Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T13:41:16.162Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Portuguese Slave Trade to Spanish Manila: 1580–1640

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2010

Tatiana Seijas
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Catarina de San Juan was a slave woman who was brought to the Philippines in the 1610s on her way to Mexico, where she became a beata of great renown. Her experiences in the slave markets of Cochin and Manila suggest that Portuguese traders played a key role as the primary suppliers of Asian slaves to the Philippines. This paper argues that Portuguese slavers made a significant contribution to the Manila economy by providing an important labour force that helped build and maintain the colony from 1580 to 1640, the years of Iberian Union or, from the Portuguese perspective, the “Spanish Captivity”. One-crown rule gave Portuguese traders free trade access to Manila, allowing them to meet the city's demand for this important commodity. The slave trade's volume and profits testify to its social and economic significance and suggests that the Portuguese helped sustain the Philippines, even as they faced the logistical difficulties and legal barriers evident in Catarina's story. This paper shows that the forced migration of individuals like Catarina was a notable outcome of “Spain's Asian presence”—less significant in economic terms than the transfer of silver and textiles, but no less important in human terms.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 19 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Arasaratnam, S. “Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Century.” In Mariners, Merchants and Oceans: Studies in Maritime History, edited by Mathew, K.S., 195–208. New Delhi Manohar, 1995.Google Scholar
Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. “A Mughal Princess in Baroque New Spain: Catarina De San Juan (1606–1688), the China Poblana”. Anales del Institute de Investigaciones Estéticas 71 (1997): 37–73.Google Scholar
Bernier, François. Travels in the Mogul Empire, A.D. 1656–1668. Translated by Brock, Irving. Edited by Constable, Archibald. 2nd ed.New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1992.Google Scholar
Blair, Emma Helen, and Robertson, James Alexander. The Philippine Islands, 1493–1803. Cleveland: The A.H. Clark Company, 1903–1909.Google Scholar
Blussé, Leonard. Strange Company: Chinese Settlers, Mestizo Women and the Dutch in VOC Batauia. Dordrecht, Holland; Riverton, N.J.: Foris Publications, 1986.Google Scholar
Bocarro, António. Década XIII da Historia da India. Edited by de Lima Felner, Rodrigo Jose. Academi Real das Sciencias, 1876.Google Scholar
Borschberg, Peter. “The Seizure of the Sta. Catarina Revisited: The Portuguese Empire in Asia, VOC Politics and the Origins of the Dutch-Johor Alliance (1602–c. 1616)”. Journal of Southeast AsianStudies 33:1 (2002): 31–62.Google Scholar
Boxer, C.R.The Great Ship from Amacon. 1959. Reprint Instituto Cultural de Macau, Centro de Estudos Maritimos de Macau, 1988.Google Scholar
Boxer, C.R.Mary and Misogyny, Women in Iberian Expansion Overseas, 1415–1815: Some Facts, Fancies and Personalities. London: Duckworth, 1975.Google Scholar
Boxer, C.R.Portuguese Merchants and Missionaries in Feudal Japan, 1543–1640. London: Variorum Reprints, 1986.Google Scholar
Boyajian, James C.Portuguese Trade in Asia under the Habsburgs, 1580–1640. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Carletti, Francesco. My Voyage around the World. London: Methuen, 1965.Google Scholar
Castillo Grajeda, José del. Compendio de la Vida y Virtudes de la Venerable Catarina de San Juan. 1692. México: Ediciones Xochitl, 1946.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Indrani, and Eaton, Richard Maxwell. Slavery & South Asian History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Chaunu, Pierre. Les Philippines et le Pacifique des Ibériques XVIe, XVIIe, XVIIIe Siécles; Introduction Méthodologique et Indices d'Actiuité. Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1960.Google Scholar
Chirino, Pedro. Relacion de la Islas Filipinas. 1604. Reprint Manila: Historical Conservation Society, 1969.Google Scholar
Cushner, Nicholas P.Landed Estates in the Colonial Philippines. New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1976.Google Scholar
Documentos Remetidos da India, ou, Livros das Monçõoes: (1625–1627). 1880. Reprint CNCDP/Centro de Estudos Damião de Góis, 2000.Google Scholar
Edwardes, Michael. Ralph Fitch, Elizabethan in the Indies. London: Faber, 1972.Google Scholar
Escalante, Bernardino de. Discurso de la Navegacion que los Portugueses Hazen a Los Reinos y Provincias del Oriente, y de la Noticia que se Tiene de las Grandezas del Relno de la China. Sevilla: 1577.Google Scholar
Frois, Luis. História de Japam. Edited by Wicki, José. 5 vols. Lisbon: Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, 1976–1984.Google Scholar
Girard, Pascale. “Les Africains aux Philippines aux XVIe et XVIIe Siècles”. Negros, Mulatos, Zambaigos: Derrotiros Africanos En Los Mundos Ibéricos, edited by Queija, Berta Ares and Stella, Alessandro, 67–74. Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 2000.Google Scholar
Headley, John M. “Spain's Asian Presence, 1565–1590: Structures and Aspirations”. Hispanic American Historical Review 75:4 (1995): 623–46.Google Scholar
Hidalgo Nuchera, Patricio. Encomienda, Tributo y Trabajo en Filipinas, 1570–1608. Madrid: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid: Ediciones Polifemo, 1995.Google Scholar
Lockhart, James. Spanish Peru, 1532–1560: A Colonial Society. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968.Google Scholar
Locklin, Blake Seana. “Orientalism and the Nation: Asian Women in Spanish-American Literature”. PhD diss., Cornell University, 1998.Google Scholar
Maza, Francisco de la. Catarina de San Juan: Princesa de la India y Visionaria de Puebla. 1971. Reprint México: Consejo Nacional para la Culture y las Artes, 1990.Google Scholar
Morga, Antonio de. Sucesos de las Islas Filipinos. 1609 Mexico. Madrid: Ediciones Polifemo, 1997.Google Scholar
Morgan, Ronald J. “‘Very Good Blood’: Reconstructing the Asian Identity of Catarina De San Juan”. In Spanish American Saints and the Rhetoric of Identity, 119–42. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Myers, Kathleen Ann. “La China Poblana, Catarina De San Juan (Ca.1607–1688): Hagiography and the Inquisition”. In Neither Saints or Sinners: Writing the Lives of Women in Spanish America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Myers, Kathleen Ann. “Testimony for Canonization or Proof of Blasphemy? The New Spanish Inquisition and the Hagiographic Biography of Catarina De San Juan”. In Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World, edited by Giles, Mary E., 270–95. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Nelson, Thomas. “Slavery in Medieval Japan”. Monuments Nipponica 59:4 (2004): 463–92.Google Scholar
Niemeijer, Hendrik E. “Slavery, Ethnicity and the Economic Independence of Women in Seventeenth-Century Batavia”. In Other Pasts: Women, Gender and History in Early Modern Southeast Asia, edited by Andaya, Barbara Watson, 174–94. Honolulu: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawai'i at Mânoa, 2000.Google Scholar
Ortega Hernandez, Maria Luisa. “Woman, Virtue, and Desire: The Female Icon in New Spain”. PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2002.Google Scholar
Pyrard, François. The Voyage of Francçis Pyrard of Laval to the East Indies, the Maldives, the Moluccas and Brazil, edited by de Bergeron, Pierre and Bignon, Jérôme. London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1888.Google Scholar
Ramos, Alonso. Primera Parte de los Prodigios de la Omnipotencia y Milagros de la Gracia en la Vida de la Venerable Sierva de Dios Catharina de San Joan. 1st ed. Vol. 1. 3 vols. Puebla: Imprenta Plantiniana de Diego Fernandez de Leon, 1689.Google Scholar
Reid, Anthony. “Female Roles in Pre-Colonial Southeast Asia”. Modern Asian Studies 22:3 (1988): 629–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rivara, Joaquim Heliodoro da Cunha. Archiuo Portuguez-Oriental. 1857. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1992.Google Scholar
Rodríguez, Isacio R.Historia de la Provincia Agustiniana del Santísimo Nombre de Jesús de Filipinas. Manila: Arnoldus Press, Convento de San Agustín, 1965.Google Scholar
Russell-Wood, A.J.R.A World on the Move: The Portuguese in Africa, Asia, and America, 1415–18O8. Manchester: Carcanet, 1992.Google Scholar
Schurz, William Lytle. The Manila Galleon. 1939. 2nd ed.New York: E.P. Dutton, 1959.Google Scholar
Scott, William Henry. Slavery in the Spanish Philippines. Manila: De La Salle University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Solórzano Pereira, Juan de, and de Valenzuela, Francisco Ramiro. Política Indiana. Madrid, Buenos Aires: Compañía Ibero-Americana de Publicaciones, 1930.Google Scholar
Souza, George Bryan. The Survival of Empire: Portuguese Trade and Society in China and the South China Sea, 1630–1754. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Vink, Markus. “The World's Oldest Trade: Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Century”. Journal of World History 14:2 (2003): 76 pars.Google Scholar
Yoshitomo, Okamoto. Jūroku Seiki Nichi-Ō Kōtsū Shi No Kenkyū Hara Shobō, 1931.Google Scholar