Many authors have written about the Manila Galleons, the massive ships that took goods back and forth between Acapulco and Manila, ferrying silver one way, and Chinese-made goods the other.

But how did the Galleons actually work? Who paid for them? How did buyers and sellers negotiate with each other? Who set the rules? Why on earth did the shippers decide to send just one galleon a year?

Juan José Rivas Moreno dives into these questions in his book The Capital Market of Manila and the Pacific Trade, 1668-1838: Institutions and Trade during the First Globalization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).

Juan José Rivas Moreno is a historian of early modern finance, specialising in the financing of the Pacific trade. He obtained his PhD in Economic History from London School of Economics in 2023 with a thesis on the capital market of Manila which received the Coleman Prize 2024. Juan José was the recipient of a Newberry Library short-term fellowship and held an Economic History Society Fellowship in 2023-2024. Currently he is a Max Weber fellow at the European University Institute in Florence.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Capital Market of Manila and the Pacific Trade. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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