Mercury, Mining, and Empire

Mercury, Mining, and Empire PDF Author: Nicholas A. Robins
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253005388
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
On the basis of an examination of the colonial mercury and silver production processes and related labor systems, Mercury, Mining, and Empire explores the effects of mercury pollution in colonial Huancavelica, Peru, and Potosí, in present-day Bolivia. The book presents a multifaceted and interwoven tale of what colonial exploitation of indigenous peoples and resources left in its wake. It is a socio-ecological history that explores the toxic interrelationships between mercury and silver production, urban environments, and the people who lived and worked in them. Nicholas A. Robins tells the story of how native peoples in the region were conscripted into the noxious ranks of foot soldiers of proto-globalism, and how their fate, and that of their communities, was—and still is—chained to it.

Mercury, Mining, and Empire

Mercury, Mining, and Empire PDF Author: Nicholas A. Robins
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253005388
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
On the basis of an examination of the colonial mercury and silver production processes and related labor systems, Mercury, Mining, and Empire explores the effects of mercury pollution in colonial Huancavelica, Peru, and Potosí, in present-day Bolivia. The book presents a multifaceted and interwoven tale of what colonial exploitation of indigenous peoples and resources left in its wake. It is a socio-ecological history that explores the toxic interrelationships between mercury and silver production, urban environments, and the people who lived and worked in them. Nicholas A. Robins tells the story of how native peoples in the region were conscripted into the noxious ranks of foot soldiers of proto-globalism, and how their fate, and that of their communities, was—and still is—chained to it.

Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico, Zacatecas 1546-1700

Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico, Zacatecas 1546-1700 PDF Author: P. J. Bakewell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521523127
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
A study of the development of Zacatecas, centre of the principal silver-mining region in Mexico.

Colonial Silver Mining

Colonial Silver Mining PDF Author: D. A. Brading
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Silver mines and mining
Languages : en
Pages : 34

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Book Description


Silver Mines and Silver Miners in Colonial Peru, 1776-1824

Silver Mines and Silver Miners in Colonial Peru, 1776-1824 PDF Author: John Robert Fisher
Publisher: Centre for Latin American Studies University of Liverpool
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description


Coercion and Market

Coercion and Market PDF Author: Enrique Tandeter
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
In this revised version of his doctoral thesis, Tandeter examines the resurgence of silver production from the famous silver mines of Potosi (Bolivia) between the 1730s and the 1790s, shedding light not only on the changes which explain this upturn, but also on the traditional structures that survived through the entire colonial period. Translated from the Spanish-language edition of 1992, published simultaneously in Cusco (Peru) and in Buenos Aires. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Potosi

Potosi PDF Author: Kris Lane
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520383354
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
"For anyone who wants to learn about the rise and decline of Potosí as a city . . . Lane’s book is the ideal place to begin."—The New York Review of Books In 1545, a native Andean prospector hit pay dirt on a desolate red mountain in highland Bolivia. There followed the world's greatest silver bonanza, making the Cerro Rico or "Rich Hill" and the Imperial Villa of Potosí instant legends, famous from Istanbul to Beijing. The Cerro Rico alone provided over half of the world's silver for a century, and even in decline, it remained the single richest source on earth. Potosí is the first interpretive history of the fabled mining city’s rise and fall. It tells the story of global economic transformation and the environmental and social impact of rampant colonial exploitation from Potosí’s startling emergence in the sixteenth century to its collapse in the nineteenth. Throughout, Kris Lane’s invigorating narrative offers rare details of this thriving city and its promise of prosperity. A new world of native workers, market women, African slaves, and other ordinary residents who lived alongside the elite merchants, refinery owners, wealthy widows, and crown officials, emerge in lively, riveting stories from the original sources. An engrossing depiction of excess and devastation, Potosí reveals the relentless human tradition in boom times and bust.

Colonial Silver Mining

Colonial Silver Mining PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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Book Description


A History of Mining in Latin America

A History of Mining in Latin America PDF Author: Kendall W. Brown
Publisher: UNM Press
ISBN: 0826351077
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
For twenty-five years, Kendall Brown studied Potosí, Spanish America's greatest silver producer and perhaps the world's most famous mining district. He read about the flood of silver that flowed from its Cerro Rico and learned of the toil of its miners. Potosí symbolized fabulous wealth and unbelievable suffering. New World bullion stimulated the formation of the first world economy but at the same time it had profound consequences for labor, as mine operators and refiners resorted to extreme forms of coercion to secure workers. In many cases the environment also suffered devastating harm. All of this occurred in the name of wealth for individual entrepreneurs, companies, and the ruling states. Yet the question remains of how much economic development mining managed to produce in Latin America and what were its social and ecological consequences. Brown's focus on the legendary mines at Potosí and comparison of its operations to those of other mines in Latin America is a well-written and accessible study that is the first to span the colonial era to the present.

Living in Silverado

Living in Silverado PDF Author: David M. Gitlitz
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN: 0826360807
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
In this thoroughly researched work, David M. Gitlitz traces the lives and fortunes of three clusters of sixteenth-century crypto-Jews in Mexico’s silver mining towns. Previous studies of sixteenth-century Mexican crypto-Jews focus on the merchant community centered in Mexico City, but here Gitlitz looks beyond Mexico’s major population center to explore how clandestine religious communities were established in the reales, the hinterland mining camps, and how they differed from those of the capital in their struggles to retain their Jewish identity in a world dominated economically by silver and religiously by the Catholic Church. In Living in Silverado Gitlitz paints an unusually vivid portrait of the lives of Mexico’s early settlers. Unlike traditional scholarship that has focused mainly on macro issues of the silver boom, Gitlitz closely analyzes the complex workings of the haciendas that mined and refined silver, and in doing so he provides a wonderfully detailed sense of the daily experiences of Mexico’s early secret Jews.

Mines of Silver and Gold in the Americas

Mines of Silver and Gold in the Americas PDF Author: Peter Bakewell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351917358
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
This volume focuses on Latin America, since it was mainly there that Europeans (or their colonial descendants) actually engaged in mining in the 16th-19th centuries; elsewhere they traded metals mined by others. The principal metals produced, and in prodigious quantities, were silver, in the Spanish colonies, and gold, mainly in Brazil in the 18th century. These articles analyse the volume and pattern of production and the forms of labour found in mining. Particular attention is given to the technologies of extraction and refining, notably the adoption of the mercury amalgamation process: this had a major impact, driving down silver production costs; because the mercury mines were a royal monopoly, it also handed control to the Spanish crown.