The Great Manila Galleons

As the entrepot between Asia and the West, Manila became the no. 1 city in the Orient in galleon days… Philippine agriculture, commerce and industry were enriched and advanced by the Manila Galleon… Epochal enough was the transfer of Western flora and fauna to the Philippines. Even more epochal was the transfer here of Western technology, with the galleons serving, literally, as vessels and media…. It was on the Manila Galleon that we began to become the Philippines.

- Nick Joaquin, National Artist for Literature (1991)

It has been more than a week since the Philippines’ second historic hosting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). It has brought leaders of 21 countries to come together in Manila for the liberalization of trade, having one common geographical denominator–their link to the Pacific. This concept of international cooperation across the said ocean is more ancient than we think.

In modern-day Philippines, we think of the Pacific Ocean as nothing more than the brewery of storms that has caused havoc in our countryside, but for the people of the past, this ocean served as a great link to numerous cultures—connections that span a millennia of contact. From the pre-colonial sturdy and impressive balanghai boats to the building of galleon ships, the Pacific Ocean had tested the Filipino skill of shipbuilding, which the first Spanish colonizers had encountered with awe.

This Pacific link is epitomized in the 16th to the early 19th century by the Manila Galleons, those large Spanish ships that set sail in the Pacific–the Galleon Trade. This trade aimed to ship Asia’s wealth (silk, pearls, porcelain, gold, ivory, etc.) once a year for 250 years across the treacherous Pacific to Acapulco, Mexico, and from Mexico to Seville in Spain. This was perhaps the very reason why the Spaniards kept the Philippines as a colony for three centuries, despite a lot of deficits in its maintenance. With trial and error–with numerous galleons shipwrecked and sunk (with some unimaginable loss of wealth now at the bottom of the ocean)–the Spaniards, Filipino shipbuilders and navigators, crossed the Pacific with great risk hoping for prosperity.

The Philippines became the gateway of the Spaniards to the lucrative trade in Asia, specifically with China. Initially, the Spaniards were hoping to transform the colony into another Moluccas, the Spice Islands where the Portuguese effectively established their outpost. But there were many factors that made this impossible. Agriculture was in its nascent phase (it was largely absent in the islands in the Pre-colonial Period). And since the Treaty of Tordesillas (having the world divided into two by the two great Catholic powers of Portugal and Spain), the Spanish spice trade, if there’s going to be one, had to take another route. The Galleons proved a better alternative. It took at least four months before a galleon arrived in its destination. However, when it arrived, it brought with it the promise of prosperity. Hence, Manila was transformed into a cosmopolitan center where the east and the west met for commerce, ideas, products, and information.

A cross-section of the Spanish galleon, illustrated by Stephen Biesty (published by Dorling Kindersley, 1992). See those cargo hold! 

By trial and error, thanks to the Spanish Friar Andres de Urdaneta, the discovery of the North Pacific current and the North Equatorial current that made up what is now called the “North Pacific Gyre” brought favorable winds to the sails of traveling Spanish galleons. Galleons were then built in the port of Cavite in Manila Bay. 

Eventually, the trade bred smuggling and corruption, and it attracted competitors. In 1578, Sir Francis Drake discovered the lucrative trade when he entered the Pacific, making Spanish galleons one of the prized loots for the English, causing economic disaster on our end in the Philippines. Furthermore, these galleons were often overloaded, since the entire colony often depended on just one shipment per year. Graft and contraband proliferated with regulations seen as only ‘suggestions’ that were never taken seriously.

This great trade link was severed with Mexico’s independence from Spain, as the last galleon ship Magallanes set sail for Acapulco from Manila in 1811.

Historians say that in the 250 year span of the galleon trade, approximately 250 million pesos of silver and 50 million in gold crossed the Pacific from Acapulco to Manila. And it was “one of the great commercial and logistical achievements in world history,” an example of early globalization. It was the galleon trade (with all its excesses and abuses), and the rising nationalist sentiments of the Spanish colonies that gave rise to the concept of the Filipino nation. 

Many accounts have been written about the Galleons, but unfortunately, the accounts only mention Filipinos in passing, remaining only on the fringes of primary sources. But we know better now, that the Filipinos then were active participants in this new order that the Spaniards had created. 

Traces of this link can still be seen today. In Pampanga, there’s this town called Mexico. A lot of Catholic images in old churches across the country were made in ivory, brought here by the galleons. Those who might go for a beach in Puerto Galera may be unaware that the name meant “Port of Galleon,” a pitstop of galleon ships from Manila before it sailed on to the vast Pacific Ocean. The cultural links, the food, the culture, even the Mexican community in the Philippines, and the Filipino community in Central and South America, including the Oceania area, may have largely began because of the galleon. 

The intrepid spirit, the spirit of “pakikipagsapalaran,” where the Filipino saw the world and his place in it–the galleon trade made that come out of Filipinos despite three centuries of Spanish colonial rule. 

Photos:

(1) Photo I took of the replica of Galeon Andalucia as it was docked at the Port Area in Manila last October 2010, in celebration of the Dia del Galeon. Galeon Andalucia is the only actual replica of a Spanish galleon that has ever been built.

(2) The port side of the Galleon Andalucia replica, last October 2010.

(3) The scale model of a Spanish galleon ship at the Ayala Museum. 

(4) Close up view of the galleon scale model at the Ayala Museum

(5) 1881 Line-block print of the Spanish Galleons sailing to the Pacific Ocean