近代早期西班牙人對中菲美貿易的爭論

The Spanish Controversy over the Trade between China, Philippines and the Americas in the Early Modern Period

10.29708/JCS.CUHK.197612_8(1).0019

全漢昇(HAN-SHENG CHUAN)

中國文化研究所學報

8卷1期（1976 / 12 / 01）

71 - 85

繁體中文

In 1492, the Spanish government sent Columbus to discover America; in 1519, the Spaniards conquered Mexico, and again in 1565, they occupied the Philippine Islands. For the next two hundred and fifty years they sent galleons annually from Acapulco in Mexico to Manila in the Philippines in order to strengthen trade ties between their two colonies. The main goods exchanged were American silver for Chinese silk. The trans-Pacific trade through Manila brought China and Spanish America into close contact with each other. China needed silver and could supply cheap, high quality silk. Spanish America demanded silk and could supply abundant, high quality silver. Both parties stood to gain greatly from expanded trade. The growth of exports from China to Manila increased employment at home and paid for more silver imports from Spanish America. Due to this trade, the settlers of New Spain-and for a time even those of Peru-had access to supplies of Chinese silk, cheaper and of higher quality than that imported from Europe. As time went on, however, certain groups in Spain began to oppose the trans-Pacific trade with China. Some Spanish mercantilists believed their colonies should contribute a steady supply of bullion to supplement Spain's store of precious metals. At no time in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries did American precious metals-predominantly silver-occupy less than 80 per cent in value terms of the total recorded eastbound cargoes. Total recorded imports of precious metals into Spain reached their highest level in the 1590s. The annual average for these years has been estimated at just under 7,000,000 pesos. Afterwards the import of American precious metals continuously declined; in 1660 official receipts of silver in Spain were little more than one-tenth of what they had been in 1595. The decline was due to a combination of many factors, but Spanish mercantilists were of the opinion that silver shipments to China via Manila reduced the supply available to Spain. Although the Chinese silk trade remained very profitable to Spanish colonists, especially those in Manila, the domestic Spanish silk industry was threatened by the influx of cheap Chinese silk into its south American market. By 1640 similar Chinese silk goods in the Peruvian market sold for only one-third the price of Spanish produced silk. Under these circumstances, Spanish silk exports could not compete, and their price fell, driving the domestic silk industry into decline. The Spanish silk manufacturers were naturally unhappy at the decline of their share of the south American market. Sometime around 1617 a Spanish writer said: ＂ ... the trade of Nueva España with China served only to carry thither silver which ought to come to España, and to bring from China silks which might be sent from España whence great injuries to España follow, as is notorious, through the loss both of the silver of which it is deprived, and of the duties and profits on its silks.＂ A strong movement stirred in Spain to limit the importation of Chinese silks. The Spanish government established a quota on the quantity of Chinese silks that could be imported into America. One reads also of the persistent appeal for an abolition of the Chinese silk trade. This was actually granted by royal decree in 1718, to be repeated two years later. News of the fateful law did not reach Manila for nearly two years. The Spaniards in Manila, threatened with ruin, prepared a strong appeal to the king. They argued that Chinese silk goods were quite different from those of Spanish silks. Hence no substantive commercial competition really existed between the Philippines and Spain. Other arguments were advanced to show that Manila should be treated with consideration; the driving out of the Dutch from the Moluccas by the Philippine government, the preservation of the missionary conquests in the Far East, and the maintenance of the Spanish crown, all of these would result from the maintenance of the Philippines, by making it possible for her to support herself with the galleon trade. After receiving these new arguments from Manila, the king issued a decree in June 1724 lifting the ban on the Chinese silk trade.