The World That Trade Created: Society, Culture, and the World Economy, 1400 to the Present by Kenneth Pomeranz & Steven Topik

Author:Kenneth Pomeranz & Steven Topik [Pomeranz, Kenneth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2017-09-22T04:00:00+00:00

Figure 5.3Sixteenth-century woodcut depicting the labor conditions in the mines at Potosí.

Source: Theodore De Bry

State coercion had to be used early on because Indians feared the dangerous mine work. The men worked 6 or 7 days a week deep in the sweltering, dusty tunnels. They sometimes had to carry out 50-pound loads of ore, climbing up ladders as much as 825 feet long, and then face the frigid air at the mine’s mouth. To avoid the labor draft, some villages paid off government officials. If they failed in their efforts and had to provide laborers, funeral services were held in the village before the men’s departure. Funereal music was appropriate. A priest newly arrived in Potosí gasped at seeing miners trudge by: “I don’t want to see this portrait of hell.”

Indians unable to avoid the mita trekked to Potosí and remained there a year. As many as 16,000 Indians were used at a time. Whole families often accompanied married men in order to provide the men’s food. By 1650 there were some 40,000 Indians living on the outskirts of Potosí. This was only one-quarter of the city’s population, however.

The barren, remote mountain gave birth to the largest city in the Americas—indeed, one of the largest cities in the world. By 1600 there may have been as many as 160,000 people living in Potosí, making it as large as Amsterdam, London, or Seville. Said one amazed observer in the 1570s, “New people arrive hour by hour, attracted by the smell of silver.”

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