Spanish shipping in Canton and Macao from 1640 to 1840 has recently received more attention from scholars but the history still remains somewhat ambiguous. The Spanish trade in opium in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has been given wide coverage in recent years, but the number of vessels involved and many other aspects of the trade are still incomplete, vague, and obscure. This outcome has been especially true for the years from 1700 to 1785, which has received little scholarly attention.
With new information that has now emerged it is possible to fill in some of these gaps in our understanding. We can now construct a more reliable list of Spanish ships in the Delta, and show some of the problems with the historical data. The Spanish trade in the Delta was very important for several reasons: the ships brought huge amounts of silver to China, which helped to finance trade; their small ships exported large quantities of expensive silk, which meant that their cargos might be worth more than a ship much larger; and they imported large amounts of opium and rice. While the outcome of the trade would have certainly been much better off without the opium, many Chinese would have suffered significantly if the Spanish rice had failed to arrive. Spaniards played an intricate role in the development of Macao and the Delta, and deserve a place in the history of the trade.