A guest post by commenter Jefe:
Manila galleons (1565 to 1815) were large Spanish ships that sailed across the Pacific between New Spain (Mexico) and the Philippines. They allowed Spain to trade with East Asia without using Portuguese trade routes. They brought the first Asians to arrive in North America after Columbus.
In 1494, after Columbus confirmed the existence of the Americas, the Pope divided the Americas between Portugal and Spain, which they interpreted as applying to the whole non-Christian world. In effect, this gave Portugal the trade routes of the Indian Ocean, while Spain got any it discovered in the Pacific Ocean.
In 1521 Magellan discovered a westward route, catching the Pacific currents that go west along the equator. In the Philippines on the island of Cebu, Magellan commanded local chieftains to provide him with food and to convert to Christianity. Lapu-Lapu fought back and killed Magellan and most of his men. Only 18 made it back to Spain alive.
In 1565 Andrés de Urdaneta discovered the eastward route by sailing along the Kuroshio Current near Japan north of the 38th parallel and then catching the westerlies to bring him east across the Pacific. He landed in the Americas near Cape Mendocino in what is now known as Humboldt County, California. From there he followed the coast south to Acapulco, Mexico.
These discoveries led to the Manila Galleon Trade. The Spanish traded with Japan, Taiwan, Fujian province of Ming Dynasty China, Macau, East Timor and the Spice Islands (eastern Indonesia).
Most Manila galleons were built in the Philippines and manned by Filipino crews. Chinese merchants would also board these ships, sometimes bringing goods from Mexico back to China.
Goods from Asia bound for Europe had to cross overland to get to the Atlantic Ocean. One way was across Mexico from Acapulco to Veracruz in the Gulf of Mexico. The other way was to follow the coast south to the Isthmus of Panama, and cross there. From Veracruz, Spanish galleons (“treasure fleet”) would travel to ports around the Gulf of Mexico, including Florida, and then ride the Gulf Stream across the Atlantic to Spain. Some Filipino crew and Chinese merchants joined the galleons leaving Veracruz. (Veracruz was also where most Afro-Mexicans lived.)
The Manila galleons tried to avoid landing near the foggy, rugged northern California coast, preferring to stop in Point Conception (near Santa Barbara), or even Cabo San Lucas in Baja California, on the way to Acapulco. However, a more permanent way station was established in Monterey Bay in the mid-18th century.
The first post-Columbian record of Asians in North America were brought by the Manila galleons:
- In 1587 Filipinos landed in California at Morro Bay near San Luis Obispo, 33 years before the Mayflower.
- In 1595, a galleon shipwrecked near Point Reyes just north of the San Francisco Bay; survivors swam to shore.
- Chinese artifacts in Mexico date back to the 16th century;
- Chinese settlement in California goes back to at least the 17th century.
The word Filipino did not exist back then. Many Mexicans referred to them as “Chino”.
See also:
Abagond 
Dang jefe. You are guest posting a lot. Thank you! I love the information being provided.
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Super informative , Jefe
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Thanks Jefe, Excellent Information.
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Jefe, you are really bringing it. Thank you so much for providing this enlightening information. This is stuff I don’t ever remember learning in school — including college.
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..Awesome info, Jefe! I remember back in 7th grade (in San Fran,Cali) when a Filipino boy (someone I have grown uP with) and dated for many years, was called a “Chino” by one of my Mexican homeboys-when asked why he said (in a friendly tone) he replied: “I don’t know, it’s just what mi familia (his Mexican peoples in this instance) always called folks with his features. No one was offended between them both, yet reading the post I can’t help recall how some traditions and/or labels can be passed down so easily from generation-to-generation (be it good or bad) without so much as a thought from the respective community in which it hails from!
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@ Jefe
Wow. Great post, packed with light and sound!
I always heard that the Filipino sea-men are some of the finest there are today, but had no idea of their history.
This a post is so layered, it’s one I’ll have to come back to a couple of times to learn more.
Thank you.
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Re the last last drawing in the article, showing the various people beside the port — where is it from, what does it show, who is the artist?
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I am wondering what the relations were like with the Dutch during this time in this South Seas region, as I thought they were keen to secure trade monopolies around the same time ahead of the British and French…
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“In the Philippines on the island of Cebu, Magellan commanded local chieftains to provide him with food and to convert to Christianity. Lapu-Lapu fought back and killed Magellan and most of his men. Only 18 made it back to Spain alive.”
this part made me laugh a bit, really u go to someone’s home and tell them to serve u and convert to ur religion. I can only imagine what he said. If they didn’t fight back they would probably have been enslaved. Give me food, convert to my religion, now be my slave, smh the demands just keep growing, first food and teaching them how to survive then them turning on u and wanting to be superior.
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@Bulanik,
You know I put this post together over a year ago, and I can’t remember exactly where I lifted it from. I remember that it was a European drawing of a Chinese port city from the 17th century, I believe, showing that Europeans were in China at that time. But, I can’t tell you if it was Portuguese or Spanish, and which port in China it was. I had another drawing of Chinese traders in the Philippines. There are also life-size figures of chinese presenting goods to Filipino chieftains in some museum in the Philippines, dating back to something like the 15th century, even before the Spanish. That is why the Spanish encountered the Chinese traders first in the Philippines.
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@Bulanik,
I think the Dutch first followed the Indian Ocean routes some time after the Portuguese, following them and fighting for their settlements. Anyhow, but the 19th century, this was all moot – everyone was using the world shipping lanes by then.
One reason I wanted to do this post first was to illustrate the notion how the galleon trade evolved into the slave trade, in both the Atlantic and the Pacific. It was more practical to ship coolies over the Pacific then to ship Africans to the West Coast. Wasn’t Peru built on (mostly Chinese) coolie labour? I read that the opening of the Suez Canal was a major factor in changing the coolie trade to the Caribbean – much easier to ship Indians and Chinese to the Caribbean, and some of the Chinese coolies to the SE USA also came that way, or indirectly that way through the Caribbean, instead of on the Pacific side.
We still need posts on
– the Coolie Trade; and
– the Transpacific Slave trade.
But, I am not doing those 😛
You?
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@mstoogood4yall
Isn’t that what happened anyhow? The Spanish went back and settled there, demanded that the Filipinos serve them and converted them to Christianity over 350 years. They even shipped Filipinos overseas to be slaves in their colonies.
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@jefe
So the Philippines religion is Christianity throughout? I have always wondered this. I just never asked my filipino friends.
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@Sharina,
Not completely Christian throughout. Roughly it is about 90% Christian (80% of which is Catholic) and 6-8% Muslim. People also practice traditional folk beliefs, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism even Judaism. But it is a secular state, and not all people are necessarily that religious.
Most of the muslims are concentrated in sections in the Western third of Mindanao, the largest island in the South. Having said that, the Philippines is the 3rd largest Catholic nation in the world after Brazil and Mexico. Any chance for a Filipino pope?
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There are just somethings that are said in poor taste and that statement is one.
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@Jefe
I would love to say the chances are high for a Filipino pope, but I fear they will not be open to it. I was shocked to learn that even in the Philippines that the mission president of the church was white. If they can’t allow them such important spiritual roles in the bounds of there own country then I fear they will not be so happy about allowing one to be pope.
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@Sharina,
Are your Filipino friends Americans or raised in the USA? It might not always be appropriate to ask Americans of Filipino descent about a country if they have little direct experience with it or if they have not studied it in detail. Otherwise, you might be putting them on the spot and create an awkward situation.
If you don’t know what I mean, imagine asking a 4th generation Chinese-American if Chinese eat dog, or if Chinese are Christians or Buddhist. Even a first generation immigrant might find it awkward.
To handle that issue, it might be better to confirm a couple things about them first to make sure that they feel comfortable answering your questions. Besides, even few native born Filipinos have traveled across their country. They might be aware of muslim minorities, but may have never even seen them or know where they live. Of course, you can always ask people their opinions.
I had a roommate for 4 years who was a former researcher for the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) in Manila. He did field research on the Badjao who lived in Tawi Tawi in extreme western Mindanao and set up a permanent exhibit in the CCP, which I visited on my first trip to the Philippines. Maybe someone who worked in an area like that might be able to answer specific cultural questions if you get too far deep.
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A subplot of the novel “Shogun” (a fantastic read) concerns an English ship captain who learns of the Manila Galleon while shipwrecked on Japan and try’s to enlist the aid of a powerful Japanese warlord in building a new ship to hunt the Manila Galleon. The success of the Manila Galleon trade was crucial to the Spanish economy of the time.
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Jefe
They were born and raised in the Philippines. They immigrated here about 6 years ago, so we have been pretty close for a long time. Friendship at first meet I guess you can say. We have briefly spoken on other Christians but in her particular area she did not have high regards for them.
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Jefe
One of the major reason I asked is because I honestly thought they had no special cultural religion. At least one that was not connected to Christianity.
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George
I was referring to your comment in regards to it being in poor taste. There is soon much more to the Philippines than simply their celebrities. There is rich history and a great group of people. I just find it a bit annoying that you would choose now to be foolish.
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Most excellent as per usual, Jefe. I especially admire that you, an American of European & Chinese descent, would research and write an article which, for the most part, pertains to Filipinos / the Philippines, an Asian cultural heritage which is not your own.
Thank you, and Kudos to you as well.
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@Pay It Forward,
I have *kinda* adopted the Philippines as my second (or should I say 3rd or 4th pr 5th) cultural heritage.
– My Godmother (ninang) is Filipino-American. Since my parents died, I go to visit and stay with her when I go back to the DC area. I previously visited her brother in California and her daughter when she was living in Hawaii. Her daughters babysit me when I was a young child.
– My father used to go to the dance halls with his Filipino friends when he was young – he had more Filipino friends than Chinese friends when I was growing up.
– I was directly involved in a Filipino Cultural Ensemble in New York and did performances with them.
– I had Filipino roommates (from the Philippines) when I lived in New York and attended many social events with them
– Go to the Philippines 2-4 times per year – already spent a full month in Cebu this year. I have been all the way from Luzon to Mindanao to Palawan.
– lived in a neighborhood in New York that was 1/3 Filipino-American
– I picked up Tagalog and am trying to learn more Cebuano / Visaya now.
I never really thought of Filipinos as a separate culture from one that I could participate in ever since I was born. That is why I was really taken aback when Randy told me that he was uniquely entitled to comment about Filipinos and I should not have a valid opinion about a culture I know nothing about.
And it is one reason I feel sensitivity, say, to the Riots and killings of Filipino-American men who danced with white women. My father used to go to the dance clubs with Filipinos. My parents told me many stories of what happened to them.
.All the neighborhoods I lived in growing up became overwhelmingly majority black. I also lived in majority Latino neighborhoods. I went to a university that was half Jewish. My mother is from a small city in Alabama. I see all of it as part of my background that I grew up with.
Anyhow, the main point of this post was not about Philippine-American history, but about the origin of the Transpacific trade routes, something that *ALL* Americans should know something about.
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@Sharina,
If you go to the Philippines, or to Filipino communities in the USA, you will see that a lot of their family life is connected directly to the Catholic Church. The main holidays in the Philippines follow the Christian religion. Besides Holy Week / Easter and Christmas, they also observe All Saint’s Day on Nov. 1.
Maybe 10% of Filipinos are non-Catholic Christians. The largest is Iglesia ni Cristo (Church of Christ) but you can find Filipinos following all sorts of different denominations.
If you travel around the Philippines, you will see some mosques, esp. in Mindanao. I also ran into T’boli and other non-Christian groups who practice folk religions, esp. in Mindanao, but I think also in Luzon.
But, not all Filipinos are that religious. I guess it is the same as Americans. Some are very religious and some are not that religious at all. But there are more Catholics in the Philippines than there are in the entire USA.
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@ Jefe, re the drawing at the bottom of your post:
It’s a
To me, the drawing also seems to reflect something that was customary during the era in Chinese (and Japanese) ports: controlled relationships between Europeans and the Chinese / Japanese.
By that, I mean the foreigners were confined to the Far East’s port cities, rather than the interior. Then it was a world in which Europe was at a trade deficit, striving to cater to Asia’s sophisticated, pre-existing trade system when the Europeans arrived, a system that Asia, not Europe, controlled.
Although you say “Chinese merchants would also board these ships, sometimes bringing goods from Mexico back to China” — I wonder what these goods were? Perhaps clocks, mirrors, glassware or such, because there was not comparable mass importation of Western goods into China.
I was always under the impression that this trade was the exchange of Chinese (or Philippine) goods for silver from Peruvian and Mexican mines.
In part, at least.
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Jefe
Thank you for the information. I actually hear very good things about the Philippines and I look forward to going.
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@Bulanik,
Thank you for sharing your train of thought, but at this stage, I also have more questions than answers.
Yes, foreigners were confined to ports like Macau, Canton (Guangzhou) which is up the Pearl River from the Coast, Swatow (Shantou) and Amoy (Xiamen). HK did not come on the scene until 19th century. And the trade system within Asia was already in sway when Europeans arrived.
Agree that the trade with Spain was largely one-sided. The Galleons brought Chinese goods (silk, tea) to Europe and returned to Asia with Silver. Of course it was not 100%, but I need (or someone else can) to do more research to find out exactly what the content was. The shipwrecks at the bottom of the South China Sea uncovered mostly Chinese artifacts and Spanish silver. Maybe we can also take a look at the articles in the Silk Road trade, which linked Asia to Europe.
I also want to know more about the Canton System
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canton_System)
I suspect that China was not interested in trading much with Western countries, so little mass importation of Western goods entered china. This might have been one of the reasons that started the Opium War – if China would not buy western goods, then the West needed to start demand for western goods in China. Sometimes, I feel that we are repeating history again today. ha-ha.
But you brought up another point – Silver from Mexico, Peru and other parts of South America. Who worked these mines? coolies? My main idea was the bringing up the Transpacific galleon trade as a precursor to the Transpacific slave trade.
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@ Jefe
I feel you’re right about coolies from China working the Peruvian silver mines.
The Spanish called them colonos asiáticos.
Aftet the native Americans were used to mine the silver, and their numbers dwindled quickly from the deadly working conditins, the enslaved Africans were used. After the abolition of slavery, the Chinese indentured labourers were shipped in appalling conditions, before being sold to the highest bidder and kept in varying degrees of dehumanizing bondage, somewhat like the Africans before them.
Like the Africans before them, the coolies were probably used as mules, although humans lasted longer than mules — mules typically died after just a few weeks of brutal mining work. Humans last a few months.
Often, miners “spent weeks underground, causing many to die from exposure. To remove silver from ore, silver-rich stones were crushed into powder. Mercury was added to the powder and the mixture was heated to extract the silver. Many miners suffered poisoning as a result of breathing the lethal vapours..”
These days in Bolivia’s silver mines, which have far improved and life-saving methods of extracting silver from the terrain, the work is still hazardous.
Any young male who continues to work in the mines until adulthood cannot expect a long life. Most miners develop silicosis, a lung disease caused by bits of silica embedding deep into thelung tissue, and die from it.
The life expectancy of a Potosí miner is around age 40.
http://www.pimsleurapproach.com/blog/spanish/silver-mines-of-potosi
I’m not under the impression that “most” of silver from New Spain ended up in China, though, from what I gather, most of the silver that China accrued through (and used for monetization, metal currency) was mined in Japan. (http://fish.miracle.ne.jp/silver/english/role.html)
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@ Jefe So, what are your thoughts about the explanation of Filipinos being labeled as “Chinos/Chinese”? Did you ever hear any opinions from anyone about this topic (on a personal level), as I did? I’m curious as to how other peoples have felt about this (misguided) viewpoint..
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@Bulanik,
It seems like you enjoy delving more and more into this issue of the coolie trade. Since you are learning so much about it, why don’t you do a full post.
I suggested to Abagond over a year ago that he should do something about either the Transpacific Slave Trade or the Coolie trade. The way he wrote it sounded as if all the slaves in the Americas came from Africa. I knew that that wasn’t 100% correct and once I started to look into it, I saw that the Transpacific coolie trade witnessed a many hundreds of thousands coolies across the Pacific, most notably to Peru, Mexico and the USA. There was some across the Atlantic from Asia to the Caribbean too, but it really exploded after the Suez Canal was opened in 1869 which shaved off weeks from the trip.
In fact, the explosive growth of the coolie trade followed right after countries started to ban
If you look at the global Coolie trade, including both the Atlantic and Pacific and Indian Ocean into the Americas, Africa, the Indian Ocean and SE Asia, I think that it was arguably even more extensive than the Middle Passage, in both numbers and in time period. It lasted well into the 20th century, and by some reckoning, still going on today (of course they do not call them coolies anymore).
And regarding the argument that it was not comparable to the African slave trade, I found more similarities than differences, e.g.,
– They were crammed into “slave” ships with high mortality (the diagrams of some of those ships do not look much different than the African slave ships)
– They were forced into indentured servitude, many with no chance of escaping their predicament
– some were traded among different “employers”
– (As you mentioned), they were often worked to death.
There are differences:
– in many cases, they brought mostly men and few women. Only in some of the locations did they bring women later.
– even if some coolies were locked into indentured servitude for life, they would not transfer it to their children
– with few women, at least in the beginning, the “employers” did not create new generations of coolies by making females pregnant.
– The descendants of the 19th century Asian coolies are often no longer recognizably Asian. Their modern day descendants are more likely to be white, black, or mestizo (or in South Africa, into “Cape Coloureds”).
– those places that have populations that are recognizably Asian today and are descendant from 19th century coolies had a lot of women transported also.
In a post from a few years ago, Abagond mentioned that DNA testing revealed that African-Americans were about 3% Asian and 3-4% Native American, but he believed that the Asian ancestry must be Native American.
(https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/some-numbers-on-black-americans/)
I disagree. I already found out that there are hundreds of thousands of blacks who are descendant from 19th century Chinese in the USA alone.Some also have Japanese or Filipino ancestry. At least 20% of Peruvians are party of Chinese descent. I suspect there is a considerable amount of Asian ancestry in modern day Mexicans. And I know many cases where Chinese fathers sent their part-Mexican, part-Peruvian, part- Jamaican (and yes, part-white and part-black from the USA) children, particularly sons, back to China to get educated and even find a Chinese wife. Some of them came back to the Americas, some did not. I worked with a lady in HK who had a Chinese-Mexican grandfather, but had two families, one with a Chinese wife, one with a Mexican wife. He brought the sons of the ones with the Chinese wife to HK. She is 7/8 Chinese, and finally connected about 10 years ago with her Mexican aunts and uncles and first cousins who are 1/4 and 1/8 Chinese respectively.
The silver trade is another interesting topic. Maybe you can follow up on that?
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[…] Filipinos landed in California at Morro Bay near San Luis Obispo in 1587, 33 years before the Mayflower. […]
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@ Jefe
I don’t know about writing anything like that.
I don’t that much about coolie slavery. I still haven’t read the books I’d like to about this form of slavery in the New World. I do agree with you though, that the way Abagond has sometimes written about slavery, one would think that the slaves in the Americas came exclusively from Africa.
This causes it a little dismay as the Chinese and Indian coolies in my family and many, many other people, remain ever in silence, and invisible.
Especially when you consider this:
There differences to enslaved Africans, though, are intriguing: factors like these:
it raises some questions about “coolie women”, in comparison to what we know of way the African woman labour AND reproductive capacities were employed and interpreted in the Americans.
I am also curious how come Abagond would classify the 3% Asian DNA as Native American. Why is Asian ancestry so readily dismissed / subsumed in this way? Do you call you concluded it might be a kind of confirmation bias when the discussion of non-white inter-racial couples came up on the Inter-racial Relationships’ thread? It was thought that IRRs of that kind (that exclude white people) don’t exist because when they were seen…they weren’t seen!
I remember touching on this custom among black people with another commenter, Ebonymonroe.
There was also some discussion about the experience of coolie women on the ships. Mentioned about half way down here:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2013/10/10/interracial-relationships/#comment-201594
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correction:
*do you recall you concluded it might be a kind of confirmation bias…
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Reblogged this on Living in Anglo-America.
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Indeed, Bulanik, it raises more questions than answers, and I wish I knew more too. Unfortunately, this whole history has been erased from our education.
One thing I do know. – The Slave trade to the Americas was not just from Africa, many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, were imported from Asia to the Americas too. They also brought Asian Coolies to Africa and around southeast Asia, which explains why half the population in the Malay Peninsula, Mauritius, etc. is half Chinese or Indian, It explains why Guyana has more people of Indian descent than African descent. It helps explains why African-Americans have 3% Asian (relatively recent) DNA. It involved many millions of people and went on for several more centuries than the African slave trade.
But, if you were to read US history textbooks, or even Abagond’s blog, you would have no inkling that it even happened in the first place, esp. if he simply wrote off the Asian ancestry in modern day African-Americans and not try to find out how and why. One of my attractions to Abagond’s blog was his mission to set history right. Well, that includes giving the Asian Slave / coolie trade its just recognition. Maybe we have to have someone who is descendant from them to research the family tree, and write something about the coolie trade to the Americas and about the relationship between African descendant people and Asian coolies.
Actually, I think I might have found a blog site of someone who writes on race relations, who is doing that to some extent. She is black American, but can trace part of her ancestry to 19th century Chinese and Japanese labourers. Need to find it again.
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Mz. Nikita – tried to reply to you, but some reason the post is not being accepted.
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Mz Nikita, I suggested you take a look at Wikipedia’s article on Chinese Peruvians. They talk a little bit about the use of the word “Chino” there.
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@ Jefe
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@Bulanik, I refer to your quote from Abagond’s entry
Maybe it would take another 10-20 words to say that, after 1838, the British continued to import Asian (“coolie”) labourers from India and China until the early 20th century, and their descendants form almost 4% of the population.
The history of Asian Jamaicans becomes omitted with just a bit of oversight. Given his West Indian background, I thought he would not have just merely forgotten about it. Maybe this is consistent with his strong belief that American blacks could not possibly have as much Asian ancestry as Native American ancestry.
Even Tiger Woods has Chinese ancestry (not to mention European ancestry) on BOTH his parents’ sides. His Dad is also part Chinese.
One of my closest friends is descended of Hakka Chinese from Bao’an, which is what Shenzhen used to be called. His grandfather’s siblings migrated to Jamaica about 100 years ago, and some married blacks. One of his 1/2 black father’s cousin was sent back to China to get educated (and ended up marrying a Chinese woman), but most of his second cousins in Jamaica are 1/4 Chinese and their kids, which would be becoming adults now, could be as little as 1/8 Chinese.
Actually, that is what happened more or less to the history of Asian-Americans as long as people prefer to believe that they are almost all new immigrants, and therefore foreigners NOT part of US history. Their history gets erased.
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@ Jefe
When I said earlier that I’m not under the impression that “most” of silver from New Spain ended up in China…most of the silver that China accrued…was mined in Japan, I said so because I believe the Asian side of the story of silver has been left out a bit.
This is not so different from the idea that although the Spanish were supposedly lured to the Americas, or Indies, by gold, they were in fact made rich by silver. History tells it lop-sidedly. As though Europe were the centre of the worold. In the case of trade, what your post shows is that economic modernity did NOT emerge out of a special brand of Western European dynamism. What it shows is that Europe was actually more of slow-developer and that there was a world economy that was densely integrated since the 16th century!
Actually, when the Basque explorers pronounced Manila the capital of New Spain, this could have been the starting point of what we now consider World Trade, because it was at this point at which maritime routes were established between the 4 continents. Another of looking at it: Spain may not have become the world power of the time if it had not been for China’s appetite for silver. The Spanish needed Africans to dig out the silver from the mines, and the Spanish may have exchanged some of that silver in exchange for the slaves…
I only know drips and drabs about silver in Asia’s trade or history.
But going by general info about Japan’s history of silver mining, Japanese silver supplied a third of the world’s silver up until the 1690s and that ended up in China.It tailed off after that, and gradually Mexico would become the biggest exporter in the Americas after Bolivia’s and Peru’s supplies waned. (Iwami Ginzan is now on the Unesco World Heritage list:http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1246)
The mine in Japan featured “routes used to transport silver ore to the coast, and port towns from where it was shipped to Korea and China.”
And as we established earlier — Japan’s Edo Period (1603 to 1868) was a time of enforced isolation (Sakoku) and this isolation “impeded the introduction of technologies developed in Europe during the Industrial Revolution” from coming into Japan’s mining industry, and perhaps prolonging it.
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Contd.
Something which seems to be taken for granted in looking at this is that, China’s population must have always been huge, or grew greatly during this period. Why did their government need so much silver for?
Note the rise in population at this time, about a third of the way down:
http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_1950_population.htm
Was there environmental change in China at this time? How did the Chinese population change?
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Contd.
Instead of the looking at graphs, I decided to read the text! LOL.
The answer is that the population expanded in China due:
The introduction of higher-yielding rice seeds and earlier ripening varieties of rice increased productivity from existing intensively tilled fields.
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This is all very interesting. I bet that it is not covered much in world history as it is taught in Europe, the Americas, or Asia.
Maize, Sweet Potatoes and Peanuts are all big crops in both the Philippines and China (not to mention tobacco). It makes sense that a population explosion could occur after the introduction of new crops. And many of the New World Crops are probably more suitable to be grown in Asia rather than Europe.
Maybe the trade FROM Asia simply involved more HUMAN cargo.
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@ Jefe
This subject is far bigger than first glance, and some of the things you’ve said have made me pause. Althogether, this a big subject that has been made habitually and artificially small.
When you think about the location of the Philippines so near to China, the size of the archipelago, the existence and potential for cultural exchange and maritime routes — this area could have outstripped the expansion of the West Indies and slave trade there, couldn’t it?
But Manila or the Philippines was never a Viceroyalty of Spain, just a periphery, a territory. But why?
As a territory, was it too jealously guarded and fought over for that kind of expansion? The ambitious Dutch were there. The possessive Portuguese were there. There were other forces at play.
On reflection, they may have had a plentiful supply of slaves already to tap into. Slavery and Islam have been talked about now and again sometimes on this blog, but although this form of slavery has been discussed mainly in relation to Africans, Asia and Asians have rarely been mentioned in this context. I only realised the potential magnitude of Asia’s slave trade when I first discovered who and what Cape Malays were: Indonesian slaves freighted to South Africa, and the seed-bearers of Islam in that country.
It was from a South African Muslim that I first learned that slavery was integral to the Islamised parts of Southeast Asia, and the products of this labour force ended up in trade with China. I recall another Chinese friend of mine once saying how good bird’s nest soup was. I had never heard of such a thing! and being even more surprised to discover that the harvesting of these nests (from Borneo) had probably been the traditional task of slaves. Then, that apart from “agricultural” products like these, slaves — especially female ones — were sought — violently abducted — not only for their labour but also, for use and sale as cucubines. Of course, where ever there are numbers of concubines, there are probably eunuchs, too. Well, at least at one time — in that setting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_bird's_nest
Islamic-type of slavery did not start off as the organised criminal-capitalist trafficking it came to eventually be — but it lay the seeds of it. Ethnicity after ethnicity were targeted for slave-raids and hunted down. I don’t know if any study has been done that charts the numbers, regions, populations and timelines.
These days, there are millions of slaves in this region of Southeast Asia — in fact you mentioned modern day slavery in another thread, among millions.
I knew what you meant…Southeast Asia alone has various different kinds of coerced slavery. But, whatever of the Muslims of the those times called slavery — whether “sultanate” slavery, regulated by concomitant laws to humanise it or not — it still set the precedent and normalisation (?) for what came to be throughout the centuries what it exists now.
http://www.academia.edu/4530579/Sources_in_Southeast_Asian_History
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@ Jefe, I hve a comment in mod. about slavery during the time of galleons, but apart from coolies, what do you know about the slave trade in Southeast Asia? Obviously it still goes on and affects millions of enslaved people, but I am trying to piece together a basic jigsaw of it…
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It’s funny, but now I am working in Corporate Social Responsibility now and auditing social systems of factories across Asia. I also have been attending seminars about human trafficking and bringing people into forced bonded labour. It is rife in SE Asia, but not only there. There are more slaves today than there have ever been.
I think Malaysia is a hotspot. The factories there cannot get enough workers so I believe there is considerable trafficking into the country.
Lifelong indentured servitude and and capture and enslavement of people (a la Solomon Northrup) is still going on today, unfortunately, and at a much larger scale than ever.
I certainly do not have all the pieces, but what piece are you trying to find?
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My reply is in moderation too.
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My post from 02.20 is still in moderation.
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Bulanik, Hi, your post came out of moderation.
Yes, This topic is enormous. Maybe we should put it at the coolie trade once that one, if ever, is up.
The Treaty of Tordesillas basically split up South America. It did not split up Asia. But Spain later claimed it did and drew up the Treaty of Zaragoza. But the Philippines lay west of that line, so technically belonged to Portugal. But it seems like it was poorly enforced, and Spain seized it. Portugal first explored Taiwan (Formosa), but the Spanish and Dutch carved their own pieces out of it. It seems like the Spanish did not have the resources to defend their claim.
Taiwan did not have that many Han Chinese when the Dutch first occupied Taiwan. The Dutch encouraged large immigration of young males from Fujian province to work for them. So maybe it was the Dutch that actually caused Taiwan to be populated by Chinese who would eventually rise up and defeat them.
I am not sure how the Spanish and the Dutch divided the line between the Philippines and Indonesia, or the line between British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies. It is not a natural boundary line. So much I don’t know.
China expressly halted Europeans from entering into the interior of China.
Maybe one difference between SE Asia and the Caribbean was that the Europeans, failing to make slaves of the Native Americans, killed them off or drove them out and made room for African slaves (which is much closer to the Caribbean). In Asia, they continued making slaves of other Asians and did not import Africans into Asia. So they imported Chinese from Mainland china to Taiwan, the Malay Peninsula (where they also brought Indians) and to the Philippines.
Asians were imported as slaves into South Africa. and yes, The nest Materials for Birds nest soup relished in China are harvested from the Philippines and Indonesia, probably needing slave labour to harvest. and I am sure slavery and the spread of Islam is no casual connection.
There is no shortage of subject material here. But I am sure the Asian slave trade eclipsed any African slave trade manifold. And it is still going on today, even on a bigger scale in numerical terms.
But for THIS month’s theme, we also need to learn something about how the Asian coolie trade impacted the United States.
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@ Jefe, thank you for explaining that slavery aspect. I didn’t realise any of that. Only just starting to join up some very disparate dots!
I haven’t thought about the impact and import of the coolie trade on the US as yet. The subject is so unwieldy, so vast, and the occurrence over such a long period. I have to yet to get my head around it…it’s also part of my family’s history. And that’s certainly not been something that I have properly understood in its wider context.
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@Bulanik,
You know I read somewhere before that modern Taiwanese have some Dutch DNA (in addition to Austronesian Aboriginal DNA) in their ancestry. I wonder how the society treated those 17th century Dutch-chinese children – were they given power over the slaves from Fujian, or were they treated as slaves. I doubt many were taken back to Holland. The history is totally subsumed and may be difficult to ever know.
Many, but not all of the 19th Chinese immigrants to the USA were “coolies” (the term we can use to mean Asian slave). Chinese came to the USA for a variety of reasons, some of which include running businesses. But of course, many came as coolies. You might be interested to learn that the USA passed the “Coolie Act” in 1862:
(http://library.uwb.edu/guides/usimmigration/1862_anti_coolie_law.html)
meaning that after 1862, Chinese immigrants to the USA had to be hired on labour contracts, further bolstered by the Burlingame Treaty with China in 1868.
Of course, “coolie” is just a name. Many Chinese labourers after 1862 came as debt-induced bonded labour or indentured servant, while US employers often reneged on their contracts. The treatment is not much different from slave. But you will notice that the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) refers to Chinese laborer, not Chinese coolie.
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[…] Filipinos landed in California at Morro Bay near San Luis Obispo in 1587, 33 years before the Mayflower. […]
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[…] See on abagond.wordpress.com […]
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@ Jefe
No, not exactly and not at all.
In some places it can be used as an epithet to tormet and demean.
In the Caribbean islands, it is used to describe people of Indian-descent, the descendents of indentured servants after African slavery ended.
It can be used as a term of endearment, true, but if you have been on the receiving end of the violence of being called “A Coolie”, it simply isn’t just another word for “Asian slave”.
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Sorry about that. I used it in a context that could be mis-interpreted.
I meant in the context of the 1862 US law itself. The fact that the US banned the coolie trade does not mean that it did not continue under a different name (e.g., forced indentured labour from China or other parts of Asia).
Of course, coolie has a deep meaning across the world. Originally of Indian origin, there is a similar word in several dozen languages across the world. The meaning is essentially the same as “Asian slave” or refers to that.
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@ Jefe Thanks a lot for the reference point (link), even though I didn’t see the full extent of your previous post that you sent to me earlier(?) Will dig into this, more! 😀
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[…] Manila galleons […]
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“Most Manila galleons were built in the Philippines and manned by Filipino crews.” – This rings a bell. Most European vessels nowadays (wherever they may actually flagged, but owned by European companies) often are manned by Philippine crews today, at last when it comes to the hardest chores. The captains or officers typically still are of European extraction.
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There is an official historical marker in Morry Bay California
http://morro-bay.com/historical/Philippine-plaque/text-of-plaque.htm
Historical Landmark, declared by the Filipino American National Historical Society, California Central Coast Chapter, Dedicated October 21, 1995
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@ Jefe:
I’m always impressed by your depth of knowledge. I have briefly heard of the Manila galleons through my parents. When I was a child, they told me that it was not true the Pilgrims landed in America first. And it’s plain to see, Asians have already made their mark even then. Now I have to ask, are you sure you don’t have Filipino in you? 😛 You’d made a great honorary Filipino. 😎
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@keigh204
Sorry for taking so long to reply.
The question I ask is … why do Filipinos learn this in their history classes but Americans do not?
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Just read that Magellan died in Cebu 495 years ago TODAY.
I have been both to the monument to him in Punta Arenas, Chile, as well as Cebu, Philippines. (Actually, the one in the Philippines is for Lapu-Lapu, who killed him, but his statue is still there nevertheless.)
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Very interesting. Recently we tested my father’s Y-DNA. Records we have found, through genealogical research, indicate that my father’s paternal side has been in Mexico for at least 200 years. We were surprised to learn that my dad is of the Y-DNA haplogroup O, which is a predominantly Asian haplogroup. I believe that the history of events and trade routes in your article are perhaps a key piece of the puzzle of my father’s ancestral roots.
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