Credit: (Left) Photo courtesy of Daniel Frank Sedwick, LLC; (Right) Howard Pyle "An Attack on a Galleon" frontispiece/Wikimedia Commons
Posted on 06/03/2011 8:10:13 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Between 1520 and 1650, Spain's economy suffered crippling and unrelenting inflation in the so-called Price Revolution. Most historians have attributed that inflation, in part, to the importation, starting in 1550, of silver from the Americas, which supposedly put much more currency into circulation in Spain. But in a report out this week, a team of researchers argues that for more than a century the Spanish did not use this imported silver to make coins, suggesting that the amount of money circulating in Spain did not increase and could not have triggered the inflation... archaeometrist Anne-Marie DeSaulty and colleagues at the University of Lyon in France used mass spectrometry to measure the ratios of several metal isotopes -- atoms of the same element with different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei...
The Latin American coins generally had a broader mix of different silver, lead, and copper isotopes than the European coins, likely because of the geologic complexity of the volcanic caves that hosted the New World's most prolific silver mines, the researchers report online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The ratio of the silver-109 isotope to silver-107 turned out to be much higher in New World silver than in the European coins. More important to the debate over the Price Revolution, the researchers discovered that coins with dates and heads indicating that they were minted in Spain prior to the reign of Philip V (1700 to 1746) had an isotopic makeup similar to medieval European coins. In contrast, coins minted later were more similar to those from the Andes. That suggests that even though American silver arrived in Spain in 1550, the Spanish waited well over 100 years before using it for their own currency.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.sciencemag.org ...
Credit: (Left) Photo courtesy of Daniel Frank Sedwick, LLC; (Right) Howard Pyle "An Attack on a Galleon" frontispiece/Wikimedia Commons
http://www.galmarley.com/framesets/fs_commodity_essentials_faqs.htm
Gold : prices, facts, figures & research
Commodity Numbers FAQs
How much gold is there?
In the world there are currently somewhere between 120,000 and 140,000 tonnes of gold ‘above ground’. To visualise this imagine a single solid gold cube with edges of about 19 metres (about three metres short of the length of a tennis court). That’s all that has ever been produced.
Divided amongst the population of the world there are about 23 grams per person, about 1.2 cubic centimetres each. This equates to about $250 - $350 worth per person on Earth, depending on the current price.
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It wasn’t the silver that ruined their economy. It was Universal Conquistador Health Care.
Conquistador - Procol Harum
Conquistador your stallion stands
In need of company
And like some angel’s haloed brow
You reek of purity
I see your armour-plated breast
Has long since lost it’s sheen
And in your death mask face
There are no signs which can be seen
And though I hoped for something to find
I could see no maze to unwind
Conquistador a vulture sits
Upon your silver shield
And in your rusty scabbard now
The sand has taken seed
And though your jewel-encrusted blade
Has not been plundered still
The sea has washed across your face
And taken of it’s fill
And though I hoped for something to find
I could see no maze to unwind
Conquistador there is no time
I must pay my respect
And though I came to jeer at you
I leave now with regret
And as the gloom begins to fall
I see there is no, only all
And though you came with sword held high
You did not conquer, only die
And though I hoped for something to find
I could see no maze to unwind
The deindustrialization that hurt them. A country that does not produce for its own won’t last. Sound familiar?
Imperial Spain tried to build an economy based on Muzzie principles of conquest, enslavement, autocracy, privilege, and slaughter. Spain had never industrialized, so it couldn’t have been hurt by deindustrialization.
Looks like one of those velvet paintings, but I like it. :’)
Having Al Conquistagore try to seize power didn’t help ‘em any.
Thanks, I screwed that up, thinkin’ Santana.
First of all, Spain, per se, had not ever been industrialized OUTSIDE of the Jewish community. Analysts argue, and I think successfully, that the Jews of Spain became the world's first true industrial class. A quick review of classical Ladino surnames demonstrates the case very well ~ they are all about making stuff, assembling products, doing chemistry.
When Spain expelled the top end mercantile class among the Jews (about 1/3 of the Jewish population with most of the rest having been forcibly assimilated ~ see Moreno) that didn't hurt Jewish industrial production at all but it wiped out the marketing arm of domestic industry.
That right there had to raise prices sky high.
That's when the Morenos find it advisable to LEAVE SPAIN, which they did. The Americas were popular, as was the former Spanish Nederlands (now Northern Belgium), Germany, Italy and so on.
With the loss of manufacturing previously inflated prices rose even more, and that's all before silver mining operations had really gotten underway in the Americas ~ sure, they had the Peruvian gold, but the larger part of it was mined later ~ after 1541 Fur Shur. They still mined Peruvian gold of course. Probably most of it is still in place and will be for centuries.
Later, under the reign of Charles and then Philip II (who ruled Spain from the Nederlands) somebody got the idea of expelling the Morescos ~ converted Moslems, and a good number of Morenos, about whom folks had doubts as to their loyalty to Christianity. They were expelled to North Africa for the most part.
There went the REPLACEMENT commercial class for the Jewish mercantile class expelled under Isabella and Ferdinand, and the newer acolytes of the still extant Jewish industrial class now identified mostly as Morenos.
Inflation went out of sight with that transformation, and then finally, the peasantery in a good chunk of Spain left for the Americas leaving behind the extraction of basic materials (wood, cement, minerals, cattle, pigs) ~ and that wasn't picked up for a couple of centuries as Spain spiraled deeper into a more primitive state.
Everything worth having had to be imported since nobody made it anymore, but at the same time no one was very good at importing, or distributing or selling, so the prices climbed higher and higher.
I think by the time the Spanish began using their gold and silver reserves to purchase goods abroad, they'd already regressed the country to a pre-Roman economic level.
Otherwise the Moslem and Christian princes competed and warred among themselves according to classical principles ~ to wit, gentlemen did not work ~ instead they farmed, or managed estates. The same with peasants.
So, that left the Jews free to "work" and make things. I suspect a person outside of the noble classes who emigrated form his home only to end up in Spain probably had to join Judaism just to survive.
Doesn’t look like the scientists took into account fiscal theories. American silver may not have been made into coins, but having the bullion in the treasury would surely impact the value of coins in circulation.
Well, I want more than my allotted 23 grams. I think I’m worth it. And FWIW, I think gold and silver should be restricted for use in jewelry and tableware — pretty stuff. We don’t need it wasted in no stinkin’ coins and bars. That’s my stand, and I stickin’ to it!
You amaze me with what you know about history. What is your background?
Thus my screen name.
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