The Manila galleon (Nao de China)

Assembled from 38 blocks · 2 evidence · 36 related

1. Story
2. The transpacific link that closed the circuit and made the trading world global rather than merely bi-oceanic. From 1565 until 1815, one or two heavily built galleons a year crossed between Manila and Acapulco. Westbound was straightforward — run south of the latitude of Guam on the north-east trades, roughly three months. Eastbound was one of the hardest regular passages ever sailed: ships had to climb north to about 35–40° N to find the westerlies, then run east across the whole width of the Pacific, four to six months out of sight of land, with scurvy killing a substantial part of the crew on bad crossings. The cargo ran silver west and Chinese silk, porcelain and Indian cottons east, which means the galleon was not a route between Spain and the Philippines at all: it was the Pacific leg of a settlement system that ran Potosí to Canton. Andrés de Urdaneta established the return track in 1565, and it stayed essentially unchanged for two and a half centuries — a route discovered once and then simply used.
3. Knowledge
4. The Atlantic wind and current system
5. Celestial navigation (latitude sailing)
6. The Manila galleon (Nao de China)
7. Manila
8. Acapulco
9. Connections
10. Acapulco
11. Manila
12. The Atlantic wind and current system
13. Celestial navigation (latitude sailing)
14. Ferdinand Magellan (Fernão de Magalhães)
15. Urdaneta finds the return route across the Pacific
16. Manila is founded as the eastern terminus
17. The last Manila galleon sails
18. The Manila galleon (Nao de China)
19. Urdaneta finds the return route across the Pacific
20. The last Manila galleon sails
21. Silver
22. The Manila galleon (Nao de China)
23. Manila is founded as the eastern terminus
24. The last Manila galleon sails
25. The Atlantic crossing (Carrera de Indias)
26. Volta do mar (the return by sea)
27. The Manila galleon (Nao de China)
28. Columbus makes landfall in the Bahamas
29. Urdaneta finds the return route across the Pacific
30. Almanach Perpetuum
31. Mariner's astrolabe
32. The Manila galleon (Nao de China)
33. The Treaty of Tordesillas divides the ocean
34. The Magellan expedition sails from Sanlúcar
35. The Treaty of Zaragoza settles the Moluccas by sale
36. Evidence
37. 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.
38. The argument that the founding of Manila in 1571, by linking the American silver supply directly to the Chinese demand for it, marks the beginning of genuinely global trade. V55 verification basis: NOT consulted in this session. The volume and year are given from the author's knowledge; pagination is omitted. The 1571 thesis is a position in an ongoing debate about the periodisation of globalisation, not a settled fact.