A History of Latin America To 1825 by Bakewell Peter; Holler Jacqueline;

Author:Bakewell, Peter; Holler, Jacqueline;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated
Published: 2011-08-18T04:00:00+00:00

PRODUCTION, TAXES, AND TRADE IN AMERICA

Sale of office was one means used by the crown to tap into the rising prosperity of least the central areas of Spain’s American empire. That rise in production and wealth seems to have persisted from the late sixteenth century for several decades into the seventeenth, though the evidence is patchy and somewhat contradictory. The firmest information is on silver-mining. Even there doubts exist, certainly, because production has been calculated from royalty records, and some evasion of the tax clearly took place. But, precisely for that reason, the estimates of output are minimum possible amounts, and hence useful indicators.

MINING AND TREASURY INCOME

Royalty receipts by the treasury show, broadly, that in the central Andes and New Spain silver production rose in the early 1600s. Potosí’s decline, it is true, began almost with the new century. Never again after 1605 did taxed production there exceed 1,500,000 pesos, as it had done several times since 1592. Potosí’s decline in registered output lasted until the 1720s, with only occasional resurgences as important, but always lesser, ore deposits were found and worked at various sites on the Bolivian altiplano and in the nearby eastern Andean ranges. It was an initial boom at Oruro, the largest of these places, from 1606 to c.1630 that propelled central Andean production upward until about 1620. After then decline at Potosí became the dominant force; and from the 1630s to the 1660s Oruro followed it downward. Potosí’s decay seems mainly to have been the reverse side of the coin of its success. What was so extraordinary about its Rich Hill was the dense concentration of rich ores that the peak contained. But the great mass was easily worked – and therefore quickly exhausted. Enormous amounts of poorer ore remained beneath the peak. Not only, however, did this ore yield less silver, but it also cost more to extract. Deep shafts, and galleries for drainage and ventilation, were expensive undertakings.

In New Spain it now seems, against earlier views, that silver production did not fall in the seventeenth century, except for a dip c.1635–65. The trend of Mexican output over the whole seventeenth century is, in fact, quite steeply upward, thanks to strong growth after 1670 that persisted, always of course with interruptions, until 1810.31 Mexican production was spread among six or more districts and centers, so that local decline had only a small effect on the whole. The difficulties of the middle decades were in any case largely external to mining. They were partly the result of a governmental decision to divert the flow of mercury originating in Almadén from Mexico to Peru, which was short of mercury on account of decline at Huancavelica. At the same time, the treasury began collecting Mexican miners’ accumulated debts for mercury distributed in the past. The double blow of shortage of money and of the essential reagent for refining ores shook Mexican mining for three decades. But it emerged fitter from the trial, with more discriminating investment than before

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