Manila's new governor, Coquela, departed from Acapulco on March 29 aboard the Seahorse and finally arrived at Manila on June 25. Three-inch room

The new governor brought to Manila was clearly not friendly and approving, as was evident from the indifference he displayed as soon as he stepped off the ship. Of course, in the eyes of the new governor Coqueira, these Manila colonial officials and merchants who came to welcome him were thieves of the kingdom, and he naturally would not give any good face.

In the past few years, Manila's colonial officials and merchants have stopped appealing to Mexico City for the lack of trade quotas, but the colony of New Spain has begun to flood with goods, and even British smugglers have begun to complain.

Naturally, the Gatyuping merchants, who controlled the commerce of the American colonies, began to be dissatisfied, and it was clear that these smuggled goods had greatly damaged their interests. After decades of war in Spain, the handicraft industry in Spain has basically been abandoned, and even the industrial products used by the Kingdom of Spain itself are mostly from all over Europe.

As a result, eighty to ninety percent of the industrial goods exported by the merchants of the Gatupin to the American colonies came from other European countries, especially Britain, which was not affected by the war in Europe. This also made the price of the Spaniards in the American colonies always high, even a stack of paper cost 3 or 4 so.

The British smuggled European industrial goods into the Spanish colonies in the Americas, and the price could not be reduced much, and the east coast of the Americas was also the most heavily guarded place by the Spaniards, so the Gatupin merchants could still turn a blind eye to the British smugglers.

However, the import of domestic goods from the eastern coast of the Pacific Ocean is different, because of the difference in the price of silver, the production of similar industrial goods in China is as low as a quarter of that of Europe. As the prices of European industrial goods rise, the gap between the two sides is still widening. Under such a price shock, who would buy the goods of the merchants of Gaqiuping?

Although the value of silver in Daming began to fall because of Daming's gold bill policy, the price of domestic commodities slowly rose to one-third of the price of European commodities, but this is still an unfair price.

What angered and frightened these Gatyuping merchants the most was that, in the name of the kingdom, they had the Viceroyalty of New Spain order the flow of gold, silver, and precious metals to Manila. However, there is a kind of banknote called Da Ming Yuan on the market, which is slowly replacing the circulation of gold and silver currency in the market because it is easy to carry and can buy smuggled goods to the country more cheaply.

Mexico's gold and silver miners are exchanging their privately hidden gold and silver production for the Ming Yuan at a staggering rate. These banknotes could be used to pay for their daily purchases, and could be remitted back to Europe through the Dutch or the British, without fear of being taxed by the king on one-fifth of the gold and silver.

On the other hand, the use of rubber, cowhide, dye, tobacco, sisal, cotton, cocoa, coffee, and other raw materials purchased at a low price, is being purchased at a high price. The fact that the Gatyuping merchants were being isolated from a new business circle was clearly intolerable.

After the investigation of these Gajupin merchants, they found that most of the goods smuggled from these countries came from the northern desert, and it was clear that the smugglers had established a smuggling port on the northwest coast of Mexico. To this end, they urged the Doge of New Spain to send troops to the northwest coast to destroy the smuggling port.

The campaign to eradicate smugglers, who were not only smuggling ordinary household goods, but also apparently smuggled large quantities of arms into Mexico. The nomads who lived in the northern desert and had never submitted to the Spanish kingdom were quickly repelled by the colonial armies who were unfamiliar with the terrain after obtaining these high-quality weapons.

The Gatyuping merchants soon discovered that it was an impossible task to eradicate these smugglers on the eastern shore of the Pacific, where there were few immigrant towns. After all, for the local Indians and Mestizos, these smugglers not only provided them with jobs, but also obtained the necessities of life at low prices. Therefore, they simply do not want these smugglers to be eliminated.

It was a difficult task to mobilize Spanish troops from the Yucatan Peninsula to the eastern coast of the Pacific Ocean, where living conditions were harsh. So when Coquilla became the new governor of Manila, the merchants pinned their hopes on him, hoping that the new governor of Manila would be able to curb the increasingly rampant smuggling trade in the Pacific at the source.

Of course, neither the Gatyupin merchants nor the new governor of Manila knew that it was the countries that led the smuggling trade in the Pacific, not the Manilan officials and merchants.

At the end of June of the ninth year of Chongzhen, 14 Ming ships had already set off for Osaka, Japan, opening this year's transpacific trade season. Most of these vessels have a deadweight displacement of 500 tons, and the cargo weight of these 14 ships alone is more than three times the total number of Manila galleons carried in a year.

After these goods arrived in Los Angeles, some of them were shipped to New Xiamen, New Hangzhou and Sanjiao Island in the north; Some were shipped to San Diego in the south and overland to the Colorado Delta and the desert regions of northern Mexico; Some of them are then shipped south to various ports on the west coast of South America. The cargo loaded on the return voyage of these vessels was fur and rubber as the first priority, followed by dyes and gold, silver and precious metals, and then other cargo.

The Viceroyalty of New Spain imposed a limit of 500,000 soles per year on the Manila galleon trade. But the fact is that the amount of the galleon trade is under 2 million soles per year, and at 300% of the gross profit, these goods are worth 8 million soles when they arrive in Mexico.

But now the markets of the entire American colonies are full of national goods, the total amount of which is estimated to be between 3 and 40 million soso. Even if Chinese merchants bought all kinds of raw materials in the Spanish colonies, one-third of the difference in price still had to be supplemented by gold, silver and precious metals.

As a result, Spain in the American colonies every year because of this smuggling trade to flow out of nearly 8 million so, a 1 soo silver coin is equal to one yuan face value of the Ming Yuan, which is 8 million yuan, about 4.32 million taels of silver, 132 tons of silver. The Spanish American colonies also produced less than 420 tons of silver a year, which of course was the official mining record. Naturally, the government of the Kingdom of Spain, which felt financially deprived because of the war in Europe, could not allow the silver produced in the Americas to flow to the east coast of the Pacific Ocean at an accelerated pace.

Coqueira, who came with a glorious mission, hastily attended the welcome banquet prepared for himself in Manila, urged Silva to hand over his official duties, and couldn't wait to start the final audit of Silva, the outgoing governor.

It should be said that the successive governors of Manila before Coqueira, although there was also such a thing as a final audit, but when the new and old governors were handed over, they would always cover up for the governors with the friendship of colleagues. But in the hands of the ill-intentioned Coquela, the final audit apparently became a weapon for him to fight against Silva and to flatter the merchants of Gatupín in New Spain.

After taking office, Coqueira immediately dismissed Hawthorne, Waldes and a number of other close associates of Governor Silva, and replaced them with his cronies brought from Mexico. He was dissatisfied with the privileges Silva had granted to his people, and even criticized the scale of the trade between the kingdom and Manila, believing that such trade would only harm the kingdom. The low cost of domestic goods not only discouraged the development of Manila's handicraft industry, but also hurt the taxes that Manila could have collected from the handicraft industry.

With this fierce criticism of the policies of the former governor, Coquela asserted his authority to the people of the Philippine colonies, hoping that the colonial officials and businessmen would come close to him and expose Silva for his corruption and bribery.

But in reality, Coqueira's brutal approach is causing discontent in the Philippine colonies. After all, the Philippine colonies at this time were in a honeymoon period with the country, whether it was the commercial prosperity brought to Manila by Philippine trade, or the inland of Luzon that the Chinese were developing for the Spaniards, or the interests of the Spice Islands that Ma wanted to share, all of which needed the support of the Chinese people for the Philippines to benefit. Not to mention the interests of the colonials' high-ranking officials in smuggling into the American colonies.

At such a moment, the colonies naturally would not jump out to expose the former governor, thus turning themselves into the target of public criticism. Coqueira was soon disappointed to find that no one had come forward to accuse the former governor of Silva's wrongdoing, and prosecutors insisted that the former governor was a good man and that there was nothing suspicious about it. There are even people who have been upset about Silva in public, accusing him of being a bastard sent by Mexico City to disrupt order in Manila.

Seeing that the situation was not good, Coqueira had to personally meet with the Attorney General, Monfalcon, to question him about the case of Salamanca, a tax officer sent to Manila by the Governor of New Spain more than two years ago.

Monfalcon replied calmly: "We also regret the disappearance of the Salamanca tax collector who fell into the water. We all thought that Mr. Salamanca was a good man, and if he hadn't been so greedy, this tragic incident would not have happened. ”

Coqueira's eyes were fixed on him and he said, "Don't you think it's abnormal for a big living person to fall into the water so in broad daylight and not even find his body, Mr. Attorney General?" ”

Without hesitation, Monfalcan replied, "No, Your Excellency. It's all too normal to go missing in the Philippines, and in the week, a priest went missing halfway through Cebu, and we haven't found his body yet. And as colleagues, we've raised money to express our condolences to the family in Salamanca, and I don't think there's anything we don't think we've done. ”

Coqueilla stared at Monfalcon in silence for a while, until the other party looked away, and then said in a threatening voice: "Mr. Attorney General, although I can't interfere with your appointment and dismissal, you should know that I am here on behalf of Helves, the governor of New Spain.

In the past three years, Manila's smuggling trade with the American colonies must be stopped, and both the Count of Olivares and His Excellency Hurves have severely accused Manila of smuggling to the American colonies as digging into the corners of the kingdom.

So somebody has to be responsible for this, either Mr. Silva or someone else, Mr. Attorney General, who do you want to be responsible for that? ”

Monfalcon finally became a little alarmed, and he stammered: "This is a slander, Manila has never supported any smuggling trade into the Americas, Your Excellency the Governor, please do not listen to such rumors..."

Coqueira said nonchalantly: "Whether it is a rumor or not, it must be confirmed by the Minister of the Kingdom and His Excellency the Governor of New Spain, my task is to find out the leader who connived at smuggling, Mr. Attorney General will think about it after he returns, but don't make a wrong judgment." ”

Monfalcan stopped talking to Coquilla, and finally bowed his head and left the Doge's Palace. How could he accuse Silva when he was already on the boat, and what he had to worry about now was not to let Coqueira find any flaws that would allow Silva to drag everyone into the water.

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