Political economy, market structure, and the early modern Pacific trade: Another look at transpacific silver flows

Abstract The crucial role that the early modern Pacific trade played as a source of silver for Asian economies has resulted in multiple attempts to estimate its monetary value. However, the political economy of Spanish commerce casts doubts on the reliability of existing sources and has resulted in great variation among historians' estimates. This article presents a critical review of the existing estimates together with previously unused evidence of Manila's capital market, arguing that revisionist estimates of 50–100 annual tons of coined silver reflect more accurately the volume of the trade between 1680 and 1815.