Page 12 - Export Porcelain and Globakization- GOOD READ

control over Macao lasted symbolically for two more years until its hand-over to the
People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1999, which gave the city the “privilege” of
being also the last European possession in Asia. Nowadays, the three cities Macao,
Canton and Hong Kong are the three corners of the Pearl River Delta triangle shaping,
step by step, one of the most prosperous and dynamic megalopolis (Greater Bay Area)
in the world with more than 60 million habitants.
Comparing these three cities, Canton has played the most prominent role in the
Eurasian porcelain trade. Macao had already lost its economic importance when the
mass exportation took off. Hong Kong was established four decades after the export
of porcelain to Europe had already come to an end, and when Europe had already
replaced almost all Chinese imports with its own ceramic production. The import of
Chinese porcelain by Portuguese ships started around 1550. Since direct trade was not
possible until the establishment of a trading post in Macao was endorsed, Portuguese
traders may have purchased the first pieces of porcelain in one of the inner Asian
entrepots: in Malacca or Patani on the Malayan Peninsula, in the Thai capital
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Ayutthaya or on Sumatra, Java or Sulawesi - places, where Chinese junks stopped to
barter silk, copper, gold and ceramics for spices, tin and silver. In 1567 the Ming ban
officially ended and one can see the expansion of the ceramic trade. Portuguese
traders were now able to buy porcelain both officially in Macao and from Chinese
junks at any entrepot in the South China Sea. However, porcelain was just a necessary
ship ballast and a supplement to the other more relevant and precious trading goods
heading to Lisbon such as pepper, other spices and plants, silk and cotton. It did not
play a crucial role in trade with Europe until 1600. Cargo lists from the 16th century
give evidence: in the years 1587-1588 around 68% of the cargo weight was pepper,
3.7% ginger, 6.3% cinnamon, 10.5% cotton and silk, 8.4% indigo dye and 1.5%
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others including porcelain . The Wanli, discovered off the east coast of Malaysia, was
a ship under Portuguese flag sent to ground in a battle with the Dutch in 1625. It had a
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porcelain cargo of approximately 37,000 blue and white porcelains from Jingdezhen
and it was on a voyage from Macao to Malacca. The cargo gives a good overview of
the early Eurasian trade with Ming porcelain (see plate 46). Some of the items are
examples of an early “chine de command” – ordered by its European customers with
underglaze images of the coat of arms of the families who ordered them.
Between 1580 and 1640 Portugal and Spain were unified under the Spanish
monarchs forming a huge empire including the Iberian Peninsula, the Low Countries
and other Spanish Habsburg territories in Europe, the Viceroyalties of the Americas
and all the Portuguese and Spanish possessions and factories in Africa and Asia. Spain,
so far banned from the Indian Ocean by the treaties of Tordesillas and Zaragoza,
earlier arrangements with the Portuguese, had organized Asian-European trade via the
Philippines and Mexico. After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in Mexico,
the new Viceroyalty of New Spain served as a basis for further Spanish expansion
towards Asia across the Pacific. Magellan had reached the Philippines in 1521 on his
circumnavigation of the earth but it still took several decades until a colonial rule was
established – the first European colonization in Asia. Manila became capital of the
Spanish East Indies in 1571 and the archipelago was named after Philip II of Spain.
The colony was administered through the Viceroyalty of New Spain (Mexico). Miguel
López de Legazpi (1502-1572) was the first Governor-General of the Spanish East
Indies including Guam and the Mariana Islands which were important resting points
for the Spanish galleons sailing between the Philippines and Mexico. The Manila
galleon route was established in 1565 and lasted until 1815. “The galleons, which
sailed the oceans between Manila and Acapulco for about 250 years, brought
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