The Silver Age. Silver was mined in South America and paid for slaves arriving from Africa, thanks to the Dutch West Indian Company (WIC), which used silver to pay for Chinese porcelain, selling it on European markets in exchange for gold. A typical location for silver mining was Potosí. Declared puna (uninhabitable) by the locals because it was above the tree line, it was immediately exploited by the Spanish, as it was extremely rich in silver. Almost overnight, the town became the largest city in the Americas, with 120,000 inhabitants in 1570, 150,000 in 1639, and then 100,000 in 1680. In England, the saying still persists today: “As rich as Potosí.” The bulk of the silver went to Europe via Panama and then Seville, a two-and-a-half-month journey. But there was a back door. This is the southern route, which takes it to Argentina, where Portuguese smugglers take it to Lisbon, and from there to Amsterdam and London. Finally, all the silver ends up in the “silver tomb”: China, where porcelain is purchased for sale on the European market. Indeed, with the exception of firearms, Europeans have little else to sell to the Chinese besides silver, given the refinement of Chinese craftsmanship. But there is also another institutional route for silver: the dangerous and costly one westward, via Acapulco and then Manila and Macau in China.
