46 Boundaries and Beyond
trade, by taking pepper and spices to Lisbon and selling them on to other
European markets through Antwerp. Besides their virtual monopoly on
spices, the chain of trading-stations that they established in the Indian
Ocean, extending to Malacca, Macao and Nagasaki, worked extremely well
for several decades from the mid-sixteenth century. The viceroyalty of
Goa actively participated in the highly proβitable triangular trade between
Goa, Macao and Nagasaki. During the days of the triangular trade, the
Portuguese “Great Ship” exported silver from Japan to China and India
via Macao and raw silk and silk fabrics to Japan from Macao.^159 In the
early decades of the seventeenth century, the ofβicial annual Portuguese
investments at Guangzhou were estimated at 1.5 million taels.^160
However, by the end of the sixteenth century they were losing their
edge in the competition in the pepper and spice trade from the Javanese
and other Asian traders.^161 The triangular trade also ended when they
were expelled from Japan in the 1630s. When Macao was cut off from
Goa after the Dutch capture of Malacca in 1641 and from the proβitable
trade with Manila after Portugal’s revolt from Spain, it suffered from
irreparable damage to its trade position.^162
Haicheng-Manila-Acapulco
Chinese trading junks from Haicheng began to call at Manila following
the Spanish occupation of the port in 1571. The new colonial regime
immediately opened direct trading connections with China. “Some
half-dozen junks came to Manila in 1574 and twelve or βifteen the next
year. By 1576 the trade was already βirmly established,” William Lytle
Schurz states.^163 The Chinese junk traders brought raw silk, silk textiles,
porcelains and hempen fabrics. On the return voyages, they shipped
back Mexican silver. Part of it was allocated to the advance order of
Chinese merchandise in the following shipment to Manila.^164 In 1573,
two Spanish galleons departing from Manila “carried to Acapulco,
- K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean, pp. 65, 76.
- C.R. Boxer, The Great Ship from Amacon: Annals of Macao and the Old Trade,
1555–1640 (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Historicos Ultramarinos, 1959), p. 6. - Luc Nagtegaal, Riding the Dutch Tiger, p. 17.
- C.R. Boxer, The Great Ship from Amacon, p. 18.
- William Lytle Schurz, The Manila Galleon (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1939), p. 27.
- See Chuan Han-sheng 全漢昇, “Ming ji Zhongguo yu feilubin de maoyi” 明季
中國與菲律賓的貿易 [Sino-Philippine trade during the late Ming], pp. 417–
33, and “Ming Qing jian meizhou baiyin de shuru Zhongguo” 明清間美洲白
銀的輸入中國 [Imports of American silver to China during the Ming–Qing
transition], pp. 435–50; both in Zhongguo jingji shi luncong, diyi ce 中國經濟史
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