Everything started with the finding of enormous deposits of silver in Bolivia and Japan. This dramatically increased the amount of precious metal that could be used to trade with. Around this time, China's economy was thriving, with a growing demand for silver. When the Chinese government began to require that its population pay taxes in silver, the demand for the metal became even greater. Because of this, the value of silver climbed higher and higher. For foreigners, this was a huge opportunity because the Chinese people were willing to offer larger amounts of their exports for the same price in silver, in order to stay in business. Very quickly, trade for China's porcelain and silk went through the roof. The silver business soon left the spice trade in the dust, setting off a chain reaction of global silver trading.
Although merchants trading silver were living the good life, silver miners were on the other end of the spectrum. PotosÃ, the largest city in the America's, was home to around 160,000 people. The wealthier of the group lived wonderful, carefree lives or luxury, while the Native American miner's worked in bad enough conditions that funeral ceremonies were sometimes held if a man was drafted into the mine.
The greedy upper class in Spain was responsible for the decline of the value of silver in the early 1600s. They simply did not know how to spend their huge sums of money productively. This caused Spain to back down, losing its dominating power over the rest of Western Europe. The Japanese were a different story when it came to silver. Rather than squandering their silver profits on useless luxuries like Spain, they used them to unify Japan and end as many conflicts within the territory.
No comments:
Post a Comment