How did silver from a mountain in the Andes end up in Ming China?
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TL;DR — Potosí’s silver, dug by forced mita labor and refined with Huancavelica mercury from 1571, sailed to Seville and, on Manila galleons, to China, the era’s sink for silver.
Silver dug from Cerro Rico at Potosí after 1545 became the coin that Spain spent in Europe and that Manila galleons carried over the Pacific to China. The mountain stood at about 4,000 meters in what is now Bolivia. Its ore was ground in water mills and mixed with mercury from Huancavelica, 1,680 kilometers away, by Indians drafted under the mita, a labor levy the viceroy Francisco de Toledo imposed in the 1570s. The Jesuit José de Acosta, who sailed home in the fleet of 1587, wrote that it carried 11 million pesos from Peru and Mexico, two thirds of them from Peru and almost half for the king. Some of the silver crossed the Pacific, where, as Columbia University’s Asia for Educators puts it, China was “a ‘sink’ for silver.”
Quick facts
- When
- 1545 (silver lodes found at Cerro Rico) · 1564 (mercury found at Huancavelica) · 1571 (mercury refining begins at Potosí) · 1572 (Francisco de Toledo's visit and the mining mita) · 1565 (Spain settles the Philippines; Manila galleons) · 1987 and June 17, 2014 (UNESCO listings)
- Where
- Potosí, a mining town at about 4,000 meters in the Andes of what is now Bolivia; the mercury mine of Huancavelica in what is now Peru; the ports of Seville and Manila
- Who
- Hualpa, the Indian whom Acosta names as the finder of the lodes; the viceroy Francisco de Toledo; Pedro Fernández de Velasco, who brought the mercury method; the Jesuit José de Acosta; the Andean chronicler Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala
- Outcome
- The mountain's silver, dug by forced labor and refined with mercury, became the coin Spain spent in Europe and the cargo Manila galleons carried to China, the destination Columbia's Asia for Educators calls a "sink" for silver
The mountain and the year 1545
The lodes were found by an Indian named Hualpa, according to Acosta, who told the story: chasing a deer up the mountain, Hualpa pulled up a bush and found silver ore at its root, refined it in secret at Porco, and was betrayed by a neighbor to a Spaniard named Villaroel, who registered the first vein. The four principal veins were enrolled by August 30, 1545, in the mountain the Spaniards called Cerro Rico, the Rich Mountain.
Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, an Andean noble whose illustrated chronicle of about 1615 was addressed to the king of Spain, drew Potosí. In the drawing the Inca and four Andean kings hold up the pillars and arms of imperial Spain over the silver mines, and his caption reads, in translation, “Because of that mine Castile is Castile, Rome is Rome, the pope is pope and the king is monarch of the world.” In the pages that follow he described a town with “silver like stone, gold like dust.”
Acosta reported the royal registers: 76 million pesos of assay had passed through the custom house of Potosí by 1574, and 35 million more between then and 1585, not counting silver carried away untaxed. UNESCO calls the area the world’s largest industrial complex of the 16th century.
How the silver was won: mercury and the mita
The first miners smelted rich surface ore in small clay furnaces that Guaman Poma called huayrachinas; he drew six of them on the hill beside Cerro Rico. What kept Potosí alive after those veins gave out was a method that Bartolomé de Medina of Seville worked out in 1555, according to Peru’s 2017 submission to UNESCO’s Tentative List: crushed ore was mixed with salt, water and mercury, trodden for days, then heated until the mercury boiled off and left silver.
The mercury came from Huancavelica, in what is now Peru, where the Santa Bárbara deposit was found in 1564. Peru’s submission quotes the Jesuit José de Acosta, who wrote that under Toledo a man named Pedro Fernández de Velasco offered to refine Potosí’s silver with mercury, and that “in 1571 Potosí started to extract silver with mercury brought from Huancavelica.” UNESCO’s Potosí listing dates full production to after 1580, when 22 reservoirs drove 140 mills that ground the ore.
The labor came from the mita. Peru’s submission describes it as Toledo’s adaptation of an Inca rotation: Indian men aged 18 to 50 from provinces up to 40 leagues, about 223 kilometers, from a mining center owed a year of work for a small wage plus rations of beef and corn. UNESCO counts 13,500 Indians forced into the Potosí mines under the system, alongside 160,000 colonists by the 17th century.
Guaman Poma, who wrote as a petitioner to the king, described what the levy did. A man who caught the mercury sickness “dries up like a stick and has asthma and cannot live by day or by night. And he lasts a year or two in this way and dies.” His drawing of Huancavelica carries the line “In that mine the Indians are used up.” He recorded the pay, eight reales a day plus food in the mercury mines and four in silver mines. None of the sources cited below gives a total of the dead. Peru’s submission dates the end of the mita to the Cadiz constitution of March 19, 1812; World History Encyclopedia gives 1821.
A city of 160,000 at 4,000 meters
Acosta wrote that once the discovery was known, Spaniards from La Plata, 18 leagues away, and Indians from many provinces came to take mines, so that within a short time Potosí was “the best peopled habitation of all the kingdom,” with the greatest traffic and commerce in Peru. UNESCO’s listing describes a Spanish quarter of churches and patrician houses and a native quarter of bare rancherías, separated by an artificial river.
The road of the silver: Seville and Manila
Refined bars were stamped at the Royal Mint and the crown took one fifth. From Potosí the silver went by sea to Seville in the annual fleets; Acosta counted 11 million pesos in the two fleets of Peru and Mexico that sailed in 1587. UNESCO’s criterion for the listing names the result: the “flood of Spanish currency resulting from the massive import of precious metals in Seville.”
A second road ran west. After the Spanish settled the Philippines in 1565, Manila became their entrepôt for trade with China, and silver minted in the Americas crossed the Pacific through Manila to pay for Chinese goods.
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Why China took the silver
Columbia’s Asia for Educators describes the chain. Spain settled the Philippines in 1565, and Manila became its entrepôt for trade with China. Silver “minted by the Spaniards in their new territories in the Americas eventually travels across the Pacific, through Manila, and into China as the commodity the Europeans can trade for the goods they seek from China.” The same page records that the Ming state drew its income from land and salt taxes. The sources cited below describe China as the destination; it does not trace how prices inside China moved, so that part of the story is left out here.
What remains: 1987 and 2014
UNESCO inscribed the City of Potosí on the World Heritage List in 1987 under criteria (ii), (iv) and (vi), citing the conserved chain from mine to mint, from the reservoirs and mills to the Casa de la Moneda rebuilt in 1759. On June 17, 2014, the World Heritage Committee in Doha placed the city on the List of World Heritage in Danger because uncontrolled mining had left Cerro Rico porous and parts of its summit had collapsed.
The mountain that Guaman Poma drew holding up the Spanish crown was hollowed by the men the mita sent into it, and its silver, refined with Huancavelica mercury, paid Spain’s bills in Seville and bought China’s silk in Manila.
Key facts
- The Cerro Rico lodes were found by the Indian Hualpa and the veins enrolled in 1545; the registers counted 76 million pesos by 1574 and 35 million more by 1585 (Acosta).
- Mercury refining began at Potosí in 1571 with mercury from Huancavelica, found in 1564 (José de Acosta, quoted in Peru’s UNESCO submission).
- Toledo’s mita drafted men aged 18 to 50 from a 40-league radius for a year; UNESCO counts 13,500 mita workers and 160,000 colonists by the 17th century.
- Guaman Poma recorded eight reales a day in the mercury mines and four in silver mines, and described mercury sickness that killed within a year or two.
- The fleets of 1587 carried 11 million pesos from Peru and Mexico, two thirds from Peru and almost half for the king (Acosta).
- After 1565 Manila was Spain’s entrepôt for China, and American silver crossed the Pacific to a country Columbia’s Asia for Educators calls a “sink” for silver.
- UNESCO listed Potosí in 1987 and placed it on the Danger List on June 17, 2014.
FAQ
When was silver found at Potosí?
In 1545, at Cerro Rico in the Andes of what is now Bolivia. Acosta names an Indian called Hualpa, of the province of Chumpivilca, as the finder.
What was the mita?
A labor levy that the viceroy Francisco de Toledo set up in the 1570s on the model of an Inca rotation. Indian men aged 18 to 50 from provinces up to 40 leagues away owed a year in the mines for a small wage. Peru's UNESCO submission dates its abolition to 1812; World History Encyclopedia gives 1821.
How did Potosí silver reach China?
By way of Acapulco. Manila galleons carried Asian goods to Mexico from 1565 and returned to Manila with silver pesos, which Chinese merchants took in exchange for silk and porcelain. Columbia's Asia for Educators calls China a "sink" for that silver.
Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre — "City of Potosí," World Heritage List no. 420, Outstanding Universal Value statement.
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre — "City of Potosí (Plurinational State of Bolivia) added to List of World Heritage in Danger," news release, June 17, 2014.
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Tentative Lists — Peru, "Santa Bárbara mining complex" (Huancavelica), submission of July 10, 2017.
- José de Acosta, The Natural and Moral History of the Indies (1590), translated by Edward Grimston (1604), edited by Clements Markham, Hakluyt Society, vol. I (1880), book IV, chapters 6–7 (the discovery by the Indian Hualpa; the veins enrolled in 1545; the registers to 1585; the fleet of 1587; the water mills), full text at the Internet Archive.
- Columbia University, Asia for Educators — "Key Points across East Asia by Era: 1450–1750," section on Europeans in China.
- Royal Danish Library — Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1615), pages 530–532, "Chapter of the miners," transcription.
- Royal Danish Library — Guaman Poma, Nueva corónica, page 1055, drawing of Oropesa de Huancavelica, mercury mines.
- Royal Danish Library — Guaman Poma, Nueva corónica, pages 1065–1068, drawing and description of the imperial town of Potosí.
Cite this article
- APA
- Song Letter. (2026, September 20). How did silver from a mountain in the Andes end up in Ming China? Our Earth's History. https://ourearthshistory.com/americas/early-modern/potosi-silver-mountain-world-money/
- Chicago
- Song Letter. “How did silver from a mountain in the Andes end up in Ming China?” Our Earth's History, September 20, 2026. https://ourearthshistory.com/americas/early-modern/potosi-silver-mountain-world-money/.
- MLA
- Song Letter. “How did silver from a mountain in the Andes end up in Ming China?” Our Earth's History, 20 Sep. 2026, https://ourearthshistory.com/americas/early-modern/potosi-silver-mountain-world-money/.
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