The Spanish treasure fleet, or West Indies Fleet from Spanish Flota de Indias called silver fleet or plate fleet, was a convoy system of sea routes organized by the Spanish Empire from 1566 to 1790, which linked Spain with its territories in America across the Atlantic. The convoys were general purpose cargo fleets used for transporting a wide variety of items, including agricultural goods, various metal resources such as silver and gold, pearls, sugar, tobacco and other exotic goods from the overseas territories of the Spanish Empire to the Spanish mainland. Spanish goods such as oil, textiles and tools were transported in the opposite direction; the West Indies fleet was the first permanent transatlantic trade route in history. The Manila galleons were the first permanent trade route across the Pacific. Spanish ships had brought goods from the New World since Christopher Columbus's first expedition of 1492; the organized system of convoys dates from 1564, but Spain sought to protect shipping prior to that by organizing protection around the largest Caribbean island and the maritime region of southern Spain and the Canary Islands because of attacks by pirates and foreign navies.

The Spanish government created a system of convoys in the 1560s in response to the sacking of Havana by French privateers. The main procedures were established after the recommendations of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, an experienced admiral and personal adviser of King Philip II; the treasure fleets sailed along two sea lanes. The main one was the Caribbean Spanish West Indies fleet or Flota de Indias, which departed in two convoys from Seville, where the Casa de Contratación was based, bound for ports such as Veracruz and Cartagena before making a rendezvous at Havana in order to return together to Spain. A secondary route was that of the Manila Galleons or Galeón de Manila which linked the Philippines to Acapulco in Mexico across the Pacific Ocean. From Acapulco, the Asian goods were transhipped by mule train to Veracruz to be loaded onto the Caribbean treasure fleet for shipment to Spain. To better defend this trade, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and Álvaro de Bazán designed the definitive model of the galleon in the 1550s.

Spain controlled the trade through the Casa de Contratación based in Seville, southern Spain. By law, the colonies could trade only with the one designated port in Seville. Maritime archaeology has shown that the quantity of goods transported was sometimes higher than that recorded at the Archivo General de Indias. Spanish merchants and Spaniards acting as fronts for foreign merchants sent their goods on these fleets to the New World; some resorted to contraband to transport their cargoes untaxed. The Crown of Spain taxed the wares and precious metals of private merchants at a rate of 20%, a tax known as the quinto real or royal fifth. Spain became the richest country in Europe by the end of the 16th century. Much of the wealth from this trade was used by the Spanish Habsburgs to finance armies to protect its European territories in the 16th and 17th centuries against the Ottoman Empire and most of the major European powers; the flow of precious metals made many traders wealthy, both in Spain and abroad.

The increase in gold and silver on the Iberian market sometimes caused high inflation in the 17th century, affecting the Spanish economy. As a consequence, the Crown was forced to delay the payment of some major debts, which had negative consequences for its lenders foreign bankers. By 1690 some of these lenders could no longer offer financial support to the Crown; the Spanish monopoly over its West and East Indies colonies lasted for over two centuries. The economic importance of exports declined with the drop of production of the American precious metal mines, such as Potosí. However, the growth in trade was strong in the early years. Numbering just 17 ships in 1550, the fleets expanded to more than 50 much larger vessels by the end of the century. By the second half of the 17th century, that number had dwindled to less than half of its peak; as economic conditions recovered from the last decades of the 17th century, fleet operations expanded again, once again becoming prominent during the reign of the Bourbons in the 18th century.

The Spanish trade of goods was sometimes threatened by its colonial rivals, who tried to seize islands as bases along the Spanish Main and in the Spanish West Indies. However, the Atlantic trade was unharmed; the English acquired small islands like St Kitts in 1624. French pirates established themselves in Saint-Domingue in 1625, were expelled, only to return and the Dutch occupied Curaçao in 1634. In 1739, British Admiral Edward Vernon raided Portobello, but in 1741 his campaign against Cartagena de Indias ended in defeat, with heavy losses of men and ships. Temporary British seizures of Havana and Manila, during the Seven Years' War, were dealt with by using more, smaller fleets visiting a greater variety of ports. Charles III began loosening the system in 1765. In the 1780s, Spain opened its colonies to free trade. In 1790, the Casa de Contratación was abolished, bringing to an end the great general purpose fleets. Thereafter small groups of naval frigates were assigned to transferring goods or bullion as required.

Despite the general perception that many Spanish galleons were captured by foreign privateers, few fleets were lost to enemies in the course of the flota's two and a half centuries of operation. Only Piet Hein managed to bring its cargo to the Dutch Republic. In 1656 and 1657 Robert Blake attacked the fleet in Cadiz and Tene

Joel C. Rosenberg is an American/Israeli communications strategist, author of the Last Jihad series, founder of The Joshua Fund, an Evangelical Christian, he has written five novels about terrorism and how he feels that it relates to Bible prophecy, including Gold Medallion Book Award winner The Ezekiel Option. He has written two nonfiction books and Inside the Revolution, on what he sees as the resemblance of biblical prophecies and current events, he and his wife Lynn have four sons: Caleb, Jacob and Noah and reside in Israel. Rosenberg was born in 1967 near New York, he has stated that his father is of Jewish descent and his mother was born into a Methodist family of English descent. His parents were agnostic and became born-again Christians when he was a child in 1973. At the age of 17, he now identifies as a Jewish believer in Jesus, he graduated in 1988 from Syracuse University, after which he worked for Rush Limbaugh as a research assistant. He worked for U. S. Presidential candidate Steve Forbes as a campaign advisor.

Rosenberg opened a political consultancy business which he ran until 2000, claims to have consulted for former Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharansky and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, where he says that he garnered much of his information on the Middle East that he uses in his books. Following Netanyahu's loss in 1999, Rosenberg decided to retire from politics altogether and begin a new career in writing; the Last Jihad was both his first book and the first of a five-part fictional series involving terrorism and how it may relate to Bible Prophecy. The book was written nine months before the September 11th attacks and was published in 2002; when published, The Last Jihad spent 11 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, reaching as high as number seven. It appeared on the USA Today and Publishers Weekly best-seller lists, hit number four on the Wall Street Journal list; the book was followed by The Last Days, which spent four weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List, hit number five on the Denver Post list, hit number eight on the Dallas Morning News list.

Following the successes of his first two novels, The Ezekiel Option was published in 2005, The Copper Scroll in 2006, the final book Dead Heat in 2008. Rosenberg wrote a non-fictional account of current events and Bible Prophecy in the book Epicenter, it was published in September 2006 and an accompanying DVD was produced in the summer of 2007. His second non-fiction book Inside the Revolution addresses the different sects of Islam in the Middle East and asserts that a significant number of moderate Muslims are converting to Christianity in the region, it was released in 2009 and made it onto the New York Times best-seller list, reaching as high as #7 as of 27 March 2009. His 2011 book The Twelfth Imam deals with terrorism and Iran gaining nuclear power. Rosenberg is the founder and President of The Joshua Fund, a 501 not-for-profit charity that seeks to "Bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus, according to Genesis 12:1-3." Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog group, criticized Rosenberg's July 31, 2006, Paula Zahn Now, CNN appearance that "featured a segment on'whether the crisis in the Middle East is a prelude to the end of the world,' marking the third time in eight days that CNN has devoted airtime to those claiming that the ongoing Mideast violence signals the coming of the Apocalypse."

It featured Rosenberg comparing apocalyptic Scripture in the Bible to modern events, which he views, in addition to the lenses of politics and economics, through what he calls "a third lens as well: the lens of Scripture."Rosenberg's views on the War of Ezekiel 38–39 involving Gog and Magog are in line with dispensationalism, one of several Christian theological systems involving eschatology. Partial preterist Gary DeMar has debated Rosenberg on this subject; the Last Jihad ISBN 978-1-4143-1272-9 The Last Days ISBN 978-1-4143-1273-6 The Ezekiel Option ISBN 978-1-4143-0344-4 The Copper Scroll ISBN 978-1-4143-0346-8 Epicenter ISBN 978-1-4143-1135-7 Dead Heat ISBN 978-1-4143-1162-3 Epicenter 2.0 ISBN 978-1-4143-1136-4 Inside the Revolution ISBN 978-1-4143-2626-9 The Twelfth Imam ISBN 978-1-4143-1163-0 The Tehran Initiative ISBN 978-1-4143-1935-3 Israel at War ISBN 978-1-4143-8374-3 Implosion ISBN 978-1-4143-1967-4 Damascus Countdown ISBN 978-1-4143-1970-4 The Auschwitz Escape ISBN 978-1-4143-3624-4 The Third Target ISBN 978-1-4143-3627-5 The First Hostage ISBN 978-1-4964-0615-6 Without Warning ISBN 978-1-4964-0616-3 The Kremlin Conspiracy ISBN 978-1-4964-0621-7 The Persian Gamble ISBN 978-1-4964-0618-7 The Jerusalem Assassin Joel C. Rosenberg Official Site Appearances on C-SPAN Miller, John J..

"Joel Rosenberg on Dead Heat". National Review Online. Archived from the original on 29 March 2009. Retrieved 31 May 2009. "Joel C. Rosenberg". Tyndale House. Retrieved 30 May 2009

Antoni Dufriche-Desgenettes, baptized Antoine Marie Dufriche-Foulaines, was a French seafaring merchant and amateur phonetician. His father François Nicolas, a brother of René-Nicolas Dufriche Desgenettes, had changed his family name from Dufriche-Desgenettes to Foulaines-Dufriche and was a lawyer and political writer. After many years at sea, Dufriche worked in the Netherlands as a French teacher for some time. In the late 1850s, he returned to Paris but still travelled abroad to Java, his travels enabled him to collect information about the sounds of many languages and to develop a universal phonetic alphabet. He is best known for the introduction of the term phoneme for an individual sound as an element of a language-specific or universal sound inventory. In 1860, Dufriche joined the Société d'ethnographie orientale et américaine, whose members "were linguists and specialists in Asian texts and pre-Columbian codices", he was among the founders of the Société de Linguistique de Paris in 1864.

As an autodidact in linguistics, he remained something of an outsider, it is that the term phoneme survived thanks to its acceptance by Louis Havet, although it underwent a number of metamorphoses in the course of half a century until it acquired the meaning'smallest distinctive unit'. A biographical sketch of Dufriche was compiled by E. F. K. Koerner in 1976, but his date of death and his full first name long remained a mystery. E. F. K. Koerner. Toward a Historiography of Linguistics: Selected Essays. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Pp. 127–136. ISBN 978-90-272-8654-3