Page 13 - Export Porcelain and Globakization- GOOD READ

porcelain, spices, silk, ivory, jade and other luxuries from China to Mexico in
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exchange for New World silver” . Spain did not have much to offer to China in
exchange for the Asian products in demand, except silver from the Americas.
Hundreds of Chinese junks sailed every year (from December to April) between the
Chinese coast and Manila, which became an important entrepot for Chinese-European
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trade via Mexico . The San Diego – a Spanish galleon sunk in 1600 in a battle with
two Dutch ships near the Manila bay – was discovered in 1991 by the maritime
archaeologist Franck Goddio. The Dutch independence war against Habsburg Spain
even took place far away from home. Goddio has excavated from the seabed Chinese
blue and white Kraak porcelain from Jingdezhen (plate 44) and blue and white
Swatow porcelain from Zhangzhou as examples of the intensive trade relations
between China and the Spanish Philippines and Spanish Mexico. And in 2016,
thousands of Ming dynasty porcelain shards were found a meter and a half
underground nearby Acapulco’s Cathedral.
2.2 The Dutch
For more than a hundred years the ships of the Estado da India had a monopoly in
the maritime long-distance trade between Europe and Asia, only challenged by the
Spanish galleons sailing from Manila to Acapulco and from Veracruz towards Cadiz
or Sevilla. Spanish politics in Europe were the reason Portugal had to face a new
powerful European competitor starting from 1600, a competitor that was able to
destroy almost all its possessions in Asia. Sixty years later Portugal had been almost
pushed out of the profitable trade and a new actor had been established supplying
Europe more effectively and on a much bigger scale with Asian goods than ever
before.
The Low Countries came in under the Habsburg rule 1482, and became part of the
Spanish Empire in 1556. The Dutch Eighty Years’ War for independence from Spain
starting in 1568 turned into a Dutch-Portuguese war when Spain and Portugal formed
the Iberian Union in 1580. The religious and political conflicts of Europe were
exported to Asia when the first Dutch ships reached the Indonesian Island of Java in
1596 and the first encounters between the Dutch and the Portuguese in Macao ended
fatally for the protestant sailors. In response, Spanish and Portuguese ships were
attacked by Dutch warships, and sent to ground or taken as a prize. The Portuguese
carrack Santa Catarina fully laden with silk, musk and porcelain was captured near the
shores of Singapore and the cargo was sold in Amsterdam – this was the first big
auction of Chinese porcelain in northern Europe. The Dutch later called the blue and
white porcelain from Jingdezhen “Kraak”, since it had first been shipped to Europe by
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Portuguese carracks . Already the second Dutch expedition to the Indonesian
Archipelago, under the command of Jacob Corneliszoon van Neck and with the polar
explorer Jacob van Heemskerk and the discoverer of Australia Willem Janszoon, had
been extraordinarily profitable. This led to the creation of the Dutch East India
Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie VOC) - established as the first joint
stock company in 1602. Between 1602 and 1796 the VOC sent almost a million
Europeans to work in the Asia trade on 4,785 ships, and netted for their efforts more
than 2.5 million tons of Asian trade goods, making them the most important trader and
carrier between Asia and Europe. The VOC was probably the first truly multinational
company with shareholders from various countries and workers from Europe to East
Asia. The headquarters – the Oost Indisch Huis built in 1606 - was in Amsterdam and
still exists today, belonging now to the University of Amsterdam.

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