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Spaniards in the Philippines did not follow the American model. In the Americas the Spanish, after looting its treasures, had sought to fashion themselves wealthy gentlemen landowners on the model of the gentry of their native Castile. They made themselves into managers of large encomiendas, on which they grazed cattle and grew wheat, conscripting native laborers to exploit the wealth of the land. But the Philippine islands were not as well suited to Castilian-style ranching. One Spaniard described the climate as cuatro meses de polvo, cuatro meses de lodo, y cuatro meses de todo (“four months of dirt, four months of mud, four months of every kind of crud”). Hardly any effort was made to farm or to take advantage of the region’s natural resources. As late as 1600 there were no more than five or six Spanish farmers in the Manila area.
The Spaniards of Manila depended on Chinese labor for the business of everyday life. “From China come those who supply every sort of service,” said a Jesuit located in Manila near the turn of the century, “all dexterous, prompt, and cheap, from physicians and barbers to carriers and porters. They are the tailors and the shoemakers, metalworkers, silversmiths, sculptors, locksmiths, painters, masons, weavers, and every sort of service worker.” The Chinese population was by far the largest in Manila; it was said to be the first large Chinese colony outside China. In 1586 it numbered more than ten thousand, compared to only eight hundred Spanish and mestizos. The Chinese were consigned to a special district called the Parian (“marketplace”), which was initially located within the city walls. But the population disparity made the Spanish anxious, and they moved the Parian to a nearby swamp. “They rapidly turned this area into a thriving town of orderly streets with a large pond at its center,” according to Ray Huang. “The pond was accessible to substantial ships and had an island in its center where punishments were administered to Chinese criminals.”
Facing this bustling city outside the gates of their small, precarious settlement, the Spanirds lived in constant fear that the Chinese would rise up against them. They interpreted a visit from mainland Chinese officials in 1603 as a spy mission — a precursor to such an uprising. To preempt this, they abruptly massacred more than twenty thousand Chinese. Most of those who weren’t killed fled, leaving behind a hapless population of only about 500. Almost at once, however, the Spaniards faced the realization that they were helpless without Chinese labor. One reported that in the absence of the Chinese “there was nothing to eat and no shoes to wear.” Reversing themselves, they now encouraged Chinese immigration, and by 1616 the population was on its way back to twenty thousand. Trade with China — as necessary for Manila’s survival as the industry of local farmers and tradesmen— also continued; the five years ending in 1610 recorded the highest volume in the history of the trade.
The governor of the Philippines was a man named Juan de Silva. He had been born in Spain and had arrived to take charge in Manila on Easter 1609; within a few months he would be besieged by a Dutch fleet of some thirteen vessels bearing nearly 28,000 men. The siege lasted for several months until it was finally broken in April 1610, when a dozen Spanish ships surprised and killed the Dutch commander. In subsequent years De Silva sought to seize the initiative, sending expeditions to the Moluccas to eradicate the Dutch presence there, but all of these failed for a variety of reasons. Finally he put together a huge armada carrying five thousand men, including a unit of Japanese samurai, and, taking personal command, set sail — not for Indonesia but for the Strait of Malacca. It was the largest European armada ever seen in those waters but, just to make sure, de Silva was headed up the strait to join forces with the Portuguese (allied with Spain since 1580) in order to launch a massive and decisive joint attack on the Dutch.
Western-Style Bell, approx. 1602. Japan, Momoyama period (1573–1615). Cast bronze. Eisei-Bunko Museum, 7271.
This large Western-style bell, weighing nearly five hundred pounds, was cast in honor of Hosokawa Gracia, a Christian convert who was the wife of a daimyo. The church for which the bell was intended was destroyed in a wave of anti-Christian repression. The bell was placed in hiding and resurfaced in the twentieth century.
In February 1616, as the fleet entered the strait, de Silva’s already poor health grew worse. Racked with fever and dysentery, he died in Malacca in April. The rendezvous with the Portuguese fleet never happened — the fleet had been surprised and defeated, and the surviving Portuguese had burned their galleons to avoid their being captured. In Malacca a deadly fever spread among the men of the armada as they waited for the fleet that would never come. In June the ships limped back to Manila, defeated without ever reaching Indonesia to encounter the enemy. De Silva’s disastrous expedition put an end to efforts to combine Portuguese and Spanish forces in Asia, and to Spain’s efforts to gain the initiative there. Subsequently it would be reduced to defending its lonely outpost at Manila, and the VOC would be conceded a virtual monopoly on the spice trade.
Thanks to the lucrative galleon trade, the Spanish no longer worried quite so much about the loss of the spice trade as they once had. From China streamed in silk, porcelains, iron, ink and paper, livestock, sugar, grains, and fruits. To China went mainly silver — and Jesuits. While there is little indication of Chinese efforts to convert Spaniards to Buddhism or the related beliefs of the followers of Wang Yangming (somewhat misleadingly labeled “neo-Confucianism” in the West), proselytizing was always fundamental to Spain’s overseas program. But its absolutist and teleological religion found only a limited reception in China, where ancient traditions of Taoism and folk belief had laid the foundations for a worldview that was fluid, cyclical, manifold, situational, and relativistic.
In 1616 the Society of Jesus had been around for just seventy-seven years, having been founded by Ignacio de Loyola, a Basque soldier turned priest, in 1539. In Rules for Thinking with the Church Loyola wrote, “I will believe that the white that I see is black if the hierarchical Church so defines it.” More than previous orders, the Jesuits sought to regularize Christian belief, an impulse that contributed on the one hand to the founding of colleges and universities and on the other to the excesses of the Spanish Inquisition. They were also a missionary order. The best-known of the Jesuit missionaries in China was an Italian, Matteo Ricci. Ricci achieved some success by dressing in the Chinese fashion and educating himself about Chinese philosophy and culture. He shared Western knowledge in mathematics, map making, and other areas, and won a following among the Chinese literati. Among the Chinese he was perceived as the champion of an interesting and exotic, though minor, school of philosophy called the Learning from Heaven. But he died in 1610 at the age of fifty-eight, and his successors did not effectively follow his example.
In 1616 Ricci’s work bore fruit in the West with the publication of De Christiana Expeditione apud Sinas Suscepta ab Societate Jesu (“About Christian Expeditions to China Undertaken by the Society of Jesus”); the book was published in Germany in 1615 but became better known through a French edition published the following year), which brought the teachings of Confucius to European scholars. But that same year his legacy suffered setbacks in China. The head of the order’s China operations reversed Ricci’s policy of presenting the faith as a branch of learning, prohibiting the teaching of mathematics and calendar reform and restricting the missionaries’ activities to preaching. At the same time, a Chinese official named Shen Jue, who had been appointed minister of rites the previous year, began a campaign of suppression of the Jesuits. In 1616 Shen repeatedly denounced the missionaries. He pointed out that they called their country Great West Ocean, which seemed to challenge the dynasty name Great Ming. Their claim that they were spreading the teaching of the Lord of Heaven conflicted with the official representation of the emperor as Heaven’s King and the Son of Heaven. Shen’s concern seems to have been that the missionaries’ activities could potentially be subversive. He might have had a point.
Arrival of a Portuguese Ship, early seventeenth century. Japan. Folding screen, one of a pair; ink, colors, and
gold on paper, 333 × 173 cm. (overall). Asian Art Museum, The Avery Brundage Collection, B60D77+.
The Palace of the Viceroys, seventeenth century. Mexico. Folding screen; oil on canvas. Museo de América, Madrid, 00207.
The top screen shows a Japanese artist’s depiction of the arrival of Portuguese traders in Japan. The influence of such Japanese screens is apparent in the Mexican screen, below, particularly in the gold-leaf cloud forms.
Until Japan closed its borders, it supplied Manila with most of its metalware and some weaponry — swords and gunpowder. There was a regular commerce between the countries, with ships arriving every year, often carrying missionaries as well as goods. In Japan the missionaries, first from Portugal and then from Spain, seemed to be making great strides, and some notable figures were converted. Among these was Hosokawa Gracia, the wife of a daimyo whose castle was besieged by a rival in 1600 while he was away at battle. In order to keep from being used as a hostage, she ordered herself killed by a servant. When her husband returned from his campaign and discovered her sacrifice, he ordered a Western-style church bell cast in her honor. But the church for which the bell was intended was destroyed following the shogun’s crackdown on Christianity. The bell, hidden in a castle turret, only came to light three hundred years later; it was rediscovered in the early twentieth century.
The Jesuit missionaries were seen as a wild card that could potentially upset the fragile equilibrium achieved through the recent unification of Japan after its bloody civil wars. The priests were suspected of preparing the way for military invasion. Dutch and English traders made sure to feed these fears, but at times the Spanish were their own worst enemies. In 1596 a galleon bound for Acapulco was blown onto the coast of Japan. Its crew was seized on suspicion of spying and its cargo was carried off (which required eighty-three boats). In an attempt to impress his interrogators, a loose-lipped sailor boasted about the extent of Spain’s world empire. Pulling out a map of the world, he pointed out the nation’s many possessions. But how was it possible for Spain to have conquered so many nations? he was asked. “Nothing is easier,” he assured his questioners. “Our kings begin by sending into countries which they desire to conquer some friars, who engage in the work of converting people to our religion. When they have made considerable progress, troops are sent in who are joined by the new Christians. They then have little difficulty in settling the rest.”
The conversation was reported to the shogun, who ordered more than two dozen missionaries, to be known among the Spanish as “the martyrs of Nagasaki,” executed. But repression of Christians in the following years was inconsistent and sporadic, and more evangelists took their places. They were fueled by apocalyptic zeal. Now that the extent of the globe was known, surely the whole world would soon be converted. The end times were at hand. “The world shows great signs of ending,” wrote the author of the first European book on China, “and the scriptures are about to be fulfilled.” In 1614 the first shogun of the Edo era, Ieyasu, ordered more rigorous anti-Christian measures, and in 1616, after his death, his successor, Hidetoda, proved even more intransigent. Christianity was almost entirely expunged, and it ceased to be a significant factor in Japanese society.
The exchanges with Japan left a mark across the Pacific. Some Japanese artists were apparently among those who made the trip to Acapulco; at the very least, Japanese style influenced American artists. Carved, inlaid desks made in Colombia have the same proportions and dimensions as their counterparts in Japan. A large seventeenth-century screen now in the collections of the Museo de Americas, Madrid, depicts a dynamic street scene backed by gold-leaf clouds in a Japanese style, but the scene depicts life in Mexico City and was made for a palace there.
Spanish Dollar, 1598–1621. Mexico. Silver.
Coins such as this, usually mined and minted in Mexico or Peru, were favored as currency not only in Europe and the Americas but in other parts of the world as well. China’s shift to an economy based on such coins had profound effects on its society.
The Manila–Acapulco galleons were the final piece in the connection of the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia — they marked the beginning of globalization. International trade and exchange had occurred throughout history, but now, for the first time, two brothers, one traveling east and the other west, could meet halfway around the world. The rise of companies like the Dutch East India Company and British East India Trading Company, which developed a model for sharing the risk and rewards of coordinated global ventures, helped to fuel the new global economy and promote capitalism as a state-sponsored philosophy. Within a few years Francis Bacon would argue that economics should be the first priority of the state and that the best remedy for all problems was the promotion of economic well-being. “The first remedy or prevention is to remove, by all means possible,” he would write, “that material cause of sedition … which is, want and poverty in the estate. To which purpose serveth the opening, and well-balancing of trade; the cherishing of manufactures; the banishing of idleness; the repressing of waste, and excess, by sumptuary laws; the improvement and husbanding of the soil; the regulating of prices of things vendible; the moderating of taxes and tributes; and the like.”
Silver was the standard on which the new global economy was built, and would remain so into the nineteenth century. During the later years of the Ming dynasty the social and economic structure of China changed in profound ways, and these changes were associated with the shift from an agriculture-based economy to one based on the use of silver as currency — during the sixteenth century considerable quantities of silver were imported from Japan until relations with the Japanese deteriorated; silver from the Americas filled the gap thereafter. The silver currency–based economy was tied to a large, unskilled peasant labor class newly displaced from its rural origins, the collapse of land prices, the growth of urban centers, the rise of mercantilism and trade, the increased specialization of skilled craft labor, the expansion of industrialized systems of production, and increased regional and agricultural specialization. Besides the industrialization of silk, the manufacturing of goods such as porcelain, iron, and steel was also industrialized. There was a great growth in printed materials, not unlike that of post-Gutenberg Europe. Despite restrictions on sea trade, maritime exchange increased not just along the China coast but throughout Asia (and indeed the world). China’s attempts to contain the sea trade actually increased its value, much as today’s prohibitions on drugs such as marijuana increase their value to distributors and cost to consumers, and this, together with the rise of a displaced underclass, caused piracy to be rampant. Diplomatic relations during this period were difficult because official vessels were always suspected of carrying spies or pirates.
The silver-based economy had even more devastating consequences for the Americas. In the early sixteenth century silver mined in Joachimsthal, Germany, was fashioned into a coin called the Joachimsthaler, or thaler for short; the word was brought into English as dollar (it already appears in the works of Shakespeare). The thaler was roughly equivalent to the Spanish peso (“weight”), another silver coin, which was equal to eight reales, and consequently known among the English as “pieces of eight” (a name made famous in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island) or the “Spanish dollar.” Because the peso was more uniform than the thaler, it was preferred in world markets. Since the value of the silver coin was determined by its weight, it could be physically divided into eight parts.
In the eighteenth century, during the American War of Independence, the Continental Congress elected to standardize on the model of the Spanish coin (rather than the British system of pounds, shillings, and pence), which resulted in the current American dollar. The first American paper bills were printed by Benjamin Franklin and bore the legend “This bill entitles the Bearer to receive ___ Spanish milled Dollars, or the Value thereof in Gold or Silver, according to the Resolutions of the Congress held at Philadelphia, on the 10th day of May, A.D. 1775.” The Americans called each of the
eight parts of the dollar a “bit,” so that a quarter dollar was known as “two bits.” Only when revolutions in Latin America disrupted the production of Spanish coins and lowered their quality did the silver standard start to decline. The Spanish peso remained legal tender in America until just before the Civil War. China remained on the silver standard until 1935.
Vessel in the Form of a Panpipe Player, 1300–1500. Peru, Andean region, Chimu culture. Silver and malachite, 7 × 11 × 21 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1969, 1978.412.219. Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY.
Andean artists used silver in works such as this vessel depicting a musician playing a panpipe, but they did not value silver as currency. The tunic, loincloth, cap, earrings, and bag on the figure show typical Andean dress, and the design motifs on the clothing match those of surviving textiles. Among Andean people music played an important role in both ritual and daily life. The panpipe, a traditional Andean instrument, is often combined today with string instruments, which were introduced by Europeans.