This lecture proposes a reading of the Hispanic Monarchy as one of the decisive actors in the birth of the first globalisation. Its purpose is not simply to recall Spain’s expansion into the Americas, but to place Spain at the center of a broader historical process: the stable connection, for the first time, of Europe, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific within a single political, commercial, monetary, cultural and religious system.

The central argument is that the first globalization was not only Atlantic. It was also, and essentially, trans-Pacific. The circuit linking Seville and Cádiz, Veracruz, Mexico City, Acapulco and Manila created a planetary network in which the Americas were not a passive periphery, but a structural axis of the world economy. American silver, especially from Mexico and Potosí, sustained exchanges with Asia and responded to China’s strong demand for monetary metal, while the Manila Galleon acted for more than two centuries as one of the great arteries of global circulation.

In this context, the Spanish dollar, or real de a ocho, can be understood as one of the first truly global currencies, accepted across Europe, the Americas and Asia, and a precursor to later forms of international monetary integration. The Philippines, Mexico and the Hispanic Pacific thus emerge as essential elements for understanding the early interdependence among continents.

The lecture will pay particular attention to Asia, especially to the place of China and Japan within this system. China became a major pole of attraction for American silver; Japan, although in a more complex and intermittent way, formed part of the Asian horizon opened by Iberian presence, missionary, commercial and diplomatic contacts, and the competition among European powers in the Pacific. The lecture will also consider how the circuits opened by the Hispanic Monarchy were later contested, imitated and transformed by Portugal, the Dutch Republic, England and France. Finally, it will connect this historical experience with contemporary debates on the Indo-Pacific, global supply chains, great-power competition, monetary circulation, economic interdependence and Spain’s role as a bridge between Europe, the Americas and Asia. In doing so, it will also explore a broader historical transition: from a Pacific world in which China was economically central but relatively absent from sustained maritime projection, to an Indo-Pacific order increasingly shaped by the end of that long historical asymmetry. Revisiting the first globalization from this perspective allows us to understand not only Spain’s past, but also the deeper historical roots of many of today’s strategic challenges.