The Age of Silver - introduction

ROSSANA BARRAGÁN; PAULA C. ZAGALSKY

Potosí in the Global Silver Age (16th?19th Centuries)

Brill Editors

Lugar: Leiden; Año: 2023; p. 1 - 48

Potosí (today Bolivia) was the major supplier for the Spanish Empire and for the world and still today boasts the world's single-richest silver deposit. This book explores the political economy of silver production and circulation illuminating a vital chapter in the history of global capitalism. It travels through geology, sacred spaces, and technical knowledge in the first section; environmental history and labor in the second section; silver flows, the heterogeneous world of mining producers, and their agency in the third; and some of the local, regional, and global impacts of Potosí mining in the fourth section.The main focus is on the establishment of a complex infrastructure at the site, its major changes over time, and the new human and environmental landscape that emerged for the production of one of the world´s major commodities: silver. Eleven authors from different countries present their most recent research based on years of archival research, providing the readers with cutting-edge scholarship.