The Mountain That Was Spent Before It Was Mined

Chapters

1. 0:00 Four thousand metres up
2. 0:42 Sixty per cent of the silver on earth
3. 1:19 No river, no firewood, no farmland
4. 1:35 When the mountain nearly stopped
5. 2:02 Huancavelica and the mine of death
6. 2:38 Toledo moves 1.4 million people
7. 3:08 Why a grid is cheaper to count
8. 3:29 The quota: 13,500 men a year
9. 3:52 The machine he inherited
10. 4:20 Two months on the road
11. 4:51 They were paid, and that was the point
12. 5:12 Who actually worked the mountain
13. 5:36 Forced labour as a price floor
14. 5:56 Thirty-two lakes and a hundred and forty mills
15. 6:30 The dam breaks, 1626
16. 6:53 Indians of the pocket
17. 7:22 Worth more than the royal fifth
18. 7:50 About the eight million
19. 8:21 What is actually documented
20. 8:50 Where the silver went
21. 9:18 Mortgaged before it sailed
22. 9:50 Valer un Potosi
23. 10:06 The column that was never opened
24. 10:27 Next: the mint fraud of 1649

Transcript

Four thousand metres up 0:00

In sixteen fifty, the richest city in the Americas stood four thousand and sixty-seven metres above sea level, on a plateau where almost nothing grows and nothing at all is manufactured. Around a hundred and sixty thousand people lived up there. Every sack of grain, every plank of wood, every flask of mercury had to be carried to them. The city existed for one reason, and the reason was a mountain.

You have heard a number about that mountain. Nobody ever counted it. What was counted is in the paperwork -- the tribute rolls, the mine registers, the viceroy's own complaints -- and the paperwork says something stranger than the number does.

Sixty per cent of the silver on earth 0:42

The Cerro Rico. Silver was found in it in fifteen forty-five, credited to an Andean prospector named Diego Huallpa. At its best the ore ran as high as forty per cent silver, which is not really a mine; it is a vault with a hill on top. Through the second half of the sixteenth century this one mountain produced around sixty per cent of all the silver mined on earth. Between fifteen fifty and sixteen thirty it registered three hundred and seventy-two million pesos. Its nearest rival, Zacatecas in Mexico, registered ninety.

No river, no firewood, no farmland 1:19

There was no river there, no firewood, and no farmland. There was wind and there was altitude. The city was not built where people could live. It was built where the mountain was, because the mountain does not move.

When the mountain nearly stopped 1:35

And then it nearly stopped. The rich surface ore ran out, and the Andean furnaces could not follow it down. Those furnaces were huayras -- clay towers set on ridgelines and drawing the wind itself as a bellows. They were elegant, and they worked on high grade ore. On poor ore they did not. By about fifteen seventy the richest mountain in the world was barely producing.

Huancavelica and the mine of death 2:02

What restarted it was not in the mountain. Cinnabar -- mercury ore -- had been found at Huancavelica in fifteen sixty, and the Crown took the deposit for itself ten years later. It lies about eleven hundred kilometres to the north. Mercury amalgamation reached the Andes in fifteen seventy-one, and within four years Peruvian silver output had multiplied five times over. Two mountains, chained to each other across a mountain range. The officials who administered the second one called it the mine of death, in their own reports.

Toledo moves 1.4 million people 2:38

That left the labour, and the labour needed something before it could be levied: it needed to be findable. Between fifteen seventy and fifteen seventy-five the viceroy Francisco de Toledo travelled the highlands with inspectors, counting. On the same tour he moved people. Something like one point four million Andeans were resettled out of scattered hamlets into roughly eight hundred and forty planned towns, each laid out on a grid around a plaza and a church, in a single decade.

Why a grid is cheaper to count 3:08

That is usually filed under religion, and it was partly that. It was also arithmetic. A population living where it had always lived cannot be enumerated cheaply. A population living in a grid can. The resettlement and the census were the same operation, and what came out of it was a list.

The quota: 13,500 men a year 3:29

In fifteen seventy-three that list produced a quota. About ninety-one thousand tributary men across sixteen provinces; thirteen thousand five hundred of them to be at Potosi every year, in three shifts of four thousand five hundred. One week working, two weeks off. One adult man in seven, by rotation.

The machine he inherited 3:52

None of that is a Spanish invention. The word is Quechua. The obligation is the one from the last episode -- the tax that took your time instead of your goods. And the census that makes such a tax possible is the same instrument the Inca state had been running in knotted cord. Toledo did not build the machine. He inherited it, rebuilt it in stone and paper, pointed it at a single mountain, and cut off the return.

Two months on the road 4:20

From Chucuito, on Lake Titicaca, about two thousand two hundred men left every year. Four hundred and eighty kilometres, roughly two months walking, and they did not go alone. Wives and children went with them, and eight or ten llamas per household to carry food and to be eaten on the way. One observer described a single season's departure as seven thousand souls moving together. They arrived at Potosi having already spent a good part of what they were going to be paid.

They were paid, and that was the point 4:51

Because they were paid. That matters, and not in the way it sounds. The wage was set below what a free worker would accept, and the drafted men were put on the jobs free workers refused. The payment was not a softening of the system. It was the component that made the rest of it run.

Who actually worked the mountain 5:12

A description of Potosi from sixteen oh three counts about fifty-eight thousand eight hundred indigenous people in the town. Five thousand one hundred were mitayos, the drafted men. Ten thousand five hundred were mingas, on contract. Forty-three thousand two hundred were free wage earners. The forced draft was fewer than one in ten.

Forced labour as a price floor 5:36

So this was not a mountain running on forced labour. It was also not a labour market. It was both at once, and the first was there to hold down the price of the second. A wage has to compete with something. At Potosi it competed with a man who had no choice, and it was priced accordingly.

Thirty-two lakes and a hundred and forty mills 5:56

One thing was still missing: power. No fuel to burn, no river to turn a wheel. So Toledo dammed the range above the town. Thirty-two artificial lakes in the Kari Kari hills, linked by canals and aqueducts, running water down to the Ribera -- the mill street. At its height the system held twenty-two reservoirs driving a hundred and forty ingenios, stamping mills that crushed the ore before the mercury ever touched it. The mountain held the silver. The engineering was in the water.

The dam breaks, 1626 6:30

On the fifteenth of March, sixteen twenty-six, the San Ildefonso dam gave way. Between two and four thousand people died. More than half the mills were destroyed, and something on the order of nineteen tonnes of mercury went down the valley with the water. By sixteen thirty-six there were more mills standing than before the flood.

Indians of the pocket 6:53

Now the part that is only in the archive. Communities began paying silver instead of sending men. On paper that money was meant to hire a replacement -- a free worker, at the free rate. It did not. It stayed in the pocket of whoever held the right to the labour. The documents have a name for the men who were paid for and never appeared. Indios de faltriquera. Indians of the pocket.

Worth more than the royal fifth 7:22

By the sixteen fifties that rent was worth something in the order of five hundred thousand pesos, which was more than the Crown was collecting as the royal fifth on all the silver of Potosi. The labour tax had stopped producing labour and started producing private income, and its most profitable form was a man who stayed home. A viceroy did object to this, in sixteen twenty-one. He objected that it was damaging to the royal fifth.

About the eight million 7:50

Which brings us back to the number. Eight million dead. That figure reached the world through a book published in nineteen seventy-one, and it is what guides and residents in Potosi will tell you today. Published estimates run from about four million upward, across three centuries, which is another way of saying that nobody counted. The administration recorded what it was owed, to the ounce, because that is what an administration is for. It did not record who died.

What is actually documented 8:21

Here is what is documented. The officials running Huancavelica called their own mine a public slaughterhouse, in writing, to their own superiors. Mercury poisoning among the workers is described in the sources of the time. And the tribute rolls went years without correction, so villages went on paying for people who were already dead -- which is exactly what Guaman Poma set down, province by province, in the manuscript nobody read for three hundred years.

Where the silver went 8:50

And the silver did not stay. The Potosi eight real coin -- the piece of eight -- became the first genuinely global currency, taken in Amsterdam, in Lisbon, and in Canton. The Manila galleon had been crossing the Pacific since fifteen sixty-five, carrying American silver west to buy Chinese silk and porcelain. Something on the order of forty per cent of all New World silver finished its journey in China.

Mortgaged before it sailed 9:18

And what did reach Spain was already spent. The loans were not secured on revenue. They were secured on silver still crossing the Atlantic, with each fleet mortgaged before it sailed. The Crown defaulted in fifteen fifty-seven, and again in seventy-five, in ninety-six, in sixteen oh seven, in twenty-seven, and in forty-seven. Its funded debt was about one million ducats in fifteen thirty-six. By fifteen ninety-eight it had passed eighty-five million.

Valer un Potosi 9:50

The Spanish language kept the phrase. Valer un Potosi. To be worth a Potosi, to be worth a fortune. It is the measure of wealth in the language of an empire that went bankrupt six times while collecting it.

The column that was never opened 10:06

It is worth being exact about what is missing. The silver is accounted for to the ounce. That is not luck and it is not diligence -- an archive exists to hold the column that somebody was answerable for. The other column was never opened. Not lost. Never written.

Next: the mint fraud of 1649 10:27

As for the coin that carried all of this around the world: for much of the sixteen forties, it was lying. Royal trials confirmed that silver leaving the Potosi mint held about seventy-five per cent of what it claimed. Madrid sent a former inquisitor to find out why. Next time on Codice: the great Potosi mint fraud of sixteen forty-nine -- who was executed for it, and why coins already circulating on three continents had to be called in and stamped again.

Description and sources

Potosi produced around sixty per cent of the silver mined on earth in the second half of the sixteenth century, and it did it in a place with no river, no firewood and no farmland. This is how the machine was assembled: mercury hauled eleven hundred kilometres from Huancavelica, a census taken by moving one point four million people into planned grid towns, a labour draft of thirteen thousand five hundred men a year, and thirty-two artificial lakes dammed above the city to drive a hundred and forty mills.

And then the part that is only in the archive. Communities began paying silver instead of sending men. The money was supposed to hire a replacement. It did not - it stayed in the pocket of whoever held the right to the labour, and the documents have a name for the men who were paid for and never appeared. By the sixteen fifties that rent was worth more than the Crown was collecting as the royal fifth on all the silver of Potosi. A viceroy objected in sixteen twenty-one. He objected that it was damaging to the fifth.

As for the silver: around forty per cent of all New World silver finished its journey in China, and what reached Spain was mortgaged before it sailed. The Crown defaulted six times while collecting it.

PRINT-READY, FROM THIS CHANNEL

The Document Set, Vol. 01 — Cajamarca 1532 and Buenos Aires 1595-1680 — the documents at reading size, with author, date, archive and licence

https://therepository.gumroad.com/l/document-set

SOURCES — every image in this video is a public-domain document.

Each plate below is listed with its author, date, holding archive and licence.

• Panorama Villa Imperial de Potosí en 1758 por Gaspar de Berrio | Wikimedia Commons | CC0
• Mhwater at Dutch Wikipedia — 2002 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• A silver mine in Potosí, Bolivia - cross-section and miners digging (c | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Farnham Bishop — 2014 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Georgius Agricola — 1657 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Agricola 1556 De re metallica libri XII — von einer Luppe werden Schla | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Paz Soldan, Mariano Felipe — 1865 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Georg Agricola — 1556 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Felipe Huaman Puma de Ayala — 1615 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Felipe Huaman Puma de Ayala — 1615 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Felipe Huaman Puma de Ayala — c. 1615 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala — 1615 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala — c. 1615 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Felipe Huaman Puma de Ayala — 1613 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Felipe Huaman Puma de Ayala — c. 1615 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Guaman Poma, Nueva crónica y buen gobierno — 1615 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Felipe Huaman Puma de Ayala — 1615 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Felipe Guamna Poma de Ayala — 1615 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• 8 reales provisionales de Fernando VII de Zacatecas de 1812 (1)(anvers | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Guaman Poma de Ayala — 1615 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain

... and 18 more plates, each credited on screen in the video and listed in this project's manifest.

This video also contains 4 synthetic illustration(s), used only for moments no archive covers (an empty square, an empty road). They are generated with Stable Diffusion XL and are marked as synthetic content on YouTube. No identifiable historical person is reconstructed.

Codice is a history channel built from the archive. Every image is a real document in the public domain, credited above.

Written and produced with archival research; sources are listed so you can check them.

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