#1565

Seltzer Cookie from Cookie Run Kingdom

"she is so squinkly it's not even funny look at her cute little smile"

Allegory of Winter, 1563-65

Artist: Bartolomeo Ammannati

Villa Medici, Castello

#1565

Manila Galleon

The Manila Galleons were Spanish treasure ships which transported precious goods like silk, spices, and porcelain from Manila in the Philippines to Acapulco, Mexico, between 1565 and 1815. The Atlantic treasure fleets then shipped some of these goods – along with silver, gold, and other precious materials extracted from the Americas – on to Spain. The Manila galleons, meanwhile, returned to the Philippines each year loaded with silver to buy more goods for the next trip. Manila galleons going in either direction were a floating Aladdin's cave of treasures and so they tempted many a pirate and privateer but, such was their armament, only four were ever captured at sea.

The Spanish Empire

In the 16th century, two European powers were colonising the globe. The 1529 treaty of Zaragoça (Saragosa) between Portugal and Spain extended the astonishing division of the world these two nations had previously established in the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494. The Zaragoça treaty confirmed Portugal's claim over the Spice Islands while Spain was given the Philippines. From 1565, galleon ships were used to transport trade goods, gold, and silver accumulated at Manila from across Asia to the Americas and then to Spain.

Unlike other ships, such as those of the Portuguese Empire which used the Cape of Good Hope trade route around the tip of southern Africa, the Spanish preferred to send their ships eastwards to the Americas. The one, or more rarely two, annual Manila galleons arrived at Acapulco on the Pacific coast of what is today Mexico and which was then part of the Spanish Empire in the Americas, the Spanish Main. Setting off from Manila in the Philippines, these ships became known as the Manila galleons to the British, although the Spanish themselves called them the naos de China or 'Chinese ships'. Almost all Spanish galleons operating in the Pacific were built in the Philippines, a requirement enforced by law from 1679, and they were funded and owned by the Spanish Crown.