Abstract
Published data on silver flows and stocks, gathered in volumes published by Moneta, provide a basis for initial steps in documenting flows of silver production and commerce from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century. Collection and publication of comprehensive data on silver flows will generate the first comprehensive study of flows of a commodity in the world economy of recent centuries, and will facilitate advances in global economic history. This article presents estimates from 1400 through 1900, showing annual flows of production, cumulative stocks (accounting for various levels of wear and tear), and the long-term rate of growth in silver stocks.Recent economic historical study of silver in the world economy, from the 15th century onward, has stopped short of comprehensive quantitative analysis. This group uses recently published date from the nineteenth-century silver boom and the international meetings associated with the gold standard to begin such comprehensive analysis. Results indicate that, while world population grew at an annual rate of 0.45% per year, 1700– 1900, silver stock rose at an approximate 0.7% per year in the same period. To support this confirmation of rapid monetization of the world economy, the article describes the procedure of estimating global flows and stocks out of competing estimates of silver flows.
Highlights
Recent economic historical study of silver in the world economy, from the 15th century onward, has stopped short of comprehensive quantitative analysis
African imports of silver long remained at a low level, but with time silver flowed from La Plata to Southeast Africa in exchange for slaves.[7]
At a recent meeting in Virginia City, Nevada—the city built above the Comstock Lode, which dominated world silver production from 1859 to 1874—scholars with several types of expertise on history of silver met and agreed to collaboration aimed at detailed documentation of silver flows
Summary
World-historical research is moving incrementally toward documenting historical production and exchange of major commodities. Rapid recent growth in study of global economic history has generated need for coherent time series on production and exchange of major commodities.[2] The purpose of the present study is to announce a major research project, identifying it as a comprehensive project for assessment of global output and global exchange of silver during the past half-millennium. Debates on silver in world history stretch back for centuries, notably including emphasis on price inflation in seventeenth-century Europe as having been stimulated by Spanish imports of silver.[5] Especially since the 1995 work of Flynn and Giráldez, it has become clear that large quantities of silver went through (not just to) Spain and across the Pacific from Mexico to Manila, and mainly to China—silks, in exchange, went to the Americas in large quantities.[6] Of silver sent to Spain, it has become clear that much of it spread through Europe and was forwarded to buyers in Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and India. Nineteenth-century efforts by British and American analysts focused only on major industrial countries, generally downplaying such major producers and consumers as Mexico, China, and India.[8]
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