B OL E T I N h C A L I FOR N I A M I S S IONS FOU N DAT ION Japan as Asian Gateway to Spanish California 9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9==9=9=9==9=9=9=9=9=9=9 Marie Christine Duggan In 1602, Sebastian Vizcaino explored California, and in 1606 the Crown issued a Royal Decree to open a port at Monterey. Yet the 1606 settlement at Monterey did not come to pass, and the reason why has never been satisfactorily clarified.1 Indeed, exactly why Spain picked up the idea of settling Monterey again in 1768 is also a bit vague.2 If we look at California as a stop on Spain’s Pacific Rim trading route, we see that Manila merchants’ trading relationship with Japan was changing in both the early 17th century (when Vizcaino explored California) and in late 18th century (when the decision was made to settle Monterey). What connects Japan and California is the sea route. In the 17th century, Manila to Acapulco was a six month voyage, but Japan to California was considerably shorter. Given that it took 45 days for the galleon to wind south through the Philippine Islands from Manila to open ocean; and given that it took 40 days to sail from Monterey to Acapulco; the implication is that sailing through the open Pacific to Monterey took about 90 days. The 16th and early 17th century galleon’s route followed the currents north along the Japanese Pacific coast and then caught the westerlies to head northeast/east toward the Americas. The westerlies are particularly strong in the winter months, and the galleon typically sailed along California’s coast in December close to Christmas, from where winds out of the northwest blew the ship south past Baja California around the New Year, to unload passengers at Puerto de Navidad and then arrive at Acapulco in late January. Figure 1 shows the route as drawn in 1939 by William Lytle Schurz from his readable classic The Manila Galleon. When departing from the Americas at Acapulco toward the Philippines, the northeast trade winds blew into the ships’ sails the entire way. About the Author Marie Christine Duggan has a PhD in economics and teaches business management at Keene State College in the University of New Hampshire System. In 2022-23, she was a visiting scholar at the Instituto José Luis Mora in Mexico City. She is writing a book on commercial actors in the history of the Californias, 1680-1830. She is the author of “From Bourbon Reform to Open Markets in California, 1801-1821”, Journal of Evolutionary Studies in Business, 2023, Volume 8, No. 1 and recently published “Bhagalpur Silk and Blue Nankeen: What Hispanic Actors Made of G.W. Eayrs’ Cargo” in Journal of the West. Historian Michael Mathes explained in his 1968 biography of Sebastian Vizcaino that the explorer was first a merchant involved in the Manila galleon trade.4 In 1586, the young Vizcaino was in Manila, and by 1589 he had moved up in that world to the circle of China trade financiers based in Mexico City. Some believe that Vizcaino was on board the galleon Santa Ana in 1587 when the British pirate Thomas Cavendish seized the ship, putting its passengers ashore at Cabo San Lucas.5 By 1596 Vizcaino was sailing off the J o u r na l o f t h e Ca l i fo r n i a M i s s i o n s Fo u n dat i o n 5 31 coast of Baja California in search of pearls. In 1602, the Crown appointed Vizcaino to lead an exploratory party to the upper California coast based on his lower California navigational experience. Knowing Vizcaíno to be a profit-driven merchant, the Crown threatened him with execution if he gave into temptation and diverted the ships and crew to pearl fishing in the Gulf of California. Vizcaíno and his pilot Francisco de Bolaños had previously sailed along California’s coasts on the Manila to Acapulco voyage, but the 1602 exploration was the first time they had come close enough to realize the Channel Islands were distinct from the mainland.6 Men of the galleon had prior to 1602 already named the mountains behind the Channel as the Santa Lucía range.7 Mathes realized that Vizcaino explored the coasts of Baja California, Alta California, and parts of Japan—all points on the China trade route. By 1602, Vizcaino was in the Santa Barbara Channel, and by 1611 he was in Japan attempting to open it to trade with Manila and Acapulco. From 1550 to about 1600, the only foreign nation with which Japan would trade was the Portuguese.8 The Portuguese empire was not a block of territory, but rather was a chain of sea ports within territories ruled by others; for example, the Portuguese “nation” included Goa on one side of India, Sao Tomé on the other, Malacca in Malaysia, and Macao in China, with a branch line to Japan at Nagasaki.9 The Portuguese brought on their black galleons (see Figure 2) above all Chinese silks to Japan, and carried in return Japanese silver to China in an annual ship known as the nao do trato (trade ship). The Jesuits financed their activities in Japan by means of cargo on this annual carrack. Some daimyo (Japanese lords) allied themselves with the Jesuits by convert- 32 5 B ol e t í n Volu m e 39, Nu m be r 1, 2 0 2 3 Figure 1 (top). The Manila Galleon Route, According to Schurz 1939.3 Figure 2 (bottom). The Portuguese MacaoNagasaki Nao do Trato.10 ing to Christianity in order to gain wealth from trade, and to obtain access to guns, especially Nagasaki Crucifixion of 1597, Cathedral of Cuernavac in Nagasaki and the surrounding areas.11 For forty years, the Jesuits had effectively played Japanese warlords off one another, yet the strategy lost its power when in 1586 Hideyoshi united Japan into one nation. In 1587, he expelled the Jesuits from his realm. Few Jesuits left, moving instead into the shadows, and proceeding cautiously. Meanwhile, Hideyoshi attempted to conquer Korea, and to finance his costly activities and flex his political influence, Hideyoshi also asked the Spanish in the Philippines to pay him tribute. Tribute did not emerge, but Spaniards in Manila were attentive to changes in Japan. Given Hideyoshi’s expulsion of the Jesuits, the Spaniards in Manila as well as the Dutch in Batavia (Indonesia) saw a possible opportunity to supplant the Portuguese as the purveyors of Chinese goods to Japan.12 Figure 3. Nagasaki Crucifixion of 1597, Cathedral of Cuernavaca. Only the Jesuits at Macao had the right to proselytize in Japan, but in 1593 the Spaniards in Manila sent Franciscans to Japan anyway. The Jesuits were askance when the Franciscans flaunted their Christianity by walking around town in priestly garb. In 1596, a Spanish galleon from Manila heading for Acapulco wrecked off Tosa (Japan). Due to his ill-considered invasion of Korea, Hideyoshi was at the time strapped for cash. He decided to confiscate the cargo, which escalated tensions with the Spanish. In the ensuing political conflict, Hideyoshi crucified 26 Christians: six Franciscans (four from Spain, one from Mexico, and a Portuguese from India), seventeen Japanese neophytes, and three Japanese Jesuit lay brothers. Some people say that the Jesuits were complicit, given their alliance with the Portuguese rivals of Spain. But the presence of the three Japanese Jesuits among those crucified belies this. Most simply say that that Spanish Franciscans rejected Jesuit offers to negotiate for the return of the cargo, and given that the Jesuits spoke Japanese far better than the Franciscans did at the time, this rejection was unwise.13 Vizcaino must not have been on board the 1596 galleon that wrecked in Japan since he was that year seeking pearls in Baja California. He may have known Felipe de Jesus Las Casas Martínez, who as a Franciscan was crucified. The latter was the son of a Mexico City merchant involved in the Manila trade, J o u r na l o f t h e Ca l i fo r n i a M i s s i o n s Fo u n dat i o n 5 33 and had earlier in life engaged in business before taking vows as a Franciscan.14 The Nagasaki crucifixion is depicted in the ex-Franciscan doctrina La Asunción that is now the cathedral of Cuernavaca, which was on the route between Acapulco and Mexico City over which merchants brought their Asian cargo (see Figure 3).15 A fictionalized account of Spaniards and Japanese Christians caught between loyalty to two cultures was written by Shisaku Endo in his 1966 novel, Silence, which became a 2016 film directed by Martin Scorsese.16 One might conclude that 1597 is the year that Japan and the Spanish Empire had a divorce, but this would be a premature conclusion. Despite the crucifixions, for decades merchants such as Vizcaino were convinced that the relationship could be repaired. In 1610, Francisco de Bolaños piloted the San Buenaventura from Japan to Matanchel, New Spain with 23 merchants on board.17 In 1611, Vizcaino as ambassador to Japan used the San Francisco to return the Japanese merchants from New Spain to Asia. A sign of the profit motive for the journey is that conflict broke out between Spanish crew and Japanese merchants over who would obtain the proceeds from selling cargo in Japan. Mathes argues that if there had been no missionaries on board, that Vizcaíno’s mercantile negotiations would have been successful. The Dutch viewed as opportunity the twin events of Hideyoshi’s edict calling for the expulsion of the Portuguese Jesuits in 1587 and his crucifixion of Franciscans and their Japanese allies in 1597. The Dutch explained to the Japanese that the Spanish aimed not simply to trade but to convert some of its people to Christianity so that they would rise and incorporate themselves into the Spanish Empire. This was in fact the perspective of many friars and their political allies. The Japanese decided that they would like to trade, but that Christianity was not compatible with their culture. In 1606-07, the Dutch attacked the Portuguese settlement at the straits of Malacca, and it was only because the Portuguese had allies in Japanese samurai that they were able to maintain a hold on the straits. The straits of Malacca were a key location because the Portuguese at Macao communicated with the Portuguese at Goa and Sao Tome by sailing through those straits—if the Dutch had taken the Portuguese establishment in Malacca, those in Macao would be cut off from the maritime route to Lisbon, and cottons from India would have been in short supply in Macao. The Dutch pursued some of the Portuguese defenders of the straits of Malacca to the coast of China near Macao, keeping the Portuguese off balance. In 1641, the Dutch would vanquish the Portuguese to control the straits of Malacca, and they would supplant the Portuguese and preempt the Spaniards to become trading partner of Japan. Back in 1611, Vizcaíno knew only that if he had succeeded in opening trade with Japan, he was to be rewarded with the position of general on the galleon, which facilitated contraband trade and so was the most lucrative position in the Hispanic China trade. Furthermore, if he could find the 34 5 B ol e t í n Volu m e 39, Nu m be r 1, 2 0 2 3 mythical Islas Rica de Oro y Plata [Islands Rich with Silver and Gold], he would have the right to settle them. Searching for this bounty, Vizcaíno came back to Japan empty-handed with a broken ship. Vizcaino wrote to the King that the Christian Japanese were a minority, and that he should not send missionaries to Japan, advice the King heeded. Of course, a subtext of this rejection of “Christianity” was Japan’s decision to trade with the Dutch.18 Though Spaniards in Asia never stopped dreaming of restoring trade and evangelism, Japan’s beautiful wares and profound culture escaped Spanish domination.19 Between 1597 and 1611, Vizcaino’s efforts to open commercial opportunity in Japan failed. Without trade in Japan, the northern Pacific would have held less interest, and this could explain why the 1606 decree to settle Monterey failed. The Spaniards in Manila never gave up on their dream of trading and evangelizing with Japan. Over a hundred years later, in 1768, a second mercantile and political actor from Manila was in Madrid advising Grimaldi from Spain’s Council of the Indies to occupy the port of Monterey. Pedro Calderón Henríquez once again mentioned Japan in the same breath as California. After reading of Vizcaíno’s attempt to tie Japan and California into the China trade route, this author was primed to read his 18th century document which has hitherto escaped notice. Pedro Calderón Henríquez’ name may be familiar to readers due to the 1944 publication by Henry Raup Wagner of the case Calderón made for a port in Monterey.20 Wagner was a German American rare book collector who spoke Spanish well due to decades working for mining interests in Mexico and Chile. He had come across a 1768 map drawn by Calderón. Calderón’s hand-drawn sketch shows on the Asia side, the actual route of the galleon, while on the California side, the map showed Calderón’s proposed stop in Monterey (see Figure 4). Wagner was, like his contemporary Schurz, steeped in the early 17th century, because he had in 1929 translated much of Sebastian Vizcaino’s 1602 voyage of exploration to northern California.21 Wagner published Calderón’s drawing (see below), but he concluded that Calderón had nothing to do with Spain’s decision to settle Monterey, on the grounds that the decision had already been Figure 4: Calderón's 1768 Derrotero (adapted from Wagner 1944). J o u r na l o f t h e Ca l i fo r n i a M i s s i o n s Fo u n dat i o n 5 35 taken by 1768. In fact, Monterey was not occupied until 1770, and we now know that Calderón had been lobbying since 1745 for the port to be settled. In 1769, the Crown had occupied San Diego, building a presidio there. In many ways, San Diego is more easily incorporated into Spain’s northern New Spain: there is a possibility of an overland route from San Diego to Tucson, as well as a short water route from Alamos (Sonora) to Loreto in Baja California, from which overland couriers to San Diego took about two weeks. The Manila galleon in the early 18th century even used San Diego Bay as a rendezvous for two ships that sailed from Manila. Calderón’s push for Monterey is consistent with his thirty year message that Spain needed a shipyard in northern California. In 1746, Calderón had proposed that the Manila merchants donate $50,000 for a fleet to patrol California’s coasts out of Monterey.22 The ostensible reason was to protect New Spain’s market from Dutch contraband traders out of Indonesia—two Dutch ships had in 1746 arrived in the Gulf of California from Asia.23 Yet Calderón was also connected to José González-Calderón, a major merchant based in Mexico City. When we see a member of the González-Calderón trans-imperial business advising the Crown to occupy a port in the northern Pacific in 1746, we should keep in mind that in 1741 the Russian navigator Aleksei Chirikov had arrived on the coast of the Americas at 55˚.24 By 1742 or 1743, the Russians were in the Kodiak and Aleutian islands impressing native men to hunt otter, for which the Manchu Chinese were offering high prices on the other side of Siberia.25 See Figure 4, Calderón’s 1768 map, to see where Kamchatka lies with respect to Monterey and northern Japan. Indeed, Calderón in 1745 suggested creating a shareholder-owned company out of Manila to conduct business from Monterey. The business was to be with merchants in the Tsugaru Strait in Japan, as is clear from the following: And having peopled the aforesaid port [Monterey, California], and leaving the coast above 30 degrees to the north in the hands of the Company, within a few years it will all be pacified and discovered, and the land will be penetrated; and from there the Company can also explore the coast that follows the Tsugaru Strait that divides Japan from the land of Heso and to establish very useful commerce in the heavy cloth and hides that are abundant in New Spain in the Port of Matsumae situated upon this strait, and there is much commerce because the Japanese, Koreans, Tartars converge there.26 Tsugaru Strait divides the island of Honshu from the northern Island of Hokkaido. The Japanese Matsumae Clan was given authority to administer a small part of southwest Hokkaido and established the colony of Matsumae as its main center in southwest Hokkaido. Yet Hokkaido was largely otherwise the domain of the indigenous Ainu, who chafed under the Japanese exploitation. It is therefore not inconceivable that the Ainu might have entered an alliance with the Spaniards, in the manner that Calderón envisioned. Figure 5 illustrates California’s location across from Tsugaru Strait, and also shows Korea 36 5 B ol e t í n Volu m e 39, Nu m be r 1, 2 0 2 3 and Kamchatka (Russia) so that we can envision as Calderón did a northern Pacific trading system. Calderón wanted Manila merchants to gain a toehold in this commerce through the shipyard he proposed to have built in Monterey. For him, Monterey was not tied to New Spain and Mexico City, so much as to trade with Asia in the northern Pacific Rim. Wagner 1944 attributed Calderón’s 1768 understanding of the Russian activities in the far northern Pacific to study, and no doubt Calderón read everything he could get his hands on. Yet in Calderón’s 1768 missive, he wrote the King that he had learned in Manila that the Russians had a base in Kamchatka [italics mine], and we should not underestimate the information passing by word of mouth between mariners of the Pacific, of whom the Filipinos were then and are now among the best.27 Figure 5: Calderón Described 1746 Trade in the Tsugaru Strait by Russians, Japanese and Koreans. The heavy cloth 28 and hides that are abundant in New Spain are highly esteemed in those parts [Northern Japan], we could barter there for silver of the [Japanese] mines, iron and other fruits of Japan, and for roots and medicinal drugs, which the Tartars have, and for marten furs. And at the same time, we could return to introducing there the Scripture, to the Japanese and the Tartars, and in Korea, given that all those people worship idols, without there being in those parts either heretics or Moslems, and navigation from Monterey to those straits is only 30 days, according to how these galleons sail, more secure and easy than from here [Manila] to Nagasaki, because it is navigated through the gulf, clean of winds or monsoons, and from here [Manila] the sea is filled with islands, reefs and currents, and very susceptible to storms, the reason why the Dutch have suffered great and continuous losses, and that they could not report, if the profits of this trade were not so great. 29 In the previous quote, Calderón is saying something rather substantial: that sailing from Tsugaru Strait to Monterey, the Spanish Empire could obtain Asian wares with a 30-day sail from California. He suggests Tsugaru to Monterey is a safer and shorter route than Manila to Acapulco. Is Calderón envisioning Monterey, California as supplanting Manila as Spain’s gateway to Asian commerce? If so, he thought Monterey’s trading partners would be Japan and Korea. Calderón was correct that the heavy cloth of New Spain and the hides might be more appreciated in the colder climate of northern J o u r na l o f t h e Ca l i fo r n i a M i s s i o n s Fo u n dat i o n 5 37 Japan, than Manila or Canton. However, the westerlies blew from Asia toward the Americas, so it is not clear how a return journey from Monterey to Hokkaido would have been made. Of course, if the ship originated in the Philipines, then stopping in Hokkaido en route to Monterey would have been relatively simple. When we think of San Francisco’s tight relationship with Japan today, Calderón’s words seem a profound insight. They confirm the sense provided by Vizcaino’s life story at the turn of the 17th century that potential trade with Japan made northern California an attractive location for a port for Spain’s traders in Asian wares. Endnotes 1. Regarding the drop in 1606 of the Monterey project, H.H. Bancroft says it was too expensive, see his (1884) History of California, San Francisco: A.L. Bancroft & Co.,, vol. I: p. 22-23. 2. On April 30, 1768, Chief Minister of Spain Pablo Jerónimo Grimaldi ordered José de Gálvez to occupy the port of Monterey. Herbert Ingram Priestley (1916) José de Gálvez: Visitor-General of New Spain (1765-1771). Berkeley: UC Press, p. 245. 3. William Lytle Schurz (1939) The Manila Galleon. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., frontispiece. 4. Michael Mathes (1968). Vizcaíno and Spanish Expansion in the Pacific Ocean, 1580-1630. Menlo Park: California Historical Society, pp. 25-43, 54-60, 57. p. 94. On Mathes, see Iris Engstrand (2013) “In Memoriam: William Michael Mathes” in Journal of California and Great Basin Archaeology, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 1. 5. On Cavendish [pronounced Candish], see June 25, 1588, Manila Audiencia to Felipe II, in Emma Helen Blair & James Alexander Robertson, The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, vol. 6, p. 311. <<https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13255>> 6. Henry Raup Wagner (1929) Spanish Voyages to the Northwest Coast of America. San Francisco: California Historical Society, 239. 7. Wagner (1929), Spanish Voyages, p. 242. 8. C.R. Boxer (1979) Papers on Portuguese, Dutch, and Jesuit Influences in 16th and 17th Century Japan. Washington, D.C.: University Publications of America, Inc., p. 6. 9. On cession of Nagasaki to Portuguese Jesuits and the nao do trato, see Boxer, C.R. (1967) The Christian Century in Japan, 1549-1640. Berkeley: UC Press, p. 100, and on Goa to Nagasaki trade via Macao, see ibid, p. 107. 10. Painting by Kanō Naizen and lies in the Kobe City Museum, now in public domain; possibly of 1610 ship, Naizen died in 1616. 11. Boxer (1967) Christian Century, p. 93-95, 117-20. 12. Boxer (1967) Christian Century, pp. 140, 141, 147-51, 160. 13. Boxer (1967) Christian Century, p. 166. 14. Joanne Marie Mancini (2018), Art & War in the Pacific World: Making, Breaking, and Taking from Anson’s Voyage to the Philippine War. Oakland: University of California Press, pp. 128-130. 15. On the path from Acapulco to Mexico City, see Yuste 2007, Emporios Transpacíficos, pp. 260-61. 16. The English translation by W. Johnston of Endo’s novel was published in 2015 as Silence by Picador. 38 5 B ol e t í n Volu m e 39, Nu m be r 1, 2 0 2 3 17. Matanchél is now Matanchén, a few kilometers from San Blas, and would by 1700 serve as the port for Baja California’s Jesuits. Mathes (1968), Vizcaíno, pp. 131-324 18. Mathes (1968). Vizcaíno, pp. 135-153. 19. Burrus, Ernest J. (1964), Kino escribe a la duquesa: correspondencia del P. Eusebio Francisco Kino con la duquesa de Aveiro y otros documentos, Madrid, José Porrúa Turanzas. 20. Henry Raup Wagner (1944). “Memorial of Pedro Calderón y Henríquez: Recommending Monterey as a Port for the Philippine Galleons with a View to Preventing Russian Encroachment in California,” in California Historical Society Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 210-225. 21. Wagner (1929) Spanish Voyages to the Northwest Coast in the 16th Century. San Francisco: California Historical Society. 22. July 16, 1746 from Manila. Pedro Calderón y Henríquez to Joseph de Carbajal y Lancaster, President of Council of the Indies. “The Dutch [from Indonesia]…undertook to introduce their commerce into New Spain—tempting the viceroy with 300,000 pesos which they carried thither last year, planning to give him this money so that he should tolerate [their trading]….I fear that they are planning to occupy some port in California,]in order that it may serve them as a magazine—like the island of Curazas [i.e., Curaçao]—and to make arrangements for carrying on their commerce from Batavia with the same ease as from here.” Calderón offers to pay: “I have collected testimony regarding all which can aid the Council to realize how, without any expense to the royal treasury, and with the men of whom we have here more than enough belonging to the navy-yard and ships, [Manila] can be fortified for that part of America, for the security of both these and those domains… For the cost of this enterprise the body of merchants offered to aid with 50,000 pesos in Acapulco.” In Blair and Robertson, eds., Philippine Islands, vol. 47, p. 230. 23. Dutch ships of 1746 are discussed in this 1766 document from the Bancroft Library: “Copia autorizada de la información que se hizo a pedimento del padre misionero Lamberto Hostell..” Loreto, AGN, Provincias Internas, vol. 7, exp. 11, f. 112 y 115. 24. Herbert K. Beals (1989) Juan Pérez on the Northwest Coast: Six Documents of His Expedition in 1774. Portland: Oregon Historical Society, pp. 12-13. 25. Warren L. Cook (1973) Floodtide of Empire. New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 41-44. Carmen Yuste (2007), Emporios transpacíficos. Comerciantes mexicanos en Manila, 1710-1815. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, p. 210-11, 221. Wagner 1944, p. 220, gives us 1741 as the date when Calderón’s lobbying begins. 26. Archivo General de Indias (AGI), Filipinas, 183, No. 6. 27. Wagner 1944, “Memorial,” p. 221. 28. The word for cloth here is paño, a heavier cloth used to make jackets. While paño was often made from wool, it could be made from other fibers, so long as the resulting weave was of the heavier sort. See Marie Christine Duggan (2023) “Bhagalpur Silk and Blue Nankeen” in Journal of the West. 29. AGI, Filipinas, 183, no. 6. J o u r na l o f t h e Ca l i fo r n i a M i s s i o n s Fo u n dat i o n 5 39