Page 9 - Vol_2_Archaeology of Manila Galleon Seaport Trade

Introduction ix

origin, producing, transporting and trading of the galleon cargoes, etc. All of these
works collaborated on a new perspective of maritime archaeology and tracked the
different paragraphs of the galleon trade and af!liated maritime history, respec-
tively, summarized as the “Yuegang Outbound”, “Manila Entreportting”, and
“Bound for Acapulco”, preliminarily reconstructing a panoramagram of the history
of Spanish pan-Paci!c trade and early maritime globalization.
Part I: Yuegang Outbound: The Archaeology of Yuegang as the Key Transit
Terminal for Manila Galleons
Yuegang is located at the lower reach and estuary of Jiulongjiang ("!") as the
biggest river of southern Fujian. Yuegang had been the flourishing trade seaport of
Ming (!) Dynasty and the main transiting terminals for Manila galleons interacting
with mainland of East Asia. The investigations and excavations of Yuegang seaport
heritage, export ceramics kiln sites along the Jiulongjiang basin, junk shipwreck
sites along the coast of Southeast China, and the analyses and discussions on the
Yuegang maritime history related to the Manila and galleon trade were presented in
this panel.

Chunming Wu

Chunming Wu systematically reviewed the development of Yuegang seaport
and the archaeological discovery of cultural heritages. His paper Bound for
America: A Historical and Archaeological Investigation in Yuegang Seaport as the
Main Origin of Galleon Cargo presented the historical documents to show the
rising, changing, and decline of Yuegang seaport as the main transferring terminals
of galleon cargoes in Southeast China, and the archaeological remains as old harbor
architectures, exotic artifacts with multicultural types, and kiln sites of Yuegang
exported ceramic, showing the flourishing navigation of Yuegang outbound for
Manila and its maritime trade history.