Spanish East Indies transpacific trade link of the Manila-Acapulco Galleons. In 1571, Manila was captured from the Sultanate of Brunei and then Manila was made the seat of the Spanish Captaincy General of the Philippines. These and other Asian territories claimed by the Spanish crown were to be governed from the Viceroyalty of New Spain in Mexico City. The Manila-Acapulco galleons shipped products gathered from both Asia-Pacific and the Americas, such as silk, spices, silver, gold and other Asian-Pacific islander products to Mexico. Products brought from Asia-Pacific were sent to Veracruz and shipped to Spain and, via trading, to the rest of Europe,
Dutch East Indies The profit from the Dutch East Indies made the Netherlands one of the world's most significant colonial powers. The Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij shipping line supported the unification of the colonial economy and brought inter-island shipping through to Batavia, rather than through Singapore, thus focussing more economic activity on Java. The worldwide recession of the late 1880s and early 1890s saw the commodity prices on which the colony depended collapse. Journalists and civil servants observed that the majority of the Indies population were no better off than under the previous regulated Cultivation System economy and tens of thousands starved. Commodity prices recovered