Why is the Spanish colonial empire often said/implied to be "less focused on trade" or "not prioritising trade" compared to other empires like the Dutch, British, Portuguese etc.?

Submitted by raori921 t3_zfpp4q in history

Every large empire has to rely on trade some way or other, even/especially empires like the European/Western ones in the age of colonialism/imperialism.

I'm Filipino so we were a Spanish colony for 300 years and more, and I keep noticing when reading our history that in terms of trade as a goal, the Spanish empire is often negatively compared against the Dutch, British or even the Portuguese, the other large European empires that rose up around the same time or slightly later. In other words the Spanish are often said or implied to focus (much?) less on trade/commercial reasons as an ultimate goal for expansion, or trade was (much?) less a priority for them.

TL;DR, Is it true then that the Spanish empire, in most of that time, really saw trade as a lesser/secondary priority or focus, compared to other European colonial empires that were its competitors? If this is so then why?

Of course this isn't an all-or-nothing claim. I know that trade was at least a little bit of a goal even for Spain because again, no large empire could do without even a little focus on it. One non-religious reason they went to the Philippines was to get to the spices in the Moluccas, and another non-religious reason they stayed and named it is to trade with China, hence, well, the 200-year galleon trade. But somehow even with these, commerce is still often described as "less" of a priority for the Spanish crown, especially compared to its commonly stated goals of Christianising its colonies. That often gets the lion's share of attention compared to purely commercial activity, and maybe it's one reason that the Spanish are not often thought of/stereotyped in popular imagination as traders/merchants, unlike say the Dutch or even to an extent the British.

Then there's the whole silver thing in Latin America, which it seems little or none of the other empires had access to, so maybe this also had something to do with why Madrid wasn't as "trade oriented", beyond extracting the silver and then at best shipping it to China through Manila, which again the galleons helped in.

Maybe, if we cover late imperial Spain too, we can also factor in changes in colonial priorities over decades and centuries of imperial rule. In the early 1800s they opened the Philippines to world trade, for example, but even that didn't seem to benefit Spain itself much because other countries just put up commercial interests in the islands like the British, Germans, Americans and Chinese. Still this was also after most of Latin America got independent, and after the first 200 years of Spanish rule to begin with.

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Swanky_Molerat t1_izdnzi3 wrote

A lot of history is generalized - especially when it comes to broader claims.  

As to your question "Did the Spanish empire focus less on trade than the English and Dutch," the very short answer is "yes." The longer answer is "It depends on place and time." 

Let me explain. 

In general histories, the English empire is (more or less) India, the Dutch empire is Indonesia, and the Spanish empire is Central and South America. (Which also means that the Philippines hardly feature in the more general treatments of Spanish colonialism.)

Generally speaking, imperialism in Asia was initially aimed at trade with wealthy and productive native societies. Large-scale conquest was at first impossible and only occurred at a later stage. 

In the Americas, the situation was different. Population levels were lower (although this was not the case everywhere) and native societies enjoyed a lower level of economic and technical development. As a result, imperialism in the Americas was more aimed at conquest, the establishment of European settlements, and resource extraction. Native societies in the Americas did not by themselves produce much that European buyers wanted.

As and added factor, Spanish colonial trade was generally subject to stricter and more limited monopolies, and did not create wealthy merchant elites to the same extent as in England and the Dutch Republic.  

But please note that there will always be exceptions. English colonial settlements in New England also do not fit the trade-first pattern. European settlements in the Caribbean were all about trade (sugar), but not with native societies.  Etc., etc.  

Finally, based on my very limited knowledge of the Spanish conquest of the Philippines, I would suspect that this fits better with the “American” pattern than the “Indian” or “Indonesian.” 

Hope this helps.

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Xyleksoll t1_ize7v03 wrote

And this is why Britain, when made to choose between India and America, chose India.

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Kered13 t1_izffq4b wrote

They didn't exactly choose, their hand was forced by the American Revolution. Before the American Revolution, they very much considered North America to be the most important part of their overseas empire. Their holdings in India consisted of a few trading posts and they had just recently acquired Bengal. After the American Revolution they had lost the core of their North American holdings, so their attention shifted to India. They rapidly expanded their territory in India until they controlled nearly the entire subcontinent, and to secure their trade routes to India they also conquered South Africa.

Thus the British Empire is divided into two eras: the [First British Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire#%22First%22_British_Empire_(1707%E2%80%931783)), focused on North America, and the [Second British Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire#Rise_of_the_%22Second%22_British_Empire_(1783%E2%80%931815)), focused on India.

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lsspam t1_izgwp2u wrote

> And this is why Britain, when made to choose between India and America, chose India.

Britain wasn't presented with a choice. This is a baffling position to assert.

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Xyleksoll t1_iziil5q wrote

They could have focused on the North American continent and today Canada would have been bordering Mexico. They were stretched on two fronts and the schwerpunkt became India, for obvoius reasons.

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lsspam t1_izj0af5 wrote

You need to do some reading friend

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Anglo-Mysore_War

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Xyleksoll t1_izj2wcu wrote

Sure, how about this :https://allthingsliberty.com/2016/04/the-tiger-aids-the-eaglet-how-india-secured-americas-independence/

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lsspam t1_izj3qek wrote

Neat article. Doesn’t support your position. Britain devoted very little resources to the war against Mysore which they lost anyways. Your position is fantasy.

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Xyleksoll t1_izrf40v wrote

...and I quote: "Consider the economics of Britain’s calculus. The raw goods to manufactured goods trade with the American colonies was profitable (North America accounted for thirty percent of English exports[15]), but it didn’t compare with the potential for gains in the East. Defending America had gotten expensive, as the Seven Years’ War showed, and the colonists were evidently unhappy to pay for that defense. In contrast, the colonial government in India made substantial revenue from taxes on Indians, and the goods traded, including but hardly limited to spices, were valuable. England was undergoing the agricultural and then the industrial revolutions; a growing market to sell goods was not overseas but right at home. This de-emphasized the market for exports, America, in favor of the source of imports, Asia."

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lsspam t1_izrhndu wrote

That’s a reason India was more profitable longterm than America. What it doesn’t say is “Britain devoted more resources to losing the second Mysore war than losing the Revolutionary war”….

…because they didn’t. In fact it wasn’t even close.

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nbgrout t1_izh589d wrote

Right? In the books, they seem to have actually taken the breakup pretty badly. They tried real hard to get us back and it wasn't until they saw us with our new French girlfriend that they accepted it was over.

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raori921 OP t1_izdw53o wrote

>based on my very limited knowledge of the Spanish conquest of the Philippines, I would suspect that this fits better with the “American” pattern than the “Indian” or “Indonesian.”

Well, the strange thing is that the Spanish conquest of the Philippines also doesn't quite fit the "standard American" pattern either, apart from the major goal of Christianising the natives. But economically it seems at least more trade oriented than the mostly extraction-based (Latin) American economy, largely also because the Spanish found little to extract directly in the Philippines themselves: less spices than nearby Indonesia (under Portuguese then Dutch control) and less gold or silver than in Mexico or South America. (Which is not to say they didn't extract what they could here. Filipino natives wore and traded a lot of gold and maybe also silver, it wasn't a lot, but a lot of it was in danger of being melted down for reuse as Church relics and things, for example. And they extracted labour, if that counts; most of it was technically not slavery, but the working conditions were still bad and pay was often unreliable or low.) On the other hand, demographically the Philippines as the Spanish found them does seem to fit more like the average American profile, outside at least of the big empires like the Incans or Aztecs, like what you said here:

>Population levels were lower (although this was not the case everywhere) and native societies enjoyed a lower level of economic and technical development

I actually think Philippine populations in the 1600s or so, from what we can tell, might even have declined because of Spanish colonial labour extraction taking its toll, rather than the genocidal effect of the early American conquests. Some scholars have looked into this, like Linda Newson.

But going back to the trade thing, I don't know if this is reaching to say, but, if we disregard the religious and general military/territorial part of the conquest, the economic part of the Spanish conquest, in the Philippines specifically, did seem to be based more around trading than most people know or think: using Manila as a galleon port and a base for trading with China was the main one. And yet even with this, if this is a major difference between their Asian/Philippine economic approach as compared to the American one, overall the perception is still that Spain in general is not seen as prioritising trade to the degree other European empires did. I guess while the other empires were aggressive at economic expansion throughout Asia, the Spanish were content to stop with the galleons for the most part.

>Spanish colonial trade was generally subject to stricter and more limited monopolies, and did not create wealthy merchant elites to the same extent as in England and the Dutch Republic.

One thing I did notice is the Spanish were very late to create what was basically a "Spanish East India Company", the Royal Company of the Philippines established in the 1780s, nearly 200 years after the English and Dutch created their better known East India Companies. And even then it didn't last very long and was rarely profitable. By the 1830s it was gone again.

Also someone said in another repost of this thread that some merchants in Spain itself, to the extent they were ever influential, actually opposed competition coming in from Asia and from the Philippines generally, maybe they got all they could need more locally or closer to home?

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Swanky_Molerat t1_ize0s6l wrote

I am not saying that trade wasn't important, but on the whole Spanish rule in the Philippines was not profitable and depended on substantial annual subsidies.

Also, if the goal was mainly trade the Spanish could have made use of Manila similar to how the Portuguese and Dutch used Malacca and Batavia during the 17th century: as trade hubs and chokepoints to control, dominate, or divert existing trade routes - without caring too much about conquering the hinterland and converting the native population.

Other examples of this approach are Ormuz, Goa, and Macao (Portugal) and Bombay and Calcutta (England).

I think the Spanish approach was quite different from the start and that it is fair to say that trade was not their main priority even in the Philippines.

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elmonoenano t1_izf9x66 wrote

>Other examples of this approach are Ormuz, Goa, and Macao (Portugal) and Bombay and Calcutta (England).
>
>I think the Spanish approach was quite different from the start and that it is fair to say that trade was not their main priority even in the Philippines.

Trade absolutely was the priority in the Philippines. China was a strong enough and unified enough government to forbid the Spanish from entering and trading directly in China. Intramuros was specifically founded to be the location where Spanish and Chinese traders would meet to conduct trade for highly prized Chinese goods like silk. Manila was the terminus of the Spanish galleon trade. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manila_galleon

The big thing that distinguishes Manila from the other examples you listed, except Macao which provided the Portuguese with the same thing the Spanish used Manila for and the British later used Hong Kong for, was that China was strong enough to keep foreign powers out and conduct trade on their terms. India wasn't. It didn't have a unified government or political system or even a national identity.

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raori921 OP t1_ize79jn wrote

Now I wonder if this low priority on trade has not had adverse consequences for the modern Philippines after independence from Spain, though the American colonial period after 1898 is another complicating factor.

Wonder if it could ever be said with any certainty that the under-focus on trade by the Spanish colonisers has in any way (direct or not) resulted in why even recently, the Philippine economy has historically had trouble growing fast or sustaining growth anytime it does grow fast, unlike more successful East Asian (and even some Southeast Asian) economies.

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Swanky_Molerat t1_izebotw wrote

>Now I wonder if this low priority on trade has not had adverse consequences for the modern Philippines after independence from Spain

The Dutch profited immensely from intra-Indonesian trade conducted by native Indonesians. Perhaps the Spanish were less opportunistic and more restrictive and controlling.

But it is always difficult if not impossible to draw proper causal inferences from such observations.

In any case, internal trade is likely to have had a more lasting impact than the regular but sporadic galleon trade.

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elmonoenano t1_izfclgm wrote

It's important to remember that trade in the Philippines wasn't focused on the Philippines. It was focused on China, so the Spanish had no incentive to encourage any kind of economic development there. If anything it would have made their conflict with the Moros on the southern islands more difficult. The world economy had changed enough by the time of the US colonization that you do get some forms of plantation development and a more serious interest in political administration of the Philippines, but whereas the Spanish mostly neglected the country, the US was highly extractive.

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raori921 OP t1_ize98k1 wrote

>if the goal was mainly trade the Spanish could have made use of Manila similar to how the Portuguese and Dutch used Malacca and Batavia during the 17th century: as trade hubs and chokepoints to control, dominate, or divert existing trade routes - without caring too much about conquering the hinterland and converting the native population

I would argue with Manila the Spanish actually kind of did both. I suppose the "conquering and converting" was the bigger and more lasting impact of course, but I thought that in some small way the galleon trade did sort of "control, dominate, or divert existing trade routes" that existed before the Spanish period.

For example, pre-Spain the Philippine kingdoms used to trade a lot more with the Malay and other Southeast Asian regions, even as far as India (and Arab regions) I guess—in addition to the existing China trade; but after Spain came in, the South/Southeast Asian trade mostly disappeared or at least is not heard of as much, compared to the new connection with Mexico/the Americas and the expanding Chinese connection, partly due to Chinese who wanted Mexican silver.

But for sure conquering and converting was always somehow much bigger for the Spanish. Somehow I feel it might be why the Filipinos got so much more culturally changed than their neighbours in SEA—but not so much physically, as few Spaniards actually went all the way there to settle, except for friars, and barring those cases that raped or otherwise knocked up native women, they wouldn't generally be able to have offspring.

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Swanky_Molerat t1_izebq5v wrote

>I would argue with Manila the Spanish actually kind of did both.

Sure.

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imgrandojjo t1_izekmsn wrote

It's simple enough. The French outright built trading ports and left the interior alone for the most part while the English and Duth built productive colonies based around a primary product to contribute to their trading empire. Tobacco and cotton for the English, furs for the French, sugar for the Dutch. There was a lot of overlap of course but those tended to be the major focuses.

The Spanish were more about building self contained, self sufficient communities that mostly did their own thing. A lot of what they built was plonked on top of extant civilizations and their infrastructure so unlike the other European states they tended to build administrative or bureaucratic cities in their colonies very early. It stands to reason, they had a MUCH larger initial population of natives to manage and the existing infrasturcture meant that large population centers could be built and maintained much earlier than the other European colonies that didn't have the bones of prior empires to build on.

While the French, British and Dutch focused on mercantilism for the most part, a lot of Spanish ideas of empire were still rooted in feudalism. Rather than dependent producer colonies or trading hubs the Spanish wanted fiefs that would manage their own affairs, keep their own peace under the authority of the Crown, pay their proper tribute, and answer their king's call to arms.

So yes, it is true that Spain was less focused on trade. Because their view of a proper empire required their colonies to be self sufficient while the British, French and Dutch model favored keeping the colonies dependent on the home country.

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MaintenanceInternal t1_izdxx7n wrote

One interesting part of Spanish history that isn't as widely known as it should be is the Reconquista.

Christian Spain had been reduced to the small kingdom of Asturias in the North West of the country by the invading Muslims from North Africa.

This small Kingdom eventually expanded and Spain spent hundreds of years recovering her land from the Muslim invaders until they were completely expelled from the country.

This caused Spain to be religiously fervorous which resulted in the mistreatment of people's from other religions.

This is large part of why Spain had a strong focus on converting people to Christianity.

Also, the conquest of the Americas, Mexico in particular resulted in such an influx of gold and silver to Spain that the economy crashed due to the devaluation of the currency.

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raori921 OP t1_ize9rk9 wrote

>One interesting part of Spanish history that isn't as widely known as it should be is the Reconquista

I thought it was one of the better known parts? It's kind of what laid the template for the conservative, royal-absolutist and very Catholic Spain that followed, mostly little changed until the 1800s upheavals.

> Spain spent hundreds of years recovering her land from the Muslim invaders until they were completely expelled from the country

They must have been surprised or shocked to find more Muslims on the other side of the world, in the early Philippines, in Manila and Mindanao. The Spanish conquest there then really does seem to just be a Reconquista continuation if so.

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TheGrandExquisitor t1_izgcq6v wrote

Many people aren't taught the link between the reconquista and Spanish colonial efforts. Granada fell to the Spanish in January, 1492. That was the last Muslim outpost in the Iberian peninsula.

Columbus landed in the New World in October, 1492.

Now, think about this. You have a bunch of trained soldiers just hanging out. They just took the last bit of territory in Spain and had little to do. Which is always a dangerous thing. Especially since soldiers would often work for whomever offered the best pay/looting.

Columbus comes back and...oh, look, we found a whole new group of "dark skinned heathens." So, they just moved the fight to the New World.

If Spain hadn't had a large, well trained, army that was looking to kill for Jesus, I think trade would have been more of a priority.

Conversely, when the English started settling the east coast of America, they came in often expecting to trade. In fact they expected to trade like they had in England. Early on, they ran into problems because the natives weren't idiots. The English would soak a newly contacted area with European goods that they traded for food and furs. Which created problems. One example was iron pots. One settlement used iron pots as trade goods. Which is great until everyone has a freaking iron pot! To top it off, the native population wasn't willing to trade for food if it meant they'd go hungry. Starvation isn't worth an iron pot. This literally caused the English to raid for food.

Interesting contrast.

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MaintenanceInternal t1_izey8lt wrote

I think it is well known, but the Spanish civil war and their south American conquests seem to come up much more often.

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bangdazap t1_izdmx2s wrote

I think it was because they didn't need to? It was basically slaves in -> gold out.

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raori921 OP t1_izdwm1v wrote

Silver, too. I wonder how much they ultimately took out of their American colonies over the 300 years or so they were there.

In many ways the economic profile of Spanish rule, at least in the Americas, does seem to revolve much more on direct extraction than trading with local populations.

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jandemor t1_izeelkd wrote

The Philippines were never a colony of the Spanish Empire, nor was the Spanish a empire. All territories and citizens under the Spanish Catholic Monarchy were provinces of the same country ("españoles de ambos hemisferios"), with the same rights and duties, liberties and freedoms of Spanish-born Spaniards. The Philippines had the same status and was as much a colony as Granada, Castille, or Andalucia. Of all that direct extraction of resources (to put things into perspective, Peru extracted as much silver last year as the Spanish in 400 years), only 1/5 (the quinto real) would go to the Spanish Crown back in Spain (minus whatever sunk in the way), while 80% of anything stayed in the overseas provinces.

If you want to talk about trade, at the end of the 18th century, the UK sold their textiles in Mexico at 20x the price in England, and it was this cash that bank-rolled the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution would have never happened without the British trade with the Spanish provinces of the New World. Contraband (undeclared goods) made up to 90% of the trade.

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elmonoenano t1_izf32j8 wrote

It's important to remember that at this time there wasn't really an idea of citizenship in Spain. It was just starting to really form in places like England and the Netherlands. The model of governance was arranged more around the crown and its subjects. And subjects had groups within them. Aristocrats, military officers, missionaries, people in certain towns, peasants, non-Christians, non-Catholics, all had different statuses rights and duties in the Spanish system. Rights, responsibilities, and privileges weren't uniform anywhere. You could be a resident of one town and have the same status and profession as a resident of the next town over and have completely different tax burdens and feudal duties b/c your city or your guild had negotiated something different than the next town or guild has. They were always negotiations between the crown and the subjects.

So it's very true to that the Philippines or Mexico were provinces, but they were also colonies b/c that was type of grant of authority the King and Queen had given to the administrators, and the people in those colonies had different duties and rights both within the colony (Native born Spaniards having the most) and between their colony and the metropole.

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jandemor t1_izipf0m wrote

Thank you for your reply.

Citizenship wasn't developed anywhere in the world until the French revolution. I said "citizens" to use the modern term; before that, people were subjects (to a crown).

On this, the Leyes de Burgos (1512) clearly state: "los nativos son seres humanos libres y vasallos de la Corona Castellana" (natives are free human beings and subjects of the Castillian Crown), and as such had the same rights as Spanish-born Spaniards: to own property, free movement, right to a proper lodging, paid and dignified work, good health, to marry and to create a family, to nourish themselves, and even to keep their traditional indigenous customs, culture and languages.

I know rights and duties, taxes etc. changed even if you moved to the next town over (still does!), but your "fundamental" rights were the same for all Spaniards (indians and Spanish-born) in the whole realm of the Spanish (in 1512, Castillian) Crown. 300 years later, the first Spanish Constitution (1812) recognized citizenship for the first time in Spanish history, and granted Spanish citizenship to all "Spaniards in both hemispheres".

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elmonoenano t1_izez1tp wrote

I've read a few books recently, and one of the things you see is that Spain did focus on trade, but mostly for the Crown and the Crown's favorites. You don't get a rise in banking. You don't get the creation of joint stock companies. You don't get an insurance industry. You don't get a growth of the merchant class. You do get a lot of smuggling.

Whereas, the British and Dutch especially, focused on a less top down form of trade. You get the development of risk reduction institutions like the joint stock company and companies like Lloyds of London that mitigate risk. You get institutions that facilitate the allocation of capital. You get exchanges that create visible price signals.

Spain conducted trade in a top down method that focused income back into the top. It was focused on using hard currency from the Americas to trade for high value items in Manila. It wasn't creative about it and it closed a lot of people off from the trade by keeping it a monopoly controlled by the crown. This didn't encourage risk taking or innovation. The Dutch and the English had freer trade systems, the value of the trade was more distributed which created more people able to participate. More people experimented and you get new institutions, you get new methods of efficiency, and so on.

There's also a lot of political institutional differences, especially from English parliament, that prevented some of the more wasteful military adventurism that Spain suffered from.

Frank Fukayama's The Origins of Political Order actually does a good job of highlighting some of the key differences, especially from the standpoint of administration. Spain just didn't invest in administering their territories and didn't develop them b/c there was little reason to. The wealth that could be potentially made would be concentrated into a few chosen subjects of the Crown, the Crown, and the Church. It didn't make sense to take big risks. Read it with 1493 by Charles Mann if you can.

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raori921 OP t1_j0ypa5t wrote

> Spain just didn't invest in administering their territories and didn't develop them b/c there was little reason to. The wealth that could be potentially made would be concentrated into a few chosen subjects of the Crown, the Crown, and the Church.

That has a few parallels with what would be called crony capitalism today, extracting resources and exploiting labour…not really to improve the economy in the homeland let alone the colonies, but more to pay off the Crown and the Church, and anyone they saw as their favourites.

I wonder if that's also why a lot of former Spanish colonies (including the Philippines!) tend to become pretty corrupt and sometimes have dictatorships and kleptocracies where leaders resort to similar kinds of cronyism.

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elmonoenano t1_j10e3v6 wrote

I think it has a big impact. Institutions are more important for good governance than they usually get credit for. These colonies set up extractive institutions, not institutions for widespread improvement. If you read about the Spanish bank when it was developed, it was basically entirely set up to hold money and then transfer it back to the crown, or to lend it to the crown. It wasn't set up to distribute capital and create liquidity to help the economy improve, especially in the colonies. There's been some good comparisons between Dutch, English, and Spanish banking and the impact on colonial development. You can find lots of papers like this: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/231550/1/49-2020-1-111-140.pdf

There was also the Banco de Isabel in the 1850s. But development economics has studied the issue quite a bit and it's worth spending a little time reading.

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FoolInTheDesert t1_ize80uk wrote

Look at what Venice and Genoa were doing first. This became the template that the Dutch and English followed. It's corporations working in concert with the state. Venice and Genoa basically invented modern incorporated business and international trade.

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boblinquist t1_izehlkp wrote

Genoa also had the earliest examples of double-entry accounting and maritime insurance

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Jestersage t1_izfxg7y wrote

Another way to see it is what is it compared.

I remember reading on the Laws of Power in how they describe the failure of Portugese in Japan when compared to Dutch - in that Portugese also do some evangelization, which pissed the shogunate off, while Dutch just focus on trading things Japan want, and thus establish good relationship.

Above point is not to talk about necessary facts, but to point out how, in terms to gaining power, one need to provide things that the other people care.

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Parrotparser7 t1_izmh0t3 wrote

It's also worth noting that the Portuguese attempted to start a Japanese slave trade, and openly interfered with internal Japanese politics.

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more_beans_mrtaggart t1_izelvrg wrote

Most colonialism is because of trade.

The Spanish though.. they had to go much further to get to their colonies. In the end they were all about conquest and land claims.

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Gl0balCD t1_izfta83 wrote

During the period from 1492 to roughly 1800, the views of trade were different than today. Today economics classes focus on the mutual benefits of trade, in that each nation can buy goods for a lower cost than they can make them, and we can sell goods at a comparative advantage to make even more money.

At the time, trade was seen as mutually exclusive. This means that resources I import have now been lost as their potential to be imported by you. There was "trade", as in the transfer of goods and wealth from the colony to the homeland. However, each colonizing power essentially worked in autarky.

Enter the Dutch. The Netherlands were essentially a piece of the Spanish empire that broke away. It's a small, below sea level area that had little going for it. But access to the north sea allowed connections to be built overseas, and they realized they could profit from trade in both Europe and the world. They were one of the richest nations because they bought British wool and sold it to Europeans. Then their trade outposts (such as New Amsterdam, today NYC) continued to contribute.

The Spanish largely kept the transfer of goods internal to their empire. It's the modern equivalent of the cold war, little transfer of goods between the imperial powers. The Spanish didn't rely on other European nations for goods, and they believed that trading with them would only hurt their own ambitions within Europe.

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Usernameisguest t1_izgdpbp wrote

OP: Out of curiosity…how do Filipino people feel about the Japanese and their “colonial” control of the islands?

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raori921 OP t1_j0yopgj wrote

Little, if anything. Like with our other colonisers the average Filipinos think little of the Japanese as a colonial force here. At most we get taught a little about what their contributions and a list of a few of the big events that happened while they were here, but that's generally it.

If we do think about them, we tend to be more positive or apologising for colonial rule because we think they brought good things or at least weren't that bad. There are exceptions who know a bit more about the Japanese/WW2 period including the atrocities, but even they probably are neutral to at most positive about Japan today. Filipinos don't usually hold grudges against colonial powers (but can hold them against native/local opposition for years).

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ThatGIRLkimT t1_izwflou wrote

It's been a topic in our history class before.

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series_hybrid t1_ize85t5 wrote

Now that you mention it, the Spaniards did seem to be more focused on gold and silver, less on trade and building businesses.

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elmonoenano t1_izezyjc wrote

They focused on those b/c the only thing that China would trade for was precious metals. Spain's trade was focused on silks and spices b/c they were high value items. They needed the currency for that. Acapulco came to exists basically b/c it was the staging area for sending silver to Manila and receiving spices and silks that would then be taken by caravan to Veracruz and shipped back to Spain.

Edit: I linked to it in another answer, but the wikipedia article on the Manila galleon trade has a good explanation of what the Spanish Crown was using the precious metals for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manila_galleon

Charles Mann's 1493 also goes into detail about this trade.

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NYG_5 t1_izfjwhm wrote

Iberian empires were more about extracting resources.

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Arkslippy t1_izegfqx wrote

They were interested in stealing what they could get their hands on, including people.

They had a different idea of what constituted colonisation than others, you should google colonisation in Goa, they had a go of nearly all the colonial powers and the worst behaved by far were the Spaniards. And when you consider that the british turned up, that's saying something.

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elmonoenano t1_izf0orf wrote

England's Royal Africa Company basically pushed the Spanish and Portuguese out of the slave trade. So, I'm not sure this holds up.

The other thing is as terrible as the Spanish genocide of the Americas was, it was a lot less successful than the British genocide of the Americas. Mexico and S. America still had large indigenous populations after the colonization. Spain then focused more on cultural genocide. Whereas the British wiped out and relocated the indigenous people in N. America as they advanced, and then the Americans did the same. Now people's like the Iroquois, Cherokee, and Anishinaabe, which heavily populated the Eastern portion of the country are just small communities, usually far from their original areas.

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Arkslippy t1_izf19bo wrote

I kind of agree with you, but the north American natives were largely effected by european borne diseases rather than actual violence at the start. Spain and Portugal arrived and slaughtered anyone who wasn't useful, and filled the area with their own migrants and turned it into a slave state. They did a lot more in half the time.

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elmonoenano t1_izf7wfz wrote

The European disease issue is tricky. B/c under all the colonial schemes disease was the main killer. Most of the killings in the Mexico conquest initially were native group on native group. It was people who hated the Mexica aligning with with Cortes or taking advantage of the chaos to rebel. But after that, disease went through and killed in large numbers, usually around 30% under all the colonies, and then mismanagement, refusal to grant medical help, reservations and encomienda, forced labor and migration, killed another 60% under all the colonial systems.

But Spain and Portugal had a different legal underpinning to their colonies. The Treaty of Tordesillas required them to Christianize the inhabits and made them subjects of their respective crowns. In the English colonies the inhabitants were foreign peoples. They weren't subjects of the British crown and their land had to be bought or claimed through a doctrine of discovery. This led the Spanish to try to integrate native peoples into the colonies through the encomienda system. Where as the English, and later American and Canadians, needed to push them off of land b/c they were foreign elements, and therefore dangerous.

That doesn't mean the Spanish weren't incredibly cruel. In letters from 1502 and 1503 the Spanish Crown limited enslaving and punishing the native inhabitants but made exceptions for mining, but also for people who wouldn't convert, especially if they practiced cannibalism, human sacrifice, or witchcraft. That became a handy accusation for conquistadors to enslave the indigenous population. But it was limited by the indigenous people's ability to seek atonement with the religious authorities. There was nothing similar in the English colonies. The abuses were somewhat mitigated in the Spanish Colonies in 1512 with the Laws of Burgos.

Both systems conducted a genocide. But the Spanish genocide focused more on cultural elements. By the 1800s, if you look at the battles against indigenous people in Yucatan by the Spanish and in California or Texas by Americans, you can see the difference. The Americans were fighting wars of extermination. The Spanish, and later Mexicans, were fighting for political and cultural control. That's why you have these indigenous communities that are large practiced their rites in secret in Mexico and lived with Spanish descendants in their communities and smaller groups who were isolated from the American/Canadian settlers on reservations, but groups who were able to retain more of their indigenous culture in the US and Canadian systems..

There's a good book on the two different legal theories underpinning colonialism by Robert Miller called Native America, Discovered and Conquered.

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