New World Gold: Cultural Anxiety and Monetary Disorder in Early Modern Spain
368
New World Gold: Cultural Anxiety and Monetary Disorder in Early Modern Spain
368Overview
The discovery of the New World was initially a cause for celebration. But the vast amounts of gold that Columbus and other explorers claimed from these lands altered Spanish society. The influx of such wealth contributed to the expansion of the Spanish empire, but also it raised doubts and insecurities about the meaning and function of money, the ideals of court and civility, and the structure of commerce and credit. New World Gold shows that, far from being a stabilizing force, the flow of gold from the Americas created anxieties among Spaniards and shaped a host of distinct behaviors, cultural practices, and intellectual pursuits on both sides of the Atlantic.
Elvira Vilches examines economic treatises, stories of travel and conquest, moralist writings, fiction, poetry, and drama to reveal that New World gold ultimately became a problematic source of power that destabilized Spain’s sense of trust, truth, and worth. These cultural anxieties, she argues, rendered the discovery of gold paradoxically disastrous for Spanish society. Combining economic thought, social history, and literary theory in trans-Atlantic contexts, New World Gold unveils the dark side of Spain’s Golden Age.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226856193 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 05/15/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 368 |
| File size: | 451 KB |
About the Author
Elvira Vilches is associate professor of Spanish and early modern studies at North Carolina State University.
Read an Excerpt
New World Gold
Cultural Anxiety and Monetary Disorder in Early Modern SpainBy ELVIRA VILCHES
The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2010 The University of ChicagoAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-85618-6
Chapter One
New World GoldAn Age of Wealth
Castilian letters celebrate gold as the substance of wealth and power. Mio Çid, the Arcipreste de Hita, Columbus, Fernando de Rojas's greedy Celestina, and Cervantes's down-to-earth Sancho Panza all agree that gold is the most wonderful thing, an indestructible talisman that will transform itself into any desirable object, passion, vice, social circumstance, or physical condition. New World gold bolstered this sentiment of wealth as treasures arrived, and glittering reports depicting the Indies as a land of untapped but instantaneous wealth spurred great excitement. The initial wave of publications about the New World aggrandized the modest amounts mined in the Caribbean. Columbus's "Letter to Santángel," summarizing the outcome of the first voyage, circulated in multiple editions in the main European languages in 1493. After this first bestseller came Vespucci's Mundus Novus (1503), the first three Decades by Peter Martyr of Anghiera (1518), Fernández de Enciso's Summa de Geographia (1519), and the gradual publication between 1522 and 1525 of Hernán Cortés's letters. Readers found in these texts a combination of geographical information, ethnographic descriptions that stressed the erotic and the exotic, many proofs of the bravery and heroism of conquistadors, and, most importantly, ample catalogues of both actual and future treasures.
Columbus's letter promised all the gold Ferdinand and Isabella would ever need. Vespucci, in contrast, paid more attention to what he deemed the overt and voracious sexuality of the Indians, which he presented as a threshold to treasures. Martyr surprised his readers with detailed descriptions of societies that still lived in the mythical Golden Age, along with great gold nuggets and exotic plants and animals. The most splendid prospects filled the pages of Enciso's Geographia with painted red sierras in the Isthmus of Panama, where gold, washed away by the rain, flooded the valleys and the streams, into which Indians threw fishing nets to trap nuggets as big as eggs.
As the cycle of conquest moved to Mexico and Peru, colonial writing amused readers with all sorts of precious and valuable things. In his first letter to Charles V (1521), Cortés closed with a laundry list of all the artifacts made with gold, silver, and precious stones that he was sending to the emperor. These magnificent pieces were displayed at court and were part of Charles's entourage during his trip to Brussels and Aachen in the course of the imperial elections. The precious metals from the Indies created an immediate impact in sixteenth-century Spain. The whole country was under the spell of incredible wealth. Pedro Cieza de León tells us that as a boy he watched at Seville's wharves when the ship Santa María del Campo carrying Hernando Pizarro and a splendid treasure was unloaded on January 9, 1534. "I cannot stop thinking about those things," he wrote, "when I remember the opulent pieces that were seen in Seville, brought from Cajamarca, where the treasure that Atahualpa promised the Spaniards was collected." He explained that this news "excited all of Spain because it rang throughout the country that the House of Trade was filled with golden vessels and jars and other praiseworthy pieces of great weight."
In Seville the treasure fleet shook the whole city. Everybody hastened to the wharves, as Cieza did, to see the shining bars unloaded near the Torre del Oro and transported, first to the chambers of the Casa de Contratación (House of Trade) and later to the Casa de la Moneda (Mint) to be turned into coin. For Alonso de Morgado, the author of Historia de Sevilla (1587), this amazing sight made Seville stand out from any other port: "An admirable sight never seen in any other port in the whole world are the oxcarts pulled by teams of four oxen that, after the arrival of the fleet, transport vast loads of gold and silver from the river Guadalquivir to the Royal House of Trade." (Cosa es de admiración, y no vista en otro puerto alguno, las carretas de a quatro bueyes, que en tiempo de flota acarrean la suma riqueza de oro y plata desde el Guadalquivir hasta la Real Casa de Contratación de las Indias.)
The regular windfall of the Indies did not cease to surprise, because each arriving shipment promised to be greater than the last. In his diary Francisco de Ariño praised the fleet that arrived in 1595 as the largest ever seen and measured its treasure by the cartload. On March 22 he counted 332 carts with silver, gold, and pearls. On May 8 the treasure cargo filled 103 carts. This cargo was combined with 583 other loads that arrived overland from Lisbon, where the third vessel had to find port. For six days these cargoes were crossing the bridge of Triana. When everything was taken to the Casa de Contratación, there was so much gold that it overflowed onto the patio.
The windfall of the Indies was revisited time and again by a celebratory imperial discourse that marveled at the treasures that Providence had granted to assist the endeavors of Charles V. Pedro Mexía wrote in his Historia del emperador Carlos V (1545) that, although there were other chroniclers writing about the Indies, he couldn't help interrupting his task to write about Mexico and the vast wealth of Peru: "God kept for this prince the great favor and good fortune of discovering the provinces of Peru, where such a great treasure of gold and silver was hidden, the like of which past centuries have never seen, nor do I think that the coming ones will believe." (Como tuviese Dios guardado para este príncipe la grande merced e buena ventura deste descubrimiento de las provincias del Perú, de donde gran tesoro de oro y plata estaba escondido, de donde se ha traído cual nunca los siglos pasados lo vieron ni pienso que los venideros lo querrán creer.)
Martín Cortés, in the letter to Charles V included in his Breve compendio de la sphera y el arte de navegar (1551), compared the sixteenth century to a golden age blessed with justice, religion, and, above all, wealth: "All of Spain has been enriched with treasures, for so much has been brought from the Indies that it seems that we surpass Solomon's time when gold was brought to him from Ophir, and given the regular shipments of the treasure fleet sent to His Majesty, this century should more properly be called the Golden Age." (que si toda España ... con tesoro se ha enriquecido, pues se han traido tantos de las Indias que parece que sobrepujamos a el tiempo de Salomón cuando le traían oro de Ophir: y dio que más a propósito consideradas las armadas de oro y plata que a VM traen tan ordinarias le convenía a este tiempo o siglo llamarle era dorada.)
Father José de Acosta expressed a similar opinion in chapters 6 and 7 of book 4 of his Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590), where he celebrates the discovery of the mines of Potosi as the engine of Spain's global monarchy and a due reward for its mission of defending Christianity: "In the aforesaid way Potosi was discovered, Divine Providence decreeing, for the good of Spain, that the greatest treasure known to exist in the world should be hidden and come to light at the time when Emperor Charles V, of glorious fame, held the reins of empire and the realm of Spain and the seigniory of the Indies." (En el modo que está dicho se descubrió Potosí, ordenando la Divina Providencia, para felicidad de España, que la mayor riqueza que se sabe haya habido en el mundo, estuviese oculta, y se manifestase en el tiempo que el Emperador Carlos Quinto, de glorioso nombre, tenía el Imperio y los reinos de España y los señoríos de las Indias.) Acosta writes that Potosi produces "year after year" a million pesos for the royal fifths alone. The chapter mentions that when he traveled in 1585, the fleet carried 111 million silver pesos. He defends the detailed nature of this account:
I have made this calculation especially so that my readers may understand how great is the power that the Divine Majesty has graciously placed in the hands of the kings of Spain.... since it has been ordained by the Lord on high, who both gives and takes away kingdoms from whomever and in whatsoever way he wishes ..., we must humbly petition him to graciously favor the pious zeal of the Catholic king, granting him good fortune and victory over the enemies of his Holy Faith, for it is in this cause that he pours out the treasure of the Indies that God has given him and still has need of much more. [He querido dar esta relación tan particular para que se entienda la potencia que la Divina Majestad ha sido servida de dar a los reyes de España.... Y pues el señor de los cielos que da y quita los reinos a quien quiere y como quiere así lo ha ordenado ... debemos suplicarle con humildad, se digne de favorecer el celo tan pío del Rey Católico, dándole próspero suceso y victoria contra los enemigos de su Santa Fe, pues en esta causa gasta el tesoro de Indias que le ha dado, y aun ha menester mucho más.]
The arrival of the treasure fleet inspired public manifestations of joy, reverence, and piety. In Seville people held masses and prayed in gratitude for the consignments of gold and silver bars, reales, pearls, and emeralds that arrived from the Americas along with such staples as dyes, sugar, tobacco, brazilwood, spices, and hides. Pamphlets described these consignments in exquisite detail regarding both volume and value.
The astonishment conveyed by these reports suggests that the influx of bullion created an experience of money organized around a conception of the event assisted by either Providence or Fortune. Acosta and his contemporaries understood the outpouring of wealth produced by the Indies as the substantiation of a holy donation that established Spain as the nation chosen to expand the Church's dominion and defend the gospel. For Cieza and many others, providential favor represented the only possible explanation for a wave of riches never seen before. In the cultural imagination, gold was the king of the metals and was held as the index of wealth despite the currency of expressions such as "vale un Perú" (it is worth a Peru) and "vale un Potosí (it is worth a Potosi) that referred to the flood of silver from Peru. American chronicles, economic treatises, individual observations, and literary discourse preferred the combination of both precious metals, but they listed gold first and often took it as a synecdoche for New World riches.
The Money Machine
In the eyes of Charles V, the influx of precious metals meant an unlimited supply of bullion to be spent and pledged for unlimited credit. Charles displayed the first treasures from Mexico sent by Cortés in order to obtain a loan for buying votes to defeat his rival, Francis I, in the imperial elections. The celebrated treasure of Atahualpa was put to similar ends. Alonso de Santa Cruz wrote in his Crónica del emperador Carlos V (1551–1560) that when the treasures of Peru first arrived in Seville, the emperor gave orders to mint bullion in both reales and ducados (the gold coin equivalent to 11 reales or 340 maravedís) to outfit his army fighting in Tunis. Charles ordered Hernando Pizarro to meet him at Toledo, where he offered Pizarro the knighthood of Santiago and asked for a donation to aid the wars and the necessities of his Majesty. Both Pizarro and Charles conceived of precious metals as money (dineros) and used them as ready cash. The urgent melting of precious gold and silver art pieces in the New World, as well as the fast conversion of bullion into ducados and reales exposed the natural nexus between the metallic substance and the coin. Gold and silver were the source of value and the buying power that both the conquistadors and the crown so eagerly sought. For the former, bullion allowed for the payment of shares and the settlement of debts; for the latter, American gold commanded the largest resources of credit and put Spain ahead in the international competition for the largest portion of the world's wealth. Credit financed the quest for gold, provided money when treasures were meager, and filled in between the periodic arrivals of the fleet. But the abundance of gold and silver, nonetheless, anticipated the instantaneous fulfillment of such promises to the extent that it closed the gap between the ink money of loans and the incoming ingots that paid for the principal.
Spain's colonial expansion was built upon credit. The enterprise of the Indies subsumed the regular financial operations of investment and credit in the hope of conquering rich lands. The royal monopoly on the enterprise of the Indies started with the funds advanced by King Ferdinand's financial advisors. When economic disappointments and political second thoughts caused them to suspend the Santa Fe Capitulations and Columbus's privileges in 1497, Ferdinand and Isabella authorized joint stock companies in Seville to finance the exploration of South America. In 1503 the Indies began to be profitable for the crown. According to the treasurer of the House of Trade, Dr. Sancho de Matienzo, the value of gold both in bullion and coin between 1503 and 1508 amounted to 87,855,987. maravedís Although these figures increased throughout the century, their volume and value were soon overrun by neverending cycles of debt.
Both the crown and the merchant class got engulfed in credit. The trade fairs no longer handled cash, because most transactions were in international credit, whereas international debt repayment and the salary of mercenaries required ducados as money of account. Bills of exchange were the oil that kept the wheels of trade and empire running. These bits of paper traveled quickly and made credit available immediately. As expenditures on war and foreign policy increased, the need for credit stimulated the business of international financiers, who, organized in consortiums, took on huge loans, or asientos. The asientos soon represented a very large floating debt, because the government bridged a long series of bankruptcies by converting part of the floating debt into consolidated debt. The renewed debt accrued larger and larger principals that kept increasing with interest charges, establishing new investments in public debt (juros) and mortgaged debt (censos).
The demands of American markets rested on a booming money market that speculated on fluctuations in the value of money and the production of commodities for future sale. Capitalist financing amplified and redesigned the credit instruments of medieval continental commerce, bolstering the growth of a credit economy that transformed the ways of doing business and using money. This new economy created the most advantageous opportunities for profit and the swift accumulation of wealth. It also created keen anxiety, because people confronted a wave of conceptual and social change that they perceived as confusing, threatening, and unrelenting. The rapid growth of the new credit economy coincided with a rampant escalation of prices. People could not understand how the value of gold and silver could ever fall when the whole country was reveling in a shower of gold. Their confusion and anxiety increased as credit money expanded, inflation ruled society, and the value of the national treasury declined.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from New World Gold by ELVIRA VILCHES Copyright © 2010 by The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Money, Credit, and Value
1 New World Gold
2 Selling the Indies: Columbus and the Economy of the Marvelous
3 Gold: A Problematic Standard
4 The New World of Money
5 Writing about Debt
6 The Indies, Value, and Wealth
Conclusion: A Remote and Exotic Geography
Bibliography
Index