Turning Silver Into Gold
Silver, to us, is the second metal--well, even the second medal--among precious metals. I mean, leaving aside Platinum, which didn't come into common currency until relatively recently. But, for much of history, silver was on par with gold. What changed? The discovery of the two most massive strikes of silver in history, one at Potosi, and one at Mount Davidson, near Virginia City, Nevada. Before those two strikes, silver had very rarely been discovered in great abundance, and certainly not enough of it to do things like, turn it into a tea service, for example. In two stunning instances, whole empires were brought to their knees but its sudden abundance. The Spanish, round about the time of their strike at Potosi, began a trade between the West coast of South America and the Philippines. To pay for goods (and to avoid the large swath of the world ceded to Portugal) the Spanish used what was most easily transported by them: silver. They found that China had not yet caught up to the...