Global Positioning System Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 6.8.
Sixteenth-century maritime trade routes of the Spanish (white lines) and
the Portuguese (dark lines). World travel was increasing, and with this increase came
a need for improved navigation.
NASA topographical image, modified by Uxbona to show
maritime routes.
gold, silver, spices, and other high-value commodities from their colonies
are shown in figure 6.8. The richness of these Spanish ''treasure fleets''
attracted unwanted attention from buccaneers (licensed pirates from other
nations, and in particular, the English, Dutch, and French). The Spanish
and Portuguese got together and carved up the world between them in a
couple of treaties (fig. 6.9)—a display of confidence (as well as arrogance)
in their new-found abilities to travel and project power all over the globe.
The speed with which the Spanish, in particular, established and ex-
ploited their overseas colonies is quite amazing. To provide just one exam-
ple, within a half century of Columbus's ''discovery'' of the New World, the
Spaniards had found huge deposits of silver ore in a mountain in remote
Bolivia (then part of Peru). The mountain soon became honeycombed
with mines and rapidly gave rise to the town, and later city, of Potosi in the
bleak highlands (at an altitude of 4,000 m, or 13,000 ft). Thousands of
indigenous people, plus slaves from Africa, died laboring to gouge the
silver ore out of
Cerro Rico
, the ''rich mountain'' (fig. 6.10). This ore was
then carried by pack animals—llama and mules—down to the coast. Thou-
sands of tons of silver ore generated billions, some say trillions, of dollars
(in today's money) for the Spanish treasury over the next two centuries. So
much wealth poured in that the economies of both the New World colonies
and the home country were profoundly a√ected (in the long run, not
always for the better).
10
10. For a detailed account of the economic impact of New World silver production in the
colonial period, see Garner (1988).
