Page 96 - Vol_2_Archaeology of Manila Galleon Seaport Trade

3 The Investigation and Preliminary Analysis of Nan’ao … 63

European and eastern Asia in fact continued and outstretched this traditional route
from the east to the west.
In 1570s, the Spanish navigators intruded into and controlled the Philippine
island setting up the transpaci!c Manila galleon trade route. After that the porce-
lains of Jingdezhen and Zhangzhou kiln exported largely to the Philippines for
trading with Spanish. Before the Spanish arrived, the small scale of smuggling
trades had existed between the Chinese merchants and the Philippine aboriginals
through middlemen of Muslim merchants of Moroland in south of Philippine. As
the trade center of Spanish galleon in Asia, the Philippines didn’t produce either
perfume or gold and silver artifacts. So the Spanish merchants implemented the
policy of attracting Asian merchants from China, Japan, Siam, Cambodia and Spice
Islands who frequented Manila that made Manila city the collecting and distributing
center of galleon cargo. The Spanish shipped silver and gold products, as well as
other cargoes from Acapulco of Mexico to Manila, purchased Chinese silk, velu-
tum, porcelains, bronzes and jade artifacts as galleon cargo for American and
European markets. Because of the thriving trade between southeastern coast of
China and Spanish galleon merchants in Philippines before the end of 16th century,
the large amount of Mexican sliver dollars were circulated into Guangdong, Fujian
and Taiwan in late Ming Dynasty.
In 1590s, Chinese maritime merchants transported almost all of the products and
the necessities for galleon trade. Most of ceramics recovered from Nan’ao
No. I shipwreck had been produced by the Zhangzhou kiln, a lot of which were
rough and defective artifacts as uneven !ring paste ware, broken cracks surface
ware, deformed ware, glued broken ware and glaze lacking ware. These defective
porcelains exported to the market of Manila showed the situation of insuf!cient
production of local ceramic industry. The similar ceramics of Nan’ao
No. I shipwreck have also been discovered in many sites of the Philippines (Mikami
1984), including both Zhanzhou and Jingdezhen kilns’ porcelains, and pottery jars
with dragon pattern, Chinese bronze coins, bronze gongs, copper coils, iron
cooking pots, beads and tin pots, presenting the prosperous situation of maritime
trade between Yuegang and Manila.
Because of the new era of maritime route between southeast coast of China and
Philippines archipelagoes, and the development of new maritime trade markets in
Philippines and America, more and more Chinese merchants arrived at and emi-
grated to Philippines, resulting an oversea Chinese residence of over 100,000
population next to the seaport of Manila in a short time. The Nan’ao
No. I shipwreck was dated to around 1590s, when the maritime trade between
Chinese and Spanish merchants developed healthy and peacefully. The diligent
Chinese people had been the key role in promoting the international maritime trade
and the construction of Manila international seaport during the early period of
galleon navigation.