Started by Maren Holt (@maren_h) ·
a mountain of silver in Bolivia and a century of European inflation
Started with a documentary clip about Cerro Rico and somehow ended at monetary theory and the Ming dynasty's appetite for silver.
7 sources · 56 min down the hole
How I got here
- Started with
- “potosi silver inflation europe”
- Ended at
- Quantity theory of money
The Trail
- “potosi silver inflation europe” (google.com)
- Cerro Rico (en.wikipedia.org)
the mountain is riddled with centuries of mine tunnels
- Potosí (en.wikipedia.org)
- Price revolution (en.wikipedia.org)
- Spanish dollar (en.wikipedia.org)
basically the first global currency
- Manila galleon (en.wikipedia.org)
- Quantity theory of money (en.wikipedia.org)
What I came away with
Silver from Potosí and Mexico poured into Europe in the 1500s while prices rose for over a century. Scholars at Salamanca noticed money was worth less where it was plentiful, an early version of the quantity theory, though historians now think population growth mattered too. A huge share of the silver ended up in China, which collected taxes in silver.
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