[
    {
        "id": 208944,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1980",
        "page_number": 106,
        "title": "RAS-1980",
        "content_text": "74\n\nJOHN VILLIERS\n\nOriginally the Spanish had hoped to gain a share of the Moluccan spice trade from Manila, but the Portuguese and later the Dutch were too strongly entrenched and the trade with China soon became virtually the Philippines' only economic resource. Silk and other Chinese goods were brought to Manila at first by Chinese junks and after about 1604 also by Portuguese ships from Macau. In the 1630s the annual value of imports from Macau to Manila averaged about 1.5 million silver pesos. At the end of the 16th century between 40 and 50 large seagoing junks were still coming yearly to Manila from Fukien bringing Chinese goods, which they sold for Mexican and Peruvian silver pesos and rials-of-eight.20 In 1573, for example, the two galleons bound for Acapulco carried 712 bolts of Chinese silk and 22,300 pieces of fine china gilt and other porcelain wares.21\n\nAlthough the Manila merchants gained enormous profits from this trade, the government of the colony had an annual deficit of between 85 to 350 thousand pesos. The Mexico treasury made up this deficit with silver bullion, much of which found its way into the coffers of the Chinese merchants. This tremendous drain on Spanish resources led to various proposals being put forward to abandon the Philippines altogether. The merchants of Seville, who enjoyed a monopoly of the trans-Atlantic carrying trade with Nueva España, and the Andalusian textile manufacturers, who feared that Mexico and Peru would be flooded with cheap Chinese silks, were especially hostile to the Philippine colony. In the end, they succeeded only in having the trade restricted to the Manila-Acapulco route, the trade between Mexico and Peru abolished, and the value of the goods to be shipped annually from Manila to Acapulco restricted to 250,000 pesos, which was deemed a large enough quota to maintain the Philippine colony and small enough to be easily absorbed in Mexico. In practice, however, the value of the goods shipped from Manila was closer to 2 million pesos a year, the quantity of merchandise loaded being determined not by royal decree but by the amount of cargo space available on the galleons. The Chinese packers were extremely skilled at cramming goods into the galleons, with resulting overlading, which caused many shipwrecks. Individual seamen were also each allowed to carry one chest, which, as one contemporary wryly observed, had a most expansive capacity.22 Space on the galleons was bought by a few wealthy entrepreneurs and by groups such as the cathedral chapter and charitable foundations such as orphanages and hospitals, which often amassed enough",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215436,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2001",
        "page_number": 213,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "162\n\n1993, p. 154. Morais, Carlos Alexandre de, Cronologia Geral da Índia Portuguesa, Lisbon-Macao, 1993. Ms. Amita Bairg, UNESCO heritage consultant on India, kindly provided number of churches and convents in 17th century Velha Goa.\n\n10 Arches of Triumph appeared in church portals at the time in Andalusia, in Southern Spain. For Vandelvira's career and famous treatise on architecture, see Barbé-Coquelin de Lisle, Tratado de Arquitectura de Alonso de Vandelvira, 2 vols. Albacete, 1977.\n\n\"V. Fraser. \"Architecture and Imperialism in sixteenth-century Spanish America”,\n\nArt History, 9, No. 3, Sept. 1986, pp. 325-35.\n\n\"The Architecture of conquest: building in the Viceroyalty of Peru, 1535-1633\", 2 volumes, Ph.D. diss., Uni. of Essex, Colchester, 1984.\n\n12 George Kubler's classic thesis on the plain style of Portuguese architecture forms the subject of his book, Portuguese Plain Architecture: Between Spices and Diamonds, 1521-1706, Middletown, Conn., Wesleyan University Press, 1972. For a recent discussion of this style, see Miguel Soromenhos' article, \"Classicismo, italianismo e ‘estilo chão'. O ciclo filipino\", in História da Arte Portuguesa, direcção Paulo Pereira, Volume 2, Lisbon, 1995, pp. 377-403. See in particular pp. 383-86.\n\n13 David M. Kowal, \"Innovation and Assimilation: The Jesuit Contribution to\n\nArchitectural Development in Portuguese India\", in The Jesuits, Culture, Sciences, And The Arts, 1540-1773, University of Toronto Press, 1999, pp. 482 and 488. It is somewhat ironic that D. Kowal uses the term \"retable-like\" for the\n\nportal decoration of the façade of São Paulo. Professor J.B. Bury dismissed an exact term in the first assessment of my MPhil thesis (see note 1) as not precise enough, one which I eventually gave up.\n\n14 See flap of vol. 2, in Barbé-Coquelin de Lisle, op. cit, for illustration of the\n\nseldom reproduced portal of Saint Elizabeth Church.\n\n15 Documenta Indica, (edited by Josef Wicki) Rome, “Monumenta Historica Soc. Iesu\", 18 vols, 1948-1988. For São Paulo, see vol. 4, pp. 726-27; vol. 8, pp. 584-86; vol. 9, p. 491. For an interesting reconstruction of the site of Church and College see, Schurhammer, G., Francis Xavier, vol. 8, Jesuit Historical Institute, Rome, 1980, p. 457.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    }
]