Early Global Encounters with Beauty: The Pacific and Indo-Atlantic Exchanges between Asia and America

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

I wish to acknowledge and thank Professors Eugenio Chang-Rodríguez and Rubén Gallo for their useful comments on an earlier version of this essay.

Notes

¹On globalization, see Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez, “Cycles of Silver: Globalization as Historical Process,” World Economics 3.2 (2002): 1–16. For a spirited, stimulating, and informative debate on this issue between Flynn and Giráldez versus O'Rouke and Williamson, see D.O. Flynn and A. Giráldez, “Path Dependence, Time Lags and the Birth of Globalisation: A Critique of O'Rouke and Williamson,” European Review of Economic History 8 (2004): 81–108; and Kevin H. O'Rouke and Jeffrey G. Williamson, “When Did Globalisation Begin?,” European Review of Economic History 6 (2002): 23–50; and “Once More: When Did Globalisation Begin?,” European Review of Economic History 8 (2004): 109–117. For a discussion of the Iberian imperial involvement of the Catholic Monarchy in this process, see Serge Gruzinski, Les quatre parties du monde. Histoire d'une mondialisation, (Paris: Editions de La Martinière, 2004).

²Economic historians have commented mainly on the trade in Asian textiles, in general, and that of Indian cottons and Chinese silks for personal use, in particular; as well as on their competition and dislocation of analogous American production, vis-à-vis Spanish silk exports to America. For an early discussion of this trade and the cultural and social implications, see Richard Rudolph and Schulyer Van Rensselaer Cammann, China and the West: Culture and Commerce (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977).

³See Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542–1773 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).

⁴See Schulyer Van Rensselaer Cammann, “Chinese Influence in Colonial Peruvian Tapestries,” Textile Museum Journal 1.3 (1964): 21–34.

⁵ The Oxford American College Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 1387.

⁶See Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik, The World that Trade Created: Society, Culture, and the World Economy (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1999); and George Bryan Souza, “Convergence before Divergence: Global Maritime Economic History and Material Culture,” The International Journal of Maritime History 17.1 (2005): 17–27.

⁷See Arjun Appadurai, ed., Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); and for goods in Latin American history, see Arnold Bauer, Goods, Power, History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

⁸This statement paraphrases the modified definition of Flynn and Giráldez for globalization, in which they have incorporated Lewis and Wigen's observations concerning the use of the term continents, see D.O. Flynn and A. Giráldez, “Path Dependence, Time Lags, and the Birth of Globalisation: A Critique of O'Rouke and Williamson,” European Review of Economic History 8 (2004): 81–108; and Martin W. Lewis and Kären E. Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

⁹For the importance of ballast, see George Bryan Souza, “Ballast Goods: Chinese Maritime Trade in Zinc and Sugar in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Roderick Ptak and Dietmar Rothermund, eds., Emporia, Commodities, and Entrepreneurs in Asian Maritime Trade, c.1400–1750 (Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 1990), 291–315.

¹⁰A.W. Crosby Jr, first introduced the Columbian exchange to date contact between America and Europe. See A.W. Crosby Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972). The term “Atlantic exchange” is used in this essay as a synonym for this phenomenon. The Atlantic exchange is used, since it geographically and conceptually correlates to the world and ocean systems of the other exchanges discussed.

¹¹It has been customary to use the term Pacific or trans-Pacific to describe this exchange, even though J.R. McNeill coined a more evocative, yet potentially polemical term: Magellan exchange. See J.R. McNeill, “From Magellan to Miti: Pacific Rim Economies and Pacific Island Ecologies Since 1521,” in Sally Miller, A. J. H. Latham, and Dennis Flynn, eds., Studies in the Economic History of the Pacific Rim (London: Routledge, 1998), 72–93; and J.R. McNeill, “Islands of the Rim: Ecology and History in and around the Pacific,” in Dennis O. Flynn, Lionel Frost, and A.J.H. Latham, eds., Pacific Centuries: Pacific and Pacific Rim History since the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1999), 70–84. For a discussion of the trans-Pacific exchange of New World crops to Asia, see Sucheta Mazumdar, “The Impact of New World Food Crops on the Diet and Economy of China and India, 1600–1900,” in R. Grew, ed., Food in Global History (Boulder: Perseus, 1999), 58–78.

¹²Although there is some literature that explores individual segments of this exchange, the term Indo-Atlantic exchange is a personal construction used here—I believe for the first time—to describe this phenomenon.

¹³For examples of the literature on Spanish maritime activities in the Atlantic, between Europe and America, see J.H. Parry, The Spanish Seaborne Empire (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969); Woodrow Borah, Colonial Trade and Navigation between Mexico and Peru (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954); Pierre and Huguette Chaunu, Séville et l'Atlantique, 8 vols. in 11 parts, (Paris: Colin, 1955–1960); Antonio García-Baquero González, Cádiz y el Atlántico (1717–1778). El comercio colonial español bajo el monopolio gaditano, 2 vols. (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1976); Eufemio Lorenzo Sanz, Comercio de España con América en la época de Felipe II, 2 vols. (Valladolid: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Diputación Provincial, 1979–1980); Lutgardo García Fuentes, El comercio español con América, 1650–1700 (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1981); and Lutgardo García Fuentes, Los Peruleros y el comercio de Sevilla con las Indias, 1580–1630 (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, Secretariado de Publicaciones, 1997). For examples of the literature on Portuguese maritime activities in the Atlantic, between Europe and America, see C.R. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969); Frédéric Mauro, Le Portugal et l'Atlantique au XVII ^e siècle, 1570–1670 (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1960); and Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, “Le Portugal, les Flottes du Sucre et les Flottes de l’ Or, 1670–1770,” Annales E.S.C. (1950): 184–97. For the Portuguese role in interconnecting Spanish- and Portuguese-America, the Portuguese community in Peru, and Spanish reactions, see Alice Piffer Canabrava, O comércio português no Rio da Prata (1580–1640) (São Paulo: Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras da Universidade de São Paulo, 1944); Gonçalo de Reparaz, Os Portugueses no Vice-Reinado do Peru (Séculos XVI e XVII), (Lisboa: Instituto de Alta Cultura, 1976); and Harry Cross, “Commerce and Orthodoxy: A Spanish Response to Portuguese Commercial Penetration in the Viceroyalty of Peru, 1580–1640,” The Americas 35.2 (1978): 151–67.

¹⁴For discussions of the Manila galleon, see William Lytle Schurz, The Manila Galleon (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1939); and O.H.K. Spate, The Pacific Since Pacific, 3 vols., (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1979–1988), specifically, Vol. 1: The Spanish Lake; for a detailed discussion of shipping and commodity movements in the Philippines, see Pierre Chaunu, Les Philippines et le Pacifique des Ibériques: XVI ^e , XVII ^e , XVIII ^e siècles (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1960); for Portuguese, Chinese and others contacts with the Philippines, see George Bryan Souza, The Survival of Empire: Portuguese Trade and Society in China and the South China Sea, 1630–1754 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); M. N. Pearson, “Spain and Spanish Trade in Southeast Asia,” Journal of Asian History 2 (1968): 109–29; and Serefín Quiason, English “Country Trade” with the Philippines, 1644–1765 (Quezon City, Philippines: University of the Philippines Press, 1966); for Spanish reforms and the Royal Company of the Philippines involvement in this trade, see María Díaz-Trechuelo Spinola, La Real Companía de Filipinas (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1965); and for an overview of the trade between Asia and America, see Carmen Yuste López, El comercio de la Nueva España con Filipinas, 1590–1785, (Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1977). For examples of the luxury items or objects of beauty that were involved and arrived in Latin America, especially to New Spain (Mexico), see José Miguel Quintana, “ A Journey from the Philippines to New Spain in the XVII Century”; Antonio Francisco Garabana, “The Oriental Trade with the Mexican Provinces”; and Gonzalo Obregón, “Artistic Aspects of the Philippine Trade”; in “El Galeón de Manila,” Artes de Mexico 143 (1971): 35–54; 65–71; and 74–114.

¹⁵For an excellent overview of the literature and discussion on this subject, see Richard von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune: Money and Moetary Policy in China, 1000–1700. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); for additional and more detailed discussion, see William S. Atwell, “International Bullion Flows and the Chinese Economy circa 1530–1650,” Past and Present 95 (1982): 68–90; Charles Ralph Boxer, “Plata es Sangre: Sidelights on the Drain of Spanish American Silver in the Far East, 1550–1700,” Philippine Studies 18.3 (1970): 457–75; John J. TePaske, “New World Silver, Castile, and the Philippines, 1590–1800,” in J.F. Richards, ed., Precious Metals in the Later Medieval and Early Modern Worlds (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1985), 425–45; and Vera Valdés Lakowsky, De las minas al mar: historia de la plata mexicana en Asia, 1564–1834 (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987).

¹⁶For detailed analysis and discussion of trans-Pacific commodities in New Spain, see Carmen Yuste López's extensive writings, “Alcabalas filipinas y géneros asiáticos en la ciudad de México, 1765–1785,” in Jorge Silva Riquer, Juan Grosso, and Carmen Yuste, eds., Circuitos mercantiles y mercados en Latinoamérica. Siglos XVIII–XIX (Mexico: Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora, 1995), 87–99; “Comercio y crédito de géneros asiáticos en el mercado novohispano: Francisco Ignacio de Yraeta, 1767–1797,” in María Martínez López-Cano and Guillermina del Valle Pavón, eds., El crédito en Nueva España (Mexico: Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora, El Colegio de Michoacán, El Colegio de México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México – Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 1998), 106–30; “El eje comercial transpacífico en el siglo XVIII. La disolución imperial de una alternativa colonial,” in Carmen Yuste López and Matilde Souto Mantecón, eds., El comercio exterior de México, 1713–1850. Entre la quiebra del sistema imperial y el surgimiento de una nación (Mexico: Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas-UNAM and Universidad Veracruzana, 2000), 21–41; “Francisco Ignacio de Yraetra y el comercio transpacífico,” in Cristina Torales Pachero, ed., La Compañía de comercio de Francisco Ignacio de Yraeta (1767–1797), 2 vols. (México: Instituto Mexicano de Comercio Exterior con la colaboración de la Universidad Iberoamericana, 1985), 1:267–300; “Las familias de comerciantes en el tráfico transpacífico en el siglo XVIII,” in Familia y poder en Nueva España (Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1991); “Los comerciantes de la ciudad de México en la negociación transpacífica,” in Leonor Ludlow and Jorge Silva Riquer, eds., Los negocios y las ganancias (Mexico: Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora, 1993), 211–24; “Los precios de las mercancías asiásticas en el siglo XVIII,” in Virginia García Acosta, ed., Los precios de alimentos y manufacturas novohispanos (Mexico: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social and Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora, 1995), 231–66.

¹⁷For examples of the literature on Portuguese imperial and seabo rne maritime activities between Europe and America or the carreira da Índia and the inter-connection of maritime trading activities within Asia, see Boxer, C. R., From Lisbon to Goa 1500–1750: Studies in Portuguese Maritime Enterprise (London,1984); Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, Os Descobrimentos e a Economia Mundial, 2 vols. (Lisbon: Arcádia, 1963–1971); Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese Empire In Asia, 1500–1700 (London: Longman, 1993); Charles Ralph Boxer, The Great Ship from Amacon: Annals of Macao and the Old Japan Trade, 1555–1640 (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, 1959; reprint, Macau: Instituto Cultural, Centro de Estudos Marítimos, 1988); George Bryan Souza, The Survival of Empire: Portuguese Trade and Society in China and the South China Sea, 1630–1754 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Niels Steensgaard, The Asian Trade Revolution of the Seventeenth Century. Carracks, Caravans and Companies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973); Glenn J. Ames, Renascent Empire? The House of Braganza and the Quest for Stability in Portuguese Monsoon Asia, ca. 1640–1683 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2000); James C. Boyajian, Portuguese Trade in Asia under the Habsburgs, 1580–1640 (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1993); Anthony R. Disney, Twilight of the Pepper Empire: Portuguese Trade in Southwest India in the Early Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978). For the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, see Celsa Pinto, Trade and Finance in Portuguese India (New Delhi, 1994), 193–201; and her article, “At the Dusk of the Second Empire: Goa-Brazil Commercial Relations, 1770–1825,” Purabhilekh-Puratatva (Journal of the Directorate of Archives, Archaeology and Museum, Panaji, Goa) 8.1(1990): 41–69. The shipping movements and activities of the port of Lisbon, Bahia and Rio de Janeiro are fundamental to understanding the carreira da Índia, see J. Bacelar Bebiano, O Porto de Lisboa. Estudo de História Económica (Lisboa: Administração Geral do Porto de Lisboa, 1960); António Manuel Barreto Lopes, et al, “Por Mares Tantas Vezes Navegados: Elementos para um estudo sobre o movimento do porto de Lisboa e o comércio externo português na segunda metade do século XVIII,” in Portugal no Século XVIII De D. João à Revolução Francesa (Lisbon: Sociedade Portuguesa de Estudos do Século XVIII, Universitária Editora, 1991), 539–61; António Manuel Barreto Lopes, Eduardo Jorge Miranda Frutuoso, and Paulo Jorge Alves Guionte, “O movimento da Carreira da Índia nos sécs. XVI–XVIII,” in As Navegaç[otilde]es Portuguesas no Atlântico e o Descobrimeto da América, Actas, I Simpósio de História Maríma, Lisboa, Academia de Marinha, 1992 (Lisbon: Academia de Marinha, 1994, 199–264); José Roberto do Amaral Lapa, A Bahia e a Carreira da Índia (São Paulo: CEN, 1968); Rudolph William Bauss, “Rio de Janeiro: the Rise of Late Colonial Brazil's Dominant Emporium, 1777–1808” (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1977). For examples of the luxury items or objects of beauty that were involved and arrived in Portugal, see Du Tage à la mer de Chine, Une épopée portugaise (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1992). For examples of the luxury items or objects of beauty that were involved and arrived in Brazil, see José Roberto Teixeira Leite, A China no Brasil: influências, marcas, ecos, e sobrevivências chinesas na sociedade e na arte brasileiras (Campinas: Editora da Unicamp, 1999).

¹⁸For archival references and secondary literature on the activities of the Portuguese companies that traded with China and sailed directly from Lisbon to China and China to Lisbon (Companhia do Comercio de Lisboa; Companhia da Cidade de Macau; Companhia da Fabrica Real da Seda; Felix von Oldenburg Companhia; and the Companhia Geral do Grão Pará e Maranhão), see Souza, Survival of Empire, 179–80 and notes 46 and 47.

¹⁹Hanson, Economy and Society, 209–15.

²⁰Leon Bourdon, “António Fialho Ferreira et le projet de liaison Macao-Lisbonne en droiture, 1640–1645,” Economia e Finanças, Anais do Instituto Superior de Ciencias Economia e Financieras 19 (1951): 101–28.

²¹The Instituto do Arquivo Nacional, Torre do Tombo (IAN/TT) in Lisbon, Portugal holds the Junta da Administração do Tabaco's voluminous records, which include seven collections (Consultas, Decretos, Avisos, Cartas do Brasil e Índia, Papéis Findos, Vária, and Cartas e informes) that contain pertinent information from 1674–1833 on the general and specific structure and functioning of the Portuguese Crown's tobacco monopoly in Portugal, Brazil, and the Estado da India, including China. Portions of all seven collections have been examined, the Cartas do Brasil e Índia (Letters from Brazil and India) collection, which are in 31 maços or boxes of loose documents, is the primary archival source for the research reported in this essay. Research is on-going for the preparation of a monograph on this topic, tentatively, entitled: “The Dimensions of Empire: The Portuguese Crown's Monopoly and Trade in Brazilian Tobacco and Afro-Asian Commodities in th e Global Economy, 1674 to 1776.” For background on the role of tobacco, including the Crown monopoly of Brazilian tobacco, in Portugal, see Carl A. Hanson, Economy and Society in Baroque Portugal, 1668–1703, Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1981, 59, 145, 160, 222, 235, 236, 239, 241, 249, 254, 256, 258, and 259; Carl A. Hanson, “Monopoly and Contraband in the Portuguese Tobacco Trade, 1624–1702,” Luso-Brazilian Review 14.2 (1982): 149–51; and Raul Esteves dos Santos, Os Tabacos: Sua Influência na Vida da Nação, 2 vols. (Lisbon: Colecção Seara Nova, 1974). For discussions of production of tobacco in Brazil, see James Lang, Portuguese Brazil: The King's Plantation (New York: Academic Press, 1979); B.J. Barickman, A Bahian Counterpoint: Sugar, Tobacco, Cassava, and Slavery in the Reconcavo, 1780–1860 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998) and Jean-Baptiste Nardi, “Le Tabac Bresilien et ses Fonctions dans l”Ancien Systeme Colonial Portugais (1570–1830) (Ph.D. diss., Aix en Provence, 1990); and his numerous publications: O Fumo no Brasil Colonia (São Paulo: Editora Brasilense, 1987); O Fumo Brasiliero no Periodo Colonial: Lavoura, Comercio, e Administração (Campinas: Editora Pontes, 1996); and, Sistema Colonial e Trafico Negreiro (São Paulo: Editora Brasilense, 2002). For discussions of the trade and Brazilian tobacco growers, see Catherine Lugar, “The Portuguese Tobacco Trade and Tobacco Growers of Bahia in the Late Colonial Period,” in Dauril Alden and Warren Dean, eds., Essays Concerning the Socioeconomic History of Brazil and Portuguese India (Gainesville, Florida: The University Presses of Florida, 1977), 26–70.

²²Hanson, Economy and Society, 235.

²³ Ibid, 154–5.

²⁴The xerafin was a silver coin worth 300 Portuguese reis. It had a strong exchange rate to the Spanish peso, Dutch rijksdaalder, and Chinese tael. One xerafin was equal to 1.07 pesos, 1.29 rijksdaalders and/or 1.33 taels. For the annual income generated from the Goa tobacco renda, see Cartas do Brasil e Índia, Maço 98, renda report for 1700 to 1724 and the superintendents’ annual accounts from 1700 to 1760 in: Cartas do Brasil e Índia, Maços 97 to 105. For details of the Estado da India's income and expenditures around 1684 to 1687, which permits the calculation of this percentage estimate, see Hanson, Economy and Society, 212.

²⁵For the standard work on this subject, see Jan Hogendorn and Marion Johnson, The Shell Money of the Slave Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). Hogendorn and Johnson utilized English and Dutch materials, which stress the primacy of cowries from the Maldives in the Indian Ocean in this trade. However, since it is not mentioned, it appears that Hogendorn and Johnson did not identify cowries from Mozambique as a serious alternative source of supply of cowries. Combined with Brazilian tobacco and Indian textiles as described, these commodities were significant factors in the Portuguese South Atlantic slave trade.

²⁶For examples of the luxury items or objects of beauty that were involved and arrived in Brazil, see José Roberto Teixeira Leite, A China no Brasil: Influências, Marcas, Ecos, e Sobrevivências Chinesas na Sociedade e na Arte Brasileiras (Campinas: Editora da Unicamp, 1999), photograph section after page 288; For a specific New Spain (Mexico) example see Antonio Francisco Garabana, “The Oriental Trade with the Mexican Provinces,” Artes de Mexico No. 143 (1971): 71.

²⁷This statement is speculative and is based upon a subjective revision of a series of exposition catalogues that suggests that this was the case in Brazil, see A Carreira das Índias e o Gosto do Oriente (Rio de Janeiro: Museu Histórico Nacional, 1985); Teixeira Leite, José Roberto. As Companhias das Índias e a porcelana chinesa de encomenda (Salvador: Fundação Cultural da Bahia, 1986); Jorge Getúlio Veiga, A porcelana da Companhia das Índias nas coleç[otilde]es brasileiras (Rio de Janeiro: Jornal do Brasil, 1986).

²⁸See António de Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, translated and edited by J.S. Cummins (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society and Cambridge University Press, 1972), 304–10. For examples of Indian furniture, some of which that has been coined as Indo-Portuguese, see Amin Jaffer, Luxury Goods from India: the Art of the Indian Cabinet-Maker (London: V&A Publications, 2002).

²⁹For Chinese, Japanese, and Indian lacquer and lacquered furniture, see Pedro de Moura Carvalho, “As lacas chinesas de exportação e o papel pioneiro de Portugal na sua difusão”; Oliver Impey, “Namban: laca japones de exportação para Portugal”; Pedro de Moura Carvalho, “Um conjunto de lacas quinhentistas para o mercado português e a sua atribuição à região de Bengala e costa de Coromandel”; Teresa Freitas Morna, “O interesse pelos acharoados na Europa. O impacto da ténica da laca”; and Maria Isabel Pereira coutinho, “A laca oriental no mobiliário francês do século XVIII”; in O Mundo da Laca: 2000 anos de História (Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2001), 41–63; 105–23; 127–53; 191–213; 215–25.

³⁰See C.M. Sinopoli, The Political Economy of Craft Production: Crafting Empire in South India, c. 1350–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

³¹The cessation of direct Portuguese trade with Japan is well known, see Charles Ralph Boxer, The Great Ship from Amacon: Annals of Macao and the Old Japan Trade, 1555–1640 (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, 1959, reprint, Macau: Instituto Cultural, Centro de Estudos Marítimos, 1988). For Spanish relations and the cessation of those direct contacts, see Lothar Knauth, Confrontación transpacifica: El Japón y el Nuevo Mundo Hispánico, 1542–1639 (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1972) and Juan Gil, Hidalgos y samurais. España y Japón en los siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1991).