Global silver trade from the 16th to 19th centuries
The global silver trade between the Americas, Europe, and China from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries was a spillover of the Columbian exchange which had a profound effect on the world economy. Many scholars consider the silver trade to mark the beginning of a genuinely global economy, with one historian noting that silver "went round the world and made the world go round". Although global, much of that silver ended up in the hands of the Chinese, as they accepted it as a form of currency. In addition to the global economic changes the silver trade engendered, it also put into motion a wide array of political transformations in the early modern era. "New World mines", concluded several prominent historians, "supported the Spanish empire", acting as a linchpin of the Spanish economy.
Silver Peso of Philip V
Great Ming Bao Chao
New Spain, officially the Viceroyalty of New Spain, originally the Kingdom of New Spain, was an integral territorial entity of the Spanish Empire, established by Habsburg Spain. It was one of several domains established during the Spanish conquest of the Americas, and had its capital in Mexico City. Its jurisdiction comprised a large area of the southern and western portions of North America, mainly what is now Mexico and the Southwestern United States, but also California, Florida and Louisiana; Central America, the Caribbean, and northern parts of South America; several Pacific archipelagos, most notably the Philippines and Guam. Additional Asian colonies included "Spanish Formosa", on the island now known as Taiwan.
Hernán Cortés and La Malinche meet the emperor Moctezuma II in Tenochtitlán, November 8, 1519.
The evangelization of Mexico
An auto-da-fé in New Spain, 18th century
Vázquez de Coronado Sets Out to the North (1540), by Frederic Remington, oil on canvas, 1905