PREFACE
The documents in the present volume cover a wide range. In greater of less detail are discussed affairs in the islands — civil, military, and religious, in which all the various ramifications of each estate are touched upon. Reforms, both civil and religious, are urged and ordered; and trade and commerce, and general economic and social conditions pervade all the documents. The efforts of Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish in eastern waters are a portent of coming struggles for supremacy in later times. Japan, meditation on the closed door to Europeans, though still permitting the Dutch to trade there, continues to persecute the Christians, while that persecution is, on the other hand, lessening in violence in China. The piracies of the Moros endanger the islands, and allow the Dutch to hope for alliance with them against the Spaniards; and the importance of the islands to Spain is urged forcibly.
A letter addressed by Los Rios Coronel to the king (probably in 1620) urges that prompt aid be sent to Filipinas for its defense against the Dutch and English who threaten its coasts. To it he adds an outline "treatise on the navigation of Filipinas," which sustains his demand by forcible arguments. The rich Oriental trade amounts to five millions of pesos a
