Changing the Rules of the Game (The India-Manila Trade: 1785–1809)

Abstract

The establishment of the Royal Philippine Company by the Royal Charter of March 10th. 1785 promised the beginning of a new era in the history of the India-Manila trade. The concessions made by the Crown to the Company were many, and they were extended in the next two decades. The Company was intrinsically valuable as an organised agency with which trade could be conducted on a structurally modified line. Initially the Company provided a new axis of Spanish commercial operations in Asia between Manila and metropolitan Spain. This was in addition to the traditional Manila-Acapulco trade. From 1793 the Philippine Company also obtained the right of direct trade between Manila and Callao on the Peruvian coast, thus adding yet another axis to the trade of Manila. These concessions underlined and enhanced Manila's importance as an entrepot for all three lines of Spanish trade authorised in Asia. The opening of Manila in three stages by the decrees of 1785, 1787 and 1789 at the Company's insistence, further increased the entrepot stature of Manila. Thus from the viewpoint of the markets, the methods of trade and the volume of commerce, the potential of the trade from India was vastly increased, and improved.