The anonymous memorial addresses the effects of Chinese silk upon the Spanish economy and proposes regulations governing its circulation through the Spanish Empire. Its central argument is strongly protectionist: Chinese silk was sufficiently inexpensive to threaten the established Spanish silk industry, particularly the important manufacturing centers of Granada, Murcia, Valencia and Toledo, while simultaneously diverting silver and diminishing revenues to the Crown.

The document belongs to the wider debate generated by the development of trans-Pacific commerce following the establishment of Spanish Manila and the Manila-Acapulco galleon route in the 16th century. Chinese merchants brought silk and other luxury goods to Manila, from where they were carried across the Pacific to New Spain in exchange for American silver. Chinese silk became one of the most important commodities in this system. Crown attempts to control the trade began early: legislation of 1593 restricted the value of merchandise imported through Acapulco, while subsequent measures sought to prevent Asian goods from moving onwards into Peru and other American markets.

The present memorial gives a particularly vivid Spanish perspective on this early global economy. It complains that Chinese silk is brought “por la China y la India Oriental” and emphasizes its low price relative to Spanish production. The author argues that this competition damages domestic manufacture, employment and the royal revenues generated by Spanish silk. He goes so far as to contrast the durability of Spanish and Chinese textiles, claiming that Spanish silk lasts considerably longer and that the apparent economy of the Chinese product is therefore deceptive.

Its geographical scope is striking. Alongside China and Manila, the text discusses New Spain, Portugal and Goa, and refers to the movement of Asian merchandise through American commercial routes. Dutch and English merchants are likewise condemned, with the author arguing that they should not be permitted to sell silk to Spaniards. The memorial thus reveals the extent to which the China trade was understood not as an isolated Philippine question but as part of an interconnected commercial system extending across the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

The manuscript is also revealing concerning the conflict between metropolitan and colonial manufacturing interests. It recommends restrictions upon Chinese silk while also attacking silk production in New Spain, proposing measures against mulberry cultivation there. Its objective was therefore not simply opposition to China but protection of Peninsular Spanish manufacture against competing sources of supply throughout the imperial economy.

The argument belongs to a substantial contemporary debate over Chinese textiles and American silver. An earlier memorial by the merchant Horacio Levanto, written around 1620, similarly addressed the Crown concerning the trade between China, New Spain and Spain, estimating that Chinese silk consumed enormous quantities of silver while competing with Spanish textile manufacture. Later debates continued over the restrictions imposed upon Asian commerce and the consequences for merchants and textile workers in New Spain.

The probable dating of the present manuscript to around 1640 places it at an especially interesting moment. During the 1630s the Crown renewed restrictions on inter-American Pacific commerce, while political and commercial disruptions in East Asia affected the quantities of Chinese merchandise reaching Manila and Acapulco. By 1637 the trans-Pacific trade had contracted dramatically, before Chinese merchants and silk cargoes returned in greater numbers in 1638.

The memorial is consequently a valuable primary document for the history of the Manila Galleon, the Chinese silk trade, Spanish mercantilism and early globalization. It captures the anxieties produced when inexpensive Asian manufactured goods entered an imperial market whose authorities were simultaneously attempting to protect domestic industry, retain American silver, preserve employment and maximize Crown revenue. More broadly, it illustrates how deeply Chinese manufacture had become embedded in debates over the economic health of the Spanish monarchy by the first half of the seventeenth century.

Provenance: Maggs Bros., Bibliotheca Asiatica, Part III, Catalogue 515, no. 26; the collection of Nicholas Ingleton, Australia.

Mariano Bonialian, “La seda china en Nueva España a principios del siglo XVII. Una mirada imperial en el memorial de Horacio Levanto,” Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History; William Lytle Schurz, The Manila Galleon, New York, 1939; Maggs Bros., Bibliotheca Asiatica, Part III, Catalogue 515, no. 26.