Joaquim Magalhães de Castro
A trip between Macau and Manila, in those remote 16th and 17th centuries, took between fifteen and twenty days; and, if carried outside the monsoon season, would not present major surprises in terms of navigation.
In addition, the Portuguese pilots had already designed detailed routes that provided the captains of the trade with peaceful navigations in the seas of China and the great South, what is today known as Southeast Asia.
Well packed in the basements of the Castilian galleons that, from the Philippine archipelago, arrived in New Spain (Mexico) and in the Viceroyalty of Peru, gold and silver were the most requested goods by Portuguese merchants in the port of Manila, as they knew how much they were valued inside immense China. Its value there far exceeded that achieved in Europe, so that such precious metals (especially silver) began to flow into Macau “together with products from the Philippines such as rice, sugar, wax, rigging and tropical fruits,” as noted by historian João Manuel Garcia in his work on the historical relations between Portugal and the Philippines.
As a bargaining chip, the Portuguese supplied “silks and porcelain,” to which were added less noble goods such as copper, jade, Indian fabrics, weapons and ammunition. Such was the craving for profit that there were those who did not hesitate to do business on their own, trying to feint the Crown’s plans; of the Crown of Castile, in particular the Spanish galleon San Martín, which left Manila for Acapulco but would be diverted by the mutineers who, after arresting Captain Francisco de Mercado, sailed to Macau to carry silk and other Chinese goods, before the long journey to the New World.
The operation, however, would take longer than anticipated and San Martín was still anchoring off Macau when, in March 1584, our well-known Bartolomeu Vaz Landeiro saw it while he was preparing for another trip to Manila. Once there, he immediately informed Governor Diego Ronquillo who sent his ship to Macau “with the head of the Fazenda Real, Juan Bautista Román, and the Jesuit Alonso Sánchez, arriving in this city on May 1, where they arrested and convicted the culprits of the riot.”
Finally, with a new and faithful garrison, San Martín could head to the famous port of New Spain. A year earlier, as José Manuel Garcia reminds us, “a senate was created in Macau, a superior institution of local administration that reinforced the power and autonomy of the mercantile oligarchy of the Portuguese who centered their business there, also contributing to a better organization of the city, bearing in mind, in particular, the Spanish expansionist interests set in Manila.”
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