Galleon trade

The royally licensed trade between Manila and Acapulco, running from 1565 to 1815, capped by a decree of 1593 at two ships per port per year after Seville merchants petitioned Philip II to protect the monopoly at home.

A cap that tight, on a route that profitable, produced exactly what caps like that produce. Contraband and understated cargo became routine, and the licences themselves became the asset, held by a small circle in Manila.

The reason it sits in the corruption genealogy is the lesson it taught over two and a half centuries: in this colony, money was made by proximity to a licence rather than by producing anything. That is a piece of learning about incentives, not about character, and it long outlived the ships.

Source: William Lytle Schurz, The Manila Galleon, 1939, the standard account, via the compiled summary at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manila_galleon . Library access for Schurz. Rizal named official monopolies and the trade restrictions among his causes in 1890.

First used in: 1.2 · The office that was paid by the people it governed