Trade routes: spices and ships

Ages 6 to 8 Read together, then try alone · about 25 minutes

Read together

Long ago, traders carried goods across land and sea. Spices, silk, porcelain and silver crossed oceans.

Cloves and nutmeg grew on small islands in what is now Indonesia. Traders carried them to Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

From 1565 to 1815, big Spanish ships called Manila galleons sailed each year between Manila in the Philippines and Acapulco in Mexico.

Do it

1. On a world map, draw the route of the Manila galleons: Manila to Acapulco across the Pacific.
2. Make a trading game: give each child cards with goods (silk, spice, silver, rice). Swap fairly to get what you need.
3. Smell some spices (cinnamon, clove, pepper) and say where they come from.
4. Talk about what is fair in trade. Who gains? Who works hard? Who decides the price?

Talk about it

• Why were spices so valuable?
• How did trade link different countries?

For the grown-up

The Manila galleons linked Asia and the Americas and carried goods, people and ideas for over two hundred years. They were part of Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines, and many Filipino workers built and crewed the ships, often under forced labour. Tell this story honestly, including both the connections and the hardship.

Mark as done

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Where this comes from

• William Lytle Schurz, The Manila Galleon (E. P. Dutton, 1939)
• Arturo Giráldez, The Age of Trade: The Manila Galleons and the Dawn of the Global Economy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015)
• Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (Bloomsbury, 2015)

Written with AI assistance and checked against the sources listed. Please read it before sharing it with a child.