ABSTRACT
The encounter of Asia and Latin America is the story of globalization. If we accept that European colonialism and imperialism constituted the first phase of the phenomenon for which the term globalization has been coined, it was the Spanish colonization of the Philippines that resulted in the earliest contact between Latin America and Asia in the second half of the sixteenth century as part of a worldwide operation. The enormous increase in output of the silver mines in Spanish America in the 1570s finally had its effect on Asia. Some of the silver was carried directly to Manila from Acapulco, to buy Southeast Asian spices and Chinese goods. This sea trading route existed for more than two centuries before the Spanish Pacific fleet ceased its service in 1815. According to Chinese accounts, contacts between the two continents even pre-date the Spanish empire and go back to Chinese expeditions reaching the American continent as early as the fifth century AD (see Chapter 2 in this book). Legend or fact – there is little doubt that the pre-modern encounter between the two continents was a sporadic one.
