Page 280 - Vol_2_Archaeology of Manila Galleon Seaport Trade

254 K. Castillo and P. Fournier

Mexico. According to Trilling (2003: 28), the development of ornament is a process
that takes place over a long period of years and involves changes in taste, economic
fluctuations, discoveries of new materials and techniques, revivals, and multiple
culture contacts and influences resulting from trade, migrations, and conquests. This
process is readily evident in colonial Mexican majolica, which was born out of an
entangled mesh in which Islamic, European, Oriental, and Indigenous ornaments
were merged together. This chapter focuses on the influence of Chinese porcelain in
colonial Mexican majolica with a particular emphasis in ornament understood as a
term that articulates both surface and the decorative motifs that appear on it (Hay
2016: 62). By analyzing the unique ways in which Chinese ornaments were adopted
and adapted by colonial potters into a style of their own this work explores the
cross-cultural circulation of ornamental elements in the majolica of New Spain,
emphasizing how some of these elements were abstracted to the point that they
became part of the traditional repertoire of what today is considered traditional
Mexican majolica.

15.2 The Manila Galleon Trade

For more than two centuries, the Manila Galleon traveled between the port of
Acapulco in New Spain and the city of Manila in the Philippines, transporting
valuable merchandise meant to satisfy the demand of luxury goods and precious
metals that became so important in the Early Modern world. In 1521, the same year
of the fall of Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec empire, Ferdinand Magellan landed
in the Philippines, establishing a westward route that linked the Americas with
Asia. It was not until 1565 that the eastward route was discovered by Andrés de
Urdaneta, opening up the way for the formalized annual round trip of the Manila
Galleon in 1587 (Fournier and Charlton 2015: 45–46; Junco and Fournier 2008: 5;
Fournier 2014: 558; Kuwayama 1997: 11; Legarda 1955: 345; Schurz 1985: 181).
The establishment of this maritime route inserted the Spanish empire into a complex
commercial network that had existed in Asia for centuries (Finlay 1998: 152, 161;
Little 1996: 47; Skowronek 1998: 48), and provided Spain and its colonies with
direct access to a myriad of exotic objects, many of which became symbols of high
status, elegance, and opulence; these included silk and other luxury fabrics, ivory,
lacquer, and porcelain (Fournier and Bracamontes 2010: 339; Junco and Fournier
2008: 3). The silver extracted from the mines of Mexico and Peru made it possible
for the transpaci!c commerce to flourish under Spanish control from about 1573,
when the !rst galleon full of Asian products arrived in the coast of New Spain, until
1815, when the annual voyage was suppressed and the last Manila Galleon made its
last trip westward (Fournier and Bracamontes 2010: 339, 347; Fournier and
Charlton 2015: 46; Kuwayama 1997: 11, 13).
Acapulco was named the of!cial port of entry of the Manila Galleon in 1582, but
before arriving to its !nal destination, the galleon stopped at San Blas, Nayarit,
where it left some merchandise to be distributed in Tepic and Guadalajara, and