In the interest of full disclosure, I have not yet had the chance to finish reading my three chapters from this book (I will have them completed in time for class), so I will focus on the chapter about silver, which was at once both satisfying and frustrating.
The global flow of silver is such a vast topic, and the twenty pages devoted to it in this book is not nearly enough to discuss the entire topic. Because of that, the reader gets a taste of the various actors within the supply chain, from the producers to the consumers, but little more than that. We learn that it does not require huge numbers of people to mine, and that the Spanish utilized the mita system, but we don't learn much more than that. The mita system is not fully described and it should be. One of the things we don't learn is more detail on the overall impact of this labor system on the natives.
The discussion of the demand for silver is also frustrating in that while various reasons for the demand are mentioned, there is almost no detailed discussion of the reasons behind those motives. For example the Chinese government insists on the payment of taxes only in silver, but we aren't given a reason why. Finally, the roles of Japan and India are mentioned only briefly.
Ultimately, this book (pending my reading of other chapters) will definitely have a place in my final paper, but I think that each chapter might best serve as companions to longer texts/works about the same commodities. In particular, given the importance and longevity of silver in the global economy, I feel like there should be an additional source about this commodity.
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