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California World History Library
Potosi: The Silver City That Changed the World (California World History Library)
"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.
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.
272 pages, Paperback
Published March 16, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 21, 2024
Unfortunately this book turned out to be not quite what I was looking for, though that isn’t really something I can blame the author for. What I had hoped for was an examination of the impact the Potosí mines had on the development of the world economy in early modern times, but that subject was only touched on briefly. This was more a history of the city and its mining industry, with particular reference to the 16th and 17th centuries.
The silver deposits at Potosí, located in what is now Bolivia and first identified in 1545, remain the largest ever discovered on planet Earth. The book advises that in its first century, Potosí produced nearly half the world’s silver, and it accounted for 20% of all world production from 1545 to 1810, a period of 265 years. The silver was mined from a mountain above the city, the Cerro Rico (“Rich Mountain”), described as “The Treasure of the World, The King of all Mountains, and the Envy of Kings”. It was also described as “The Mouth of Hell” and as “The Mountain that ate People.” The mining was done partly by free workers and partly by native Andean peasants recruited under a system of forced labour known as the mita. Safety standards in the mines were zero and fatal accidents commonplace, but the even bigger killers were silicosis (the mountain rock has a high silica content) and mercury poisoning – mercury being used to separate the silver from the host rock. The Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano claimed in his book Open Veins of Latin America that 8 million Andean natives died in the mines of Potosí, although this book dismisses that number as impossible given the scale of Andean society at the time. Although this author doesn’t seek to play down the injustices inflicted upon the natives, he follows the modern practice of balancing the portrayal of them as victims by also highlighting where they outsmarted the system.
There’s a huge amount of detail, too much for me at times. We are told, for example, that in 1603 the city’s inhabitants consumed 24,000lbs of sugar and 12,000lbs of fruit conserves. Similar figures are provided for other products, but they were all fairly meaningless to me. In another section, we get 3 pages about a 1614 inventory from a bookshop, and which books were on sale.
Prior to the Spanish conquest of Latin America, Europe was a cash-poor society. Copper coins were usually not accepted outside a monarch’s own domain, and only gold and silver could be used for international trade. Most European armies of the period were made up of mercenaries, who also demanded payment in gold or silver. Historians generally acknowledge that in the 17th century the Hapsburg, Ottoman and Safavid Empires experienced ruinous inflation, and I wondered whether this was due to the sudden flood of silver into Spain expanding the money supply. It was something of a surprise to me that the author suggested most of the silver ended up in either China or in Mughal India, as it was used by Europeans to purchase luxury goods such as Chinese silks and porcelains, or Indian printed cottons and tea. However, he says that the economies of India and China absorbed all this extra silver without suffering inflation. That surprised me a little – I would have expected the opposite. It’s not that I’m arguing with the author – I lack the knowledge to do so – but I would have liked him to have explained why this difference arose between India and China, and the other empires.
I might have to try and read more on the subject…
The silver deposits at Potosí, located in what is now Bolivia and first identified in 1545, remain the largest ever discovered on planet Earth. The book advises that in its first century, Potosí produced nearly half the world’s silver, and it accounted for 20% of all world production from 1545 to 1810, a period of 265 years. The silver was mined from a mountain above the city, the Cerro Rico (“Rich Mountain”), described as “The Treasure of the World, The King of all Mountains, and the Envy of Kings”. It was also described as “The Mouth of Hell” and as “The Mountain that ate People.” The mining was done partly by free workers and partly by native Andean peasants recruited under a system of forced labour known as the mita. Safety standards in the mines were zero and fatal accidents commonplace, but the even bigger killers were silicosis (the mountain rock has a high silica content) and mercury poisoning – mercury being used to separate the silver from the host rock. The Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano claimed in his book Open Veins of Latin America that 8 million Andean natives died in the mines of Potosí, although this book dismisses that number as impossible given the scale of Andean society at the time. Although this author doesn’t seek to play down the injustices inflicted upon the natives, he follows the modern practice of balancing the portrayal of them as victims by also highlighting where they outsmarted the system.
There’s a huge amount of detail, too much for me at times. We are told, for example, that in 1603 the city’s inhabitants consumed 24,000lbs of sugar and 12,000lbs of fruit conserves. Similar figures are provided for other products, but they were all fairly meaningless to me. In another section, we get 3 pages about a 1614 inventory from a bookshop, and which books were on sale.
Prior to the Spanish conquest of Latin America, Europe was a cash-poor society. Copper coins were usually not accepted outside a monarch’s own domain, and only gold and silver could be used for international trade. Most European armies of the period were made up of mercenaries, who also demanded payment in gold or silver. Historians generally acknowledge that in the 17th century the Hapsburg, Ottoman and Safavid Empires experienced ruinous inflation, and I wondered whether this was due to the sudden flood of silver into Spain expanding the money supply. It was something of a surprise to me that the author suggested most of the silver ended up in either China or in Mughal India, as it was used by Europeans to purchase luxury goods such as Chinese silks and porcelains, or Indian printed cottons and tea. However, he says that the economies of India and China absorbed all this extra silver without suffering inflation. That surprised me a little – I would have expected the opposite. It’s not that I’m arguing with the author – I lack the knowledge to do so – but I would have liked him to have explained why this difference arose between India and China, and the other empires.
I might have to try and read more on the subject…
March 28, 2023
As well-written and smoothly paced as the professor's Quito 1599, the story of Potosi, as real and as imagined, makes a great subject for Kris Lane. I liked the emphasis that, contrary to the anti-Spanish/anti-Catholic Black Legend, Potosi did--in spite of possibly unalterable, awful conditions considering the technology or its lack then, to extract silver in maniacal ways on three shifts that never stopped--manage to elevate the status of women as entrepreneurs, and ironically, weaken the re-imposition of the mita/forced labor quota that the colonists first disparaged, then revived from the days of the Inca. However, I wish there was more about the day-to-day lives of the common people. With so much in archives perhaps remaining to be discovered, maybe more awaits.
Yes, this is the trick for social historians, given the paucity of records and the bias towards the wealthy. But I expected Lane to "dig deeper" into this aspect. Overall, recommended to any curious reader. It has tidbits that made me think; for instance, it never occurred to me that the Catholic Empire of Hasburg Spain's rush to evangelize the natives was to hasten the Second Coming. While this is commonplace for many Protestant denominations past and present, I found this intriguing.
Yes, this is the trick for social historians, given the paucity of records and the bias towards the wealthy. But I expected Lane to "dig deeper" into this aspect. Overall, recommended to any curious reader. It has tidbits that made me think; for instance, it never occurred to me that the Catholic Empire of Hasburg Spain's rush to evangelize the natives was to hasten the Second Coming. While this is commonplace for many Protestant denominations past and present, I found this intriguing.
June 29, 2025
If one has done any reading at all about the Spanish Empire in its prime, the name of Potosi runs through narratives like a silver thread, in as much as it was the foundation of Madrid's wealth for a century.
Lane's main goal is to examine the silver city as a crucible of imperial culture, as while the mountain from which the silver ore was mined was known as the "mountain that ate men," it was also a hot bed of cultural interaction and conflict.
As for myself, the single episode that was of most interest to me is how the production of coinage at Potosi became debased over time (during the 1640s), as the best veins of silver ore played out, while at the same time the Spanish Crown's demand for coin did not abate. Once exposed this racket was punished with maximum judicial ferocity, but the damage was done, and it took a long time for the damage to the Spanish Crown's honor to be repaired in world markets.
Regarding Potosi today, it's still a relevant mineral site, though more for tin than silver; so long as water supplies hold up, a live issue.
Lane's main goal is to examine the silver city as a crucible of imperial culture, as while the mountain from which the silver ore was mined was known as the "mountain that ate men," it was also a hot bed of cultural interaction and conflict.
As for myself, the single episode that was of most interest to me is how the production of coinage at Potosi became debased over time (during the 1640s), as the best veins of silver ore played out, while at the same time the Spanish Crown's demand for coin did not abate. Once exposed this racket was punished with maximum judicial ferocity, but the damage was done, and it took a long time for the damage to the Spanish Crown's honor to be repaired in world markets.
Regarding Potosi today, it's still a relevant mineral site, though more for tin than silver; so long as water supplies hold up, a live issue.
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September 21, 2020Wenns einen interessiert, auf jeden Fall ein halbwegs stabiles Buch, vor allem für geschichtswissenschaftliche Verhältnisse.
October 4, 2022
This book is so very well-written and informative. Dr. Lane's work is excellent all-around, from Quito 1599 to this work regarding Potosi. I especially appreciate that there are parts focused on the daily lives of individuals involved in the robust story of the silver trade. I'd highly recommend this to anyone interested in South American history.
September 10, 2021
I read about Potosi and this book in the New York Review of Books. I looked up the place on Wikipedia and saw an impressive photo of a forbidding urban cluster sitting beneath Cerro Rico, the silver rich mountain that is the reason that Potosi exists. What made me want to read about Potosi was what that photograph conveyed to me; this place exists because of the folly of man.
Diego Gualpa in 1545 reportedly was the first to discover that Cerro Rico was covered in silver. He claimed a strong wind threw him to the ground and he braced himself by placing his hands in the dirt that got covered by the precious metal. He was an Andean native working for a European master. Right here at the very beginning of the story of Potosi is this dynamic between the European thirst for silver and their use of a 'draft' to compel natives of South America to do the hard work of mining the silver. Added to that was the need for mercury to assist in the silver mining process. In another part of the Andes was a mercury source that was extremely deadly to those that mine it. This draft was particularly necessary to force men to risk their lives for the Spanish crown. It was so hard to get the men for the mining that African slaves joined the mix.
It is during the century of discovery when Potosi flourishes but it never seems like a place anyone would truly want to be. First, it is located at 13,000 feet on a barren hillside and then the only reason it exists is for the Spanish Hapsburgs to fund their war effort. The Catholic Church was a particularly strong influence on the Hapsburgs, the Spanish and therefore on Spanish South America but the various church fathers and officials did little more than wring their hands about the fact that human beings were forced to work under horrible conditions for the purposes of producing money to kill more men in war. Surprise, surprise, the Church managed to reconcile this horror and continue to believe in their supreme holiness.
After that first century Potosi kept going as a silver boomtown with various expansions and declines. In the 19th century with Simon Bolivar freeing South America from European tyranny things changed for the better only slightly. Mine owners bemoaned the slimmer profit margins because without a draft, they had to double the mens' pay. Anyone who thinks that rapacious capitalism started only with the Industrial Revolution think again.
The story in the book that had the most resonance for me involved a 17th century drug lord, Francisco Gomez de la Rocha, who had made his money producing coca which temporarily helped the men cope with the misery of their working life. Rocha set up a vast scheme to defraud the Spanish crown by skimming off most of the silver which left the silver delivered in coin or bars to officials quite meager. The Spanish king sent an investigator named Nestares Marin to clean up Potosi and end the fraud at the mine. Right after an attempt on the investigators' life by someone paid off by Rocha (slipping mercury into Marin's food), the investigator had the drug lord executed.
This story resonates because it turns out that one of the key chroniclers of Potosi history regals his readers with stories about Rocha being a hapless scapegoat while Nestares Marin is seen as an overzealous scourge bringing misery upon the people of Potosi. History is decided by those that write it. Here we are now in the middle of history and I'm not sure we know how a particular ex-President will fare. We think his malicious disregard of truth and integrity will mean that he will end up one of histories villains but I remind myself that the story is still unfolding and we don't know who will be the victors.
Diego Gualpa in 1545 reportedly was the first to discover that Cerro Rico was covered in silver. He claimed a strong wind threw him to the ground and he braced himself by placing his hands in the dirt that got covered by the precious metal. He was an Andean native working for a European master. Right here at the very beginning of the story of Potosi is this dynamic between the European thirst for silver and their use of a 'draft' to compel natives of South America to do the hard work of mining the silver. Added to that was the need for mercury to assist in the silver mining process. In another part of the Andes was a mercury source that was extremely deadly to those that mine it. This draft was particularly necessary to force men to risk their lives for the Spanish crown. It was so hard to get the men for the mining that African slaves joined the mix.
It is during the century of discovery when Potosi flourishes but it never seems like a place anyone would truly want to be. First, it is located at 13,000 feet on a barren hillside and then the only reason it exists is for the Spanish Hapsburgs to fund their war effort. The Catholic Church was a particularly strong influence on the Hapsburgs, the Spanish and therefore on Spanish South America but the various church fathers and officials did little more than wring their hands about the fact that human beings were forced to work under horrible conditions for the purposes of producing money to kill more men in war. Surprise, surprise, the Church managed to reconcile this horror and continue to believe in their supreme holiness.
After that first century Potosi kept going as a silver boomtown with various expansions and declines. In the 19th century with Simon Bolivar freeing South America from European tyranny things changed for the better only slightly. Mine owners bemoaned the slimmer profit margins because without a draft, they had to double the mens' pay. Anyone who thinks that rapacious capitalism started only with the Industrial Revolution think again.
The story in the book that had the most resonance for me involved a 17th century drug lord, Francisco Gomez de la Rocha, who had made his money producing coca which temporarily helped the men cope with the misery of their working life. Rocha set up a vast scheme to defraud the Spanish crown by skimming off most of the silver which left the silver delivered in coin or bars to officials quite meager. The Spanish king sent an investigator named Nestares Marin to clean up Potosi and end the fraud at the mine. Right after an attempt on the investigators' life by someone paid off by Rocha (slipping mercury into Marin's food), the investigator had the drug lord executed.
This story resonates because it turns out that one of the key chroniclers of Potosi history regals his readers with stories about Rocha being a hapless scapegoat while Nestares Marin is seen as an overzealous scourge bringing misery upon the people of Potosi. History is decided by those that write it. Here we are now in the middle of history and I'm not sure we know how a particular ex-President will fare. We think his malicious disregard of truth and integrity will mean that he will end up one of histories villains but I remind myself that the story is still unfolding and we don't know who will be the victors.
December 4, 2024
Do you ever read a book that's super densely packed with information within a week because that's what was assigned to you and then finish it and go, "wow, I don't know what I just read but I feel like that was important?" Because that's how I feel right now
February 20, 2021
Really great if ur into this kinda stuff.
Unfortunately though, I am not. This was fantastically written, but I'm just not a non-fic person. Personally, this felt like more of a textbook than a pleasure read. But with that said, definitely read if your interested in the topic. I feel like I'm moderately familiar with the Potosi mines after this.
Unfortunately though, I am not. This was fantastically written, but I'm just not a non-fic person. Personally, this felt like more of a textbook than a pleasure read. But with that said, definitely read if your interested in the topic. I feel like I'm moderately familiar with the Potosi mines after this.
August 22, 2019
An interesting and well-written look into the history of the silver mine at Potosí, but dear lord, who designed that cover? (I don’t mean to be superficial, but yikes.)
February 4, 2020
Lane has a good eye for an anecdote, but I would've enjoyed more thorough coverage of the global implications of Potosi, an area of this book that seems rather underdeveloped.
November 25, 2022
If I had a nickel for every time a book from my Latin American History class mentioned transgender woman who could have an entire book written about them I’d have two nickels.
June 5, 2024
Excellent book!
Loved the historical detail and the characters.
Loved the historical detail and the characters.
November 11, 2025
Read for #history class
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews