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Global Silver Trade From The 16th To 18th Centuries
The global silver between the Americas, Europe and China from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries was a spillover of the Columbian Exchange which had a profound effect on the world economy. Many scholars consider the silver trade to mark the beginning of a genuinely global economy, with one historian noting that silver "went round the world and made the world go round." Although global, much of that silver ended up in the hands of the Chinese, as they accepted it as a form of currency. In addition to the global economic changes the silver trade engendered, it also put into motion a wide array of political transformations in the early modern era. "New World mines", concluded several prominent historians, "supported the Spanish empire", acting as a linchpin of the Spanish economy. Spaniards at the time of the Age of Discovery discovered vast amounts of silver, much of which was from the Potosí silver mines, to fuel their trade economy. Potosí's deposits were rich and Spanish ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
16th Century Portuguese Spanish Trade Routes
16 (sixteen) is the natural number following 15 and preceding 17. 16 is a composite number, and a square number, being 42 = 4 × 4. It is the smallest number with exactly five divisors, its proper divisors being , , and . In English speech, the numbers 16 and 60 are sometimes confused, as they sound very similar. Sixteen is the fourth power of two. For this reason, 16 was used in weighing light objects in several cultures. The British have 16 ounces in one pound; the Chinese used to have 16 ''liangs'' in one ''jin''. In old days, weighing was done with a beam balance to make equal splits. It would be easier to split a heap of grains into sixteen equal parts through successive divisions than to split into ten parts. Chinese Taoists did finger computation on the trigrams and hexagrams by counting the finger tips and joints of the fingers with the tip of the thumb. Each hand can count up to 16 in such manner. The Chinese abacus uses two upper beads to represent the 5s and 5 low ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spanish Empire
The Spanish Empire ( es, link=no, Imperio español), also known as the Hispanic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Hispánica) or the Catholic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Católica) was a colonial empire governed by Spain and its predecessor states between 1492 and 1976. One of the largest empires in history, it was, in conjunction with the Portuguese Empire, the first to usher the European Age of Discovery and achieve a global scale, controlling vast portions of the Americas, territories in Western Europe], Africa, and various islands in Spanish East Indies, Asia and Oceania. It was one of the most powerful empires of the early modern period, becoming the first empire known as "the empire on which the sun never sets", and reached its maximum extent in the 18th century. An important element in the formation of Spain's empire was the dynastic union between Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon in 1469, known as the Catholic Monarchs, which in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paper Money
A banknote—also called a bill (North American English), paper money, or simply a note—is a type of negotiable promissory note, made by a bank or other licensed authority, payable to the bearer on demand. Banknotes were originally issued by commercial banks, which were legally required to redeem the notes for legal tender (usually gold or silver coin) when presented to the chief cashier of the originating bank. These commercial banknotes only traded at face value in the market served by the issuing bank. Commercial banknotes have primarily been replaced by national banknotes issued by central banks or monetary authorities. National banknotes are often – but not always – legal tender, meaning that courts of law are required to recognize them as satisfactory payment of money debts. Historically, banks sought to ensure that they could always pay customers in coins when they presented banknotes for payment. This practice of "backing" notes with something of substance is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Repartimiento
The ''Repartimiento'' () (Spanish, "distribution, partition, or division") was a colonial labor system imposed upon the indigenous population of Spanish America. In concept, it was similar to other tribute-labor systems, such as the ''mit'a'' of the Inca Empire or the corvée of the Ancien Régime de France: Through the pueblos de indios, the Amerindians were drafted work for cycles of weeks, months, or years, on farms, in mines, in workshops (''obrajes''), and public projects. Establishment of the ''repartimiento'' and decline of the ''encomienda'' With the New Laws of 1542, the ''repartimiento'' was instated to substitute the '' encomienda'' system that had come to be seen as abusive and promoting of unethical behavior. The Spanish Crown aimed to remove control of the indigenous population, now considered subjects of the Crown, from the hands of the ''encomenderos,'' who had become a politically influential and wealthy class, with the shift away from both the ''encomienda'' s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amerindian
The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples. Many Indigenous peoples of the Americas were traditionally hunter-gatherers and many, especially in the Amazon basin, still are, but many groups practiced aquaculture and agriculture. While some societies depended heavily on agriculture, others practiced a mix of farming, hunting, and gathering. In some regions, the Indigenous peoples created monumental architecture, large-scale organized cities, city-states, chiefdoms, states, kingdoms, republics, confederacies, and empires. Some had varying degrees of knowledge of engineering, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, writing, physics, medicine, planting and irrigation, geology, mining, metallurgy, sculpture, and gold smithing. Many parts of the Americas are still populated by Indigenous peoples; some countries have s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lead Smelting
Plants for the production of lead are generally referred to as lead smelters. Primary lead production begins with sintering. Concentrated lead ore is fed into a sintering machine with iron, silica, limestone fluxes, coke, soda ash, pyrite, zinc, caustics or pollution control particulates. Smelting uses suitable reducing substances that will combine with those oxidizing elements to free the metal. Reduction is the final, high-temperature step in smelting. It is here that the oxide becomes the elemental metal. A reducing environment (often provided by carbon monoxide in an air-starved furnace) pulls the final oxygen atoms from the raw metal. Lead is usually smelted in a blast furnace, using the lead sinter produced in the sintering process and coke to provide the heat source. As melting occurs, several layers form in the furnace. A combination of molten lead and slag sinks to the bottom of the furnace, with a layer of the lightest elements referred to as speiss, including arsenic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stamp Mill
A stamp mill (or stamp battery or stamping mill) is a type of mill machine that crushes material by pounding rather than grinding, either for further processing or for extraction of metallic ores. Breaking material down is a type of unit operation. Description A stamp mill consists of a set of heavy steel (iron-shod wood in some cases) stamps, loosely held vertically in a frame, in which the stamps can slide up and down. They are lifted by cams on a horizontal rotating shaft. As the cam moves from under the stamp, the stamp falls onto the ore below, crushing the rock, and the lifting process is repeated at the next pass of the cam. Each one frame and stamp set is sometimes called a "battery" or, confusingly, a "stamp" and mills are sometimes categorised by how many stamps they have, i.e. a "10 stamp mill" has 10 sets. They usually are arranged linearly, but when a mill is enlarged, a new line of them may be constructed rather than extending the line. Abandoned mill sites (as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Almadén
Almadén () is a town and municipality in the Spanish province of Ciudad Real, within the autonomous community of Castile-La Mancha. The town is located at 4° 49' W and 38° 46' N and is 589 meters above sea level. Almadén is approximately 300 km south of Madrid in the Sierra Morena. The name Almadén is from the Arabic word ''al-maʻdin'', meaning "the metal". Originally a Roman (then Moorish) settlement, the town was captured in 1151 by Alfonso VII and given to the Knights of the Order of Calatrava. The mercury deposits of Almadén account for the largest quantity of liquid mercury metal produced in the world. Approximately 250,000 metric tons of mercury have been produced there in the past 2,000 years. Due to the human toxicity of mercury and its byproducts, the mine has variously employed penal labour, slave labour, and prisoners of war over its long history. Almadén mine stopped working in 2002, due to the prohibition of mercury mining in Europe. In 2006, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mit'a
Mit'a () was mandatory service in the society of the Inca Empire. Its close relative, the regionally mandatory Minka is still in use in Quechua communities today and known as ''faena'' in Spanish. Historians use the Hispanicized term ''mita'' to differentiate the system as it was modified and intensified by the Spanish colonial government, creating the encomienda system. ''Mit'a'' was effectively a form of tribute to the Inca government in the form of labor, i.e. a corvée. Tax labor accounted for much of the Inca state tax revenue; beyond that, it was used for the construction of the road network, bridges, agricultural terraces, and fortifications in ancient Peru. Military service was also mandatory. All citizens who could perform labor were required to do so for a set number of days out of a year (the basic meaning of the word ''mit'a'' is a regular ''turn'' or a ''season''). The Inca Empire's wealth meant a family often needed only 65 days to farm; the rest of the year was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Huancavelica
Huancavelica () or Wankawillka in Quechua is a city in Peru. It is the capital of the department of Huancavelica and according to the 2017 census had a population of 49,570 people. The city was established on August 5, 1572 by the Viceroy of Peru Francisco de Toledo. Indigenous peoples represent a major percentage of the population. It has an approximate altitude of 3,676 meters; the climate is cold and dry between the months of February and August with a rainy season between September and January. It is considered one of the poorest cities in Peru. Geography The Huancavelica area features a rough geography with highly varied elevation, from 1,950 metres in the valleys to more than 5,000 metres on its snow-covered summits. These mountains contain metallic deposits. They consist of the western chain of the Andes, which includes the Chunta mountain range, formed by a series of hills, the most prominent of which are: Sitaq (5,328m), Wamanrasu (5,298m) and Altar (5,268m). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amalgam (chemistry)
An amalgam is an alloy of mercury with another metal A metal (from Greek μέταλλον ''métallon'', "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electricity and heat relatively well. Metals are typicall .... It may be a liquid, a soft paste or a solid, depending upon the proportion of mercury. These alloys are formed through metallic bonding, with the electrostatic attractive force of the conduction electrons working to bind all the positively charged metal ions together into a Crystal structure, crystal lattice structure. Almost all metals can form amalgams with mercury, the notable exceptions being iron, platinum, tungsten, and tantalum. Silver-mercury amalgam (dentistry), amalgams are important in dentistry, and gold-mercury amalgam is used in the Gold extraction, extraction of gold from ore. Dentistry has used alloys of mercury with metals such as silver, copper, indium, tin a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Silver Mining
Silver mining is the extraction of silver from minerals, starting with mining. Because silver is often found in intimate combination with other metals, its extraction requires elaborate technologies. In 2008, ca.25,900 metric tons were consumed worldwide, most of which came from mining. Silver sources Silver-bearing ore typically contains very little silver, with much higher percentages of copper and lead. Specific minerals include argentite (Ag2 S), chlorargyrite ("horn silver," Ag Cl), polybasite (Ag, Cu)16Sb2S11), and proustite (Ag3AsS3). Silver mainly occurs as a contaminant in chalcopyrite and galena, important ores of copper and lead, respectively.Kassianidou, V. 2003. Early Extraction of Silver from Complex Polymetallic Ores, in Craddock, P.T. and Lang, J (eds) Mining and Metal production through the Ages. London, British Museum Press: 198–206 Some ores are actually mined explicitly for their silver value vs the silver being a byproduct of other metals. However ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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