Re: (TFT) Hirst Arts Melee/Wizard Arena

[Sgt Hulka <hulkasgt@yahoo.com>]

Modern research has proven this assumption to be flawed. The basis of wealth for encomenderos, the nobility of New Spain, was their control of Indian labor. They grew rich by leasing their Indians' tributary labor obligations to the mine owners. They largely lived in urban areas (Mexico City or Lima), preferring to hire Spanish overseers to manage their encomiendas and send them the money. Immediately after the conquest there was some dis-satisfaction among encomenderos regarding their (self-percieved) poverty. See Bernal Dias. But when silver was discovered and labor was required that changed.

In Mexico, the silver mines were located in the north, beyond the borders of the sedentary indian populations. There was no ready supply of easy labor there, which is why the labor was leased from encomenderos to the south. But there was also no Indian market there to provide for this sudden influx of population. The sprawling haciendas were born of a need to supply this sudden population. Hides were an excees product of the haciendas and the reason they were exported was because the meat couldn't be (it would go bad).

In backwaters like Argentina, hides again were the only viable export, but they weren't exactly lucrative. More lucrative was silver smuggled down the Rio de la Plata where the Spanish authorities couldn't tax it. That was difficult, though, since Spain held a monopoly on mercury and was therefore able to keep very good track of exactly how much silver was produced and when it went missing.

Peru didn't grow quite the same tradition of haciendas in part because the sedentary Indian population was already relatively close to the mines. The traditional indian markets were more likely to provide the required food and materials. At this early stage of colonization, the Spaniards were not terribly interested in displacing Indian markets. Their own colonizing population was massively outnumbered, and they relied on the Indian system to keep themselves fed.

There are a lot of theories as to why Spain, the wealthiest country in Europe, declined so quickly. You point out mis-management as one. Certainly constantly financing Catholic wars against Protestantism can be characterized as massive mis-management. But there was also a problem of declining silver prices that I'm sure the OPEC nations can relate to. The amount of silver that came out of the new world was like nothing Europe had seen before. That sudden influx caused a plummet in world silver prices that Spain couldn't have predicted and couldn't have prepared for. Thinking they could finance a war with today's dollars in silver, they found themselves tomorrow faced with an inability to pay their mercenaries when those silver dollars were worth a quarter what they thought they would be. Well, maybe they could have predicted it, but it would have required a revolutionary advance in the economic theories of the time.

As for your specific comment, below, the more accurate description would probably be "Spanish colonial grandees preferred exacting tribute from their Indian dependants, much like the nobility living off the labor of their peasants back at home...or much the way Spanish knights grew wealthy demanding tribute from conquered moors during the Reconquista." 

The guys working the haciendas closer to the mines were more akin, at this early period, to entrepeneurs than to grandees. Of course in the later period, as encomenderos lost the rights to their Indian tributes due to humanitarian, political, and religious concerns, lo and behold the guys with actual property suddenly became rich by comparison, and used debt-peonage to fill in the gap left by the removal of forced labor. (encomenderos technically neither owned their encomiendas as property nor the Indians that lived on them...they only owned the right of tribute...essentially the right to demand a tax of labor and material...from those Indians). 

--- On Fri, 2/20/09, maou_tsaou1@netzero.net <maou_tsaou1@netzero.net> wrote:

> From: maou_tsaou1@netzero.net <maou_tsaou1@netzero.net>
> Subject: Re: (TFT) Hirst Arts Melee/Wizard Arena
> To: tft@brainiac.com
> Date: Friday, February 20, 2009, 10:49 AM
> The secondary export from the Indies is hides of uncured
> leather.
> Spanish colonial grandees prefer ranching large herds to
> managing
> farms and plantations. Ranches are equivalent to the
> property noblemen
> own in old Spain.
=====
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