Against the backdrop of the trans-Pacific galleon route and the intra-Asian junk trade, this dissertation asks how cross-cultural trade between Chinese merchants from Southern Fujian (the Minnan region) and Manila-based Spaniards was sustained by means of specific institutions and organizations. Like other trade diasporas of the early modern world, these groups operated as self-organizing networks across imperial borders. They relied on formal and informal mechanisms for sustained inter-network and intra-network cooperation. On the Chinese side, lineages and maritime firms, as the main organizations behind maritime trade, had the expected potential to sustain consolidated operations, but there is no robust evidence that they created business operations exclusively dedicated to the Minnan-Manila route. Instead, the trade was largely conducted by individuals in the context of Spanish institutions (including formal courts), becoming atomized and greatly based on individual cooperation between itinerant Minnan merchants and Manila-based Chinese converts. These could gain mercantile trust from galleon merchants due to their religious status.
The dissertation studies these dynamics of exchange systematically, using data from Spanish archival documents, such as shipping manifests and maritime loan contracts. These allow for statistical and social network analysis. As a primary dataset, I have created the Manila Intra-Asian Trade database (MIAT), which is a compilation of existing records for ship arrivals and cargo between 1680 and 1840. Exploratory visual analysis reveals economic cooperation in the allocation of resources, including financial capital (credit), physical capital (ships), and skilled labor (shipmasters). Though more difficult to quantify, social capital (mercantile trust), enabled cooperation within networks and against a steep cross-cultural gradient. The dominant strategy that emerges from this data, and is supported by Chinese sources like genealogies, is diversification across commercial destinations and traded goods. Minnan captains called at different Southeast Asian ports in addition to Manila. They also invested in a wide range of products in order to spread risk between the lucrative but fluctuating market for re-exports to colonial Mexico and the less sizable but more stable market for domestic consumption in the Philippines.