Obispado, Kristyl N. “Textiles and Other Trade Goods: The Philippines in the Sixteenth-Century Global Trade” In Dada Docot, Stephen Acabado, and Clement Camposano (eds.), Philippine Studies: Plural Entanglements, pp. 58-83. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.

This study aims to contribute to the growing literature on the importance of non-European actors as prime movers in the early global trade. For this purpose, it locates the Philippines in the intercontinental exchange and reexamines its role, which has been confined to serving as a way-station for Asian and American goods (Schurz 1939). The chapter is organized into three sections. The first part discusses the value of Philippine products as tribute and trade goods and the mechanisms used for their production and circulation. The second part analyzes the flow of the Philippine trade goods in the Pacific leg of the sixteenth-century global trade. Finally, it utilizes archival data and contemporary colonial reports to understand better the Philippine commercial relationship with other “peripheries,” that is, American colonies.