The ceramic trade throughout Medieval Southeast Asia was prolific. Terrestrial sites have yielded massive amounts of ceramic material and the archaeological reports of shipwreck cargoes corroborate the versatile and extensive qualities of trade…
When the European visitors arrived in the Philippines from the Sixteenth century, they encountered a range of indigenous craft ranging from logboats to plank-built vessels. These boats, especially the plank-built vessels, were built in a very…
The Portuguese and Spanish navigation from Europe to East Asia and America opened the early globalization, one of the most important periods of cultural interaction in human history. The broad and deep maritime cultural exchange and conflict between…
An assemblage of 1577 porcelain sherds associated with a historically recorded but unidentified shipwreck on the north Oregon coast was analyzed to determine the age and intended destination of the ship and its cargo. Prior to this study, only a…
The Pacific Ocean is the largest body of water on earth, measuring more than 165 million square kilometers. Although the first European to spot it was Vasco Nuñez de Balboa in 1513, who named it Mar del Sur (South Sea) due to a miscalculation, it…
This study is the second part of investigative research into early Asian presence in the Atlantic. The first investigation focused on the islands of Macaronesia (Canary Islands, Madeira, Azores and Cape Verde Islands), and resulted in a better…
The arrival of Spain and Portugal in Asia-Pacific in the 1500s marked a turning point in the history of the region. New foreign actors came into play: priests, merchants and mercenaries looking to save souls and profit from trade in exotic Asian…
The arrival of naval expeditions in the Philippines and Melaka from Spain and Portugal respectively during the early sixteenth century CE created profound transformations in patterns of Southeast Asian maritime trade as European markets became…
In the present investigation we aim to make an approach to some aspects concerning life aboard the Manila Galleon (from the 16th to the 19th centuries), such as diseases, death and burial of bodies, the psychology of the crew in face of these facts,…
The results of a seven-year, multi-disciplinary investigation into the identity and origin of the “Beeswax Wreck†are discussed. The “Beeswax Wreck†is the name historically given to a 17th century source of marked beeswax blocks and candles…
This paper examines the information provided by primary written sources in relation to the outfitting and sailing of the ships used in the Loaysa and Saavedra expeditions, which took place between 1525 and 1536. On July 24, 1525, seven vessels, under…
In 1939, William Schurz published ‘The Manila Galleon’ that has been considered a seminal work in maritime history (in the English language). In it, he proposed the shipping route of the galleon trade in the Pacific Ocean during the 16th to 19th…