We know that a huge amount of Potosí silver had reached China by the last quarter of the 16th century, and by around 1600 the traffic showed no signs of abating. Living at the Ming court in Beijing, Jesuit Matteo Ricci made a point of informing his audience of eunuchs about the riches of South America. His 1602 world map, engraved by his assistant Li Zhizao and based on a Waldseemüller print, covers an entire wall. China is in the middle, of course, and America is on the far right. Positioned more or less in the centre of South America is a small mountain range with characters that read ‘Bei Du Xi Shan’ or ‘Potosí Mountain’.
World map of Matteo Ricci and Li Zhizao
Matteo Ricci and Li Zhizao, world map, c.1602 (courtesy of the James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota).
Kris Lane
Further reading
- Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela, B. (1965) Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosí, 3 vols., edited by L. Hanke and G. Mendoza (Providence, RI: Brown University Press).
- Bakewell, P.J. (1985) Miners of the Red Mountain: Indian Labor in Potosí, 1545–1650 (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press).
- Bakewell, P.J. (1987) Silver and Entrepreneurship in Seventeenth-Century Potosí: The Life and Times of Antonio López de Quiroga (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press).
- Barragán Romano, R. (2019) Potosí global: viajando con sus primeras imágenes (1550–1650) (La Paz: Plural Editores).
- Bueuchler, R.M. (1981) The Mining Society of Potosí, 1776–1810 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press).
- Capoche, L. (1959) Relación general de la Villa Imperial de Potosí [1585]. BAE 122. Edited Hanke (Madrid: Atlas).
- Cole, J. (1985) The Potosí Mita, 1573–1700: Compulsory Indian Labor in the Andes (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press).
- González Casasnovas, I. (2000) Las dudas de la corona: la política de repartimientos para la minería de Potosí (1680–1732) (Madrid: CSIC).
- Lane, K. (2019) Potosí: The Silver City That Changed the World (Oakland, CA: University of California Press).
- Mangan, J. (2005) Trading Roles: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Urban Economy in Colonial Potosí (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
- Tandeter, E. (1993) Coercion and Market: Silver Mining in Colonial Potosí, 1692–1826 (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press).
