A New World of Gold and Silver

Using tax and mintage records, this book provides a district-by-district annual accounting of the gold and silver officially produced and minted in colonial Latin America, placing that output within the context of the emerging early-modern world economy.

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Colonial Latin America was famed for the precious metals plundered by the conquistadores and the gold and silver extracted from its mines. Historians and economists have attempted to determine the amount of bullion produced and its impact on the colonies themselves and the emerging early-modern world economy. Using official tax and mintage records, this book provides decade-by-decade and often annual data on the amount of gold and silver officially refined and coined in the treasury and mint districts of Spanish and Portuguese America. It also places American bullion output within the context of global production and addresses the issue of contraband production and bullion smuggling. The book is thus an invaluable source for evaluating the rise of the early-modern economy.