Silver: transformational matter

Abstract

"Silver transformed and convulsed the early modern world. Silver, even more than gold, occupied a deeply charged intersection of forces and dynamics -- philosophical, religious, material, telluric, economic, colonialist, social, cultural, and courtly -- that traversed and profoundly altered the world. Silver from the so-called 'New World' bankrolled and justified the Spanish monarchy in its landgrab, wars, and empire building in both the Americas and in Europe. The great mountain of fabulously rich silver, Cerro Ricco in Potosí, relentlessly exploited by the Spanish invaders from 1545, irrevocably changed power relations, empires, and entire social and environmental ecologies across the globe. Accelerating global commerce and the growth of capitalism, trade in silver intensified the accumulation of capital and uneven trade balances, and enhanced the wealth of northern Europe at the expense of the Global South, particularly of Latin America. This wealth helped jump start the Industrial Revolution a century later. Silver: Transformational Matter draws together essays by leading anthropologists, art historians, and historians to rethink silver across diverse fields and bring into context mining, trade, the Spanish empire and colonialism, Indigenous expertise, high-end Islamic and European silver artifacts, philosophical and alchemical erudition, and the shimmer of silver in textiles and moonlight. The emphasis in this collection is on early modern silver (ca.1545-ca.1700), since that was the crux and highpoint of its economic, artistic, and colonialist triumph, but any notion of a homogeneous historical 'period' is strongly resisted. Time and place were splintered by silver, as well as brought into relation by it."-- Provided by the publisher.

Contents

Introduction : forging silver connections / Helen Hills -- Part I : Silver : mining, indigenous knowledge, and colonialism -- 1 : Gold, silver, power, and abuse : the incorporation and erasure of indigenous knowledges in Spanish colonial metalwork / Allison Margaret Bigelow -- 2 : The Atocha's silver ca.1622 : ingots, aquillas, and the intersection of values / Thomas B. F. Cummins -- 3 : Flowing silver and ephemeral cities : working the ruins of colonial silver mines / Maggie Bolton -- Part II : Silver and the moon -- 4 : Silver, the lunar metal / Spike Bucklow -- 5 : How the world shines silver in the moonlight / Tim Ingold -- Part III : Silver profits : trade, trust, and trickery -- 6 : : Between early modern technology and moral agenda : silver counterfeiting and assaying in sixteenth-century Europe/ Sergius Kodera -- 7 : Mutant money : the globe-trotting career of seventeenth-century silver cash / Kris Lane -- Part IV : Exquisite effects -- 8 : : Fidda (silver) : on the active life of matter/ Avinoam Shalem -- 9 : Weaving silver: brilliance and sheen in colonial Andean textiles / Elena Phipps -- 10 : Adam van Vianen and ghosts of silver in the late-Renaissance world / Richard Checketts.