Glory, God, and Gold,” So Goes the Refrain, Drove Spain Into Its New World Ventures

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

“Glory, God, and Gold,” so goes the refrain, drove Spain into its New World ventures. In the late fifteenth century, however, the shortage of gold in Europe was compelling enough in itself to motivate the quest for new sources of that metal. Moreover, the bullionist outlook of emerging nation-states like Portugal and Spain—that a nation’s power and prestige depended upon control over large supplies of gold and silver—also fueled the search for these metals. A monetary historian, Pierre Vilar, notes that in his diary Columbus mentions gold sixty-five times between October 12, 1492, and January 1493 when the Genoan- born sailor began his return to Castile.1 He arrived home from his first voyage with gold nuggets worth 20,000escudos , approximately 9,000,000 maravedís or 33,100 silver pesos of eight reales. That his sec- ond voyage was fitted out with the primary purpose of finding gold is good evidence of the metal’s high priority in the age of discovery and conquest. When Columbus brought back thirty thousand ducats in gold amounting to 11,250,000 maravedís or a bit more than 41,000 silver pesos of eight reales, he reinforced his claims that the Indies offered new sources of wealth for the Catholic Kings.2

Early Estimates of New World and World Bullion Output

Both the conquistadores and the swashbucklers and settlers who fol- lowed them found a plentitude of gold and silver in the New World. In Spanish America silver ultimately dominated, although very early

1 Pierre Vilar, A History of Gold and Money, 1450 to 1820 (London: Verso, 1991), 63. 2 Jaime Vicens Vives, ed., Historia social y económica de España y América 4 vols. (Barcelona: Editorial Libro Vicens-Bolsillo, 1961): Vol. II, Guillermo Céspedes del Castillo, ed., Baja edad media. Los Reyes Católicos. Descubrimientos, 468. Maravedís were small coins, primarily of copper, that were used in Castile. More importantly, the maravedí became a standard Spanish unit of account. One silver peso or piece of eight consisted of eight reales. Each real was worth 34 maravedís, and thus the peso had a value of 272 maravedís. 2 chapter one in the colonial epoch Europeans discovered gold in the Caribbean and later in Chile, Ecuador, and New Granada (present-day Colombia) as well. These regions became the major producers of that metal in Span- ish America. In Luso-America (Brazil) the Portuguese eventually found gold in great abundance, primarily in the eighteenth century. Because such huge amounts of precious metals were extracted, refined, and minted in the Indies during the three centuries of European domina- tion, observers from the Old World—with their bullionist attitudes— made valiant efforts to estimate New World gold and silver output. Among the most perceptive of these was Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), the distinguished German scientist who traveled exten- sively throughout Spanish America at the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth. Gaining access to Spanish royal fiscal records with the blessing of Charles IV, he had a great advan- tage over previous observers. When he published his detailed Political Essay on the Kingom of New Spain at the beginning of the nineteenth century, he not only put forward his own calculations of New World gold and silver output, but he also credited those before him who had made informed estimates of New World bullion production and provided benchmarks for Humboldt’s own estimates.3 Humboldt referred to a wide variety of European statesmen, histo- rians, and political economists. In the seventeenth century, for exam- ple, Juan Solórzano Pereira (1575–1655), a Spanish jurist, fiscal of the Council of the Indies, and a former judge on the high court (audien- cia) of Lima, published his De indiarium jure between 1629 and 1637, subsequently printed in five volumes as Política indiana. In his work he calculated New World bullion output between 1492 and 1628 at 1,500,000,000 silver pesos of 272 maravedís.4 In the eighteenth century two French observers, Guillaume Fran- çois Thomas Raynal or Abbé Raynal (1713–1796), and Jacques Necker (1732–1804) provided their assessments of New World gold and silver production. In Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce dans les deux Indes, published first in six volumes in 1770 and in many later editions, Raynal estimated that between 1492 and

3 Alexander von Humboldt, Ensayo político sobre el Reino de Nueva España 5 tomos (Mexico, D. F.: Editorial Robredo, 1941). A much abridged edition in English taken from the John Black translation, edited by Mary Maples Dunn, is also available: Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972). 4 Humboldt, Ensayo político, 3:378.