Maritime Trade in the Philippines during the Early Colonial Period (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries CE)

Abstract

The arrival of the Spanish naval expedition in the Philippines in 1521 CE transformed the archipelago from a series of small and fragmented ports and polities engaged in Southeast Asian intra-regional trade into a locus of a maritime trade network on a global scale. Manila became an entrepôt in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries due to the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade, which ran for 250 years and linked the eastern and western worlds through the exchange of tangible trading commodities and technology as well as ideas, beliefs, and traditions. This chapter provides a brief historical background of the maritime trade in the Philippines, with special focus on the Manila galleon trade. It also provides a summary of the excavation results of Philippine underwater sites that have been dated to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The shipwrecks include the Manila galleons San Diego, Nuestra Señora de la Vida, Encarnación, and San José as well as other shipwrecks: Española, Marinduque, Royal Captain Shoal, and San Isidro. These vessels carried both peoples of different nationalities and a wide range of trading and utilitarian goods, and they provided valuable information on the diversity and complexity of maritime trade in the Philippines at this time.