The Portuguese Slave Trade to Spanish Manila: 1580–1640

Tatiana Seijas

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Colonialism, slavery, and trade Global Maritime and Colonial Histories History of Colonial Brazil

Abstract

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.

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References

1986Strange company : Chinese settlers, Mestizo women, and the Dutch in VOC Batavia 2006Slavery and South Asian History 2003"The World's Oldest Trade": Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Century 1940The Manila Galleon 1986The Survival of Empire 1998Imagining the Nation 2003Neither Saints Nor Sinners 2002The Seizure of the Sta. Catarina Revisited: The Portuguese Empire in Asia, VOC Politics and the Origins of the Dutch-Johor Alliance (1602 – c.1616)

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