Page 42 - Zhangzhou Or Swatow The Collection of Zhangzhou Ware at the Princessehof Museum, Leeuwarden, Netherlands

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Zhangzhou Ware in the Spanish “Manila Galleon Trade”

In 1521 a Spanish expedition led by Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480–1521) sailed west across the Pacific, reached
the Philippines and claimed the islands for Spain. In order to be able to trade with these Southeast Asian
islands, an eastward maritime route had to be identified to enable galleons to return to the Americas. This was
the beginning of the so-called “Manila Galleon Trade”, aptly named Nao de China in Spanish, meaning “ship from
China”. It was the beginning of globalised trade, and brought porcelain, silk, ivory, spices and other exotic
goods from China to the Americas in exchange for New World silver, mined in Mexico and Peru.

Some of the galleons from Manila en route to Acapulco carried Zhangzhou wares. A number of shipwrecks and
excavations brought new light on Zhangzhou ware traded between Southern China and Mexico.
In 1595, the Spanish galleon San Agustin, under the command of Sebastian Rodriguez Cermeno, lost cargo at
Drakes Bay, California. Besides some Fujian ware of the Kraak type the cargo consisted of cruder Zhangzhou
ware.

The most important dated shipwreck of the “Galleon Trade” was the San Diego, a Spanish galleon which sank
1600 near Batangas, the Philippines, after an exchange with the Dutch warship Mauritius. It carried a huge cargo
of Chinese porcelain, gold and silver, nautical instruments.The ceramic cargo included 500 blue and white
pieces of Chinese porcelain, most of them from Jingdezhen and to be dated into the Wanli period (1573-1620),
around 750 storage jars - Chinese, Thai and Burmese, and numbers of Zhangzhou ware, plates, vases and jars,
the majority decorated in underglaze cobalt blue. Only three pieces painted in the red and green palette were
found.

Excavations on Spanish colonial sites in Mexico, North America and the Caribbean revealed shards of
Zhangzhou ware, often together with Kraak ware. Zhangzhou shards were found, for instance, in Panama Viejo,
old city of Panama, present day Alabama, USA, dating 1600-1620.

Ref.: National Museum of the Philippines 1993; Shulsky, 1998-99; Crick 2000

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