Spanish Manila and the Manila galleons
Silver for silk: the first regular link of Asia and America
Miguel López de Legazpi founded Spanish Manila. Galleons sailing between Manila and Acapulco carried American silver in exchange for Chinese silk and porcelain, linking Asia and the Americas by regular trade for the first time.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 16th century
Did you know
Silver from Potosí (1545) made the Spanish peso the first truly global currency: from 1571, Manila galleons carried it across the Pacific to China.
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 1571 Battle of Lepanto — same year
- 1572 St Bartholomew's Day Massacre — 1 year later
- 1582 Gregorian calendar — 11 years later
- 1588 Defeat of the Spanish Armada — 17 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1547 Ivan IV crowned Tsar — 24 years earlier
- 1555–1561 Saint Basil's Cathedral — 16 years earlier
- 1569 Union of Lublin — 2 years earlier
- 1582 Yermak's conquest of Sibir — 11 years later
Africa
- 1591 Battle of Tondibi and fall of Songhai — 20 years later
Alive at the time
- Ivan the Terrible (aged 41)
- Elizabeth I (aged 38)
- Akbar the Great (aged 29)
- Tokugawa Ieyasu (aged 28)
- Miguel de Cervantes (aged 24)
- William Shakespeare (aged 7)
- Galileo Galilei (aged 7)
- Selim II (aged 47)
- Philip II of Spain (aged 44)
- Yermak Timofeyevich (aged 39)