Silver
Silver mining had an already long history by the late early-modern era. Some of the first silver mines were situated in present-day Turkey. Spain became the center of silver mining in 100 CE until the wars of conquest began in 711. Mining technology improved slightly, but it was not until 1492 and the discovery of the New World that silver would change the world.
Bolivia, Peru, and Mexico accounted for over 85 percent of the silver that entered into the trade markets between 1500 and 1800. As the Spanish conquest moved into the Pacific, silver mined in the New World flooded the European and Asian trade networks. Mining was hard and dangerous work. The silver mines at Petosi, for example, could only use native labor as Spaniards were unable to handle the pressure from inside of the mountains. Chewing on cocoa leaves alleviated side effects from digging down into the earth, but Europeans had no tolerance for chewing the leaves and became very sick and unable to work.
Trading along the Silk Roads and throughout much of the early modern era was done using the tribute and barter system. Rulers and states controlled areas along established trade routes. In order for outsiders to trade within a specific territory, they had to pay tribute by giving items of value from their region to the ruler of the region in which they wanted to trade. When the ruler was satisfied with the tribute, terms were arranged and the outsider was permitted to trade in the region. Paying tributes consisted of goods that were often bartered from another region. Bartering allowed merchants and traders to exchange goods that benefited each other’s trade. Silk could be traded for sugar and then the silver could be traded for spices. Bartering relied upon the supply and the demand of a desired commodity.
When silver entered into the market, it created currency. No longer did one trader rely upon the goods of another traded for barter. Instead, items could be purchased with bullion. Goods were purchased instead of traded which became a factor in the development of a capitalist marketplace. By the late-sixteenth and early seventeenth- centuries, the Spanish crown had saturated the marketplace with silver. Silver was devalued and created a financial crisis for the Spanish Empire. By the late-nineteenth century, Spain had lost most of its New World territory and the Philippines while trade had completed the transformation from a barter system to a free capitalist marketplace.