Mining, Money and Markets in the Early Modern Atlantic

Digital Approaches and New Perspectives

Renate Pieper, Claudia de Lozanne Jefferies, Markus Denzel, Renate Pieper, Claudia de Lozanne Jefferies, Markus Denzel

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783030238940
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic History
• Index: Economics

This volume documents recent efforts to track the transformation and trajectory of silver during the early modern period, from its origins in ores located on either side of the Atlantic to its use as currency in the financial centres of continental Europe. As a point of comparison, copper mining and its monetary use in the early modern Atlantic World will also be considered. Contributors rely mainly on economic and economic history methodologies, complemented by geographical and cultural history approaches. The use of novel software applications as tools to explain economic-historical episodes is also detailed.

Part IIntroduction

© The Author(s) 2019

R. Pieper et al. (eds.)Mining, Money and Markets in the Early Modern AtlanticPalgrave Studies in Economic Historyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23894-0_1

Begin Abstract

1. Mining, Money and Markets in the Early Modern Atlantic: Digital Approaches and New Perspectives

Renate Pieper¹ , Claudia de Lozanne Jefferies² and Markus Denzel³

(1)

Institute of History, University of Graz, Graz, Austria

(2)

School of Arts and Social Sciences, City, University of London, London, UK

(3)

Historisches Seminar, Universität Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

Renate Pieper (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Claudia de Lozanne Jefferies

Email: [email protected]

Markus Denzel

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

In 1635, in Antwerp, the Flemish diplomat and court painter Peter Paul Rubens designed and constructed an “Arch of the Mint” (Fig. 1.1) for the ceremonial entry of Cardinal Infante Ferdinand,¹ the new governor of the Spanish Low Countries, who the year before had won a resounding victory at the battle of Nördlingen. For this Joyeuse Entrée, Rubens composed a collection of allegorical images linking mining and money on both sides of the Atlantic: miners, resembling those in the woodcuts of Georg Agricola, supposed to represent indigenous workers at the silver-rich mountain of Potosí in modern Bolivia; Vulcan forging coins and medals, fuelling commerce in the city of Antwerp; American parrots and monkeys; and Jason and Medea seeking the Golden Fleece.

Fig. 1.1

From mining to money

(Source Peter Paul Rubens, The Arch of the Mint, 1635. (c) KMSKA. Photo Rik Klein Gotink)

Inspired by Rubens, this volume brings together a collection of articles on subjects previously dispersed across the breadth of economic history literature. The resulting mosaic traces the entwinement of mining and money across the transatlantic world. Some pieces hitherto missing from the mosaic will inspire further research on the entanglement between these deeply interrelated fields of craft and economy.

The “Arch of the Mint” bound the European commercial centre of Antwerp into the transatlantic trade network, a key step in the process of globalisation (Flynn 2003; Martínez Ruiz 2018). In the same vein, this book focuses on globalisation and the entanglement of the Americas with Western Europe in a “transatlantic world”. In particular, it focuses on the territories of the Spanish Habsburgs—carriers of the Golden Fleece—as well as some of their competitors in continental Europe: the northern Netherlands, the German territories and France.

Rubens designed his arch in 1635, at the end of a long period of intensive silver mining in Spanish America (TePaske 2010, p. 20; Garner 2007). In order to capture the wide-ranging effects of mining on the transatlantic world, the studies assembled here examine not only that first silver boom around 1600 but the whole period from the beginning of the American mining industry in the early sixteenth century, through its decline and recovery in the second half of the seventeenth century and its zenith in the second half of the eighteenth century to the transformations, driven by the emergence of nation states in the Americas, which took place during the early nineteenth century.

As Rubens’s allegory suggests, precious metals—gold and silver—from the Americas (e.g. Lopezosa Aparicio 1999; Hausberger and Ibarra 2014) played a vital role in pre-modern economies, whether they were traded as commodities in the form of bullion or fuelling merchant networks as specie. Due to its relative abundance, silver was the most frequently exchanged metal across the early modern Atlantic. This book tracks the trajectory and transformations of silver from its origin in ores on both sides of the Atlantic up to its arrival in the financial centres of Central and Western Europe, where it was traded mainly as currency. As a point of comparison, it also examines the mining and monetary use of copper. Mining and its products entangled both sides of the Atlantic and, as well as economics, heavily influenced the technical, social, political, administrative, theoretical and cultural aspects of early modern society. This volume scrutinises the fluctuations and interrelationships associated with silver and copper mining in the early modern Atlantic world, but excludes gold and the gold-producing regions of Africa and the Americas.

Given the current state of the literature, this book aims to bring the interrelated fields of mining history, minting history and monetary history into a common discourse (cf. Kellenbenz 1981; Fischer et al. 1986, vol I; Van Cauwenberghe 1989, 1991). Recent literature has largely centred on the Pacific, highlighting the connections between Spanish America and the Asian world (e.g. Depeyrot and Flynn 2016; Denzel 2014; Hirzel and Kim 2008; Kim 2013; Flynn 1996, 1997, 2003; Von Glahn 2003). In contrast, this volume focuses on the Atlantic—roughly two-thirds of American bullion exports in the early modern period were shipped east, across the Atlantic (cf. Pieper 1990, 1992; TePaske 2010).

Further, our analysis emphasises the technical, geographical and economic aspects of mining and minting. Recent literature tends to engage with social rather than technical issues (Povea Moreno and Zagalsky 2017; Barragán Romano 2017; Bakewell 1997, 2011; Robins 2011) and those studies which do deal with technical questions are dated or—with few exceptions (Sánchez Gómez and Pieper 2000)—stress a unidirectional European impact on Spanish American mining industries (Brown 2012; Platt 2012; Hausberger 1997; Sánchez Gómez 1995, 2017; Sánchez Gómez and Mira Delli-Zotti 2000; Lacueva Muñoz 2010). In contrast, we investigate how the combination of indigenous and European methodologies led to innovation on both sides of the Atlantic so that, for instance, American mining experts were sought after for European ventures and the extent to which mining in the Americas drove technical innovation in eighteenth-century Europe. We engage with social and political questions as well, but do so with respect to human geography using digital approaches. In the realm of economic questions, we draw upon recent archival research on prices, interest and exchange rates. Other publications leveraging similar economic indicators rely mostly on time series published some time ago (Munro 2002, 2003).

The impact of American precious metals on European concepts and monetary theories is still the subject of debate which began in the sixteenth century and re-emerged at the end of the twentieth century (Bernholz 1992; de Lozanne Jefferies 1997, 2014; Denzel 2004; Lucassen 2007). This book focuses on the role played by precious metals in the form of specie in the development of early modern state administration and the emergence of theoretical debates in early modern economic treatises, which still persist in modern monetary theory. Finally, this volume also engages with the cultural imaginaries—evident in Rubens’s painting—associated with silver, both as bullion and as specie. Up until now, specie, in contrast to diamonds, has not generally been considered a cultural issue worthy of study in itself (Siebenhüner 2018).

The following contributions rely mainly on the methodologies of economics, economic history and history. In the last two decades, economic history in particular has experienced an integration of computerised statistical tools as state of the art, but the implementation of digital geographical tools (GIS) as an instrument for research is still in its infancy. Therefore, several chapters discuss the use of this relatively novel software as a tool for researching and explaining economic histories.

To analyse the trajectory of silver and copper from the mines to their ultimate cultural impact, we cover a broad transatlantic area and time span, from the commercial revolution of the late Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution. Further, we employ a number of theoretical approaches. Some chapters apply economic theories, and others centre on legal, political or cultural concepts. Given the variety of methodological approaches, geographical entities and political changes, especially around 1800, a common terminology would obfuscate the differences in approach without aiding in comprehension. Some chapters use terms such as “empire” for the Holy Roman Empire as well as for the Spanish Empire, which encompassed the American viceroyalties, Spain and the southern Netherlands and for some time the kingdoms of Portugal and Naples. Other contributions avoid the concept of “empire”, pointing to post-colonial theories, and prefer to use the term “transnational” even before the existence of nation states. Most texts dealing with Spanish America use “colony” and “colonial” for those territories before their political independence, although such terminology was not employed by contemporaries. They rather spoke of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, encompassing the modern south-western United States, Mexico and Central America north of Panama, and the Viceroyalty of Peru, encompassing Spanish America south of Costa Rica up to the early eighteenth century and then splitting up into three viceroyalties over the course of that century. Spanish American elites stressed this terminology for a long time as it underlined that they were ruled by viceroys like the kingdoms of Naples, Valencia, Aragón and Portugal, not by governors like the southern Netherlands. The vernacular only shifted towards the use of “colony” with the independence movement and the emergence of new elites in the early nineteenth century.

Irrespective of their chosen terminology, the chapters of this volume are united in stressing the agency of all the inhabitants of the Atlantic world, whether they resided in a colony or a nation state. This book shows how individuals from both sides of the early modern Atlantic actively exchanged ideas and participated in the mining, minting and marketing of silve...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Part I. Introduction
• Part II. Theory
• Part III. Mining
• Part IV. Money
• Part V. Markets
• Back Matter