"The Philippines in the Maritime Trade of Armenians" (continued) - Yuri BARSEGOV

Yuri Barsegov's article "The Philippines in the Maritime Trade of the Armenians" (continued) is devoted to the study of the commercial ties of Armenian merchants with Manila and, more broadly, with the Spanish colonial possessions in the Pacific region throughout the 16th–18th centuries, continuing the research begun in previous issues of ANIV.

Introduction and Methodology

The author draws on a wide range of archival sources — materials from the Records of Fort St. George, documents of the French and English East India Companies, accounts of European travelers and naval officers (Le Gentil de la Galaisière, Drals de Grand-Pierre, Alexander Hamilton), as well as Vatican acts and records of the Pondicherry Council. On this basis, the mechanism of the intermediary role of Armenian merchants between India, the Philippines and Spanish America is reconstructed.

Key Argument

Barsegov demonstrates that Armenian merchants, lacking their own "national" ports and possessing the legal status of foreigners in the Spanish possessions, in fact performed the function of trading intermediaries for Spain itself, compensating for the Spaniards' lack of bases and factories in India. Specific cases are cited (the affair of the ship "Sultana Begum," 1766), in which Spanish subjects made use of Armenian vessels and names to conduct trade in circumvention of military-political restrictions.

Main Thematic Directions

• The Hispanicization of Armenian names and ship names ("Santa Cruze," "St. Domingo," and others) as evidence of the deep integration of Armenians into the Spanish trading system;
• A hypothesis concerning the conversion of certain Armenian merchants to Catholicism with the aim of obtaining "Spanish" status and the right to trade across the Pacific with New Spain;
• Indirect evidence of Armenian business interests directly in America (the case of the debt obligations of John St. Hillary, 1720);
• A comparative analysis of the regularity and profitability of Manila voyages undertaken by Armenian, English, and French merchants.

Particular attention is paid to statistics on trading voyages: while Armenian ships sailed to Manila almost annually over the course of two centuries, the English and French companies regularly suffered losses and were compelled to resort to chartering Armenian vessels (the cases of 1721 and 1727), thereby acknowledging the superiority of the Armenians in organizing trade and exporting American silver.

Conclusion

The author concludes that Armenian merchants, throughout the 16th–18th centuries, were not merely participants but a structure-forming element of Manila trade, ensuring the circulation of American silver between the New World, the Philippines, and the markets of India and Europe, surpassing their European competitors in the scale and stability of their operations.