The Fruits of El Dorado: The Global Impact of American Precious Metals

Leticia Arroyo Abad and Nuno Palma

Economics Discussion Paper Series from Economics, The University of Manchester

Abstract: The quest for precious metals and trade routes during the early modern period fundamentally changed the world. What was the global impact of the large deposits of silver and gold which existed in the Americas? In this chapter, we take a global view. We find that in Europe, England and the Netherlands benefited the most. By contrast, the colonizers par excellence, Spain and Portugal, were unable to profit from their colonial expansion. In Latin America, the exploitation of precious mineral resources enabled the geographic expansion of the empire and shaped labor institutions, the fiscal apparatus, and economic activity. The direct impact on other parts of the world was negligible; but the long-term political consequences of European presence shaped the world as we know it today.

JEL-codes: F54 N50 O43 Q33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-05, Revised 2021-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-fdg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/schools/soss/eco ... npapers/EDP-2003.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Fruits of El Dorado: The Global Impact of American Precious Metals (2021)
Working Paper: The Fruits of El Dorado: The Global Impact of American Precious Metals (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:man:sespap:2003

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Discussion Paper Series from Economics, The University of Manchester Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Patrick Macnamara ().