The last Manila galleon sails
The transpacific galleon service ended in 1815, after two and a half centuries, as the Spanish American empire dissolved in the independence wars and the monopoly system that sustained the route lost both its silver source and its legal basis. The route had been discovered once, in 1565, and thereafter simply repeated; its ending is the closing of the first continuously operated global trade circuit rather than the failure of a technology.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- The Manila galleon (Nao de China) · trade route · Pacific Ocean — Manila to Acapulco · not located
- Manila · city · Philippines
- Acapulco · port · Mexico
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
The Manila Galleon
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.
E. P. Dutton · 1939 · Partly verified
William Lytle Schurz, The Manila Galleon (New York, 1939)
Recorded on The Manila galleon (Nao de China)
- Urdaneta finds the return route across the Pacific
- Manila is founded as the eastern terminus
- The last Manila galleon sails
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.