[
    {
        "id": 208945,
        "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": 107,
        "title": "RAS-1980",
        "content_text": "SILK & SILVER: MACAU, MANILA TRADE\n\n75\n\nwealth thereby to act as bankers to the shippers. Profits were seldom less than 100 and often as much as 300 per cent. In return the galleons from Acapulco brought about 2 million silver pesos to the Philippines in an averagely good year.23\n\nIn 1580, with the death of the Cardinal King Henry of Portugal, the crowns of Spain and Portugal were united in the person of Philip II. In the Indies as well as in Europe, the Cortes of Tomar of 1581 guaranteed completely separate Portuguese and Spanish administrations and made direct trade between the Spanish and Portuguese possessions overseas illegal. Both in Manila and Mexico there were many who wished to engage in direct trade with China, but the Portuguese argued that this would ruin their commerce in the Far East and that Spain would also suffer, as all the silver from Nueva España would go to China and not to Spain or the Philippines.24 They also claimed it would mean the ruin of the Portuguese Jesuit missions in Japan, since, as a bishop in the Philippines remarked, \"all these affairs are moved by but one wheel, namely Macau.\"25\n\nDirect voyages were even made occasionally from Macau to Acapulco, though these caused great scandal in official circles. In 1589, D. João da Gama made the first crossing of the Pacific from Macau but on arrival in Acapulco was imprisoned and his goods impounded.\n\nRequests made by the leading citizens of Manila to make voyages to \"Japan, Macau and all other kingdoms and posts, whether Portuguese or pagan\" were not granted.26 The government in Madrid accepted that Japan lay within the Portuguese sphere of influence and that Macau had a monopoly of the Japan trade, while at the same time the Macaonese consistently thwarted all Manila's attempts to gain a trading base on the China coast which would have competed with theirs. The Cantonese officials did finally allow the Spanish to settle at a place they called El Pinal on the coast between Canton and Macau; its exact whereabouts are unknown. The Portuguese informed the Chinese that the Spaniards were \"robbers and insurrectionaries who raise revolts in the kingdoms they enter\" and then attempted to drive them out of El Pinal. Though this attack was staved off, El Pinal was nevertheless abandoned shortly afterwards.27\n\nBy about 1610 some direct, though intermittent, trade had developed between Nagasaki and Manila. Most of it was conducted in",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215420,
        "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": 197,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "146\n\nof Bragança, Philip IV of Spain ruled Portugal as Philip III during the construction of the façade. Before him two other Philips had reigned over Spain and Portugal, beginning with Philip II, crowned Philip I of Portugal in 1580. Throughout most of this highly controversial historical period very large altarpieces in a classical style were being built in Spain and Portugal. The prime instance of late sixteenth-century classical altarpieces of huge dimensions is the massive main retable of the church of the Escorial.\n\nIt is rather frustrating that no known contemporary source actually establishes any sort of comparison between the frontispiece of St. Paul and these retables. Even in our days specialists have ignored the connection. The reason may be that the façade of St. Paul does not conform to known examples of retable-façades. Even in the largest surviving examples the actual retable configuration is contained within the elevation by various means, such as the large buttresses found in Santa Maria A Grande in Pontevedra. They indicate to the viewer that this is a simulated stone altarpiece cleverly applied to the front of the building for his or her admiration and astonishment. At St. Paul's there is no containment, no similar signalling to the beholder that its designer intended a metaphorical retable. Here the altarpiece simile seems to extend to the whole of the church's front. This fact would certainly make this façade unique, but would not necessarily exclude it from classification as a retable-façade.\n\nGiven the lack of primary sources that would justify such a classification one must largely rely on the visual evidence. The following section shows how an analysis of the façade's structure and of its iconography can lead to reasonable conclusions supporting this hypothesis.\n\nArtists and Dates of Construction\n\nWho the architect and artists of the surviving frontispiece were and when they built it is a question that has eluded scholars due to a lack of contemporary sources. These sources plainly state that the architect of the church was the Italian Jesuit Carlo Spinola and one can surmise that he drafted the design of the elevation, but no one really knows. Spinola died a martyr's death in 1622, before the construction of the façade.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    }
]