Silver Trade
by During the mid-sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century, silver traveled much of the globe.
The silver trade had multiple significant positive effects on the economic systems between the mid-sixteenth centuries to the early eighteenth century, as opposed to a few significant negative impacts on the social systems.
Silver had a few, but significant effects on the socials systems of the world. Antonio Vazquez de Espinosa [Document 6], a Spanish priest, talked much about how inhumanly the Spanish were treating the enslaved Indians; “…more than 3000 Indians worked away hard with picks and hammers…” and, “…the poor fellows, loaded down with ore, climb up these ladders or rigging, some like masts and others like cables, and so trying and distressing that even an empty- handed man can hardly get up them.” This shows that the Spanish didn’t care about the social equality of the Natives, even in their own home.
The greed for silver was so overwhelming that the Spaniards took all the silver from the enslaved peasants and used it to dominate the elite end of the social class [their class]. Tomas de Mercado [Document 2], a Spanish scholar, seems to agree that the greed for silver was very bad for Spain, “High prices ruined Spain as the prices attracted Asian commodities and the silver currency flowed out to pay for them.” Both of these sources support that hunger for so much silver was unhealthy and ended up being bad for Spain.
The social effects of the Americas indirectly affected the economic growth the countries on the Eastern Hemisphere. The efforts of the enslaved laborers help get all the silver into the Eastern Hemisphere, which started the whole global trading system. The Indian slaves of South America and the African slaves, who were brought over by the Spaniards and Portuguese [the African slaves], provided the backbone of the labor force. They labored day in and day out in horrible conditions to get the world trade rolling. From there the silver was then taken to Europe, to be distributed. From there it traveled to the main, vast markets of Asia. There it was used as currency [China], and collected as taxes. This can be seen in all of the documents written by Ming [Chinese] officials. In Document 1, Ye Chunji explains how the amount of wealth that silver is causing in the main reason for the silver inflation.
In Document 3, Wang Xijue reports to the emperor that wheat was cheap because of the scarcity of silver. Though one contradicts the other, in that one calls to spend less, whereas the other calls to spend more, to get more silver into circulation; both support the fact that Ming China is mainly dependent on silver. The other documents written by Ming officials also support the prior statement. But they differ in that Xu Dunqui Ming [Document 5] is indirectly saying that the new silver system was not as preferred as the old system in which the customer could pay in what the seller wanted. This meant that with this system [the silver system], neither the buyer nor seller really benefited, rather than before when the seller got something he wanted in return for a service or a product.
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