A Project to Promote Trade between the Kingdom of Naples and the Great Kingdom of China, and the Imperial Policy during the Reign of Philip III (1608)

Ignacio Javier Chuecas Saldias

Full Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Communications

Member of the CIDOC Research Center of the Finis Terrae University - Santiago de Chile

In the year 1608, Baltasar de Torres, secretary of the Viceroy of Naples, Count of Benavente, wrote to the Duke of Lerma, Philip III’s favourite, a letter proposing that trade be opened between the capital of the Kingdom of Naples and China by way of Philippines and Panama. This unusual initiative was part not only of the lucubrations of the administrative agents present in the vast territories of the Hispanic monarchy, but also of the strategies of the mercantile elites of the Empire. Among the latter, at the time of Philip III, the extensive networks of merchants of New Christian origin from the Kingdom of Portugal stand out, who in the context of the union of the Castilian and Portuguese crowns found ample space to develop an agenda oriented towards global trade. Indeed, the opening of traffic from the great kingdom of China through the Pacific and then to other American and European territories represented a constant aspiration within said cluster. Based on these assumptions, it is understood how Baltasar de Torres’s project of commercially linking the kingdom of Naples with China, through the American route, is actually part of a larger agenda, actively promoted by the commercial elites of the Empire. In turn, it is an initiative that would never see light, due in large part to the pressure exerted by the commercial consulates of cities such as Seville, which saw their own monopoly on the movement of goods to and from the heart of the metropolis in jeopardy.