In this study of the Portuguese intervention in the Manila Galleon Trade, Etsuko Miyata explores its history through a new approach: the examination of Chinese ceramics.

Villamar examines the role of Portuguese merchants in the formation of the Manila Galleon as a system of trade founded at the end of the sixteenth century. The rise of Manila as a crucial transshipment port was not a spontaneous incident. Instead, it came about through a complex combination of circumstances and interconnections that nurtured the establishment of the Manila Galleon system, a trading mechanism that lasted two and half centuries from 1565 until 1815. Villamar analyses the establishment of the regulatory framework of the trade across the Pacific Ocean as a whole setting that provided legality to the transactions, predictability to the transportation and security to the stakeholders. He looks both at the Spanish crown strategy in Asia, and the emergence of a network of Portuguese merchants located in Manila and active in the long-distance trade. This informal community of merchants participated from the inception of the trading system across the Pacific, with connections between Europe, ports in Asia under the control of Portugal, the Spanish colonies in America, and the city of Manila. From its inception, the newly-founded capital of the Philippines became a hub of connections, attracting part of the trade that already existed in Asia. Surveying the Portuguese commercial networks from the ‘Estado da Índia’ across the ‘Spanish lake,’ this book sheds light on the early modern globalization from a truly comprehensive Iberian perspective. This is a valuable resource for scholars of Pacific and Iberian trade history and the maritime history of Asia.

This book focuses on the archaeological and historical research on the seaport heritage of galleon navigation in Asia-Pacific region. It reconstructs the Manila Galleons’ era of early maritime globalization, established and operated by Spanish navigators from the 16th to 19th centuries. The galleons sailed across the Pacific via the hub seaports and trade centers of Manila in the Philippines and Acapulco in Mexico, forming a prosperous sea route connecting eastern Asia and New Spain on the American continent for more than 250 years. This pioneering navigation of the pan-Pacific regions promoted early global maritime trade along the new Maritime Silk Road between the East and the West. Written by archaeologists and cultural historians from America, Mexico, Japan, the Philippines, Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, it presents the latest investigations and research on the galleon-affiliated seaports, including Acapulco and San Blas in Mexico, Guam, Manila in Philippines, Yuegang (Crescent Harbor), Xiamen (Amoy), Keelung and Macao in China, Nagasaki in Japan. This joint research sheds new light on the history of navigation and maritime trade between galleon-affiliated harbors; the origin, production, transport and trade of the galleon cargo; social cultural exchange along the new Maritime Silk Road in the pan-Pacific region; and the history of maritime globalization in last 500 years. It offers a new perspective on maritime archaeology and traces the different stages of the galleon trade and affiliated maritime history, including "Yuegang Outbound", "Manila Entrepotting" and "Bound for Acapulco", presenting a panoramagram of Spanish pan-Pacific trade and early maritime globalization.

The economic history of early India is a rich and diverse area of study, covering agricultural developments, trade, markets, occupation and professional groups, urbanization and the institutions that govern the economy. Recent research has expanded our understanding of the processes of transformation of the economy in different temporal contexts within the Indian sub-continent. They have particularly led us to explore connected histories given the trans-continental trading networks and movements of people from very early times. This volume seeks to draw attention to this vast and unexplored terrain in the economic history of early India, by bringing together essays on a new and rich historiography. Essays in the volume cover neglected regions, economic processes and structures. Scholars have looked at questions of settlements, crops that were cultivated and market orientation. Essays cover material culture and provide insights into how early Indians lived, what kinds of activities they were engaged in, and how they organised their production activities within and outside domestic spaces. Further the volume bring new insights on hierarchy of settlement types, nature of exchange, and the significance of a nodal site in exchange networks. Maritime history as well as the understanding of trade in its varied forms and manifestations are covered in several essays.

This book analyzes the exchange relations between the colonies of the Iberian Empires, starting from two cities ports, Buenos Aires and Macau in the period 1580-1700. Agents, who were not professional traders such as the members of the Society of Jesus, and the circulation and consumption of Asian goods in the local populations of Buenos Aires and Macau, were analyzed. Both cases of study will show us how these non-state agents- the Jesuits- build their own networks and exchange channels to Chinese goods distribution (i.e silk, porcelain, musk, amber and others) between Asia and Latin American. This book intends to break with the local scheme of Jesuit studies in order to combine the local scale with analysis of inter-regional processes on a continental scale, from a comparative perspective.

Crossroads of Cuisine offers history of food and cultural exchanges in and around Central Asia. It discusses geographical base, and offers historical and cultural overview. A photo essay binds it all together. The book offers new views of the past.

This collection of 13 essays deals with a range of topics concerning Portuguese, Dutch and Chinese merchants, commodities and commerce in maritime Asia in the early modern period from c. 1585-1800. They are based on exhaustive research and careful analysis of diverse sets of archival materials found around the globe. Written by a leading authority on global maritime economic history and the history of European Expansion, each individual essay addresses a topic of fundamental importance to those interested in knowing more about what merchants did (with which resources and under what conditions) and how they did it, what were the commodities that were incorporated into local, regional, intra-regional and global economies, and what was the role and function of early modern maritime trade and commerce in economic development in general and especially in Asia in the early modern era, from c. 1585-1800. A number of them, in particular, relate the individual or collective merchant experience to specific European (Portuguese and Dutch) imperial projects and their contestation amongst themselves and their indigenous neighbours over portions of the period. Collectively, they form an exposition of a utilitarian view of human activity under a wide-ranging different set of circumstances and conditions but with similar patterns of behaviors and responses that are largely independent from ethnic, racial or religious stereotyping. The work therefore should raise new issues and avenues of research concerning these agents and objects in European Expansion, Asian and Global History.