strategic settlements to develop their own control models. Dutch maritime supremacy, and some English raids, affected Portuguese mastery over seafaring deeds, routes and trading posts, and thereby exacerbated the isolation of various communities scattered throughout the Asian seas.

Still in the sixteenth century, Japan appeared as a godsend to the Portuguese who, from the outset of their overseas expansion, sought coinable metals to finance their trade. Silver and gold shortage was more acute in East Asia, ‘a meeting point of a world of cheap silver and a world of expensive silver’. ¹⁰ The Portuguese came into contact with this cosmopolitan world, which was jealously guarding its most lucrative trades, but at the same time welcoming exchanges and cross-cultural experiences under the guidance of Chinese and Japanese pilots. ¹¹ Very soon the basic mechanisms of social and commercial interactions were recognized in a process celebrated in chronicles and confirmed by archival documents.

The (simplified) explanation for the success of the Portuguese as intermediaries in the dealings between China and Japan is well known: relations between the two states were officially cut off as a consequence of Japanese piracy and China’s protectionist policies. On the one hand, the Portuguese exploited this state of affairs by assuming the profitable position of mediators; on the other hand, they profited from a reasonable value ratio between Chinese gold and Japanese silver, which facilitated cross-border trade and investment. Furthermore, the preference of Japanese consumers for Chinese silk carried in Portuguese ships generated additional profit. ¹²

The composition of Macao–Japan trade was far more complex. In Japan, the Portuguese traded weapons (swords and spears, until Japanese authorities banned exportation in 1621), as part of a broader process of military knowledge circulation described by Bébio Amaro. ¹³ Japanese copper also played a significant role in Portuguese transactions, mainly at the peak of productivity of cannon foundries, such as that operated by Manuel Tavares Bocarro (1627–1650). Lacquers and gilded veneer screens were luxurious commodities in high demand among European elites. Another rarely mentioned and yet to be studied trade that was very profitable for Portuguese seafarers was supplying Manila with iron, lead, saltpetre, flower, lard, vegetables and drugs, ‘very difficult to obtain in New Spain, and extremely expensive’, as Philippine officials stated in 1633. ¹⁴

Sporadically, former Korean prisoners turned into slaves were also traded to meet the high demand of the Portuguese and Spanish for slave labour in the east, but soon this practice was met with resistance by the Jesuits, as well as by the Crown officials in Goa, and was then abolished. ¹⁵ This closure was compensated by the import of African slaves. The arrival of Asian and African slaves was documented in Macao and China, and many of those slaves circulated throughout multiple routes managed by the Portuguese. If the State of India letters provide at times specific evidence of the Mozambique slave supply – women, for example, did not seem to please the buyers who thought them lazy at work – then documents from China offer even more insight, signalling the involvement of Macanese agents in the Angola slave trade. Similar to entrepreneurial behaviour on the margins of political states (and beyond the legal limits they imposed), Macao’s merchants expanded their business in the slave trade, and when they found themselves struggling with the Japanese trade crisis they became ‘front-men’ of Chinese, Indian and even Japanese merchant companies in intra-Asian trades. ¹⁶

In addition, associational forms and cooperative strategies emerged. One with enormous consequence was Portuguese participation in the Manila trade. The port of destination for the galleon from Acapulco, Manila developed after its foundation (1572) into the third vertex of a recognizably active triangle linking Macau and Malacca. Connected to New Spain through the Galleon route – in fact, the Philippine archipelago administratively depended on the Vireinado of New Spain – Manila ultimately came to be the most important strategic port in this maritime compound, this fabulous world of silver and spices, and worked as a decoy for Southeast Asian ships and merchants. Chinese (the sangleys of the ‘parián’) were key elements in the structure, and Portuguese from Macao actively participated as well. Not coincidentally, the galleon dispatched from Acapulco every year was often called the Ship of China. ¹⁷

Like Macao, Manila was neglected by the central Spanish rulers. In 1588, their governors complained about the misery ‘of the land’ and blamed the Marquis of Villamanrique, Viceroy of New Spain, for ignoring them, for not sending enough help, and for charging the Philippines’ neighbours with heavy levy payments: ‘that’s why, they added, they prefer to send their ships to Macao or China, where taxes are lower’. ¹⁸ The same criticism can be read in the correspondence of Governor Santiago de Vera, in the mid-1580s, when he testified about the poverty of the land (especially after the big fire that destroyed the city), the misery of the soldiers (vagrants and unpaid), ‘Indian’ uprisings, conflicts among the Spanish elites, and so on. ¹⁹ In the face of such challenges, seafarers and merchants sought alternatives. If Philippine traders looked to Macao as a door to China and Japan, for the Portuguese merchants of Macao, Manila became the most logical and worthwhile destination although severe obstacles had to be overcome or minimized.

There is still much to uncover about these regional involvements in long-distance trade and global connections, but they seem to have emerged while the Iberians structured their field of activity. This looks like a logical consequence of the fact that the Portuguese and Spaniards – through the ‘Great Ship of Amacao’, the Manila Galleon, and several other private ships owned in partnerships, which infer that the ‘Manila Galleon’ was not always a single ship but a small convoy of ships – worked as an active commercial enterprise that connected and influenced the rhythms of these significant trading territories.

Macao’s weaknesses

The administration of the great ship voyages reveals as much about the hazards of the Macao–Japan trading relationship, as about the commercial expeditions at the base of the traders’ prosperity. While the organization of voyages was generally corrupt, it was not only beyond the reach of the mercantile community, but also disrupted the commercial ventures of the Macanese consortia. In the State of India, any nobleman who claimed to have performed meritorious service, or fought for the Crown in any fortress or military post in the east, wanted a ship’s concession – a viagem – as a reward. Voyages to several Asian maritime destinations promised great profits to viagem-holders and contractors. Portuguese voyages to China and Japan were desired the most, the latter being the most wanted in Macao. However, the Japan voyage was in the hands of the major-captain (Capitão-Mor), appointed by the Crown or the Goa viceroy. Being the most influential commissioner, the major-captain ceased to grant the honourable concessions and decided instead to auction the voyages for his own personal profit. He quickly became the most important figure in the city, but also attracted the greatest enmity of the city’s traders, who appealed the viceroy for his replacement. In 1623, a general-captain (Capitão-Geral) was appointed governor of Macao, and from this date the captain-major of the Japan voyage never exercised authority on land; however, Macao’s citizens soon realized that they had not gained anything with the change. So, they went back to the previous position, but it was too late and the authority of the major-captain was henceforth limited to vessels and the control of the Portuguese merchant community in Nagasaki. ²⁰ In these new functions he acted as a high-ranking Portuguese administrative servant, a kind of factor/ambassador similar to the one the Crown had installed in Antwerp. He was highly regarded in Japan and recognized as daimyo. He supervised the behaviour of his fellow countrymen, exercised justice (Portuguese and European offenders, debtors and defaulters were delivered to him by the Japanese authorities to be prosecuted) and, from 1614 onwards, he was supposed to prevent Jesuit and other Christian missionaries from entering Japan. ²¹ This indicated the power that private interests exerted over the business, a situation that had altered from the early stages of Portuguese involvement, when the Crown had taken charge of commercial agency, even assuming commercial management as one of its key functions. Maybe the state lacked the necessary skills to intervene effectively in the economy, yet it undeniably competed with traders and confronted them with challenges that they managed to overcome only with much effort and difficulty or, on many occasions, not at all.

Difficulties in voyages and in overall relations with Japan were caused by issues with the Jesuits. Ironically, the situation initially offered advantages to the Macanese agents (who were in charge of transporting the missionaries to Japan) because they considered the Jesuits’ abilities to penetrate Japanese commercial communities, and to quickly apprehend and communicate the social aspects of their trading processes, as valuable resources they could exploit. But what they initially perceived as an advantage quickly became a problem, as the Japanese authorities developed a deep animosity towards Jesuit missionaries.

The historiography explains the Japanese brawl with the Portuguese as a struggle against Jesuit missions. But if we look closer, behind the religious issues we can discern sensitive matters of an economic nature, with the Jesuits interfering in business and trade. This is not exactly a novelty but when, for example, Charles Boxer addressed this question, he ‘only’ considered the Jesuits’ role as middlemen and silk traders. ²² We now know more about them: for example, they played a crucial role in finances as they were involved in highly lucrative and speculative credit operations in the maritime silver trade, through respondência with Japanese bankers and Portuguese businessmen. ²³ Two facts can elucidate the irreversible setbacks imposed by the Japanese a bit more. First, the borrowers experienced constant liquidity problems as they were unable to pay the high interest rates; their bankruptcies raised Portuguese debt to levels that became unpayable. Second, the Japanese wished to eliminate a powerful and dangerous economic adversary. In fact, the Jesuits were penetrating influential layers of Japanese society and thus posed a potential challenge to the feudal system and even the unification process of the state, which had been in progress since the last quarter of the sixteenth century. ²⁴

In the early seventeenth century, there was general uncertainty due to the widespread threats that were posed by interlopers from the United Provinces and England. These were well-armed and well-equipped opponents and the Iberians were relatively weak opponents. This strengthened the remarkable cooperation between the Portuguese and Castilians. And we shall see that one of the ‘strengths’ of Macao was its firepower and artillery: nevertheless, in 1621, the Macao governors had to resort to asking Manila for help, which yielded four pieces of heavy artillery ahead of the imminent Dutch and English attacks. ²⁵

The general insecurity felt by all those engaged in maritime business should also be mentioned. Above all, the notion of a fragile balance that would break down at the slightest disturbance prevailed in Macao and the Philippines as well as the Spanish Indies, ²⁶ showing the increasingly global nature of these maritime economies. In 1610, three shipwrecks – one of them of a ship loaded in Macao – threatened to ruin Spanish and Portuguese merchants. ²⁷

Macao and Manila interactions: The strength of a mercantile community

Macao’s regional influence, the private initiative of its residents, and their organization, gave the city the strength to resist when challenged by adversaries who systematically expelled the Portuguese and Castilians from key positions in their domains. This showed, for example, in the unsuccessful English siege and port blockade in June 1622, and in the celebrated victory over the Dutch, interpreted as a Saint John’s miracle.

The strength of Macao’s community was proven in the systematic adoption of an existing practice, in that Portuguese ships from this port turned into pirates, or patrollers, with the aim of counteracting competition of any kind. As early as March 1588, Friar Francisco Manrique, a well-informed Spanish Abbot of the Saint Augustine convent of Macao, complained about the Portuguese attempts to prevent Japanese navigation to Manila. ²⁸ Nevertheless, their naval power was useful to the Castilians. In 1584, the aforementioned Governor Santiago de Vera regretted the absence of Castilian ships and had to rely on two Portuguese ships to fend off four Japanese pirates. ²⁹

The Macanese also had considerable influence over Chinese authorities. In 1584, Friar Domingo de Salazar, Bishop of the Philippines, attributed the Chinese distrust of Castilians to the Portuguese. ³⁰ Moreover, the Portuguese benefited from the existing transnational markets and the intermediary roles they adapted. Macanese businessmen, in association with Chinese commercial entities, quickly became key players in Japan, Siam, Cambodia and Hainan ³¹ – places where small Christian communities existed. Historical evidence seems to confirm that business with those regions rapidly came to dominate the traders’ activities and was vital to their prosperity.

Although this was a ‘civilization of silver’, the Portuguese were successfully using copper to mint coins. This provided business opportunities and supported bilateral trade with Manila, which was sustained even when copper mines were later discovered in Manila – they were not very profitable and it was better to get it in Macao. ³² Most important, and decisive for the Portuguese involvement in the Manila Galleon, was their control over the Asian quicksilver trade. Essential to the silver mines of New Spain and referred to in the Manila correspondence, which reveals trading flows between Macao, Guangdong and Fukien, it was an asset that the Portuguese used to consolidate their position. ³³ It was sometimes transported in Portuguese ships, sometimes in Spanish vessels. In 1612, officials reported how a storm prevented the ship of Pedro de Angulo reaching Macao where a cargo of quicksilver (azogue) waited to be loaded. ³⁴ The same Spanish correspondence portrayed Macao as a well-equipped military location. More than once, Manila required Portuguese artillery and gunpowder, especially after the first English raids in the Pacific in the 1580s. ³⁵ Furthermore, Macao benefited from the ability of the Portuguese to build good ships, to put them into the service of, or sell them to, the Spanish, who, at times, suffered from a shortage of vessels and were unable to build them. In 1620, a ship (nao) bought in Macao (surely made in Goa) arrived in Manila ready to set sail to the Spanish Indies, ‘with sails and rigging and seven anchors and four good cables, very adequate to the needs of this route and contracting of New Spain’. ³⁶

Thanks to their lucrative trade, the influence they had in Southeast Asia, the relationships they developed with local agents and their naval power, the Portuguese moved some of their businesses to the Spanish Pacific area, in particular to Manila. Focusing on the maritime domain, from the last quarter of the sixteenth century, the primary goal of Portuguese ships was to compensate for the traffic disruptions in Nagasaki and other Japanese ports by trying to penetrate (and, in part, to control) the Manila trade, for which they had to compete with Chinese seafarers. In 1588, Bartolomeu Vaz Landeiro, a Macao neighbour ‘who travels a lot throughout those Kingdoms [of China and Japan]’, characterized the Portuguese shipowners regularly seen in Chinese ports, particularly Canton, as very competitively offering their ships for charter. According to him, they prevented Castilian attendance in the Canton ‘fair’ as well as Chinese shipping to Manila. ³⁷ After 1613, when the Japanese ruler eased the restrictions on Chinese trading activities in Japan, the country’s ports attracted 60 to 80 Chinese junks every year. ³⁸ When the Portuguese found themselves chased away for good from the same Japanese ports, they managed to reduce the junks’ traffic to Manila as they sought to balance losses on one side (Japan) with gains on the other (the Philippines). On 10 November 1634, both the president and the ombudsman of the audience of Manila were ordered in a royal letter to comment on the information sent by Juan Grau y Monfalcón, General Attorney of Manila, saying the Portuguese ‘embarrassed the sangleys in order to seize the trade with the Philippines’. ³⁹ Even worse, said the same official, the Portuguese in Macao were causing much damage to Manila’s neighbours because they went to Canton to purchase merchandize

… which they immediately sold in Manila, preventing the Spaniards to benefit from it, as they did when the Chinese were the sellers, raising their margins of profit in New Spain; the Portuguese did not sell them on credit [fiado], sell them at excessive prices, and sell them on their own in Mexico. ⁴⁰

When the Macao rulers lamented their fate in the letters sent to the king, they briefly characterized the town as a mercantile society. Isolated – no mail exchange with Goa and the kingdom for more than three years – and desolated by the loss of trade with Japan, populated by ‘more than 50 thousand souls’ of married locals (casados), ⁴¹ and merchants who temporarily frequented the town following the rhythms of trade. The situation was undeniably severe and their letters emphasized misfortunes, particularly when describing the weakening of the city’s wealth. ⁴²

Despite these complaints, the Macanese community consisted of experienced merchants aware of the risks and dangers of business setbacks. And they knew they had to look for valuable alternatives. In the meantime, they did not hesitate to request the assistance of a power – the Crown – which they were used to confronting and deceiving. First, Macao traders asked for royal permission to organize slave-trade expeditions to the West African coast (Angola), which is rarely discussed in the current historiography: ‘we ask our lord king to grant us a ship from this city to the kingdom and another to Angola, every year, to save this port’. ⁴³ Second, and repeatedly mentioned, they launched a successful attempt to penetrate Castilian dominions in Asia, more specifically in Borneo. A recent study argues that ‘well aware of the detached role of the Borneo Sultanate in regional trade routes, the Spaniards from Philippines immediately oriented its expansionist actions and control area in its direction’, attempting to dominate it in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. ⁴⁴ However, the Portuguese – again comfortable with associational and cooperative strategies with Spanish agents, who guaranteed them the required licenses to operate in the area without any major problem – managed to participate strongly in the trade with the Sultanate, as can be seen from complaints about their presence in 1636. ⁴⁵

But the Macao leaders, spokesmen for their own shipping community, went further. These ambitious merchants managed to insinuate themselves into the attractive Castilian Carrera de Índias from Manila, thus putting many of their commercial ventures into the hands of their Spanish associates and risking bans and confiscations from the Spanish Crown. They even addressed the latter, as proved by the following requirement, in which they tried to include Macao in the Asian-American connection: ‘and be served as well [the King] to free the Peru trade so the merchants of this city may have communication with the Indies and with this output may these two republics [Macao and Manila] continue to exist’. ⁴⁶ Thoroughly preparing the ground by seizing a big portion of the Philippines–China trade, as mentioned above, they were playing their trump card as strong agents in the Philippine market where they were used to networking with Castilian officials and traders, thus using all the mechanisms of trading connections to thrive.

Based on Portuguese accounts, José Alberto Barata describes the arrival of the Manila Galleon in Macao in 1584. ⁴⁷ Moreover, its arrival is widely reported in Spanish letters. The following data suggest that this was not unusual. Letters from Manila mention how merchants and seafarers from Macao, in collaboration with Spanish cargadores, sent ships to New Spain. In 1592, Governor Gomez Perez das Mariñas laid a Portuguese ship coming from Mexico under embargo in retaliation for the seizure of a Spanish ship he had sent to Macau to collect gunpowder and ammunition. In the same letter, he discussed the convenience of preventing the departure of ships to the Indies from Macao and every other port of China. ⁴⁸ The practice was not new and relied on collaborators. In the following year, the Audiencia of Manila denounced the initiatives of the Portuguese, supported by the sangleys and Spanish cargadores, to attract the Manila Galleon to Macao. ⁴⁹ One of these galleons, captained by Pedro de Unamuno, called in Macao en route to New Spain in 1577. ⁵⁰ In the seventeenth century, the practice was extended and, so it seems, became unstoppable. On 10 October 1632, several documents arrived at the Spanish Indies council that were allegedly intended to protect the business of Filipino merchants. The first dealt with an agreement approved in the Manila Church Chapter affirming the trade monopoly on the islands that was breached by Mexican merchants, who had recently started to invest in the Philippine trade and established relations with shipmasters and sailors storing cargo to be traded in the Indies. Previously, on 11 January 1593, a royal letter assuring Manila’s neighbours of the trade monopoly and specifically banning New Spain’s neighbours from participating in the trade (which implied that they did), was copied and sent. A third document followed in the wake of this controversy: dated in Manila on 11 October 1632, it ordered an enquiry to determine which Mexican traders were involved in this business. A fourth letter clarifies the issue: dated 22 October of the same year, it requested Manila’s bishop to deny absolution to all people in town associated with Mexican trade and to impose ecclesiastical penalties to those who shipped their commodities, especially the Mexican and Macanese merchants. The last letter, dated 8 November 1632, is a Manila town council agreement asking the said bishop for more serious punishments for the same traders. ⁵¹

These documents convey a sense of strength and initiative, typical of the endeavours of other Portuguese overseas communities. For the most part, that strength came from the actions of individual agents, tradesmen and navigators who could move like no one else through the intricacies of ports, trade and business, regardless of partnerships or rivalries. Among the seamen, the great ship Amacau’s pilot was on the front line. He was always Portuguese, solely responsible for navigation, influential in the distribution of cargo and contracting of crew. He used the power he had aboard for his own as well as his partners’ benefit, but much is still unknown about these connections.

So far, early modern trade schemes exposed merchants as promoters of these connections. As the present research shows, Macanese merchants relied on new Christians’ networks as the key elements in their business activities, both in Europe and throughout overseas empires. They wielded influence through family, confessional and cultural ties, which did not obstruct transnational coalitions, as well as through their commercial networks, present in all ports and markets. Apart from being discussed extensively in the literature, a 1645 Portuguese account confirms the networks’ impact on Macao. It also reveals another formidable menace threatening these communities: the Inquisition, the ultimate weapon used by rivals and government officials to counter this trend. The Inquisition process against Pêro Henriques de Guevara, a new Christian from Torre de Moncorvo (a northern Portuguese village famous for its crypto-Jewish merchants’ community) held in the Holy Office Court of Lisbon, relates the existence and performance of new-Christian networks in Macao and Manila, that were supported by the clergy, as they were in many other ports. ⁵²

Conclusion

In the preceding pages we have followed a merchant community which after its foundation grew accustomed to managing its own destiny. The role of Macao’s seafarers and merchants as middlemen in the Sino–Japanese trade was challenged in the early seventeenth century, if not earlier. In the 1630s, they were caught in a deadlock caused by the impending loss of one of their richest trades, and in 1639 they were chased from Japan for good. To compensate for their losses, they intensified their engagements with the maritime hub of Manila.

All the episodes mentioned above allow us to identify Asian port agents moving across political borders, enabling ‘new’ territories to emerge, transforming the notions of space and trade communities, directly and indirectly adapting to different realities. Groups whose existence came under threat often had to rely on their own resources and wits to survive. ⁵³ In the process they grew stronger, paving the way for new organizational, economic, social and cultural models.

Returning to the initial question of this study, and offering an additional concept to reflect upon, globalization consists of what is understandable by people and agents of different worlds. The maritime commercial practice described in this study – extended to different areas, made of widespread exchanges, experiences and adaptations – was undeniably understood by all participants. In this sense, it is also important to stress the fact that this process greatly contributed to our understanding of how ports and their merchants took their first steps towards globalization, which is still far from being fully understood. For merchants and networks, Macao served as a base, meeting and departure point of maritime routes that linked trading hubs, such as Malacca, Nagasaki and Manila. At its limit, commodities were sent to Lisbon from where the Crown administered the oriental trade. But this was just a small part of this world of business; the lion’s share remained in Southeast Asia, in every port and harbour of the Straits, India, China, Japan, the Philippines and wherever the Portuguese intervened as equals, assuming the role of local agents and, whenever possible, operating on the fringes or even beyond the official schemes of Portuguese state trade.

By virtue of the Portuguese and their ships, diverse areas came into contact and were linked as a result of their commercial transactions. This kind of involvement contrasts with the Castilian Caribbean, traditionally defined as ‘closed’ to external navigation because of restrictions imposed by Spanish authorities, although this remains to be fully proven. In Southeast Asia, in essence dealings were organized and managed by Portuguese merchants, as in the cases of the Goa–Japan–Manila and Ormuz–Goa routes, and the immense circuits in which they participated more or less freely and autonomously.

‘Born with a silver spoon’, Manila turned the Philippines into a cradle of globalization, ⁵⁴ but only because many factors converged, some of which are outlined in this study. So there is no doubt that this first global age was brought about by merchants and seafarers, the itinerant men of ports and networks, Iberian and Asian, and their partners, who developed a settlement and a model that makes us question the nature of imperialist interventions, as different from those later developed by the Dutch and English.

With Manila there were converging interests. As recently shown by Picazo Muntaner, the Castilians of Manila suffered from similar constraints to those imposed on the Portuguese in Macao: growing interventionism of the Crown, which led to the adoption of ‘escape’ strategies and measures to circumvent limitations, resulting, in most cases, in smuggling practices or in partnerships with agents familiar with all ports and surroundings. The Spanish had to overcome an additional serious obstacle of social order and even of social prejudice, namely when officers of noble extraction decided to engage in trade and business, which was in contradiction to the standards of social behaviour in Spain’s ancient regime. ⁵⁵

As a closing remark, the existence of this first globalization is proven by the fact that the practices involved clearly contradict the traditional notion of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans as closed worlds. On the contrary, the movements generated in ports through maritime networks connected the different systems of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. Suddenly, the world became small.