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Asia-Pacific in the Making of the Americas: Toward a Global History Main Menu The Spanish Pacific The China Trade Era 19th-Century US Pacific Timeline by Andrea Ledesma Gallery Collection of all images, documents, and photos featured on this site. Acknowledgements

Image of a Port

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The Spanish Pacific Elli Mylonas
Contents of this tag:
1. English and French Seek Pacific Route to Asia
2. Hennepin's Nouvelle France, 1783 Louis Hennepin, 1783. Map of North America and the northern part of South America from New France to New Spain. Cartographic elements include Indian settlements, the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River, part of the Mississippi River, locations of missions and forts, sea banks or shoals, and lines of latitude and longitude. Decorative cartouche includes allegorical figures. An angel holding a shield with a cross smites a fallen man who holds snakes. At right, a redeemed man and woman rise up toward cross and the triumph of Louisiana. One female figure holds the royal French coat of arms, another holds a banner with "Louis." John Carter Brown Library
3. Japanese Sailing Map
4. Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica de las Yslas Filipinas — Sangley Details Detail of Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica de las Yslas Filipinas (1734), by Pedro Murillo Velarde. The Philippines was a vital part of the Spanish Empire, and the map shows the maritime routes from Manila to Spain and to New Spain. There are twelve engravings on the sides depicting different ethnic groups living in the archipelago and cartographic descriptions of particular cities or islands. From the National Library of Spain.
5. Merchants Eating In a Boat
6. Indias Ocidentales, 1601 (1575) "Descripcion de las Yndias del occidentals." Madrid, 1601, in Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas i Tierra Firme del Mar Oceano escrita por Antonio de Herrera coronista mayor de Su Md: de las Indias y su coronista de Castilla ... Decada primera" Map of the western hemisphere with the northwestern part of North America unfinished and showing part of western Iberian pennisula and Africa, part of China, Japan, part of New Guinea, and some of the Solomon islands. Includes the Line of Demarkation. Only four known surviving examples.
7. Francisco Felipe Faxicura Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga was baptized as Francisco Felipe Faxicura on February 17, 1615 in Spain by King Philip III's personal chaplain. Shown in the top right is Hasekura's coat of arms: a crowned shield depicting a Buddhist swastika overlapping two intersecting arrows on an orange background. His coat of arms is seen in various places, including on his ship, San Juan Bautista. This image found in a German translation of: Historia del regno di Voxu del Giapone, first published Rome, 1615, found in the John Carter Brown Library or online at https://archive.org/details/relationvndgrndt00amat .
8. Cobo's Crab in the Shilu
9. General Map, 1576
10. Clergy and Tradesmen, 1596
11. 1634 Japanese Red Seal Ship As the Japanese increasingly ventured on voyages for trading purposes nearing the seventeenth century, Red Seal ships became more common. Red Seal ships were military merchant sailing ships that were armed and carried red-sealed permits from Tokugawa Ieyasu, the Japanese ruler of the time. The seals allowed for a controlled system of foreign trade as well as protection against pirates. Tokyo Naval Science Museum.
12. Spanish military, 1570
13. The Life of St. Francis Xavier : Apostle of the Indies and Japan by Daniello Bartoli, 1608-1685. Bartoli, a 17th century Italian Jesuit writer, zealously describes St. Francis Xavier's travels to the Indies and Japan on galleons on a mission to convert foreigners to Catholicism. A description of St.Francis Xavier's 1549 voyage to Japan begins on page 326, Book the Third. Here, Bartoli refers to letters sent by St.Francis while in Japan and his ultimately successful efforts to spread Catholicism there. Bartoli writes on the saint's humility, skill with learning foreign languages (a skill he attributes to God) and the positive responses he received while preaching christianity. Translation of his Vita di S. Francesco Saverio della Compagnia di Gesù apostolo delle Indie.
14. Will of Juan de Páez
15. Sangley Rebellion "Rare first edition of an important relation describing the 1639-40 revolt of ethnic Chinese Filipinos (Sangleyes) against Spanish colonial powers at the port of Calamba, located some 55 kilometers south of Manila. This organized conspiracy, sometimes called the Second Chinese Insurrection (the first Sangley rebellion occurred in 1603), had been coordinated to begin on Christmas Eve of 1639: Sangley insurgents (some 45,000 Sangleys lived in and around Manila at the time) corresponded with a Chinese pirate named Yquan Sanglus, agreeing that he should surprise the Spanish colonists and capture their galleons arriving from New Spain. Governor Sebastián Hurtado de Corcuera’s (d. 1660) soldiers, supported by two companies of Sangley mestizos, one company of Japanese troops and additional fighters from among the indigenous and free black population, easily put down the revolt during January and February of 1640. The present document is rich with details and records that 5 million pesos worth of damage had been done in the rebellion, that the Spanish sank 11 of 20 Sangley ships, killed 650 Sangley sailors in the initial skirmish and several thousand infantrymen in the weeks that followed. Sangley prisoners questioned by the Spaniards confessed that their leader had offered large rewards, including a Spanish woman as a wife, to any who should bring him a Spanish head. A total of 7783 Sangley fighters surrendered to colonial authorities on 24 February 1640, the peace largely brokered by Jesuits and Augustinians, some of whom had themselves participated in the battle. "
16. Hennepin’s North America, 1698
17. Planta de las Islas Filipinas Detail, 1699
18. Descripcion de las Indias del Poniente
19. Juan Cabo's Eclipse
20. Ships Near Port
21. Image of a Port
22. Chinese Chuan
23. Intramuros, Manila, 1571
24. Chinese Merchants
25. Interior of a Spanish Galleon
26. Santo Tomas Libreria, 1887
27. Image of Ships on the Pacific Ocean
28. Port in Acapulco "The beautiful " birds- eye- view" of Mexico City by Juan Gómez de Trasmonte is extremely well -known as almost the only surviving representation of the city in the seventeenth -century . The origin , intentions and history of esta map are , however , less well- known. In fact , classical texts on the subject are inaccurate or incomplete mostly . Incorporating new cartobibliographic evidence , this article reinterprets Trasmonte 's plan from the point of view of four methodological statements : i ) The map is the territory . ii ) The map is not the territory . iii ) Territories are maps and iv ) The maps is the map . Hopefully , This analysis Contributes some innovative methodological principles for studying historical urban cartography ." From "The map is the City?. A new look at the bird's eye view of Mexico City in 1628 by Juan Gómez de Trasmonte"
29. Descripcion de las Yndias del Ocidentales by Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas
30. The Parían Market, from Itinerario
31. Linschoten's Map of the World
32. The Pacific Ocean with Flying Fish
33. Chinese Merchants
34. Manila Bay, 1685
35. Bilingual pages of Cobo's Beng Sim Po Cam
36. Historia general, 1601
37. Planta de las Islas Filipinas, 1699
38. Cobo's Shilu cover page, 1593
39. Signature of Luis de Encio
40. 1618 Chinese Map of the Philippines Dong Xi yang kao 東西洋考 (On the eastern and western oceans), 1618, by Zhang Xie 張燮, 1574-1640. "...is the most comprehensive Ming description of the countries of Southeast Asia." ( Wilkinson, Chinese History, a Manual, p. 747. "...a maritime geography of south Asia...deals with the history, topography, products, and trade of the lands of southeast Asia, including the Philippines, the Moluccas, Brunei (on the north coast of Borneo), ...Indo-China, Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, southwest coast of Borneo, a total of thirty-eight countries; discusses China's relations with Japan and the Dutch 紅毛番 ...revenue, navigation (with compass directions and distances and rhymed rules for weather prediction), and to a certain eunuch revenue collector Gao Cai, who exacted tribute from merchants...until his recall to Peking in 1615....documents and official communications between the Chinese court and various countries including Japan" -- Cf. Dictionary of Ming Biography: 77-78 (courtesy of The Ricci Institute Library). Nineteenth-century Chinese facsimile of the first edition from Brown University Libraries, The Gardner Collection.
41. European geocentric cosmology
42. Large Map of Asia "This... map embraces all of Asia. The Middle East is very well formed, although the Caspian Sea has the egg-like form it maintained on maps until the 1730s. The Arabian Peninsula is well defined, based on Portuguese sources, and India takes its form after the maps of the Dutch adventurer, Jan Hugyen van Linschoten (1596), which, in turn, borrowed from Portuguese sources. Southeast Asia and the Indonesian Archipelago are derived from charts made for the Dutch East India Company (the VOC), while China is derived from Jesuit sources, although Korea is an oddly elongated peninsula. The geography of the region would remain an enigma to Europeans until the early 18th Century. Japan's Honshu and Kyushu are recognizable, although the area further to the northeast remains a vast mystery. True to the ‘Carte à Figures’ style, which was the hallmark of the great contemporary period of Dutch Baroque cartography, the map is surrounded on three sides by registers of fine vignettes. Along the top of the map are views of Farmagusta (Cyprus), Rhodes (Greece), Damascus, Jerusalem, Aden and Hormuz (Persia). Along the left side of the map are depictions of people in local costume including Syrians, Arabs, Armenians & Persians, Indians, and Sumatrans. On the left side are depictions that include Javanese, Moluccans & Bandans, Chinese, Russians and Tartars. The map is further embellished by a fine title cartouche and ships and sea monsters in the seas. The map was originally conceived by Jodocus Hondius the Younger, as a part of an exceedingly rare Appendix to the Hondius-Mercator Atlas (1630), of which this edition included an extra panel of text at the bottom. The present edition was issued by Hondius’s brother-in-law, Jan Jansson, as part of Atlas Novus (1638). The Jansson edition is distinguishable by the appearance of Jansson’s imprint, within a cartouche, to the upper right, and the removal of the bottom text panel, which was considered to be too cumbersome for inclusion in a folio atlas. The map was originally conceived by Jodocus Hondius the Younger (1594-1629), whose eponymous father played a large part in the rise of Amsterdam as the dominant cartographic production center in the 17th Century. The present edition of the map is by Jan Jansson (1588-1664), who married Jodocus the Younger’s sister Elizabeth. He transformed the Hondius firm into a powerhouse of geographical publications. Jansson most notably published the Atlas Novus (1638), and the Atlas Major (1660), the 11 volumes of which included a town atlas, a hydrographic atlas, an atlas of the ancient world, and Andreas Cellarius’s incomparable celestial atlas. Jansson’s works were rivaled only by those of his arch-nemesis Joan Blaeu. The present map is one of the finest depictions of Asia from the apogee of Dutch cartography. It is also scarce, appearing on the market infrequently." From The Barry Ruderman Antique Maps, co.
43. Cardona's legend for map of Acapulco bay
44. Potosi Forma de los ingenios enquese muelen los metales de plata en la Ribera de Potosi el vno de dos Cabeças yelostro de una. Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela, Bartolomé, 1676-1736 (creator); leaf 91 from Historia de la villa imperial de Potosí by Bartholome Arzans de Orzua y Vela. This is a detailed manuscript account, published by Brown University in 1965, of “that mining center where the wealth and poverty, avarice and generosity, religiosity and bitter hatreds, cruelty and intrigues all flourished” (John Phelan, The Hispanic Historical Review 47:4, Nov. 1967).
45. Documentation of Hasekura’s Roman Citizenship
46. Ships Near Port
47. Juan Correa, "St. Francis Xavier Baptizing" c. 1700
48. Guadalajara Cathedral
49. Nicolai Copernicus's de Revolvtionibus orbium coelestium, 1543
50. 1608 Red Seal License
51. Parían Market " Market Manila, called the Parian . Juan Francisco de Ravenet and Bunel . Collection of drawings and prints of the Malaspina Expedition 1789-1794 . MN This is the only known drawing of Chinatown Manila, shortly before its demolition was ordered . Many of the characters depicted were the subject of a portrait by the same artist. " Known Drawing, 1521 1898 , Little Manila , Philippines 1521 , Single Drawing, Drawings , Spanish Philippines , Manila , Manila Call
52. Doctrina Cristiana, 1593
53. Beng Sim Po Cam
54. Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica de las Yslas Filipinas — Mestizo Details Detail of Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica de las Yslas Filipinas (1734), by Pedro Murillo Velarde. The Philippines was a vital part of the Spanish Empire, and the map shows the maritime routes from Manila to Spain and to New Spain. There are twelve engravings on the sides depicting different ethnic groups living in the archipelago and cartographic descriptions of particular cities or islands. From the National Library of Spain
55. The San Juan Bautista Originally owned by Date Masamune, an influential feudal lord in the Tokugawa court, the San Juan Bautista carried Hasekura Tsunenaga Rokuyemon, a samurai who led Masamune’s embassy to Spain and Italy, and Sebastián Vizcaíno, a Mexican diplomat. Vizcaíno was demoted to a simple passenger on the San Juan Bautista as Haskeura’s embassy sailed the ocean. A replica of the ship is shown here and found in Ishinomaki, Japan.
56. Schurman Commission Document, 1900 The Schurman Commission, also known as the First Philippine Commission, was formed by President William McKinley on January 20, 1899. The commission was tasked with studying the political climate of the country and make policy recommendations. While the report acknowledged Filipino aspirations for independence, the commission reported that the country was not ready for self-governance. From the University of Michigan Library.
57. Map depicting the bay of Acapulco in 1632, detailing Japanese ship Spanish captain Nicolás de Cardona sailed to Acapulco in 1614, the same year as Hasekura. He draws his then surroundings on the map and supplies a legend in his 1632 book, "Descripciones geográphicas e hydrográphicas de muchas tierras y mares del Norte y Sur en las Indias, en especial del descubrimiento del Reino de la California,"or "Geographic and hydrographic descriptions of many northern and southern lands and seas in the Indies, specifically the discovery of the kingdom of California.” The book is written in 1632, but the drawings on the map represent Cardona's catalogue of his surroundings during his 1614 expedition. He depicts a Japanese ship on the bay of Acapulco, believed to be the San Juan Bautista. Takashi Gonoi explains this likeliness in page 53 of "Hasekura Tsunenaga" 支倉常長, Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2003.
58. Wong Kim Ark’s Departure Statement, 1894
59. Conquest of the Philippines, 1698
60. Juan Cabo, 19th Century

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Social Interactions and Ethnic Relations
What appeared to have been a mutually beneficial and interdependent relationship between Spaniards and Hokkien in Manila sowed the seeds of discord and distrust that led to incidences of extreme violence. Even as some Spaniards praised the Chinese for their skilled labor, commercial spirit, and overall alacrity in meeting every Spanish need and demand, these same Spaniards also sought to control and discipline Chinese entrepreneurship with a series of improvised taxes, tariffs and licensing fees that the Chinese viewed as onerous, arbitrary and unfair. For example, for those who wished to reside permanently in Manila, a residency permit of eight pesos per annum was assessed. The missionaries also imposed a contribution of several pesos for a community fund. (Salazar; p. 237 in Blair and Robertson translation) Chinese junk merchants especially resented an indirect tax of ten percent of the total value of their goods, in addition to the six percent tariff imposed on merchandize from China, compared with only three percent for goods from all other sources. (Guerrero, pp. 31-32; Morga, p. 317, notes that only 3 percent was assessed on the Chinese merchandize, which amounted to 40,000 pesos per year.)
Occupation Number Occupation Number
Blanket sellers          31 Umbrella maker    3
Silk vendors 50 Boxmaker 7
Peddlers 27 Locksmith 4
Ceramics dealers 7 Western tailors 6
Weavers 31 Fishermen with nets 6
Sweetmakers 6 Petate makers        6
Foundrymen 5 Waterjar makers    3
Netmakers 27 Boatmen 9
Sugar vendors 24 Druggists 5
Hat/sword makers     13 Barbers 11
Vegetable sellers 26 Chinese tailors       6
Shoemakers 8 Brokers 16
Fishermen 8 Braziermen 10
Fishermen with boats 26         Dyers 24
Silversmiths 21 Carpenters 17
Wax chandeliers w/o shops     14 Boatmen to Pampanga 23
Wax chandeliers w/shops 14 Boatmen to Cebu 8
Booksellers 3 Boatmen to Iloilo 6
Rattan dealers 10 Guards 9
Ironsmiths 8   Tea dealers 4
Winemakers 10    Ropemakers 3
Noodlemakers 18 Water dealers     3
Sellers of buyo 33 Rice cleaners   5
Rice dealers 6 Tahug sellers 7
Chicken dealers 7   Chinese cooks    12
Chicken dealers w/ boats 19    Porters 33
Tobacco dealers 28 Oil dealers 11
In 1603, with their numbers in Manila as high as 30,000, the Chinese staged a protest against the heavy and arbitrary taxes and fees imposed on them.   Even more than the onerous multiple taxes and feels, they really resented the arbitrariness of being repeatedly assessed, even when the stated amount had already been paid. In response, the Spaniards unleashed the full force of their military might on the Chinese. The reported massacre of 25,000 Chinese (probably exaggerated) practically decimated the Parián. Those who had escaped death were deported back to China. Manila came to a standstill. (Díaz-Trechuelo, pp. 138-40)
Before long, Spaniards beckoned Chinese to return, which they did promptly and repopulated the Parián, resuming life and work as before, provisioning the galleons with luxury goods as well as food, supplying Spanish residents with food, clothing, shoes and all other necessities of everyday life. Just as the Chinese re-entrenched themselves into the Spanish American colony, protests against heavy taxes and fees in 1639 and again in 1662 provided Spaniards with ready excuses to rain reprisals on the Chinese with a heavy, violent hand, each time followed by destruction and desertion of the Parián. (Díaz-Trechuelo, pp. 149-53) After a brief respite, traders, artisans and laborers from Minnan, (augmented by immigrants from Guangdong later in the century), would return to the site of their violent confrontation with Spaniards, enabling a revived and rebuilt Parián to rise from the ashes of violence to grow and thrive until the next state campaign to cut them down again. (Felix, p. 3) Insatiable appetites on both sides of this transpacific transaction—Chinese for silver, Mexicans for silk—made this an enduring relationship, albeit often confrontational and violent, because of its very interdependence.
Admiration tinged with fear of the Chinese could be discerned in all those Spaniards who lived, worked and observed the Sangley close at hand. While prompted to pronounce them “a great danger to the Spanish population in the city,” they also knew they could not conduct trade with China nor survive in Manila without the Chinese. There was simply no way out for Spaniards, who could not rid themselves permanently of the Chinese community when the Chinese constituted the backbone of the Spanish mercantile colonial enterprise in Manila.   Spanish fear and mistrust would always be trumped by their total dependence on the Chinese, hence their haste to recall the Chinese to Manila shortly after each periodic violent episode that culminated in expulsion, setting the stage for the interplay between integration and rejection that characterized relationships in the first American Chinatown. Putting it another way, it was precisely the close and intimate daily interaction between Chinese and Spaniards in every facet of local life, in addition to the global economic exchange, that provoked intense Spanish fear of this high degree of penetration into their lives and material interests. Their response was to break the momentum of the Chinese by shutting them down periodically. Further adding to the anxiety of Spaniards, while instilling fear and loathing in the Chinese as well, were formidable Chinese pirates off the south China coast, notably the Hokkien known as Limahong, who first attacked Manila in 1574 with three hundred junks. (Schurz, p. 26; Díaz-Trechuelo; Tsinoy) As with more well-known pirates of the Caribbean and Atlantic, they were all attracted primarily by the prodigious amounts of silver crossing these oceans.
On the other side of the Pacific, the sleepy port of Acapulco aroused itself from torpor at the approach of the não de china at least one a year and sometime more. The renowned Acapulco fair attracted buyers and onlookers—as many as ten thousand--from throughout Mexico and the rest of Spanish America, especially Peru, whose Potosí mines (in present-day Bolivia) produced much of the silver for the trade with China. (Porras, pp. 37) From Acapulco, much of the merchandize would make their way through the “camino de China” to Mexico City, where they would be bargained over and sold at the big alcaiceria also commonly called the Parián in the middle of the plaza mayor of Mexico City.