The Underground Wealth of Nations: On the Capitalist Origins of Silver Mining, A.D. 1150-1450

Silver mining was a capitalist business long before the supposed origin of modern capitalism

Hundreds of years before a sixteenth†‘century crisis in European agriculture led to the origins of capital, investment, and finance, the silver mining industry exhibited many of the features of modern capitalism. Silver mines were large†‘scale businesses that demanded large investments and steady cash flow, achieved by spreading that risk through fungible shares and creating legal structures to prot...