Global silver trade from the 16th to 18th centuries | Wikipedia audio article
Channel: wikipedia tts
Date: 2019-06-15

This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_silver_trade_from_the_16th_to_18th_centuries


00:03:10 1 First paper money
00:04:13 2 Silver in the Americas
00:05:24 2.1 Mining Processes in the Americas
00:07:42 3 Global Flow of Silver
00:09:21 3.1 China and the Demand for Silver
00:11:28 3.2 China's Silver Dominance
00:15:26 4 Opium Wars
00:18:28 5 See also



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SUMMARY
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The global silver trade between the Americas, Europe and China from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries was a spillover of the Columbian Exchange which had a profound effect on the world economy. In fact, many scholars consider the silver trade to mark the  beginning of a genuinely global economy, with one historian noting that silver "went round the world and made the world go round." Although global, much of that silver ended up in the hands of the Chinese, as they accepted it as a form of currency. In addition to the global economic changes the silver trade engendered, it also put into motion a wide array of political transformations in the early modern era. "New World mines," concluded several prominent historians "supported the Spanish empire," acting as a linchpin of the Spanish economy.Spaniards at the time of the Age of Exploration discovered vast amounts of silver, much of which was from the Potosí silver mines, to fuel their trade economy. Potosí's deposits were rich and Spanish American silver mines were the world's cheapest sources of it. The Spanish acquired the silver, minting it into the peso de ocho to then use it as a means of purchase; that currency was so widespread that even the United States accepted it as valid until the Coinage Act of 1857. As the Spanish need for silver increased, new innovations for more efficient extraction of silver were developed, such as the amalgamation method of using mercury to extract silver from ore.In the two centuries that followed the discovery of Potosí, the Spanish silver mines in the Americas produced 40,000 tons of silver. Altogether, more than 150,000 tons of silver were shipped from Potosí by the end of the 18th century. From 1500 to 1800, Mexico and Peru produced about 80% of the world's silver with 30% of it eventually ending up in China (largely because of British merchants who used it to purchase exotic Chinese commodities).  In the late 16th and early 17th century, Japan was also exporting heavily into China and the foreign trade at large.As has been demonstrated, China dominated silver imports. The market value of silver in the Ming territory was double its value elsewhere, which provided great arbitrage profit for the Europeans and Japanese. The abundance of silver in China made it easy for the country to mint it into coinage. That process was so widespread that local Chinese government officials would demand taxes to be paid in silver to the point that silver eventually backed all of China's economy.