Abstract
ABSTRACTThis article provides an initial (partial) estimate of silver quantities held within China around mid-18thcentury, utilising archival evidence related to wealth confiscations. Better future estimates for overall Chinese silver holdings could also facilitate more accurate estimation of Chinese silver (legal plus illegal) imports. Similar analyses for other world regions could eventually yield estimates for global silver stock holdings, useful in turn for improving global silver mining and trade flow estimates. Extensive contraband silver mining and silver trade are known to have escaped official recordation, by definition. If methodologies suggested herein prove successful, then parallel non-silver-trade-good estimates could follow. Current exclusive focus upon production and trade flows should be reevaluated in the context of linkages with accumulations of goods (wealth components). Economic history could someday provide a prominent stage for the historical study of wealth holdings, thereby furnishing context for increasing wealth concentrations observable worldwide today.
Highlights
In response to the challenge of quantifying massive smuggling of silver in addition to unrecorded overland transportation of silver, Patrick Manning and Dennis Flynn organised a session at the Boston 2018 World Economic History Congress intended to initiate a collaborative effort to estimate (1) global silver production, (2) global silver trade and (3) end-market accumulations of silver worldwide over the past five centuries
End-market silver stocks—should eventually facilitate increasingly accurate estimation of global silver trade flows that are compatible with estimated mining quantities and estimated end-market concentrations
Quantification of New World silver flows via Acapulco-Manila galleons and onward to destinations within China may seem straightforward at first glance, yet the task is complicated
Summary
In response to the challenge of quantifying massive smuggling of silver (both in coin and bullion forms) in addition to unrecorded overland transportation of silver, Patrick Manning and Dennis Flynn organised a session at the Boston 2018 World Economic History Congress intended to initiate a collaborative effort to estimate (1) global silver production, (2) global silver trade and (3) end-market accumulations of silver worldwide over the past five centuries. Some participating researchers plan to focus upon the quantitative estimation of silver mine production worldwide since 1500.1 A second group (including authors of this essay) will estimate accumulated stocks of silver at end-markets around the world. End-market silver stocks—should eventually facilitate increasingly accurate estimation of global (legal plus illegal) silver trade flows that are compatible with estimated mining quantities and estimated end-market concentrations Interactions among these three branches of research are perhaps easiest to explain through the provision of a fanciful example (discussed in Sections 2 and 3) that illustrates how theoretical mechanisms (to be discussed in the concluding section) can guide archival research efforts described in the body of this essay
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