The Manila galleons were Spanish trading ships that sailed a fixed annual or biannual route across the Pacific Ocean between Manila in the Spanish Philippines and Acapulco in New Spain, present-day Mexico, from 1565 until 1815. Built to carry Chinese silk, porcelain and other Asian luxury goods eastward to the Americas and Spanish silver westward to pay for them, the Manila galleon trade route created one of history's first sustained transpacific commercial links, connecting the economies of Asia, the Americas and, through onward Spanish shipping, Europe into a single global trading system centuries before other regular transoceanic trade routes of comparable scale existed. The voyages were long and hazardous, subject to typhoons, disease and occasional attack by rival European privateers, and the galleon trade's eventual end in 1815 coincided with Mexico's independence movement disrupting the colonial administrative and financial arrangements the route had depended on.
Facts
SignificanceAn early instance of globalization, a trade route from Asia to the Americas connecting all the world's continents in the global silver trade 1 Manufacturer or BuilderShipyards in Cavite, Philippines 1 Sources
1. Wikipedia: Manila galleon
Introduction, route inauguration
inaugurated in 1565 after the Augustinian friar and navigator Andrés de Urdaneta pioneered the
Introduction, globalization sentence
The Manila Galleon route was an early instance of globalization, representing a trade route from Asia that crossed to the Americas, thereby connecting all the world's continents in global silver trade.
Introduction, shipyards sentence
The majority of these galleons were built and loaded in shipyards in Cavite
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