When the Spaniards came to the Philippines, our ancestors were already trading with China,

Japan, Siam, India, Cambodia, Borneo and the Moluccas. The Spanish government continued
trade relations with these countries, and the Manila became the center of commerce in the
East.

3400 b.c.
The earliest evidence of rice in the Philippines was found in the Cagayan Valley. Rice was
brought to the Philippines during an Indo-Malaysia, Chinese, and Vietnamese wave of
migration.

2nd century AD
The Chinese were the first to trade with the Philippines, which they called Mal at the time.
China introduced the Philippines to soy sauce, fish sauce, and the method of stir frying. This led
to the birth of many Filipino-Chinese dishes such as pansit, lumpia, siopao, and siu mai.

1100 AD
The Philippines began trading with India, Thailand, and Japan. This led to the creation of many
new Filipino dishes with spices and flavors from around the world.

16th to 18th
The migrants came as servants, slaves, sailors, barbers, vendors, harp players, dancers, scribes,
tailors, cobblers, silversmiths and coachmen. Mexico’s Plaza Mayor, known as the Zocalo,
became a place of stalls and shops selling the Asian imports where the city’s myriad populations
mixed in buying and selling. They called it the Parian after the Chinese district of Manila
- Items sold or traded were spices from the Orient, ivory, diamonds, Chinese porcelain,
Indian fabrics, Siamese ebony, rubies and emeralds from India. From the Philippines,
ivory religious images, our indigenous fabrics in cotton, indigo and wooden furniture.

1535
Mexico - At the time of the Manila Galleon, it was one of the richest cities in the world with
leading cultural and intellectual aspects to its urban life. It had a printing press
Its native costumes had an Oriental influence acknowledging its opening to the world. It
introduced chocolate and other crops (sweet potato, vegetables, fruits) not only to the world
but particularly to the Orient because of trade. Mexico and the rest of Spanish America (also
grown rich from trading and silver mines)

1545
Potosi in Bolivia began mining a mountain of silver in 1545 and soon produced half of the
world’s silver, which during the Manila Galleon trade was coveted by the Chinese economy in
exchange for its goods.

1575
Manila was the gateway to China not only for being the entrepot where Chinese goods along
with those of Japan, India, Southeast Asia were assembled for re-export to the West, but for its
role in mediating information about China. Martin de Rada acquired Chinese books in Manila in
1575

1583
Mexico was then a city of books, writers, students, with influences from Asian cultures.

1593
The first translation of classical Chinese texts into a European language took place in Manila
when Mingxin Borojiau was translated into Espejo Rico de Claro Corazon in 1593 and published
in Manila by Juan Cobo who also translated Seneca into Chinese.

End of 16th century

As a result, Potosi’s population was larger than that of any other city in the Americas at the end
of the 16th century. It had more than a dozen dancehalls, 80 churches, and fountains (?) of
wine and chicha (Andean corn beer). It is estimated that one-third of its silver production ended
up in China.
1602
By that time Mexican silver mines had made an industrial innovation – the use of mercury to
extract silver from ore as against smelting. This was certainly in the light of today and its
consequences, an unhealthy and anti-environmental industrial innovation but at that time it
made things easier – more silver could be extracted from ore. Potosi was so famous it was
mentioned in Don Quijote and Mateo Ricci placed it in the Chinese world map of 1602.

1609
Antonio de Morga who wrote Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas in 1609 (not only about relations
with the Philippines but with China, Japan and Southeast Asia) published it in Mexico in 1609.
Here was a city on the cutting edge of world knowledge, trade and diplomacy.

1781
Tobacco monopoly
The tobacco industry was placed under government control during the administration of
Governor General Basco.
was implemented in the Cagayan Valley, Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, La Union, Isabela, Abra, Nueva
Ecija, and Marinduque. Each of these provinces planted nothing but tobacco and sold their
harvest only to the government at a pre-designated price, leaving little for the farmers. No
other province was allowed to plant tobacco. The government exported the tobacco to other
countries and also part of it to the cigarette factories in Manila.

1815 Sep 14
End of the Galleon Trade between the Philippines and Mexico
THE Manila Galleon Trade lasted for 250 years and ended in 1815 with Mexico’s war of
independence. In terms of longevity alone, plus the trade that it engendered between Asia,
Spanish America and onward to Europe and Africa, it brought in its wake events and movement
of people among the various continents that are still apparent and in place today.

1820 Oct 22
Spanish Cortes passes a bill granting press freedom in the country.

1834 Sep 6
Opening of the entire Philippines to world trade