Acapulco

Assembled from 10 blocks · 1 evidence · 5 related

1. Story
2. A deep, sheltered bay on the Pacific coast of New Spain, chosen as the American terminus of the galleon route for exactly that reason and otherwise remote from everything. For most of the year it was a small place; when the galleon came in, it held a fair that drew merchants overland from Mexico City and beyond, and the Asian goods landed there moved inland by mule train to Mexico City and on to Veracruz for the Atlantic fleet. Acapulco is the hinge where the Pacific system met the Atlantic one: cargo landed here could reach Seville, and silver from Potosí and the Mexican mines could reach Canton. The single land crossing of Mexico is what turned two separate ocean trades into one circuit around the world.
3. Knowledge
4. Acapulco
5. Connections
6. The Manila galleon (Nao de China)
7. Urdaneta finds the return route across the Pacific
8. The last Manila galleon sails
9. Evidence
10. The standard narrative history of the transpacific galleon trade: its route, its cargoes, its termini at Manila and Acapulco and its ending in 1815. V55 verification basis: NOT consulted in this session. Schurz remains the reference work but is now over eighty years old, and its figures have been revised by later scholarship; a curator should treat it as the frame and check quantities elsewhere.