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

The open access publication of this book has been made possible thanks to the International Institute of Social History - Amsterdam.

Potos (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 Potos 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.

Contributors are: Julio Aguilar, James Almeida, Rossana Barrag n Romano, Mariano A. Bonialian, Th r se Bouysse-Cassagne, Kris Lane, Tristan Platt, Ren e Raphael, Masaki Sato, Heidi V. Scott, and Paula C. Zagalsky.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9004528679
• ISBN13: 9789004528673
• Release Date: March 2023
• Publisher: Brill
• Length: 490 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.1" x 9.2"