Obispado, Kristyl. 2023. “The case of the dead sailors and the things they left: A microhistorical analysis of the Carrera del Pacífico in the sixteenth century” In Europa y América: el mar y la primera globalización, Colección Historia Medieval y Moderna 96, Universidad del País Vasco y / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea Press.

Abstract

One of the consequences of the Carrera del Pacífico (more popularly known as the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade) was the influx of global products in Spanish America and the Asia Pacific, which affected the daily consumption of their broader population. As a contribution to the growing scholarship on the topic, it will also be noteworthy to analyze the workers who transported these trade goods, circulated with them, and brought them to their destination areas. The present study will utilize the microhistorical approach to examine the sailors of the Carrera in the sixteenth century, particularly the case of Baltazar Hernandez. He was a Carrera sailor who died aboard San Martin, a Mexican-bound ship. By surveying the goods that he left when he died as well as those of the other sailors, the research aims to reconstruct their everyday and global lives during the early modern period: their trade and consumer goods, things of enjoyment, working instruments, food, drink, and other objects.