The Universal Mint: Mexico’s Silver and the World Economy (1821–1870)

Abstract

Throughout the modern era Mexico was the most important producer and provider of silver to the world economy; this continued to be true following Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821 and until the end of international bimetallism in the 1870s. However, reconstruction of the flows of Mexico’s silver into the world economy has proven to be elusive. The reason for this is that neither Mexico nor Great Britain, the main importer of Mexican silver and the country that would increasingly act as the financial center of the world, has kept reliable registers of precious metals’ exports and imports. The aim of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, using a broad array of sources that have not been employed for this purpose before, it constructs a new annual series of Mexico’s silver exports between 1821 and 1870. On the other hand, it describes the main routes and destinations of Mexican silver and analyzes the uses that major importers made of it. Between 1822 and 1850 the function performed by Mexican silver was to support the monetary systems of Europe, especially France, and of the United States. Then, starting in 1850, Mexican silver played a vital role in strengthening the economic integration of the East into the world economy.