Abstract
Over the early modern period and beyond, massive amounts of silver and gold were found and mined in the Americas. In this chapter, I review the consequences for the European economies. Some second-order receiver countries such as England benefited in both the short and long run. First-order receivers such as Spain and Portugal also benefited in the short run, but their continued exposure to the arrival of massive quantities of precious metals eventually led to loss of competitiveness and an institutional resource curse.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Acemoglu D, Johnson S, Robinson J (2005) The rise of Europe: Atlantic trade, institutional change, and economic growth. Am Econ Rev 95(3):546–579
Agudo DG (2019) Prices in Toledo (Spain): sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Soc Sci Hist 43(2):269–295
Allen RC (2001) The great divergence in European wages and prices from the Middle Ages to the First World War. Explorations in Economic History 38(4):411–447
Álvarez-Nogal C, Prados De La Escosura L (2007) The decline of Spain (1500–1850): conjectural estimates. European Review of Economic History 11:319–366
Álvarez-Nogal C, Prados De La Escosura L (2013) The rise and fall of Spain (1270–1850). Econ Hist Rev 66(1):1–37
Barrandon J, Morrisson C, Cécile M (1999) Or du Brésil, monnaie et croissance en France au XVIIIe siècle. Preface by Le Roy Ladurie Emmanuel. Cahiers Ernest Babelon, vol 7. CNRS Editions, Paris
Barret W (1990) World bullion flows, 1450–1800. In: The rise of merchant empires. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Berg M (2005) Luxury and pleasure in eighteenth-century Britain. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Besley T, Persson T (2011) Pillars of prosperity: the political economics of development clusters. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Blanning TC (2007) The pursuit of glory: Europe, 1648–1815. Penguin, New York
Bolt J, Inklaar R, de Jong H (2018) Rebasing Maddison: relative prices and the shape of long-run global development. GGDC Research Memorandum, vol GD-174. Groningen Growth and Development Centre
Bonfatti R, Karaman KK, Palma N (2017) Monetary capacity. Unpublished manuscript
Braudel F, Spooner F (1967) Prices in Europe from 1450 to 1750. Camb Econ Hist Eur 4:374–486
Broadberry S, Campbell B, Klein A, Overton M, van Leeuwen B (2015) British economic growth, 1270–1870. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Brzezinski A, Chen Y, Palma N, Ward F (2019) The vagaries of the sea: Evidence on the real effects of money from maritime disasters in the Spanish Empire. CEPR Discussion Paper 14089
Challis CE (1978) The Tudor coinage. Manchester University Press, Manchester
Cipolla CM (1993) Before the Industrial Revolution: European society and economy 1000–1700. Routledge, London
Collier P (2010) The plundered planet: why we must – and how we can – manage nature for global prosperity. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Costa LF, Rocha MM, de Sousa RM (2013) O ouro do Brasil. Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, Lisboa
Costa LF, Palma N, Reis J (2015) The great escape? The contribution of the empire to Portugal’s economic growth, 1500–1800. Eur Rev Econ Hist 19(1):1–22
Costa LF, Henriques AC, Palma N (2019) Portugal’s early modern state capacity: a comparative approach. Unpublished manuscript
Day J (1978) The great bullion famine of the fifteenth century. Past Present 79:3–54
de Macedo JB (1982) Problemas de História da Indústria Portuguesa no Século XVIII, 2nd edn. Lisbon, Querco
de Vries J (2008) The industrious revolution: consumer behavior and the household economy, 1650 to the present. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Desaulty AM, Albarede F (2013) Copper, lead, and silver isotopes solve a major economic conundrum of Tudor and early Stuart Europe. Geology 41(2):135–138
Desaulty AM, Telouk P, Albalat E, Albarede F (2011) Isotopic Ag–Cu–Pb record of silver circulation through 16th–18th century Spain. Proc Natl Acad Sci 108(22):9002–9007
Drelichman M (2005a) The curse of Moctezuma: American silver and the Dutch disease. Explor Econ Hist 42:349–380
Drelichman M (2005b) All that glitters: Precious metals, rent seeking and the decline of Spain. Eur Rev Econ Hist 9:313–336
Drelichman M (2007) Sons of something: taxes, lawsuits, and local political control in sixteenth-century castile. J Econ Hist 67(3):608
Drelichman M, Voth H-J (2008) Institutions and the resource curse in early modern Spain. In: Helpman E (ed) Institutions and economic performance. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Enciso AG (ed) (2001) El negocio de la lana en España (1650–1830). Ediciones Universidad de Navarra S.A, Pamplona
Fisher (1971) The Portugal trade: a study of Anglo-Portuguese commerce 1700–1770. Methuen, London
Forsyth P, Nicholas S (1983) The decline of Spanish industry and the price revolution: a neoclassical analysis. J Eur Econ Hist 12:601–610
Glassman D, Redish A (1985) New estimates of the money stock in France, 1493–1680. J Econ Hist 45(1):31–46
González Mariscal M (2015) Inflación y niveles de vida en Sevilla durante la Revolución de los Precios. Revista de Historia Económica/J Iber Lat Am Econ Hist 33(3):353–386
Hamilton EJ (1934) American treasure and the price revolution in Spain, 1501–1650. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Henriques AC, Palma N (2019) Comparative European Institutions and the little divergence, 1385–1850. CGEH Working Paper, University of Utrecht
Hough JF, Grier R (2015) The long process of development: building markets and states in pre-industrial England, Spain and their colonies. Cambridge University Press, New York
Hume (1987/1742) Essays, moral, political, and literary. Liberty Fund, Indianapolis. Accessed May 2014 from http://www.econlib.org/library/LFBooks/Hume/hmMPL26.html
Irigoin MA (2009) Gresham on horseback: the monetary roots of Spanish American political fragmentation in the nineteenth century. Econ Hist Rev 62(3):551–575
Jong H, Palma N (2018) Historical national accounting. In: Blum M, Colvin C (eds) An economist’s guide to economic history. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke
Jordà O (2005) Estimation and inference of impulse responses by local projections. Am Econ Rev 95(1):161–182
Karaman KK, Pamuk S, Yildirim-Karaman S (2017) Long run patterns in fiscal capacity. Bogazici University, Mimeo
Karaman K, Pamuk S, Yıldırım-Karaman S (2019) Money and monetary stability in Europe, 1300–1914. Journal of Monetary Economics
Klein J (1920) The Mesta: a study in Spanish economic history, 1273–1836. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Krantz O (2017) Swedish GDP 1300–1560: a tentative estimate. Lund papers in economic history, vol 152. Lund University
Lucas RE (1996) Nobel lecture: monetary neutrality. J Polit Econ 104(4):661–682
Lucassen J (2014) Deep monetisation: the case of the Netherlands 1200–1940. Tijdschr Soc Economische Geschiedenis 11(3):73
Ma D (2013) Chinese money and monetary system, 1800–2000, overview. In: Caprio G (ed) Handbook of key global financial markets, institutions, and infrastructure, vol 1 (eds: Calomiris C, Neal L). Elsevier, Oxford, pp 57–64
Ma D, Zhao L (2018) A silver transformation: Chinese monetary integration in times of political disintegration during 1898–1933. LSE Economic History Working Paper No: 283
Macdonald J (2013) The importance of not defaulting: the significance of the election of 1710. In: Questioning credible commitment: new perspectives on the glorious revolution and the rise of financial capitalism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Maddison A (2001) The world economy: a millennial perspective. OECD, Paris
Malanima P (2011) The long decline of a leading economy: GDP in central and northern Italy, 1300–1913. Eur Rev Econ Hist 15:169–219
Malinowski M, van Zanden JL (2017) Income and its distribution in preindustrial Poland. Cliometrica 11(3):375–404
Mayhew NJ (1999) Sterling: the rise and fall of a currency. Lane, Allen
Morineau (2009) Incroyables Gazettes et Fabuleux Métaux: Les Retours des Trésors Américains d’Aprés les Gazettes Hollandaises (XVI–XVII Siècles). Cambridge University Press, London. Originally published 1985
Muldrew C (2008) Wages and the problem of monetary scarcity in early modern England. In: Lucassen J (ed) Wages and currency. Global comparisons from antiquity to the twentieth century wages and currency. International and comparative social history, vol 10. Verlag Peter Lang, Bern
North DC, Weingast BR (1989) Constitutions and commitment: the evolution of institutions governing public choice in seventeenth-century England. J Econ Hist 49(4):803–832
O’Brien PK (1988) The political economy of British taxation, 1660–1815. Econ Hist Rev 41:1–32
O’Brien PK (2011) The nature and historical evolution of an exceptional fiscal state and its possible significance for the precocious commercialization and industrialization of the British economy from Cromwell to Nelson. Econ Hist Rev 64(2):408–446
Palma N, Silva AC (2016) Spending a Windfall: American Precious Metals and Euro-Asian Trade 1531–1810. GGDC Research Memorandum 165
Palma N (2018a) Reconstruction of money supply over the long-run: the case of England, 1270–1870. Econ Hist Rev 71(2):373–392
Palma N (2018b) Money and modernization in early modern England. Financ Hist Rev 25(3):231–261
Palma N (2019) The existence and persistence of monetary non-neutrality: evidence from a large-scale historical natural experiment. University of Manchester discussion paper
Palma N (forthcoming) Historical account books as a source for quantitative history. In: Christ G, Roessner P (eds) History and economic life: a student’s guide to approaching economic and social history sources. Routledge, London
Palma N, Reis J (2019) From convergence to divergence: Portuguese economic growth, 1527–1850. J Econ Hist 79(2):477–506
Palma N, Santiago-Caballero C (2020) Patterns of Iberian Economic Growth in the Early Modern Period. Forthcoming in: An Economic History of the Iberian Peninsula, 700–2000 (general editor: Pedro Lains)
Parker G (1973) The emergence of modern finance in Europe, 1500–1700. In: Cipolla CM (ed) The Fontana economic history of Europe. Collins, London
Pincus SC, Robinson JA (2014) What really happened during the glorious revolution? In: Galiani S, Sened I (eds) Institutions, property rights, and economic growth: the legacy of Douglass North. Cambridge University Press, New York
Prados de la Escosura L (2000) International comparisons of real product, 1820–1990: an alternative data set. Explor Econ Hist 37(1):1–41
Reher D (1990) Town and country in pre-industrial Spain: Cuenca, 1540–1870. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Ridolfi L (2016) The French economy in the longue durée. A study on real wages, working days and economic performance from Louis IX to the Revolution (1250–1789). PhD dissertation. IMT School for Advanced Studies, Lucca
Schön L, Krantz O (2012) The Swedish economy in the early modern period: constructing historical national accounts. Eur Rev Econ Hist 16(4):529–549
Selgin GA (2008) Good money: Birmingham button makers, the royal mint, and the beginnings of modern coinage, 1775–1821. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor
Spooner FC (1972) The international economy and monetary movements in France, 1493–1725. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Stapel R (2016) Coin production in the low countries 14th–19th c. http://hdl.handle.net/10622/D5WXZZ, IISH Dataverse
TePaske J (2010) A new world of gold and silver. Edited by Kendall W. Brown, Brill
Tilly C (1992) Coercion, capital and European states, AD 990–1992. Blackwell, Cambridge, MA
van Zanden JL, van Leeuwen B (2012) Persistent but not consistent: the growth of national income in Holland 1347–1807. Explor Econ Hist 49:119–130
Velde F, Weber W (2000) A model of bimetallism. J Polit Econ 108(6):1210–1234
Wallis P, Colson J, Chilosi D (2018) Structural change and economic growth in the British economy before the Industrial Revolution, 1500–1800. J Econ Hist 78(3):862–903
Zuijderduijn J, Stapel R, Lucassen J (2018) Dataset: coin production in the low countries: fourteenth century to the present. Tijdschr Soc Economische Geschiedenis/Low Countries J Soc Econ Hist 15:2–3
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this entry
Cite this entry
Palma, N. (2019). American Precious Metals and Their Consequences for Early Modern Europe. In: Battilossi, S., Cassis, Y., Yago, K. (eds) Handbook of the History of Money and Currency. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0622-7_58-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0622-7_58-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-10-0622-7
Online ISBN: 978-981-10-0622-7
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences