Читать книгу The History of Mining - Michael Coulson - Страница 49

Mexico, however, was to yield the Spanish far more than just the gold artefacts of the Aztecs; in 1524 silver was discovered near Acapulco. Over the next three centuries before independence movements swept the Spanish from Latin America, Spain’s colonies are thought to have delivered as much as $8 billion worth of silver to the Crown. Production in Mexico alone had reached 9 million ozs a year by the 18th century. During this period of Spanish hegemony the gold price was worth around 15 times that of silver and silver in volume was shipped to Spain in a ratio to gold of about 10 to 1. That means that in monetary terms silver was not far behind gold in value to the Spanish treasury.

Over 150 years from the mid-1400s to the early 1600s inflation in Western Europe saw consumer prices rise by 600%. The arrival of large quantities of gold and silver from Latin America, particularly Mexico and Peru, was thought to have been a major influence in this inflationary period. Certainly the Spanish economy became increasingly enfeebled due to inflation and the problems of its overseas possessions, and its European Empire was dismantled in 1714 following the Treaty of Utrecht.

Following Cortez, the Conquistadors had not finished with Latin America’s great civilisations and within a few years Pizzaro led a small force of well-armed Spaniards into Peru where he confronted the Incas and their king, Atahualpa, in 1532. As with Mexico so with Peru – the Incas had extensively mined gold over the centuries and fashioned a large collection of artefacts. Atahualpa was prepared to gather these together as tribute for the invading Spaniards, but though a substantial quantity of gold artefacts were delivered to Pizarro he was not satisfied. He believed he had been duped and he had the Inca king executed. As with the Aztecs and other indigenous Latin American civilisations, the coming of the Spanish spelled the virtual extinction of the Incas.

It is fashionable today to decry the British for the establishment of their empire but the Spanish, with their gold lust and religious fervour, were equally as guilty – they destroyed many of those they had subjugated. When their American colonies wrested independence from Spain the new nations were culturally and demographically largely Spanish; Britain’s colonies when granted independence in most cases returned to their original indigenous state. The great cultural treasures like the Taj Mahal in India survived intact, while the Inca cities were reduced to ruins and their fabulous gold artefacts melted down and sent back to Europe where the ensuing inflation reduced Spain to almost third-world status.

But how had the gold, which the Conquistadors looted, been mined?