Assumptions and speculation about the Spanish conquerors' treatment of the indigenous miners at Potosí, Peru, have long obscured the complexity of the motives in mining there. Peter Bakewell's innovative study incorporates the Indians' viewpoints, finding that they were willing to work for the Spaniards. Many of them quickly combined their technical skills and individual initiative to become the first silver mining entrepreneurs of Potosí. Although Indian entrepreneurship declined after the 1750s, a substantial portion of the native work force retained more control over its condition of labor and life than previously recognized. -- From publisher's description.

This book deals with the history of mining and smelting from the Renaissance to the present. Martin Lynch opens with the invention, sometime before 1453, of a revolutionary technique for separating silver from copper. It was this invention which brought back to life the rich copper-silver mines of central Europe, in the process making brass cannon and silver coin available to the ambitious Habsburg emperors, thereby underpinning their quest for European domination. Lynch also discusses the Industrial Revolution and the far-reaching changes to mining and smelting brought about by the steam engine; the era of the gold rushes; the massive mineral developments and technological leaps forward which took place in the USA and South Africa at the end of the 19th century; and, finally, the spread of mass metal-production techniques amid the violent struggles of the 20th century. In an engaging, concise and fast-paced text, he presents the interplay of personalities, politics and technology that have shaped the metallurgical industries over the last 500 years.

"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.

When Spaniards invaded their realm in 1532, the Incas ruled the largest empire of the pre-Columbian Americas. Just over a century earlier, military campaigns began to extend power across a broad swath of the Andean region, bringing local societies into new relationships with colonists and officials who represented the Inca state. With Cuzco as its capital, the Inca empire encompassed a multitude of peoples of diverse geographic origins and cultural traditions dwelling in the outlying provinces and frontier regions. Bringing together an international group of well-established scholars and emerging researchers, this handbook is dedicated to revealing the origins of this empire, as well as its evolution and aftermath. Chapters break new ground using innovative multidisciplinary research from the areas of archaeology, ethnohistory and art history. The scope of this handbook is comprehensive. It places the century of Inca imperial expansion within a broader historical and archaeological context, and then turns from Inca origins to the imperial political economy and institutions that facilitated expansion. Provincial and frontier case studies explore the negotiation and implementation of state policies and institutions, and their effects on the communities and individuals that made up the bulk of the population. Several chapters describe religious power in the Andes, as well as the special statuses that staffed the state religion, maintained records, served royal households, and produced fine craft goods to support state activities. The Incas did not disappear in 1532, and the volume continues into the Colonial and later periods, exploring not only the effects of the Spanish conquest on the lives of the indigenous populations, but also the cultural continuities and discontinuities. Moving into the present, the volume ends will an overview of the ways in which the image of the Inca and the pre-Columbian past is memorialized and reinterpreted by contemporary Andeans.

On the basis of an examination of the colonial mercury and silver production processes and related labor systems, Mercury, Mining, and Empire explores the effects of mercury pollution in colonial Huancavelica, Peru, and Potosí, in present-day Bolivia. The book presents a multifaceted and interwoven tale of what colonial exploitation of indigenous peoples and resources left in its wake. It is a socio-ecological history that explores the toxic interrelationships between mercury and silver production, urban environments, and the people who lived and worked in them. Nicholas A. Robins tells the story of how native peoples in the region were conscripted into the noxious ranks of foot soldiers of proto-globalism, and how their fate, and that of their communities, was—and still is—chained to it.

Why are railroad tracks separated by the same four feet, eight inches as ancient Roman roads? How did 19th-century Europeans turn mountains of bird excrement from Peru into mountains of gold? The answers to these tantalizing questions and dozens more will be revealed.

For centuries Europeans ruled vast portions of the world, as inhabitants of west European countries sailed to distant continents and took possession of territories whose societies and economies they set out to change. How and why did these farflung empires form, persist, and finally fall? David Abernethy addresses these questions in this magisterial survey of the rise and decline of European overseas empires. Abernethy identifies broad patterns across time and space, interweaving them with fascinating details of cross-cultural encounters. He argues that relatively autonomous profit-making, religious, and governmental institutions enabled west European countries to launch triple assaults on other societies. Indigenous people also played a role in their eventual subjugation by inviting Europeans to intervene in their power struggles. Abernethy finds that imperial decline was often the unanticipated result of wars among major powers. Postwar crises over colonies' unmet expectations empowered movements that eventually took territories as diverse as the thirteen British North American colonies, Spain's South American possessions, India, the Dutch East Indies, Vietnam, and the Gold Coast to independence. In advancing a theory of imperialism that includes European and non-European actors, and in analyzing economic, social, and cultural as well as political dimensions of empire, Abernethy helps account for Europe's long occupation of global center stage. He also sheds light on key features of today's postcolonial world and the legacies of empire, concluding with an insightful approach to the moral evaluation of colonialism.

History is never complete, for it is created every day. The people, places, and events presented in this episodical manuscript will demonstrate how important history is to a nation. In retrospect, a nation cannot move constructively forward into the future unless it is understood. Thus, the future can benefit from the past and gain from it knowledge.

In the eighteenth century Genoese merchants thrived in the changing Atlantic market. Their trade and migration are explored here.