"Dawning with Spain's arrival in the Philippines was a new, distinctly modern era." Charles C. Mann proposes this view in Chapter One of his 2011 book, 1493. The subtitle of the book, Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, suggests the intriguing thesis of the work. Columbus did not discover a New World in his first voyage in 1492; rather he helped to create one, a global world. This is a rather refreshingly fresh view of history. Columbus, an Italian sailing under the patronage of Spain, initiated the era of a global society. About eighty years later, the Spaniard Miguel Lopez de Legazpi established the trade link between Spain and China, and the new global order was under way. Noteworthy is the fact that Legazpi was trainted as a notary, in the Spanish civil service. He was a businessman; China was the wealthiest country in the world; Spain was dominant in Europe. Thus came about the famous "galleon trade" between Spain and China for well over 200 years. Legazpi wisely moved his headquarters from Cebu to Manila, in easy reach of Chinese trading boats across what is now the South China Sea.
Ultimately what particularly interests me about this persuasive historical presentation developed by Mann is the geographic importance of the Philippines as a bridge between West and East. This geographic importance has rather obvious political and economic consequences, which raise the question: why do the major powers of both West and East tend to overlook the bridge that could connected them in the first place?
