AP World History: DBQ on Global Silver Trade

"High prices ruined Spain as the prices attracted Asian commodities and the silver currency flowed out to pay for them. The streets of Manila in the Spanish territory of the Philippines could be paved with granite cobblestones brought from China as ballast* in Chinese ships coming to get silver for China.

*A heavy substance used to improve the stability of a ship.

When the Portuguese go from Macao, the most southern port in China, to Japan, they carry much white silk, gold, perfume and porcelain and they bring from Japan nothing but silver. They have a great ship that goes to Japan every year, and brings back more than 600,000 coins worth of Japanese silver. The Portuguese use this Japanese silver to their great advantage in China. The Portuguese bring from China gold, perfume, silk, copper, porcelain, and many other luxury goods.

A considerable number of junks (large ships) come as a rule laden with goods from Great China to Manila. Every year, thirty, sometimes forty, of these ships come, though they do not enter together as a fleet or armada, but in squadrons, with the monsoon and the settled weather. When a ship arrives and anchors, the royal officials carry out their inspection of the cargo. At the same time, a formal valuation is made of the worth of the goods according to Manila prices, for the vessel immediately pays three percent on everything to the royal exchequer.

In the past, the dye shops would allow customers to have several dozen pieces of cloth dyed before settling accounts and charging the customers. Moreover, customers could pay for dyeing the cloth with rice, wheat, soybeans, chickens, or other fowl. Now, when you have your cloth dyed you receive a bill, which must be paid with silver obtained from a moneylender.

So huge is the wealth that has been taken out of Potosi since the year 1545, when it was discovered, up to the present year of 1628, that merely from the registered mines, according to most of the accounts in the Spanish royal records, 326 million silver coins have been take out. This does not count the great amount of silver taken secretly from these mines to Spain, paying no 20 percent tax or registry fee, and to the countries outside Spain, including the Philippines and China.

Since we were supplanted in the spice-trade by the Dutch, our chief investments or importations from the East Indies have been in dyed cotton cloth, silks, drugs, cotton-yarn, and wool; part o which commodities are for our own use but a much greater part, in times of peace, were brought to London for sale to France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, and our colonies. For Europe draws from Asia nothing of solid use; only materials to supply luxury, and only perishable commodities, but sends to Asia gold and silver, which is there buried and never returns.