Colonial Potosí: Setting the Stage for Global Capitalist Development

Abstract

In the early 1540s, Spanish conquistadores took control of the mineral-rich region surrounding the mountain of Potosí in what is now Bolivia, and in 1545 they officially established the colonial mining center of the same name. Less than one hundred years later, that town grew to be an Imperial City with a population of over 100,000, a figure rivaling the largest European cities. During that same period, it produced between 80 and 90 per cent of the silver coming out of Spanish South America through new and complex industrial production chains (Barragan 2017a, 2018) that were established in the city. The colonial authorities implemented widespread changes in the landscape through environmental engineering and extensive urbanization. Potosí produced wealth that drove the modern economy, shifted the global balance of power, and built the Spanish Empire. Its resources and their exploitation bankrolled the first steps in Europe’s industrial revolution and shaped our classic understandings of development in the modern world (Galeano 1997; Lane 2019).