Catherine Goode - The Pacific Borderlands of the Spanish Empire

The Pacific Borderlands of the Spanish Empire

Catherine Tracy Goode
The [Oxford] Handbook of Borderlands of the Iberian World
Edited by Danna A. Levin Rojo and Cynthia Radding
Print Publication Date: Dec 2019 Subject: History, European History

Online Publication Date: Nov 2019 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199341771.013.25
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter explores the economic relationship between the Spanish colonies in the
Americas and the Asian markets at the center of the early modern world economy. Point
ing to the importance of political and family networks that existed within the Pacific bor
derlands, it investigates how Spanish merchants and bureaucrats supplied the sought-af
ter silver to Asian markets in exchange for varied luxury goods like textiles, spices, porce
lains, and furniture. The Manila Galleon functioned as the conduit, moving goods, people,
and knowledge through the Pacific borderlands. These relationships across the Pacific,
which were built on commerce but extended to political and cultural exchange, demon
strate that Spanish colonies that were far beyond the control of a European power bene
fitted from their direct access to the Asian economy across the Pacific.
Keywords: Asia, Pacific Ocean, silver, trade, contraband, fraud, ports, Manila Galleon, elites, family networks
OCEANS are often imagined as boundaries that mark the absolute edge of a territory.
However, a small shift in thinking allows such a space to be conceptualized as a series of
waterways, corridors, or thoroughfares that connect regions. From this perspective,
oceanic borderlands begin to form a connective web rather than the limit of empire.
While arduous and lengthy, the voyage across the Pacific between the powerhouse econo
my of Asia and the Spanish Empire in the Americas became an important source of ex
change—especially of specie and luxury products but also of peoples and ideas—that
proved profitable for the actors on both sides of this vast ocean. A renewed interest in Pa
cific trade and the connections between Asia and colonial Latin America is shifting an At
lantic-centric perspective in the historiography, revealing the importance of the access
that the Spanish enjoyed to the Asian economy through the supply of silver from their
American colonies.
Defining an ocean as a unit of study is a peculiar historiographical challenge. Traditional

maritime historiography, in many regions across the world, largely considers the military
presence of ships with some attention to commercial activities. The history of piracy in
the early modern period is a particular favorite. But a divide exists between the land and
Page 1 of 27
PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights
Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in
Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).
Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

the sea; even when considering port cities the ocean is seen as a limit not an extension of
the space. Instead, scholars should recognize the contingent nature of the relationship
between land and sea.1 While there is little dispute that the Mediterranean, the Indian
Ocean, even the Atlantic, comprise contiguous spaces that warrant study, the Pacific is a
latecomer to the scholarship. O.H.K. Spate posits that it was impossible to theorize the
“Pacific” before the outer edges of the great ocean were defined by European coloniza
tion, bringing a measure of continuity to the diverse regions.2 The very heterogeneity of
the populations and polities that ring this ocean and create connections across (p. 766) it
has also been a cause of the neglect in considering the area as a whole. Europeans im
posed a cultural homogeneity across the Atlantic as they settled along both sides, histori
an Jean Heffer argues, creating a conceptual coherency that the “Pacific” does not enjoy.3
But, must an “ocean world” be defined by cultural homogeneity along the coasts? And
what if this is an imagined homogeneity that was imposed by colonial projects, like the At
lantic? In fact, the very diversity of the Asian–New Spain connections is what made the
links across the vast Pacific so profitable.
It is striking that the importance of American silver to the Asian economy of the early
modern period is central to the narratives of World and Asian history but plays a periph
eral role in the histories of Spain, the Spanish Empire, and Europe as a whole.4 Histori
ans of Latin America have long made the mistake of assuming that the economy of the Pa
cific is simply an extension of the larger Atlantic economy. Immanuel Wallerstein, in his
seminal world-systems analysis, went so far as to call the Asian economy the “external
arena” of the true world economy that was centered in the Atlantic.5 Histories that posi
tion New Spain in a global context often argue that the relationship of New Spain to Asia
was largely transatlantic.6 Thus the transpacific nature of the trade is denied, ignoring
New Spain’s central role in the export of silver directly to Asia through the port of Manila
and the importation of myriad goods from India, China, Japan, and the Southeast Asian is
lands. Subsuming the “China trade” within the notion of an “Atlantic system” leaves New
Spain on the periphery of a European-led global economy. When the Pacific economy is
understood to complement its Atlantic counterpart, New Spain takes center stage in the
negotiation between Asian and European markets seeking American resources.
Current estimates suggest that up to 70 percent of silver from New Spain and Peru was
shipped to Europe, with approximately 40 percent of that amount moving on to Asia
through various European exchanges. Existing research suggests that at least 20 to 30
percent of American silver went straight to Asia via the Manila Galleon trade, demon
strating that a significant amount of silver from the Americas made the journey across the
Pacific.7 A single ship could carry well over one million pesos in coins, plus silver bullion
and myriad merchandise, on the most direct route running between Acapulco and
Manila.8 Additionally, the galleons carried both legal and contraband trade. Fraud in the
bureaucratic procedures or contraband trade beyond the legal proscriptions set by the
Crown (trade with foreigners, etc.) constituted a significant, although difficult to quantify,
part of commerce in the Pacific.9 The Pacific borderlands as a space contributed to this
tendency as goods could be offloaded at many unofficial ports coming south from Alta
California before arriving in the legally sanctioned port of Acapulco—avoiding detection,
Page 2 of 27

regulation, and tax collection.10 While the very nature of contraband trade makes it noto
riously difficult to track, scholars estimate that a great deal of silver and other merchan
dise was transferred through the Pacific borderlands, a hallmark of such spaces.11 The
point is not that transpacific trade trumped the transatlantic but rather to understand
how New Spain was a nexus between the two oceans. As Asia’s most direct access to sil
ver was through the Pacific via Acapulco, this positioned colonial merchant-bureaucrats
in New Spain to take advantage of their crucial location between the Asian and European
markets that were hungry for American silver.
The economic connections between the Spanish Empire in the Americas and the
(p. 767)
core Asian economy that encompassed China, India, and Southeast Asia, involved both lo
cal and colonial powers.12 The Gallo de Pardiñas family lived and worked in the Pacific
borderlands of New Spain from where they established an extended network of relatives
to take advantage of the global economy. As bureaucrats in Acapulco with direct access to
the economic structure of the Manila Galleon trade, they could import and export goods
for extraordinary profits. The Gallos held sway in Acapulco politics for some seventy
years; empowered in both civil and military matters, they used the features of the border
lands to manipulate the system to their benefit. Combining bureaucratic power with fraud
and contraband across a wide web of family members, they created a multigenerational,
multifamily fortune in the Pacific borderlands.
Historiography of an Oceanic Borderland

The four main schools of historiography focusing on the economic aspects of the Spanish
Empire’s Pacific connections are: “Great Men, Great Ships,” “Filipinas Drains the Cof
fers,” “New Spain from the Pacific Point of View,” and the “Vital Pacific Borderlands.”13
The “Great Men, Great Ships” paradigm focuses on the “explorers” of the islands for
Spanish and Portuguese interests who eventually laid claim to them for Spain in 1570,
with the Manila Galleon as part of the program of Spanish expansion. The Seville-cen
tered work of scholars who rely heavily on the documentation in the Archivo General de
Indias (AGI) informs the category of the “Filipinas Drains the Coffers,” postulating that
the Philippines were an economic drag on the empire as a whole. Emerging at the same
time, with the same documentary base, are those who saw “New Spain from the Pacific
Point of View.” Taking the Philippines as their starting place shifted the focus, but they of
ten came to many of the same conclusions about the economic viability of the Pacific
trade. Currently, a new generation of scholars in Mexico and the United States are ex
panding the historiography as they explore the “Vital Pacific Borderlands,” positing the
importance of the Asian connections for the Spanish colonies in the Americas. This new
work builds on earlier studies but challenges the assumption that the Pacific was of little
or negative importance to the empire, arguing rather that the Spanish Empire benefited
from the economic relationship that existed across this ocean in countless ways.
The classic works that highlight the conquest of the archipelago or the convoys of ships
making their way from Acapulco to Manila focus on the idea of “Great Men, Great Ships.”
Page 3 of 27

Miguel López de Legazpi is credited with successfully colonizing the Philippines, arriving
in 1565 and finally claiming the city of Manila for the Spanish Crown in 1570.14 Andrés
de Urdaneta has received a great deal of coverage, as the Augustinian who accompanied
Legazpi and made the first return voyage to Acapulco in 1565, while (p. 768) Antonio de
Morga’s 1609 account of the history of the Philippines has been reprinted many times.15
William Shurz’s classic The Manila Galleon, stands as the single English-language, book-
length treatment of the ships that traded goods between Manila and mainland New
Spain.16 Despite its age, and lack of documentation, it is still the source most likely to be
cited by Latin Americanists in the United States who mention the Pacific trade. Mexicans
made a better show in their early studies on these men and ships, with Manuel Carrera
Stampa’s article “La nao de china” and a book of the same name by Francisco Santiago
Cruz. While they take a similar tack by focusing on the explorers and the galleons, both
are documented with sources from Mexico and Spain.17 This approach would be sub
sumed in the late 1960s through the 1990s by two different historiographical perspec
tives, one from Spain the other from the Philippines, with similar conclusions as to the
significance of the Asian outpost.
The first phase of historiography to present a different perspective on Spain’s Pacific bor
derlands emerged with a series of studies that were driven by the imperial-level docu
mentation available in Spain. While ease of access for the many scholars who came
through the Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos in Seville explains part of the trend,
a lack of local documentation prior to the late eighteenth century in Manila and Acapulco
(despite a wealth of sources in Mexico City) led many to the vast collections of the AGI,
Archivo Histórico Nacional (Madrid), and Archivo General de Simancas (Valladolid). How
ever, reliance on this documentation led these scholars to stress imperial concerns, mir
roring the sources themselves, to argue that the Philippines cost Spain more than it pro
vided. María Lourdes Díaz-Trechuelo emerged as one of the first and most prolific of
scholars at the Escuela to work on the Philippines.18 While her work and that of her stu
dents is exhaustively researched, it reinforces the perspective of the empire, pitting the
Philippines against the Crown as an economic problem.19 A recent example of this ten
dency is El costo del imperio asiático by Luis Alonso Álvarez.20 As the title suggests, the
author’s economic analysis takes the position of the Crown and calculates losses based on
imperial-level complaints about the cost of maintaining the Spanish population in Manila.
No doubt, the Philippines would be described as a loss leader in modern parlance—an in
vestment that brought little direct return for the Crown’s coffers but in the end produced
massive profits for Spanish interests. As Latin Americanists have adeptly demonstrated
through more than three decades of research, an economic loss for the Crown in Spain
was not necessarily a loss for the empire as a whole.21
Conceptually originating on the other side of the Pacific, based on the same corpus of
sources from Spain but beginning to utilize the rich resources available in Mexico, “New
Spain from the Pacific Point of View” constitutes a valuable historiographic tradition but
offers many of the same conclusions as the Seville-based approach. These works run the
gamut from the earliest broad studies that conceptualized the Pacific as a single unit to
the local studies of colonial state formation in the Philippines.22 While making up a small
Page 4 of 27

fraction of the total scholarship of this category, those that visualize the Pacific as a space
worthy of study have led the way for re-conceptualizing this region as a borderlands to
day. Pierre Chaunu’s Les Philippines et le Pacifique des Ibériques in the Annales tradition
of longue durée history is by far the most empirically based of the works, utilizing the
Spanish sources in Seville to great effect.23 Two more studies in the same vein were
(p. 769) written on opposite sides of the Pacific: The Spanish Lake by O.H.K. Spate and El
gran océano by Rafael Bernal.24 Spate was a British geographer by training who worked
in Australia for most of his career. Countering the difficulties inherent in conceptually
navigating the vastness of the Pacific, he adopted the notion of the “Spanish Lake” to
highlight the connections rather than the obstacles.25 Bernal’s El gran océano takes a
wider view of the Pacific, looking beyond the Spanish Empire to consider the interactions
between Chinese, Japanese, Southeast Asian, and European kingdoms. While the title in
vokes the expanse of the Pacific, the work focuses primarily on the Asian context but
posits that the ocean was a medium for “transculturation.”26
Moving from the broad expanse to the local, Mexican historian Carmen Yuste became one
of the most prolific scholars working on the Pacific.27 Her studies investigate the flow of
commerce through the city of Acapulco, family and political networks based in both port
cities on either side of the Pacific, and their connections to Mexico City. While she uses
documentation from the AGI, she has also extensively mined the Archivo General de la
Nación de México (AGN). Through the lens of merchants and the networks they created
to participate in the profitable China trade, her work has evolved from a focus on the eco
nomics of trade to address the social history of merchants from New Spain playing a role
in the global economy. Emporios transpacíficos: Comerciantes mexicanos en Manila,
1710–1815, centers on merchants in the Spanish Empire as actors in the larger global
economy and challenges the assumption that New Spain was a passive player. Bridging
two historiographical trends, Yuste’s current work complements a new tendency in the
scholarship to document the economic potency and the multiplicity of ways in which
mainland New Spain was connected to Asia.
Emerging in the late 1990s, a new perspective on the relationship of the Philippines to
mainland New Spain challenged the narrative of economic stagnation, arguing instead
that the Manila Galleon trade was fundamental to the global economy. This historiograph
ical trend, the “Vital Pacific Borderlands,” started with the work of the economist Dennis
O. Flynn and the historian Arturo Giráldez who argued that 1571, the year the Manila
Galleon trade began, marked the genesis of globalization.28 In a series of publications
they demonstrated how profitable the Manila Galleon trade was, on both sides of the Pa
cific, arguing that the failure to take Spanish America seriously as a part of the global
economy was simple Euro-centrism.29 Building on the Asian historiography and placing
Latin America in a global context, the Flynn/Giráldez team laid a foundation for re-con
ceptualizing the relationship of the Americas to Asia in the early modern period.30 In The
Age of Trade: The Manila Galleons and the Dawn of the Global Economy, Giráldez
presents an overview of the trade in a world history context.31 He follows the ships across
Page 5 of 27

the Pacific, considering the diversity of the Asian context, the impact of the trade in silver
on the Spanish colonies, and the implications for globalization.
The last two decades have seen a renewed focus on the Pacific borderlands of the Span
ish Empire, particularly in the United States and Mexico, but work continues in Spain and
the Philippines as well. Between 2013 and 2015, conferences and symposiums held in
Mexico City and Guadalajara brought together scholars from Mexico, Spain, and the
Philippines to exchange ideas on the religious, political, and economic aspects of this his
tory.32 New museum exhibits at the Museo Nacional del Virreinato in (p. 770) Tepotzotlán,
Mexico and the Casa de América in Madrid, as well as the traveling exposition “Pacífico:
España y la aventura de la mar del sur,” called attention to the material culture of the
transpacific connections.33 In the United States, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts staged
the exhibit “Made in the Americas: The New World Discovers Asia” in late 2015.34 The ex
hibit focused specifically on the material culture of the Spanish and Portuguese Pacific
trade routes and was scheduled to coincide with the 450th anniversary of the first return
voyage led by Urdaneta in 1565.35
In addition to reevaluating the economic importance of the Pacific, recently published

scholarship also sheds lights on the movement of people across the ocean and the devel
opment of the military in this borderlands region.36 Three scholars are emblematic of the
historiographical category of the “Vital Pacific Borderlands.” Mariano Bonialian’s compre
hensive study of the trade that connected New Spain, Peru, and various regions of Asia,
based on extensive archival research in Spain, Mexico, Peru, and Chile illuminates the
vast networks that linked the Spanish Empire to the global economy.37 He highlights the
“centrality of the marginal” in recognizing the significance of the Pacific borderlands to
the success and survival of the Spanish Empire. Much of the extant literature focuses on
the goods—silver, porcelains, and spices—that filled the galleons sailing between Acapul
co and Manila, while the human dimension is often ignored. In her groundbreaking stud
ies, Tatiana Seijas has placed the people that crossed the ocean at the center of the
story.38 Detailed archival work in Mexico City, Puebla, and Seville allowed Seijas to recon
struct a history of a diverse population brought as chattel to mainland New Spain where
they were reduced to a new identity of “chinos” or “indios chinos.”39 Starting in Asia, her
book traces the journey of the more than eight thousand Asian slaves as they negotiated
their new lives in Mexico in bondage and freedom, and the effect of their presence on the
Spanish colonial project.40 Finally, Guadalupe Pinzón Ríos takes on the traditional topic of
the military installations along the Pacific frontier of mainland New Spain but places the
development of these defense structures within a larger context of global trade and the
local particularities of Acapulco and the Pacific coast.41 By tracking the implementation of
defensive systems, her study provides a detailed discussion of the development of society
in this littoral region, a significant conduit between two centers of power, using archival
sources from Spain, the United States, and various collections across Mexico.
Building on these historical approaches to the Pacific borderlands, the study of the Gallo
de Pardiñas family undertaken here exemplifies the transoceanic networks of family and
Page 6 of 27

empire, centered on the nexus created by the commercial and cultural routes that con
nected mainland New Spain to the Philippines and Asia.
“Gallos de alto poder” in Acapulco

Miguel Gallo traversed the Iberian borderlands, with his family in tow, from the Atlantic
to the Pacific. In 1688, he was the top military official in Gibraltar, but a promotion to the
(p. 771) position of castellano and alcalde mayor for Acapulco offered many rewards, both
professionally and economically.42 Born in 1646, Miguel Gallo hailed from a newly noble
family in Puerto de Santa María (Cádiz), Spain. By marrying Claudia Tomasa de Pardiñas
Villar de Francos, a noble family lineage with its roots in Galicia but firmly established in
the port city of Cádiz, Miguel positioned himself for greater advancement.43 In 1678, they
married and took up residence in Gibraltar where Miguel held the post of sargento mayor
and alcalde of the castle fortifications. Located on the periphery of the Iberian peninsula,
Gibraltar was a military stronghold and thus Miguel served to protect the Crown from for
eign invasions during his tenure.44 Here, the family grew by two, and in his petition for
passage to mainland New Spain, Miguel listed his wife Claudia, son Juan Eusebio, and
daughter Nicolasa María who would accompany him, as the family prepared to exchange
the Iberian outpost of Gibraltar for the Pacific coast borderlands of New Spain.45
The Gallo de Pardiñas clan lorded over the political and economic life of Acapulco for
close to seventy years, arriving just before a surge in the Pacific trade in the eighteenth
century. By then, the Manila Galleon trade was well established, having gone through a
foundation period (1571–1630) and early attempts to limit and manage the trade (1630–
1700). Beginning in 1571, between one and four galleons a year sailed from Acapulco to
Manila until the Crown disbanded the trade route in 1815 in the face of the wars for inde
pendence. The uptick in the early eighteenth century (1700–1760) was followed by anoth
er period of reform in the final decades of the colonial period (1760–1815). Although ship
wrecks and pirate attacks sometimes impeded arrival, the Manila Galleon constituted a
remarkably reliable commercial system.46 Two interrelated issues help to shape establish
ing the broad periodization of the trade: silver cycles and royal regulation. With silver as
the single most sought after commodity in the Pacific, the trade closely followed the highs
and lows in the extraction of the precious metal. Thus, the first attempts at managing the
new trade ties coincided with the Potosí cycle from 1540 to 1640, while the Mexico cycle
from 1700 to 1750 shaped the thriving years of the trade in the early eighteenth
century.47 Boom years in silver mining made for particularly strong commercial ties be
tween Manila and Acapulco, while attempts to control the profits, participation, and the
royal share marked changes over time as well.
Crown regulations demonstrated an early preoccupation with the trade. The first at
tempts to bring order came about in the seventeenth century, especially as Iberian manu
facturers (particularly of textiles) felt that the new trade route damaged their potential to
sell wares in the colonies. The earliest regulations began in 1593 limiting the total weight
of goods (the permiso) on the ships and the total value of pesos, which ended twenty-two
Page 7 of 27

years of essentially unfettered trade.48 The Crown also established Acapulco as the sole
legal port of entry and in 1634 outlawed direct exchanges between the viceroyalties.
Some increases to the permiso were established in the seventeenth century, but the years
in between 1680 and 1700 mark two major changes to the Pacific trade. New laws in
1680 attempted to severely restrict the quantities of goods imported to mainland New
Spain.49 And the abolition of slavery in 1700 ended the Asian slave trade.50 The early
years of the eighteenth century saw a return to and an increase in the (p. 772) permiso,
with a series of royal decrees from 1700 to 1734 that mandated changes to the distribu
tion of lading space, restrictions on the quantity and quality of textiles, and a brief re
opening of the trade between mainland New Spain and Peru.51 After 1760, Bourbon re
forms brought the trade more firmly under the control of the Crown while also increasing
profits under the banner of “free trade.”52
Yet the periodization of the Pacific as a borderland is not based simply on economic fac
tors but also on the particular preoccupations of European incursions and contraband.53
Policing the vast space, both to keep “foreign enemies” out and to stop contraband trade,
often perpetrated by the Crown’s own subjects in New Spain (on both sides of the Pacif
ic), proved to be an ongoing battle. One of the earliest attempts to tackle both issues was
the establishment of Acapulco as the sole official Pacific port of entry.54 While the harbor
at Acapulco was especially suited to the large ships of the Manila Galleon trade, this was
also a way to limit the area in need of protection from European rivals and smugglers,
foreign and domestic. The construction of coastal military installations began like San
Diego in Acapulco in the sixteenth century and later the port of San Blas (Nayarit) in the
early eighteenth.55 European attacks, like that of the Dutch in 1624, were relatively infre
quent but foreign ships were regularly present in the waters of the Pacific borderlands of
New Spain. While this officially represented an “unjustified penetration,”56 these ships
were also part of the contraband trade that defined the region. Foreign friends, like the
Catholic French, received permission to sail in the Spanish waters of the Pacific through
out the seventeenth century until 1710, when imperial restrictions attempted to limit the
ever-present but technically illegal trade outsiders engaged in along the coast.57
European attacks and contraband trade intensified in the eighteenth century, but money
to maintain the fortification of San Diego was rarely forthcoming from the viceregal or
royal coffers, not to be remedied until the last decades of the colonial period.58
Demonstrative of another inter-related feature of the Iberian borderlands, metropolitan
officials frequently decried the corruption and crimes far from their location but provided
little in the way of support as a counter. Furthermore, stamping out contraband trade was
better as a rhetorical strategy than a practical endeavor as so many royal subjects in New
Spain profited handsomely from these exchanges.
As the castellano and alcalde mayor, Miguel Gallo and later his son Juan Eusebio Gallo
“protected” the Pacific borderlands in regard to the twin concerns of safety and regulat
ing trade from their roost in Acapulco. The fact that they were also central players in
these commercial networks meant that the Gallo de Pardiñas family represented both the
power of the Crown on the ground and the fluidity of official positions in regard to fraudu
lent trading practices. As was common in the borderlands of New Spain, Miguel Gallo
Page 8 of 27

held both civil and military authority. Invested with the highest civil authority, the alcalde
mayor oversaw most aspects of the Manila Galleon trade, principally provisioning and re
pairing ships, registering embarkations, assuring that royal taxes were paid, and organiz
ing the yearly trade fairs.59 As the leading military commander along the Pacific littoral,
the castellano was charged with defending the entire coast from enemy attacks, including
the maintenance of soldiers and fortifications. Beginning with his arrival in the 1690s,
Miguel Gallo established a family network that (p. 773) included relatives of his wife, his
sons, and eventually the family of a son-in-law, in order to take advantage of their wide-
ranging powers over the civil, economic, and military functions of the port of Acapulco.60
Before his sons were old enough to take power in his name, Miguel Gallo called on other
family members to step in. Claudia Tomasa Pardiñas Villar de Francos connected Miguel
to the powerful members of her family in mainland New Spain, allowing him to create ex
tensive commercial and social networks.61 When Miguel took up his new post in the
1690s, his brother-in-law Juan Isidro de Pardiñas Villar de Francos served as the gover
nor and captain general of Nueva Vizcaya, a strategic location that included the mines in
Parral (at their height of production from 1630 to 1680), the many Franciscan and Jesuits
missions of the province, and a direct route to the furthest outpost of Santa Fe, New Mex
ico. After dealing with Indian rebellions and other threats to security, Juan Isidro left his
post in Nueva Vizcaya and joined his sister’s family in Acapulco.62 In 1701, as the acting
castellano and alcalde mayor of Acapulco, he stepped in for his brother-in-law Miguel and
authorized the registro of the shipment of goods to Manila.63 Vecinos of mainland New
Spain reexported Iberian “necessities” for the small Spanish population in Asia such as
wine, olive oil, guns, and iron implements, along with Mexican products like chocolate
and most importantly silver.64 When Pardiñas Villar de Francos registered the galleon up
on its return to Acapulco later that year, it was laden with fabrics—mainly clothing and
handkerchiefs, but it also included raw silk threads ready for weaving—cinnamon and
pepper, thousands of porcelain cups for chocolate, fans, and furniture, the total value of
which easily came to more than one million pesos.65 Theoretically, manileños exported
those goods to then be sold at the yearly fair in Acapulco to mainland buyers, all under
the watchful gaze of local officials. But the actions of the Gallo de Pardiñas extended fam
ily reveal how they used their control of bureaucratic processes in the context of the Pa
cific borderlands to their own benefit and allowed this particular form of contraband
trade to flourish.
The children of Miguel and Claudia Tomasa, including at least three more children born
after their arrival, were vital to the success of the Gallo de Pardiñas family in the Pacific
borderlands.66 Their oldest, Juan Eusebio served as acting castellano and alcalde mayor
on various occasions when his father was called out of the city or left for health reasons,
before assuming the position permanently from the early 1720s to 1760.67 Miguel Ventu
ra Gallo de Pardiñas rose to the office of prebend at the Cathedral in Mexico City and act
ed as the family representative in the capital, managing their business and property inter
ests.68 Claudia Gallo de Pardiñas was the conduit between two families, marrying Manuel
San Juan de Santa Cruz in 1714, allowing for Miguel Gallo to expand his reach and for the
Page 9 of 27

San Juan de Santa Cruz family to rise in the colonial bureaucracy well beyond the dic
tates of their middling-class background.69
Once Miguel Gallo was installed in Acapulco, he needed contacts in Manila. While he no
doubt had multiple connections in Manila by the 1710s, the best documented cases are
those of his son Juan Eusebio and, at the time, future son-in-law Manuel. Both served in
military posts in the heavily fortified capital of the Philippines, where the small Spanish
population was always outnumbered by the vast network of Asian trading (p. 774) en
claves.70 Both men returned to mainland New Spain from Manila in 1709, bringing vast
amounts of trade goods (legal and illegal).71 Manuel spent three months in Acapulco,
where he evidently met the young Claudia for the first time, before settling in Mexico City
from mid-1709 to 1714.72 Juan Eusebio remained in Acapulco where he served his father
in a variety of capacities, officially and unofficially. As well as taking the reins of the city
on a temporary basis several times, he also functioned as an importer for his family,
bringing in thousands of pesos worth of stock from Asia.
This trade in Asian merchandise dominated all aspects of the life of Acapulco. As the lead
ing family in the city, the Gallo de Pardiñas clan not only participated in the trade but also
regulated it as representatives of the Crown. This was illegal on a number of levels but al
so perfectly common in practice. One of the primary responsibilities of the castellano and
alcalde mayor of the only official port city in the Pacific borderlands was to register the
embarking galleons. The registro took account of the investors (technically restricted to
manileño exporters and members of the crew on the ship) and the goods imported. This
accounting of people, goods, and money provided the cover to hide the fraudulent prac
tices of merchants from mainland New Spain acting as importers.73 Registros from 1704,
1707, 1709, 1710, and 1712 conducted by Miguel Gallo, exemplify the practices of the
Gallo de Pardiñas extended family that included using members of the crew as fronts for
local importers and registering trade goods as nothing but gifts from remarkably “gener
ous” manileños. These actions reveal the usual disregard for prohibitions on bureaucrats
participating in the very commerce they were responsible to oversee.
As contraband is notoriously difficult to document, we know of the “success” of the ex

tended family because the patriarch Miguel Gallo was charged with misconduct in the
registration of the galleon in 1712. This case against him is folded into a larger report,
initiated in 1711 by the oidor from the Audiencia of México Juan Díaz de Bracamonte.74
The viceroy directed Bracamonte to study the Manila Galleon trade, citing irregularities
in most of the previous ten years: “[…] because the commerce of the Philippines is not
regulated according to the law.” Gallo could not account for more than fifty thousand pe
sos that mysteriously went missing at the time the nao Nuestra Señora de la Begoña
embarked from Acapulco in March 1712, after a three-month stopover. When the ship
reached Acapulco in late 1711, it held goods from all over Asia, including Chinese silks,
spices from Southeast Asia, and furniture from Japan.75 Over seventy men and women
were listed as stakeholders in the goods on this ship; among them was one Manuel San
Juan de Santa Cruz. The earlier shipment from 1709 lists not only Manuel but also Miguel
Gallo himself and his son Juan Eusebio Gallo de Pardiñas.76 As bureaucrats and vecinos of
Page 10 of 27

cities in mainland New Spain they were legally forbidden to participate as merchants in
this trade. Nonetheless, the three men, among many other merchants in mainland New
Spain, evaded the middlemen manileños and imported goods directly. When Miguel Gallo
allowed the ship to leave again in March of 1712, he registered it with 257,100 pesos
worth of goods purchased at the fair by vecinos of Oaxaca, Puebla, Zacatecas, and Guana
juato, among others—a small sum compared to figures for other shipments that ranged
from five hundred thousand to one million pesos.77 The missing fifty thousand pesos com
prised only the tip of the iceberg, as his false registration of the (p. 775) imported and ex
ported goods in 1712 concealed his family’s fraudulent participation in this lucrative
trade.
Beyond the machinations of officials on the ground in a port city, the manipulation of the
crew of the ships proved to be an important strategy as well. The registros from the ar
rival of the nao in 1709 and 1712 provided the names of officials and employees of the
galleon who imported massive amounts of goods into Acapulco. These “generous” souls
then gifted almost all of this merchandise to the merchant vecinos of mainland New
Spain. Early regulations established that the employees of the Manila Galleon were allot
ted space on the ship to import goods, the only group granted the privilege other than
manileños.78 Both the viceroy of New Spain and the governor of the Philippines selected
personnel for the ships and these appointments were often sold to relatives or friends, in
the same manner that many bureaucratic posts were purchased throughout the
colonies.79 And just as the sale of office opened up the possibility for exploitation, the
practice in the case of the Manila Galleon provided a loophole to evade the proscriptions
barring specific groups from participating. In 1709, Juan Eusebio Gallo was one of those
officials on the galleon, acting as the importer for himself, Manuel, and two other Spa
niards.80 In 1712, Captain Simón de Amechesurra was Manuel’s chosen importer—joining
twelve others, including the Bishop of Nueva Segovia.81 Miguel Gallo designated the ma
jority of the goods on the registro, imported by members of the crew, as gifts to many dif
ferent mainland New Spain merchants.82 Among the many items Gallo asked viceregal of
ficials (and us as readers in the twenty-first century) to categorize as gifts were thou
sands of cups for chocolate (tazas para chocolate) and over two hundred Japanese paint
ed desks.83 The practice of listing goods as gifts allowed the excluded vecinos of main
land New Spain to participate as importers of Asian goods skirting around the regula
tions. These manipulations stand out as an important part of the local strategies em
ployed by the Gallo de Pardiñas extended family.
The case against Miguel Gallo caused little reaction in Mexico City, despite the report by
Bracamonte. Although Gallo was sidelined for a short time, his extended family continued
to control Acapulco until he returned to his post.84 Following in this vein, the Bracamonte
report concluded by placing the primary blame on the manileños for the problems in the
Manila Galleon trade. Rather than charge Crown officials with bureaucratic mismanage
ment, he accused the manileños of collaborating with Chinese merchants to the detri
ment of Spanish trade and industry. The report stated that although the local officials al
lowed the entrance of goods in excess of the permiso, they did their job as prescribed by
collecting taxes on the whole lot: “[…] [local officials] allowed the embarkation of quanti
Page 11 of 27

ties exceeding the permiso, paying, as they say publicly, 10 to 12 percent [in different roy
al taxes].”85 This conclusion was not born out by the evidence culled by Bracamonte, in
which witnesses reported that the permiso was regularly exceeded, unauthorized mer
chants regularly imported and sold their wares across mainland New Spain, and these
practices were in fact harmful to the manileños who depended on the Manila Galleon
trade for their livelihoods.86 The case against Gallo, conserved in the Bracamonte report,
suggests that his actions as castellano and alcalde mayor formed part of a larger pattern
that was not limited to his family alone. From 1709 (p. 776) to 1712, the Gallo de Pardiñas
extended family network succeeded in importing Asian products bound for sale in New
Spain by exploiting their position in Acapulco, with little interference from the authorities
in Mexico City who turned a blind eye to the whole affair.
Members of the Gallo de Pardiñas family, particularly Juan Eusebio and Miguel Ventura,
achieved great economic success in the colonies. Juan Eusebio, like his brother-in-law
Manuel San Juan de Santa Cruz, traveled between Manila and Acapulco and traded in
Asian imports, despite being a vecino of Acapulco who was theoretically prohibited from
participating in this trade.87 Juan Eusebio owned extensive properties across mainland
New Spain and was a generous supporter of the church, endowing numerous pious
works.88 As a highly placed priest, Miguel Ventura also amassed a large landholding, evi
denced by various disputes in the Audiencia of Mexico over water and indigenous labor
on his haciendas.89 In 1747, Miguel Ventura took a new post in the archbishopric of Mani
la, where he would die in 1752, demonstrating his family’s continued ties to the Philip
pines.90 The San Juan de Santa Cruz branch of the extended family, in the person of
Manuel brought to the table new northern connections and a direct link to the Atlantic
economy. While the Gallo de Pardiñas family distributed “gifts” in Acapulco, Manuel and
his older brother Francisco took up the posts of the Governor of Nueva Vizcaya and Royal
Treasurer in Veracruz, respectively. Manuel collaborated with his father- and brothers-in-
law, who acted as his conduits to Asian commerce through their official control of the
Manila Galleon trade, at the same time that he and his brother were expanding the reach
of the extended family to the new silver mines of Chihuahua and trade in the official At
lantic port city. Moreover, Juan Eusebio and Miguel served as trusted overseers of
Manuel’s Pacific and metropolitan business dealings, managing his concerns in Acapulco
and Mexico City while he and their sister Claudia, whom he married in 1714, lived in the
northern province of Nueva Vizcaya.91 By the mid-eighteenth century, the two families
boasted two Knights of Santiago, as well as mines, haciendas, and homes across main
land New Spain. The alliance and partnerships built in the Pacific borderlands served
them remarkably well.92
From the Pacific Borderlands to the Global

Economy
The Pacific functioned as a borderland, albeit an oceanic one, of the Spanish Empire in
that it connected disparate spaces and existed beyond the direct control of the central bu
Page 12 of 27

reaucracy in Mexico City, Lima, or Seville.93 Out of necessity, different patterns of eco
nomic, political, social, and cultural life emerged in this in-between space for those who
lived on the edges of or traversed the Pacific. The extended family networks of merchants
and bureaucrats in Acapulco, like the Gallo de Pardiñas and San Juan de Santa Cruz
(p. 777) families, are illustrative of the ways that elite Spaniards adapted to these circum
stances and thrived in the Pacific borderlands, linking their enterprises to the global
economy.
The Pacific Borderlands presents a series of unique circumstances for conceptualizing the
ways in which new ties were forged. The port cities of Acapulco and Manila represent the
closest physical links between centers of political and economic power in the American
and Asian imperial spheres. While the coastal cities functioned as points on the axis that
connected mainland New Spain to Asia, they also existed as frontier regions in and of
themselves within their respective regions of influence. Located on the geographic
fringes of Asia, the Philippines was not a producer of valuable goods itself, but Manila
nonetheless served as a fundamental conduit for precious Asian commodities and a portal
for American silver. Acapulco was a backwater of mainland New Spain, except for the few
weeks a year after the ships disembarked. Both cities relied almost entirely on the Manila
Galleon trade and given the distance to the centers of imperial political authority, local
vecinos relied heavily on the ties forged in the borderlands. Acapulco survived as a con
duit between mainland New Spain and goods, peoples, and ideas making their way from
Asia, with manileños negotiating their part in the Asian economy in a large, cosmopolitan
city in which they were far outnumbered. Like other port cities, Manila and Acapulco
served as the connective tissue of the empire in the borderlands.94 Distance from the cen
ter does not diminish the importance of the frontier; rather the two must be understood
in relation, in that cores rely on peripheries as much as the reverse is true.
Much of the preoccupation with the significance of the Pacific borderlands of New Spain
deals with distance. Given the great expanse across this vast ocean, it simply cannot be
measured in practical terms unlike the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, or the Mediterranean,
spaces that dominate the historiography of their respective regions. A noted historian of
Central America argues that the Pacific (including Peru) was beyond the reasonable dis
tances of the near and far Atlantics: “If […] Mexico and Panama were the far Atlantic,
what of Peru? That area should perhaps be called the remote Atlantic. As for Manila, that
distant administrative outlier of and appendage to New Spain, journeys to and from had
to cross two oceans and a continent. Measured in time, the Philippines were much more
remote than the moon is today.”95
Yet, the evidence shows that the Spanish continued to make those voyages, despite the
distance, difficulty of the passage, and constant complaints on the part of the Crown. As
French historian Jean Heffer points out “gargantuan” is not impassable.96 We must take
care not to impose an anachronistic presumption that a trip that would take three to six
months (depending on which leg) was unrealistically long. The desire for silver and luxu
ry goods on the one hand, and the necessary economic stimulus provided by the trade for
the vecinos of Acapulco and Manila on the other, were more than enough to encourage
Page 13 of 27

what today may seem “too far to go” for textiles and spices. And, while economic factors
might have driven the willingness to embark on such arduous journeys, neither should we
underestimate the importance of the political capital accrued by maintaining a Spanish
presence in Asia and the links this provided for religious and cultural exchange.
A key issue in assessing the Pacific economy as a success or failure is a simple

(p. 778)
question: who benefited? Much of the scholarship in the first three historiographical cate
gories described at the beginning of this chapter reifies the imperial perspective that if
trade across the Pacific was not of direct benefit to the Crown it was thus a detriment to
the overall imperial economy. But the newest turn in the scholarship demonstrates that
by focusing the lens squarely on the economy of New Spain, a different perspective
emerges: European (and some local) merchants, high- and low-level bureaucrats (some of
whom were merchants themselves), and their Asian counterparts were the beneficiaries
of a thriving economy that found Mexico City at the nexus of the Pacific and Atlantic net
works, connecting Asia, South America, and Europe.97 This innovative historiographical
trend counters the imperial rhetoric about the value of the Pacific borderlands to the em
pire by reimagining the scope of the political and economic power of the Crown, recogniz
ing New Spain and in particular Mexico City as a center of gravity beyond the control of
Seville.
Andre Gunder Frank, sociologist and notable proponent of dependency and world sys
tems theory, jettisoned much of his earlier interpretations with the publication of ReOri
ent: Global Economy in the Asian Age.98 For decades, he had written eloquently about the
way that the European core had devastated the American periphery. This view, in line
with the earlier incarnations of these theories, ignored the Asian presence in the early
modern global economy. He and others argued that interactions between Europe and Asia
did not represent fundamental commercial relationships but rather inconsequential trade
in frivolous luxury goods.99 In their view, Europe was centered and the Americas consti
tuted the periphery from which goods were extracted while Asia remained beyond these
networks in Wallerstein’s “external arena.” Gunder Frank’s ReOrient built on the work of
scholars like Flynn and Giráldez to demonstrate the Asian center of gravity in the global
economy. This shift did more than simply change the focus from Europe to Asia. In recog
nizing the economic importance not only of the core economies but also the actors in be
tween, the Americas move to the middle rather than being pushed off to the edge.
When Flynn and Giráldez linked the “birth of globalization” to the start of the Manila
Galleon trade in 1571, they centered the Americas in a world economy sustained by silver
that was mined, minted, and traded in New Spain.100 John Tutino has recently argued: “In
most discussions and debates, the Americas appear as appendages of Europe. [ … ] Yet if
silver was essential to early globalization, should we presume that the American societies
that produced it in prodigious quantities were peripheral to global dynamism?”101 Moving
from the center of the viceroyalty to the Pacific (and Atlantic) borderlands, Spanish mer
chants and bureaucrats were the conduit through which silver flowed into the world
economy. The strategies they created in order to adapt to the peculiarities of the oceanic
borderlands speak to the very global dynamism Tutino references above. The men and
Page 14 of 27

women of the Gallo de Pardiñas and San Juan de Santa Cruz families created wealth for
themselves, the viceroyalty, and the Crown. Their story offers evidence for a shifting para
digm that incorporates the Pacific borderlands into the history of the Spanish Empire.
Bibliography
Atwell, William S. “Another Look at Silver Imports into China, ca. 1635–1644.” Journal of
World History 16, no. 4 (2005): 467–489.
Bernabéu Albert, Salvador, and Carlos Martínez Shaw, ed. Un océano de seda y plata: El
universo económico del Galeón de Manila. Seville: CSIC, 2013.
Bonialian, Mariano. El Pacífico hispanoamericano: Política y comercio asiático en

(p. 788)
el Imperio Español (1680–1784). Mexico: El Colegio de México, 2012.
Bonialian, Mariano. China en la América colonial: Bienes, mercados, comercio y cultura

del consumo desde México hasta Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires and Mexico: Editorial Bib
los, Instituto Mora, 2014.
Buschmann, Ranier F., et al, eds. Navigating the Spanish Lake: The Pacific in the Iberian
World, 1521–1898. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2014.
Carr, Dennis, et al., eds. Made in the Americas: The New World Discovers Asia. Boston:
MFA Publications, 2015.
Flynn, Dennis O., and Arturo Giráldez. “Born with a ‘Silver Spoon:’ The Origin of World
Trade in 1571.” Journal of World History 6, no. 2 (1995): 201–221.
Flynn, Dennis O., and Arturo Giráldez. “Cycles of Silver: Global Economic Unity through
the Mid-Eighteenth Century.” Journal of World History 13, no. 2 (2002): 391–427.
Frank, Andre Gunder. ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1998.
Giráldez, Arturo. The Age of Trade: The Manila Galleons and the Dawn of the Global
Economy. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
Goode, Catherine Tracy. “Merchant-Bureaucrats, Unwritten Contracts, and Fraud in the

Manila Galleon Trade.” In Corruption in the Iberian Empires: Greed, Custom, and Colo
nial Networks, ed. Christoph Rosenmüller, 171–195. Albuquerque: UNM, 2017.
Lee, Christina H., ed. Western Visions of the Far East in a Transpacific Age (1522–1671).
Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012.
Lyon, Eugene. “Track of the Manila Galleons.” National Geographic 178, no. 3 (1990): 5–
38.
Page 15 of 27

Pinzón Ríos, Guadalupe. Acciones y reacciones en los puertos del mar del sur. Desarrollo
portuario del Pacífico novohispano a partir de sus políticas defensivas (1713–1789). Mexi
co: IIH-UNAM, Instituto Mora, 2011.
Seijas, Tatiana. Asian Slaves in Colonial Mexico: From Chinos to Indios. New York: Cam
bridge University Press, 2014.
Seijas, Tatiana. “Inns, Mules, and Hardtack for the Voyage: The Local Economy of the
Manila Galleon in Mexio.” Colonial Latin America Review 25, no. 1 (2016): 1–21.
Trejo Rivera, Flor and Guadalupe Pinzón, eds. El mar: Percepciones, lectura y contextos.
Una mirada cultural a los entornos marítimos. Mexico: IIH-UNAM, INAH, 2015.
Yuste, Carmen. El comercio de la Nueva España con Filipinas, 1590–1785. Mexico: INAH,
1984.
Yuste, Carmen. Emporios transpacíficos. Comerciantes mexicanos en Manila, 1710–1815.

Mexico: UNAM, 2007.
Notes:
(1.) Ashin Das Gupta and M. N. Pearson ed., India and the Indian Ocean (Calcutta: Oxford
University Press, 1987), 5.
(2.) Das Gupta and Pearson, India and the Indian Ocean, 5. They describe the relationship
as “… symbiotic, but asymmetric.”
(3.) Jean Heffer, The United States and the Pacific: History of a Frontier, trans., W. Donald
Wilson (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 5.
(4.) See the following works on Chinese silver consumption: William S. Atwell, “Another
Look at Silver Imports into China, ca. 1635–1644,” Journal of World History 16, no. 4
(2005): 467–489, and “International Bullion Flows and the Chinese Economy Circa 1530–
1650,” Past and Present 95 (1982): 68–90; Ward Barrett, “World Bullion Flows, 1450–
1800,” in The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long–Distance Trade in the Early Modern World
1350–1750, ed. James D. Tracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 224–254;
Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez, China and the Birth of Globalization in the 16th
Century (Burlington: Ashgate, 2010); Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Com
merce, 1450–1680, vol. 2: Expansion and Crisis (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1997), chap. 1. For a discussion of silver flows from the perspective of the Spanish
colonies in the Americas see: Carlos Marichal, “The Spanish–American Silver Peso: Ex
port Commodity and Global Money of the Ancien Regime, 1550–1800,” in From Silver to
Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy,
1500–2000, ed. Carlos Marichal et al. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 25–52.
Page 16 of 27

(5.) Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the
Origins of the European World–Economy in the Sixteenth (New York: Academic Press,
1974), chap. 6.
(6.) Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein, Silver, Trade, and War: Spain and America in
the Making of the Early Modern Europe (Baltimore: JHU, 2000), 17. See similar interpre
tations in: Alison Games, “Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities,”
American Historical Association 111, no. 3 (2006): 741–757; Stuart B. Schwartz, “The
Iberian Atlantic to 1650,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Atlantic World, 1450–1850, ed.
Nicholas Canny and Philip Morgan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 147–164.
(7.) Frank, ReOrient, 142–149. Low–end estimates suggest 20 percent of American silver
arrived in Asia via Manila while high–end estimates are in the 30 percent range. See
Frank’s discussion of “stock and flows of money” in chapter 2; Mariano Bonialian, El Pací
fico hispanoamericano: Política y comercio asiático en el Imperio Español (1680–1784)
(Mexico: El Colegio de México, 2012), 29–52; Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez, “Span
ish Profitability in the Pacific: The Philippines in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Cen
turies,” in Pacific Centuries: Pacific and Pacific Rim Economic History since the Sixteenth
Century, ed. Lionel Frost et al. (London: Routledge, 1999), 23–37; and Tatiana Seijas,
“Inns, Mules, and Hardtack for the Voyage: The Local Economy of the Manila Galleon in
Mexico,” Colonial Latin America Review 25, no. 1 (2016): 1–21.
(8.) Eugene Lyon, “Track of the Manila Galleons,” National Geographic 178, no. 3 (1990):
23, 42–43. Note that there were often various ships sailing each year as part of the Mani
la Galleon voyage, not to mention the contraband voyages from both New Spain and Peru.
Also see: Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez, “Born with a ‘Silver Spoon:’ The Origin of
World Trade in 1571,” Journal of World History 6, no. 2 (1995): 201–221.
(9.) Bonialian, El Pacífico hispanoamericano, 165. Not properly registering goods upon
the arrival of a ship (fuera de registro) was labeled as fraud while illicit commerce was
the trade in goods beyond the legal bounds set by the Crown.
(10.) Guadalupe Pinzón Ríos, Acciones y reacciones en los puertos del mar del sur: Desar
rollo portuario del Pacífico novohispano a partir de sus políticas defensivas (1713–1789)
(Mexico: IIH–UNAM, Instituto Mora, 2011), 226–233.
(11.) In a section entitled “El fraude y el contrabando: Una aproximación,” Bonialian

posits that scholars must not assume that fraud and contraband trade were in opposition
to legal commerce, but rather that they complemented one another. Bonialian, El Pacífico
hispanoamericano, 165–175.
(12.) For the extensive historiography that focuses on the religious aspects of the Spanish
presence in Asia see Brandon L. Bayne, “Converting the Pacific: Jesuit Networks between
New Spain and Asia,” in The Oxford Handbook of Borderlands of the Iberian World, ed.
Danna A. Levin Rojo and Cynthia Radding, 789–816 (New York: Oxford University Press,
2019).
Page 17 of 27

(13.) These categories are roughly chronological, but scholars continue to reinterpret ear
lier topics and themes as the historiography changes.
(14.) Nicholas P. Cushner, “Legazpi 1564–1572,” Philippine Studies 13, no. 2 (1965); Luis
Muro, La expedición Legazpi–Urdaneta a las Filipinas (1557–1564) (Mexico: SEP, 1975);
Isacio R. Rodríguez, “A Bibliography on Legazpi and Urdaneta and their Joint Expedition,”
Philippine Studies 13, no. 2 (1965); José Sanz y Díaz, López de Legazpi. Fundador de
Manila, 1571–1971 (Madrid: Publicaciones Españolas, 1971).
(15.) Mariano Cuevas, Monje y marino: La vida y los tiempos de fray Andrés de Urdaneta
(Mexico: Editorial Galatea, 1943); Antonio de Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas: Edi
ción crítica y comentada y estudio preliminar de Francisca Perujo (Mexico: Fondo de Cul
tura Económica, 2007).
(16.) William Shurz, The Manila Galleon (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1939). Additionally,
Woodrow Borah’s 1954 study of the interviceregal trade argues that said trade was su
perseded by the emerging Pacific trade after 1585. Woodrow Borah, Early Colonial Trade
and Navigation Between Mexico and Peru (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1954), 116–130. Several edited volumes about the Galleon provide a more complete pic
ture of the impact of the trade: Javier Wimer, ed., El galeón del Pacífico. Acapulco–Manila.
1565–1815 (Mexico: Gobierno Constitucional del Estado de Guerrero, 1992); Marita
Martínez del Río de Prado, ed., El Galeón de Acapulco (Mexico: INAH, 1988).
(17.) Manuel Carrera Stampa, “La Nao de la China,” Historia Mexicana 9, no. 33 (1959):
97–118; Francisco Santiago Cruz, La nao de China (Mexico: Editorial Jus, 1962).
(18.) María Lourdes Díaz–Trechuelo, La Real Compañía de Filipinas (Seville: EEHA,

1965); “El municipio indígena en Filipinas: Su evolución desde la conquista hasta el final
de la soberanía española,” in Homenaje a Alberto de la Hera, ed. José Luis Soberanes Fer
nández and Rosa María Martínez de Codes (Mexico: UNAM, 2008), 257–273; and Filip
inas: La gran desconocida, 1565–1898 (Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra,
2001).
(19.) For further examples, see: Concepción Pajarón Parody, El gobierno en Filipinas de
Don Fernando Manuel de Bustamante y Bustillo (1717–1719) (Seville: EEHA, 1964);
María Luisa Rodríguez Baena, La Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País de Manila en el
siglo XVIII (Seville: EEHA, 1966); L. Javier Ortiz de la Tabla Ducasse, El Marqués de
Ovando, Gobernador de Filipinas (1750–1754) (Seville: EEHA, 1974); Ana Maria Prieto
Lucena, Filipinas durante el gobierno de Manrique de Lara, 1653–1663 (Seville: EEHA,
1984).
(20.) Luis Alfonso Álvarez, El costo del imperio asiático: La formación colonial de las islas
Filipinas bajo domino español, 1565–1800 (A Coruña and Mexico: Universidad de A
Coruña, Instituto Mora, 2009); and “La inviabilidad de la hacienda asiática: Coacción y
mercado en la formación del modelo colonial en las Islas Filipinas, 1565–1595,” in Impe
Page 18 of 27

rios y naciones en el Pacífico, vol. 1: La formación de una colonia, Filipinas, ed. Dolores
Elizalde Pérez–Grueso, et al (Madrid: CSIC, 2011), 181–205.
(21.) For examples of this argument for the Atlantic see: Zacarías Moutoukias, Contraban
do y control colonial en el siglo XVII: Buenos Aires, el Atlántico y el espacio peruano
(Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1988); Louisa Hoberman, Mexico’s Mer
chant Elite, 1550–1660: Silver, State and Society (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
1991).
(22.) Antonio Álvarez de Abreu, Extracto historial del comercio entre China, Filipinas, y
Nueva España (Mexico: Instituto Mexicano de Comercio Exterior, 1977); Leslie E. Bau
zon, Deficit Government: Mexico and the Philippine Situado, 1606–1804 (Tokyo: The Cen
tre for East Asian Cultural Studies, 1981); Katharine Bjork, “The Link that Kept the
Philippines Spanish: Mexican Merchant Interests and the Manila Trade, 1571–1815,”
Journal of World History 9, no. 1 (1998): 25–50; Nicholas P. Cushner, Landed Estates in
the Colonial Philippines (New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1976); F.
Landa Jocano, The Philippines at the Spanish Contact: Some Major Accounts of Early Fil
ipino Society and Culture (Manila: MCS Enterprises, 1975); Antonio M. Molina Memije,
América en Filipinas (Madrid: Editorial MAPFRE, 1992); Patricio Hidalgo Nuchera, En
comienda, tributo y trabajo en Filipinas, 1570–1608 (Madrid: Universidad Autónoma de
Madrid, Ediciones Polifemo, 1995); John Leddy Phelan, The Hispanization of the Philip
pines: Spanish Aims and Filipino Responses (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1959); William Henry Scott, Cracks in the Parchment Curtain and Other Essays in Philip
pine History (Quezon City: New Day, 1985); and Vera Valdés Lakowsky, De las minas al
mar. Historia de la plata mexicana en Asia, 1565–1834 (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura
Económica, 1987); Gemma Cruz Guerrero, et al., eds., El Galeón de Manila. Un mar de
historias (Mexico: JGH Editores, 1997).
(23.) Pierre Chaunu, Les Philippines et le Pacifique des Ibériques, XVI, XVII, XVIII siécles:
Introduction méthodolique et indeces d’activité (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1960–1966). An ab
breviated version of the multi–volume study was published in Spanish: Pierre Chaunu, Las
Filipinas y el Pacífico de los Ibéricos, siglos XVI–XVII–XVIII: Estadísticas y atlas (Mexico:
Instituto Mexicano de Comercio Exterior, 1974).
(24.) Rafael Bernal, El gran océano (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2012); O. H. K.
Spate, The Spanish Lake (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979).
(25.) Spate, The Spanish Lake, ix. His work is an early exception to the rule that the
Philippines were an economic drain on the Spanish Empire.
(26.) Prior to his sweeping history of the Pacific, Bernal wrote on the Spanish in the
Philippines: Rafael Bernal, México en Filipinas: Estudio de una transculturación (Mexico:
UNAM, 1965) and Prologue to Philippine History (Manila: Solidaridad, 1967).
(27.) Carmen Yuste, El comercio de la Nueva España con Filipinas, 1590–1785 (Mexico:
INAH, 1984); “El eje comercial transpacífico en el siglo XVIII. La disolución imperial de
Page 19 of 27

una alternativa colonial,” in Comercio y poder en America colonial: Los consulados de

comerciantes, siglos XVII–XIX, ed. Bernd Hausberger and Antonio Ibarra (Frankfurt am
Main: Iberoamericana, 2003); Emporios transpacíficos: Comerciantes mexicanos en Mani
la, 1710–1815 (Mexico: UNAM, 2007); “Las familias de comerciantes en el tráfico
transpacífico en el siglo XVIII,” in Familia y poder en Nueva España: Memoria del tercer
simposio de historia de las mentalidades, ed. Solange Alberro (Mexico: INAH, 1991), 63–
74; “Los comerciantes mexicanos en la formación del consulado filipino,” in Un hombre
de libros: Homenaje a Ernesto de la Torre Villar, ed. Alicia Mayer (Mexico: IIH–UNAM,
2012), 177–202; “Nueva España: El cabo americano del Galeón de Manila,” in Los orí
genes de la globalización: El Galeón de Manila, ed. Dolors Folch et al (Shangai: Biblioteca
Miguel de Cervnates de Shangai, 2013), 105–126.
(28.) Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez, “Born Again: Globalization’s Sixteenth–Centu
ry Origins,” Pacific Economic Review 13, no. 3 (2008): 359–387; “Born with a ‘Silver
Spoon;’ ” China and the Birth of Globalization in the 16th Century; “China and the Manila
Galleons”; “Cycles of Silver: Global Economic Unity through the Mid–Eighteenth Centu
ry,” Journal of World History 13, no. 2 (2002): 391–427; and “Spanish Profitability in the
Pacific.”
(29.) Flynn and Giráldez, “Cycles of Silver,” 398.
(30.) In ReOrient, Gunder Frank also took up this challenge, building on the work of Fly
nn and Giráldez in his 1998 critique of the Euro–centric approach to world–systems theo
ry of which he had long been a proponent.
(31.) Arturo Giráldez, The Age of Trade: The Manila Galleons and the Dawn of the Global
Economy (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).
(32.) Colloquium “Vislumbraron el Pacífico y pusieron a México en el Centro del Mundo,

1513–2013,” Archivo General de la Nación and Centro de Estudios de Historia de México
Carso Fundación, September 24–26, 2013, Mexico City; International seminar “Familias y
mestizaje entre México y Filipinas,” IIH–UNAM, October 28, 2014, Mexico City; Congreso
internacional “450 años del viaje de Miguel López de Legazpi a las Filipinas,” El Colegio
de Jalisco, November 24–25, 2014, Guadalajara; Seminario internacional “Nueva España:
Puerta americana al Pacífico asiático (siglos XVI–XVIII),” IIH–UNAM, October 13–14,
2015, Mexico City.
(33.) Permanent exhibit “Oriente en Nueva España,” Museo Nacional del Virreinato
Tepotzotlán, Mexico; Temporary exhibit “La exploración del Pacífico: 500 años de histo
ria,” Casa de América Madrid, Spain, October 2, 2013–February 2, 2014. A temporary ex
hibit spearheaded by Acción Cultura Española, the Archivo General de las Indias, and var
ious government ministries, traveled to Spain, the Philippines, and several Latin Ameri
can countries. See the exhibit catalog: Antonio Sánchez de Mora, ed., Pacífico: España y
la aventura de la mar del sur (Madrid: Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, 2013).
Page 20 of 27

(34.) Temporary exhibit “Made in the Americas: The New World Discovers Asia,” The
Boston Museum of Fine Art, Boston, August 18, 2015–February 15, 2016. See also: Den
nis Carr, et al., ed., Made in the Americas: The New World Discovers Asia (Boston: MFA
Publications, 2015).
(35.) These new exhibits represent a major shift from the 2004 exhibit at the Victoria and
Albert Museum in London called “Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe 1500–
1800,” in which Spain received no mention. Passing reference was made to the fact that
“American silver” fueled this trade, but the Spanish presence and the way that Spanish
colonial policies affected the flow of that silver in Asia was ignored. Anna Jackson and
Amin Jaffer, ed., Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe 1500–1800 (London: Victo
ria & Albert Museum, 2004).
(36.) For examples of the newest scholarship, see: María Cristina E. Barrón Soto, ed., Ur
daneta novohispano: La inserción del mundo hispano en Asia (Mexico: Universidad
Iberoamericana, 2012); Salvador Bernabéu Albert and Carlos Martínez Shaw, ed., Un
océano de seda y plata: El universo económico del Galeón de Manila (Seville: CSIC,
2013); Ranier F. Buschmann, et al., eds., Navigating the Spanish Lake: The Pacific in the
Iberian World, 1521–1898 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2014); Robert Rich
mond Ellis, They Need Nothing: Hispanic–Asian Encounters of the Colonial Period
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012); Jaume Gorriz Abella, Filipinas antes de Filip
inas. El archipiélago de San Lázaro en el siglo XVI (Madrid: Ediciones Polifemo, 2010);
Ethan P. Hawkley, “The Birth of Globalization: The World and the Beginnings of Philippine
Sovereignty, 1565–1610” (PhD diss., Northeastern University, 2014); Christina H. Lee,
ed., Western Visions of the Far East in a Transpacific Age (1522–1671) (Burlington, VT:
Ashgate, 2012); Flor Trejo Rivera and Guadalupe Pinzón, eds., El mar: Percepciones, lec
tura y contextos. Una mirada cultural a los entornos marítimos (Mexico: IIH–UNAM,
INAH, 2015); Mercedes Maroto Camino, Producing the Pacific: Maps and Narratives of
Spanish Exploration (1567–1606) (New York: Rodopi, 2005); Patricio Hidalgo, Los autos
acordados de la real audiencia de las islas filipinas de 1598–1599 (Madrid: Universidad
Autónoma de Madrid, 2012); Kevin Sheehan, “Voyaging in the Spanish Baroque: Science
and Patronage in the Pacific Voyage of Pedro Fernández de Quirós, 1605–1606,” in
Science in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, 1500–1800, ed. Daniela Bleichmar et al.
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 233–246; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Hold
ing the World in Balance: The Connected Histories of the Iberian Overseas Empires,
1500–1640,” American Historical Review 112, no. 5 (2007): 1359–1385; Birgit M. Tremml,
“The Global and the Local: Problematic Dynamics of the Triangular Trade in Early Mod
ern Manila,” Journal of World History 23, no. 3 (2012): 555–586.
(37.) Mariano Bonialian, China en la América colonial. Bienes, mercados, comercio y cul
tura del consumo desde México hasta Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires and Mexico: Editorial
Biblos, Instituto Mora, 2014); El Pacífico hispanoamericano; and “México: Epicentro se
mi–informal del comercio hispanoamericano, 1680–1740,” América Latina en la Historia
Económica 18, no. 35 (2011): 7–27.
Page 21 of 27

(38.) Tatiana Seijas, Asian Slaves in Colonial Mexico: From Chinos to Indios (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2014); “Native Vassals: Chinos, Indigenous Identity, and Le
gal Protection in Early Modern Spain,” in Western Visions of the Far East in a Transpacif
ic Age (1522–1671), ed. Christina H. Lee (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012), 153–164; and
“Inns, Mules, and Hardtack.”
(39.) The latter was reserved only for native Filipinos. Scholars tend to use the terms in
terchangeably, but Seijas demonstrates that the term “indio chino” was distinct in usage.
(40.) A sizeable number of individuals also arrived in mainland New Spain as free peo
ples. Matthew J. Furlong, “Peasants, Servants and Sojourners: Itinerant Asians in Colonial
New Spain, 1571–1720” (PhD diss., University of Arizona, 2014).
(41.) Guadalupe Pinzón Ríos, “Desde tierra y hacia el horizonte marítimo. Una reflexión
sobre la relevancia de los establecimientos portuarios del Pacífico novohispano,” México y
la cuenca del Pacífico 3, no. 7 (2014): 67–87; Hombres de mar en las costas novohispanas:
Trabajos, trabajadores y vida portuaria en el departamento marítimo de San Blas (siglo
XVIII) (Mexico: IIH–UNAM, 2014); “Una descripción de las costas del Pacífico novohis
pano del siglo XVIII,” Estudios de Historia Novohispana 39 (2008): 157–182; “Quinto Re
al, licencias y asientos en torno a la extracción de perlas en el Pacífico novohispano,” in
La fiscalidad novohispana en el Imperio español. Conceptualizaciones, proyectos y con
tradicciones, ed. Pilar Martínez, et al. (Mexico: IIH–UNAM, Instituto Mora, 2015), 139–
165; and Acciones y reacciones.
(42.) Real cédula naming Miguel Gallo as castellano and alcalde mayor of Acapulco, 1688,
Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico (henceforth AGN), Reales Cédulas, vol. 22, exp. 66.
(43.) Jaime Bugallal y Vela and Jesús Ángel Sánchez García, “Villardefrancos. Reconsid
eración de un gran pazo y su linaje,” Quintana 1 (2002): 153–176.
(44.) By 1713, the Spanish Crown lost control of the island when it was ceded to the
British with the Treaty of Utrecht. Iván Escamilla González, Matilde Souto Mantecón, and
Guadalupe Pinzón Ríos, ed., Resonancias imperiales: América y el Tratado de Utrecht
1713–2013 (Mexico: IIH–UNAM, Instituto Mora, 2015).
(45.) Request for passage by Miguel Gallo, 1688, Archivo General de Indias (henceforth
AGI), Contratación, 5450, N. 68.
(46.) During the period that the Manila Galleons sailed, forty–two shipwrecked. William J.
McCarthy, “Gambling on Empire: The Economic Role of Shipwreck in the Age of Discov
ery,” International Journal of Maritime History 23, no. 2 (2011): 83. For a list of the
Galleons, see: Shirley Fish, The Manila–Acapulco Galleons: Treasure Ships of the Pacific
(Central Milton Keynes: AuthorHouse, 2011), 499–523.
(47.) Flynn and Giráldez, “Cycles of Silver,” 392.
Page 22 of 27

(48.) Bonialian, El Pacífico hispanoamericano, 59–60. The total tonnage was limited to
three hundred tons, while they were allowed two hundred and fifty thousand pesos in
goods from Manila to mainland New Spain and five hundred thousand pesos in silver for
the return voyage.
(49.) Bonialian, El Pacífico hispanoamericano, 65–66.
(50.) Seijas, Asian Slaves, chapter 7. The final chapter analyzes the late seventeenth–cen
tury abolition campaigns aimed at indigenous slavery practices and how chino slavery
was incorporated into these debates.
(51.) Bonialian, El Pacífico hispanoamericano, 66–70. The permiso was raised to five hun
dred thousand pesos in goods going to mainland New Spain and a million pesos in silver
to Asia.
(52.) Bonialian, El Pacífico hispanoamericano, 394–397.
(53.) Pinzón Ríos, Acciones y reacciones, 99. The Pacific borderlands of mainland New
Spain stretched from Alta California to Central America.
(54.) Pinzón Ríos, Acciones y reacciones, 31. There were more than five possible ports in
the general zone, taking into account the coast between the modern states of Jalisco and
Oaxaca, with more ports to the north and south.
(55.) Pinzón Ríos, Acciones y reacciones, 137–138.
(56.) Pinzón Ríos, Acciones y reacciones, 99.
(57.) Pinzón Ríos, Acciones y reacciones, 105–106.
(58.) Pinzón Ríos, Acciones y reacciones, 140–143. Approval for the new fortification was
granted in 1777, complemented by the new installation at San Blas.
(59.) Pinzón Ríos, Acciones y reacciones, 138. Along with these duties, he was also re
sponsible for the management of the small population of Acapulco year round. For exam
ple, in 1743, Juan Eusebio Gallo de Pardiñas sent a report to the viceroy indicating that
four hundred families of mulatos, pardos, and some chinos lived in Acapulco. Pinzón Ríos,
Acciones y reacciones, 75.
(60.) Yuste López, Emporios transpacíficos, 318–319.
(61.) Petition for Caballero de Santiago by Juan Eusebio Gallo de Pardiñas, 1719, Archivo
Histórico de la Nación Madrid (henceforth AHN), Ordenes Militares, Santiago, exp. 3233.
(62.) Genealogists claim that he held the position of castellano, alcalde mayor, and
capitán de guerra in Acapulco (as well as a similar position in Puebla) before taking the
post in Nueva Vizcaya. No corroborating documentation has been found to date to verify
the claim. Bugallal y Vela and Sánchez García, “Villardefrancos,” 169.
Page 23 of 27

(63.) Registration of the Nao Nuestra Señora del Rosario, Acapulco, 1701, National
Archive of the Philippines (henceforth NAP), Acapulco 1701–1712, Book 1.
(64.) Registration of the Nao Nuestra Señora del Rosario, Acapulco, 1701, NAP, Acapulco
1701–1712, Book 1.
(65.) Registration de la Nao Nuestra Señora del Rosario, Acapulco, 1701, NAP, Acapulco
1701–1712, Book 2.
(66.) Other children mentioned include Nicolasa, born in Cádiz, and Sebastián and Bal
tazar both born in New Spain. References to all three are scarce. Sebastián, like his
brother Juan Eusebio, did hold office in Acapulco but the scarcity of documentation about
his tenure suggest he was a temporary replacement. See: Autos covering the inventory of
the property of Juan Serrano [who died] intestate, ordered by the alcalde mayor Capitan
José Sebastián Gallo, 1711, AGN, Intestados, vol. 9, exp. 9, 166–180v.
(67.) Retirement of Juan Eusebio Gallo de Pardiñas in Acapulco, 1760, AGN, Filipinas, vol.
6, folio 112.
(68.) Doctor Don Miguel Ventura Gallo de Pardiñas, prebend, about an irregular deposit,
1731, AGN, Bienes Nacionales, vol. 449, exp. 24; Transfer of Manuel San Juan de Santa
Cruz’s Power of Attorney from Felipe de Iparraguirre to Miguel Gallo de Pardiñas, 1719,
Archivo Histórico Municipal de Parral, r. 1720B; The indigenous of the pueblo of San
Francisco Magu (Tlanepantla, jurisdiction Estado de México), against Manuel de San
tacruz and Miguel Ventura Gallo, owners of the hacienda of Lanzarote, about water
rights, 1744, AGN, Tierras, vol. 1591, exp. 10.
(69.) For more information on the San Juan de Santa Cruz family, see: Catherine Tracy
Goode, “Power in the Peripheries: Family Business and the Global Reach of the 18th–cen
tury Spanish Empire” (PhD diss., University of Arizona, 2012).
(70.) Yuste López, Emporios transpacíficos, 126; Luis Muro, “Soldados de Nueva España a
Filipinas (1575),” Historia Mexicana 19, no. 4 (1970): 466–491.
(71.) Juan Eusebio, a vecino of Acapulco, was listed as an official on the galleon that year.
Case against Miguel Gallo, castellano and alcalde mayor of Acapulco, 1712, AGI, Escrib
anía 264A.
(72.) For information on his first year in Mexico City, see the following letters between
Manuel and his older brother Francisco in Veracruz: Manuel San Juan de Santa Cruz to
Francisco San Juan de Santa Cruz, Mexico City, January 23, 1709, AGI, Audiencia de Méx
ico, leg. 2769; Manuel San Juan de Santa Cruz to Francisco San Juan de Santa Cruz, Aca
pulco, March 30, 1709, AGI, Audiencia de México, leg. 2769; Manuel San Juan de Santa
Cruz to Francisco San Juan de Santa Cruz, Mexico City, May 22, 1709, AGI, Audiencia de
México, leg. 2769.
Page 24 of 27

(73.) For a discussion of these practices in the mid–sixteenth century, see: William J. Mc
Carthy, “Between Policy and Prerogative: Malfeasance in the Inspection of the Manila
Galleons at Acapulco, 1637,” Colonial Latin American Historical Review 2, no. 2 (1993):
163–183.
(74.) The report is wide–ranging, including historical documentation and a series of inter
rogatories of Mexico City merchants, in two full legajos. Report by the Fiscal, consultant
to Juan Díaz de Bracamonte, to the Viceroy, 1712, AGI, Escribanía 264A.
(75.) Report by the Fiscal, 1712, AGI, Escribanía 264B.
(76.) Report by the Fiscal, 1712, AGI, Escribanía 264A.
(78.) Yuste López, Emporios transpacíficos, 133.
(79.) Shurz, The Manila Galleon, 202.
(80.) Report by the Fiscal, 1712, AGI, Escribanía 264A. He also made a payment in the
amount of fifteen thousand pesos to his father, but the purpose of the payment is not ex
plained in the documentation.
(81.) Report by the Fiscal, 1712, AGI, Escribanía 264A. Both registros list the space each
importer contracted on the ship; Manuel had one chest and one bundle (a chest could
hold as much as two hundred fifty pounds of Chinese silks, or one thousand one hundred
forty pairs of stockings, weighing about two hundred thirty pounds). For more informa
tion on the allotment of space on the ships in the early seventeenth century see: Bo
nialian, El Pacífico hispanoamericano, 67; Lyon, “Track of the Manila Galleons,” 42–43.
For further information on the provisioning of the galleons, see: Seijas, “Inns, Mules, and
Hardtack.”
(82.) As the manifest of goods is a separate document from the list of exporters/importers
and their piezas, it is difficult to correlate the goods each merchant imported; all that can
be determined for an individual is the space allotted on the ship.
(83.) Catherine Tracy Goode, “Merchant-Bureaucrats, Unwritten Contracts, and Fraud in

the Manila Galleon Trade,” in Corruption in the Iberian Empires: Greed, Custom, and
Colonial Networks, ed. Christoph Rosenmüller (Albuquerque: UNM, 2017), 183–189.
(84.) A single reference to the case, in late 1712, mentions the need for a temporary
castellano, because Gallo was in prison, presumably due to these charges. Appointment of
Juan de Guzmán as interim castellano, Acapulco, 1712, AGN, Tierras, vol. 2986, exp. 4.
(86.) Report by the Fiscal, 1712, AGI, Escribanía 264A. Note that the majority of the “wit
nesses” were Mexico City vecinos that had never been to Acapulco, let alone Manila.
Page 25 of 27

(87.) Report by the Fiscal, 1712, AGI, Escribanía, 264A.
(88.) Juan Eusebio Gallo de Pardiñas against Jose Mateo Herrera, and Juan Antonio
Velázquez over ownership of territory, 1715, AGN, Tierras, vols. 409–411; Juan Eusebio
Gallo De Pardiñas against the vecinos of the villas de Santa Ana de Camargo and of Mier
(jurisdiction Tamaulipas and Nuevo León) over ownership of territory, 1756, AGN, Tier
ras, vol. 817, exp. 3; The indigenous of the pueblo of San Juan Bautista Jalapa against the
heirs of Juan Eusebio Gallo, owners of the hacienda of San Marcos (jurisdiction Guer
rero), over ownership of territory, 1765, AGN, Tierras, vol. 910, exp. 2; Testimony of the
autos for the foundation of a capellanía instituted and endowed by General Don Juan Eu
sebio Gallo de Pardiñas, Knight of the Order of Santiago and castellano of the port of Aca
pulco, 1754, AGN, Bienes Nacionales, vol. 238, exp. 6.
(89.) Miguel Ventura was a wealthy priest, but in debt and embroiled in various conflicts
over his properties: Debts of Miguel Ventura Gallo, 1737, AGN, Capellanías, vol. 86, exp.
662; Concerning the survey of said hacienda that resolved the dispossession of Doctor
Don Miguel Ventura Gallo de Pardiñas, prebend of this Holy Church as the owner of the
hacienda San Nicolás Lanzarote, 1736, AGN, Tierras, vol. 566, exp. 1; Dr. Don Miguel Gal
lo canon of this Holy Church concerning the permission to sell the ranch Tecoloacan,
1736, AGN, Tierras, vol. 3114, exp. 4.
(90.) This may well have been a punishment, given his legal problems. Oath of Dr. Don
Miguel Ventura Gallo de Pardiñas to be the Ordinary of the Archbishop of Manila, 1747,
AGN, Inquisición, vol. 847, exp. 913. News of the death of Don Miguel Gallo in Manila.
1752, AGN, Inquisición, vol. 1151, exp. 5.
(91.) Manuel continued to exploit the close association with Claudia’s family until his
death in 1749, evidenced when Claudia stepped in to mediate between the families con
cerning a dispute about finances in 1723. She was aware of her husband’s creative fi
nancing and the letter suggests that she was actively involved in those dealings. It is not
clear whether she approved of the illegal activity, only that she is concerned for her par
ents. Claudia Gallo de Pardiñas to Francisco San Juan de Santa Cruz, 1723, AGI, Audien
cia de México, leg. 2769.
(92.) Petition for Caballero de Santiago by Manuel San Juan de Santa Cruz, November 28,
1711, AHN, Ordenes Militares, Santiago, exp. 7519; Petition for Caballero de Santiago by
Juan Eusebio Gallo de Pardiñas, 1719, AHN, Ordenes Militares, Santiago, exp. 3233. Juan
Isidro gained the title of Caballero de Santiago in 1680 before the family network dis
cussed here existed. Bugallal y Vela and Sánchez García, “Villardefrancos,” 169.
(93.) The following recent works employ the term “frontera” for the Spanish Pacific:
María Fernanda García de los Arcos, “Las relaciones de Filipinas con el centro del vir
reinato,” in México en el mundo hispánico, vol. 1, ed. Oscar Mazín Gómez, (Zamora: El
Colegio de Michoacán, 2000), 51–67; Lourdes de Ita Rubio, “Los puertos novohispanos,
su hinterland y su foreland durante el siglo XVI,” in Territorio, frontera y región en la his
toria de América. Siglos XVI al XX, ed. Marco Antonio Landavazo (Mexico: Editorial Por
Page 26 of 27

rúa, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas–UMSNH, 2003), 3–32; Marta María Mancha

do López and Miguel Luque Talaván, ed., Fronteras del mundo hispánico: Filipinas en el
contexto de las regiones liminares novohispanos (Córdoba: Universidad de Córdoba,
2011); Pinzón Ríos, Acciones y reacciones, 99.
(94.) Das Gupta, India and the Indian Ocean, 13.
(95.) Murdo J. MacLeod, “Spain and America: The Atlantic Trade, 1492–1720,” in The
Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 1, ed. Leslie Bethell (New York: Cambridge Uni
versity Press, 1984), 354.
(96.) Heffer, The United States and the Pacific, 6.
(97.) Certainly few enjoyed this economic success; yet, under the constraints of the colo
nial economy that excluded the majority, one can assess the success of merchant activi
ties as they pertain to mainland New Spain and the Pacific borderlands.
(98.) Frank, ReOrient.
(99.) Wallerstein, The Modern World System I, 333.
(100.) Flynn and Giráldez, “Born with a ‘Silver Spoon,’ ” 201.
(101.) John Tutino, Making a New World: Founding Capitalism in the Bajío and Spanish
North America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 2–3.
Catherine Tracy Goode
Catherine Tracy Goode graduated from the University of Arizona with a dissertation
on the central role of New Spain (Mexico) in the world economy of the early modern
period. Her “Merchant-Bureaucrats, Unwritten Contracts, and Fraud in the Manila
Galleon Trade,” was published by the University of New Mexico Press in the volume
Greedy Officials, Whiny Subjects, and Atlantic Networks. Currently she is preparing
the manuscript “Family, Fraud, and Fortunes: Extended Family Networks in the Eigh
teenth-Century Global Economy.” As an independent consultant and research advisor
with archival experience in Spain, Mexico, the United States, and the Philippines, she
works in libraries and manuscript collections dating from the sixteenth to twentieth
centuries.
Page 27 of 27

Catherine Goode - The Pacific Borderlands of the Spanish Empire

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Catherine Goode - The Pacific Borderlands of the Spanish Empire

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Pacific Borderlands of the Spanish Empire

The Pacific Borderlands of the Spanish Empire

Print Publication Date: Dec 2019 Subject: History, European History

Abstract and Keywords

Defining an ocean as a unit of study is a peculiar historiographical challenge. Traditional

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

Historiography of an Oceanic Borderland

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

In addition to reevaluating the economic importance of the Pacific, recently published

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

“Gallos de alto poder” in Acapulco

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

As contraband is notoriously difficult to document, we know of the “success” of the ex­

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

From the Pacific Borderlands to the Global

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

A key issue in assessing the Pacific economy as a success or failure is a simple

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

Bonialian, Mariano. El Pacífico hispanoamericano: Política y comercio asiático en

el Imperio Español (1680–1784). Mexico: El Colegio de México, 2012.

Bonialian, Mariano. China en la América colonial: Bienes, mercados, comercio y cultura

Goode, Catherine Tracy. “Merchant-Bureaucrats, Unwritten Contracts, and Fraud in the

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

Yuste, Carmen. Emporios transpacíficos. Comerciantes mexicanos en Manila, 1710–1815.

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

(11.) In a section entitled “El fraude y el contrabando: Una aproximación,” Bonialian

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

(18.) María Lourdes Díaz–Trechuelo, La Real Compañía de Filipinas (Seville: EEHA,

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

una alternativa colonial,” in Comercio y poder en America colonial: Los consulados de

(29.) Flynn and Giráldez, “Cycles of Silver,” 398.

(32.) Colloquium “Vislumbraron el Pacífico y pusieron a México en el Centro del Mundo,

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

(47.) Flynn and Giráldez, “Cycles of Silver,” 392.

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

(49.) Bonialian, El Pacífico hispanoamericano, 65–66.

(52.) Bonialian, El Pacífico hispanoamericano, 394–397.

(55.) Pinzón Ríos, Acciones y reacciones, 137–138.

(56.) Pinzón Ríos, Acciones y reacciones, 99.

(57.) Pinzón Ríos, Acciones y reacciones, 105–106.

(60.) Yuste López, Emporios transpacíficos, 318–319.

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

(75.) Report by the Fiscal, 1712, AGI, Escribanía 264B.

(76.) Report by the Fiscal, 1712, AGI, Escribanía 264A.

(77.) Report by the Fiscal, 1712, AGI, Escribanía 264A.

(78.) Yuste López, Emporios transpacíficos, 133.

(79.) Shurz, The Manila Galleon, 202.

(83.) Catherine Tracy Goode, “Merchant-Bureaucrats, Unwritten Contracts, and Fraud in

(85.) Report by the Fiscal, 1712, AGI, Escribanía 264A.

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

(87.) Report by the Fiscal, 1712, AGI, Escribanía, 264A.

Subscriber: New York Public Library; date: 05 May 2021

rúa, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas–UMSNH, 2003), 3–32; Marta María Mancha­

(94.) Das Gupta, India and the Indian Ocean, 13.

As contraband is notoriously difficult to document, we know of the “success” of the ex

rúa, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas–UMSNH, 2003), 3–32; Marta María Mancha