1493_ Uncovering the New World Columbus Created - Charles C. Mann [87]
Parián artisans and shopkeepers sold the Spaniards everything from roof tiles to marble statues of Baby Jesus—“much prettier articles than are made in Spain, and sometimes so cheap that I am ashamed to mention it,” wrote Domingo de Salazar, bishop of the Philippines. Colonists flocked to the Chinese ghetto, where stores purveyed the latest European styles. European merchants griped about the competition. The monarchy ordered the shops moved further away, but Spaniards kept coming to them, attracted by the low prices.
The trades “pursued by Spaniards have all died out,” Salazar lamented, “because people buy their clothes and shoes from the [Parián].” As a warning, he told the story of a Spanish bookbinder and his Chinese apprentice. After carefully observing the master at his work, the apprentice set up his own shop in the Parián, driving his former master out of business. “His work is so good there is no need of the Spanish tradesman.” The Chinese were not universally successful, of course. One shopkeeper sold a wooden nose to a Spaniard who had lost his in a duel. He tried to capitalize on his success by importing “a fine boatload of wooden noses.” Sales were poor.
By 1591, twenty years after Legazpi entered Manila, the Parián had several thousand inhabitants, dwarfing the official city, which had only a few hundred European colonists. For the Chinese, the arrangement was convenient. They had created a Chinese city outside of China, where the nominal presence of the Spanish authorities insulated them from the scrutiny of the Ming. To the Spaniards, the ghetto was alarming, alien, an unwelcome necessity. And it was big, especially when compared to Manila. Despite constant exhortation, Spaniards refused to settle there in any numbers. The city was too remote, too hot, and, above all, too full of disease, especially what we now know as malaria. European residents often sought cooler air by building homes in the hills around town. By bad luck, the hills are the habitat of the mosquito that is the islands’ main malaria vector. The more Europeans escaped the heat, the more they got sick.
The only reason Manila attracted any Europeans at all was because it represented an extraordinary opportunity: China would pay twice as much for Spanish silver as the rest of the world. And its merchants were willing to sell silk and porcelain amazingly cheaply. “The prices of everything are so moderate, it’s almost for free,” one Spaniard had crowed when the Chinese first arrived in Manila. Yet somehow the deals rarely were as lucrative as the newcomers wanted. To their dismay, the Chinese were always able to play them off against each other, bargaining them down time after time. Sitting in the nexus of exchange made Manila’s colonists wealthy, but not as wealthy as they wanted. “Among all those one hundred and fifty families who are settled at Manila, there are not two who are very rich,” groused the Spanish admiral Hieronimo de Bañuelos y Carrillo in 1638.
Trying to regain the advantage, the Manila government imposed taxes, freight charges, and registration fees on Chinese merchants; they were effectively forced to pay soldiers to stand guard over their property. Angered, the Chinese staged an Ayn Rand–style producers’ strike, starving Manila of supplies, and the Spaniards backed down. Frustrated, the king ordered the colony to create a kind of cartel: it would buy all incoming Chinese goods at a single price and “distribute [them] fairly among the citizens.” In theory, this would wipe out all the Chinese retailers, which in turn would greatly reduce the Parián, which in turn would greatly reduce Spanish anxieties.
Economics 101 says that cartels rarely work, because individual cartel members will cheat and cut side deals. In this case, Economics 101 was correct. Spaniards made secret arrangements with Chinese traders,