Commodity and Market 47
among other goods, 712 pieces of Chinese silk and 22,300 pieces of βine gilt
china and other porcelain ware”.^165 Beside Chinese silks, another highly
valued staple was spices from the south. Most of these two categories of
merchandise were thereafter forwarded to Europe.
Through the long-distance trade, both the Spanish and the Portuguese
contributed to large βlows of silver from Mexico, Peru and Japan into
China and other Asian regions. As Schurz highlights, the Spanish and the
Portuguese had set up a vast semi-circumference from Japan, China, India
and the Moluccas whose radii met in Manila.^166 Their coins also achieved
the status of international currency during the time.
Batavia-Ayudhya-Nagasaki
Dutch and English ships appeared in Asian waters in the last decade
of the sixteenth century. Shortly afterwards, both nations founded a
chartered company known as the East India Company that allowed
them to compete more successfully in trade with their Portuguese rival
during the following 200 years. Large quantities of commodities were
shipped back to European markets from Asia. These included cotton
textiles from Coromandel on the east coast of India and silk textiles, raw
silk, indigo and tea from China. Both the Dutch and English also involved
themselves in the interregional trade of the Indian Ocean and maritime
East Asia. Indian textiles were shipped to the Indonesian Archipelago to
be exchanged for pepper and spices. Precious metals from East Africa
and Japan became the major form of trading currency. An intra-Asia
trade from the Red Sea to the China Sea was greatly enhanced by the
burgeoning of Amsterdam and London as international trading centers
in the Western world.
The Dutch opened up the triangular trade between India, Siam and
Japan. They founded a trading-station in Ayudhya as a transshipment
center in 1608. Within the triangular networks, large quantities of silver,
gold and copper from Japan were carried to India where they were
exchanged for cotton textiles from Gujarat, Coromandel and Bengal that
were subsequently taken to Ayudhya. In return, from Siam they procured
forest and βishery products suitable for the Japanese market. Proβit from
the triangular trade in the form of silver and cotton textiles was reinvested
in the Indonesian Archipelago where they were exchanged for pepper
論叢，第一冊 [Collected papers on Chinese economic history, Vol. 1] (The Asia
Institute of Hong Kong University, 1972).- William Lytle Schurz, The Manila Galleon, p. 27.
- Ibid.