Note 3 — Chapter X · A Century of Obscurity and Decline. 1663–1762.

Trade Between South America and the Philippines Forbidden.—But this traffic was absolutely forbidden, and to prevent Chinese and Philippine goods from entering South America, the trade between Mexico and Peru was in 1636 wholly suppressed by a decree. This decree, as it stands upon the pages of the great Recopilacion, is an epitome of the insane economic policy of the Spaniard. It cites that whereas “it had been permitted that from Peru to New Spain there should go each year two vessels for commerce and traffic to the amount of two hundred thousand ducats [which later had been reduced to one hundred thousand ducats], and because there had increased in Peru to an excessive amount the commerce in the fabrics of China, in spite of the many prohibitions that had been imposed, and in order absolutely to remove the occasion for the future, we order and command the officers of Peru and New Spain that they invariably prohibit and suppress this commerce and traffic between the two kingdoms by all the channels through which it is conducted, maintaining this prohibition firmly and continually for the future.”3