Gold and silver shipped from the Americas to Europe 1500-1800

The potential discovery of precious metals was a key driver of inward exploration of the Americas' interior, following the arrival of Columbus in the Caribbean in 1492. While mythical cities of gold were the most famous tales from the New World, it was actually silver that helped the Spanish Empire emerge as the wealthiest power in the world by the early 17^th century.

Early years

Prosperity was not immediate, and it took several decades before Spanish conquistadors located the largest silver mines, such as those at Potosi (present-day Bolivia) or Zacatecas (Mexico). Mining conditions in this period were harsh, and Europeans relied on the forced labor of indigenous Americans or (to a lesser extent) enslaved Africans to extract these metals; they also relied on the smelting techniques of indigenous peoples, as European mining methods were often inefficient at such high altitudes, where most of these sources were located. While Portuguese merchants had already established trade with various Asian cultures in the early 1500s, they were dependent on Japanese silver for trade; in contrast, the Spanish had their own source of silver that they could then ship from Mexico to their colonies in the Philippines in order to trade in Asia. This combination of silver from the Americas being traded by Europeans and Asians is viewed by some as the beginning of the global economy.

Later centuries

As Spanish colonization of the Americas developed, and as Europeans grew better at mining, processing (the introduction of mercury to the refining process revolutionized silver mining in the Americas), and transporting these resources, the quantity of precious metals being shipped across the Atlantic increased. Additionally, silver output from Mexico overtook that of the Andes region in the 1700s. When volumes from the 16^th century are compared to those of the 18^th century, the amount of silver being shipped increased by a factor of five. In contrast, the quantity of gold being transported was almost 100 times larger, due to the gold booms in Brazil that started in the 1690s. The attractiveness of such silver or gold booms also incentivized European migration to the New World, however there was still a heavy reliance on forced labor for mining, although the use of paid labor did increase with time.