num_pages: 392
description: Silver mining was a capitalist business long before the supposed origin of modern capitalismHundreds of years before a sixteenthcentury crisis in European agriculture led to the origins of capital investment and finance the silver mining industry exhibited many of the features of modern capitalism. Silver mines were largescale businesses that demanded large investments and steady cash flow achieved by spreading that risk through fungible shares and creating legal structures to protect entrepreneurs from financial disaster. Jeannette Graulau argues that mining preceded agriculture as the first true capitalist enterprise of the modern world.
language: English
title: The Underground Wealth of Nations: On the Capitalist Origins of Silver Mining, A.D. 1150-1450
publisher: Yale University Press