Studies of the trade between the Atlantic World and Asia during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries typically focus on the exchanges between Atlantic European countries – especially Portugal, the Netherlands and England – and Asia across the Cape route. In The Atlantic World and the Manila Galleons. Circulation, Market, and Consumption of Asian Goods in the Spanish Empire, 1565-1650, José L. Gasch-Tomás offers a new approach to understanding the connections between the Atlantic World and Asia. By drawing attention to the trans-Pacific trade between the Americas and the Philippines, the re-exportation of Asian goods from New Spain to Castile, and the consumption of Chinese silk, Chinese porcelain and Japanese furnishings in New Spain and Seville, this book discloses how New Spanish cities and elites were main components of the spread of taste for Asian goods in the Spanish Empire. This book reveals how New Spanish family and commercial networks channelled the market formation of Asian goods in the Atlantic World around 1600.

This groundbreaking book presents the first full history of the Manila galleons, which marked the true beginning of a global economy. Arturo Giraldez, the world’s leading scholar of the galleons, traces the rise of the maritime route, which began with the founding of the city of Manila in 1571 and ended in 1815 when the last galleon left the port of Acapulco in New Spain (Mexico) for the Philippines, establishing a permanent connection between the Spanish empire in America with Asian countries, most importantly China, the main supplier of commodities during that era. Throughout the two-and-a-half-century history of the Manila galleons, the strategic commodity fuelling global networks was always silver. Giraldez shows how this most important of precious metals shaped world history, with influences that stretch to the present.

2011 Updated Reprint. Updated Annually. Philippines Foreign Policy and Government Guide