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Earl J. Hamilton's multiple theses on the price revolution, the decline of Spain, and the birth of capitalism have all placed American silver (and gold) at the forefront. This essay supports Hamilton's emphasis on the impact of New World treasure on the decline of Castile, but from a different angle. Mining profits rather than the quantity of imports supported the empire. When the profits dwindled, as was inevitable, international superiority was begrudgingly surrendered to the emerging powers of the north.

Including 11 essays published over the last 15 years, this volume by Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez concerns the origins and early development of globalization. It opens with their 1995 "Silver Spoon" essay and a theoretical essay published in 2002. Subsequent sections deal with Pacific Ocean exchanges, interconnections between the Spanish, O.

ABSTRACTThis article provides an initial (partial) estimate of silver quantities held within China around mid-18thcentury, utilising archival evidence related to wealth confiscations. Better future estimates for overall Chinese silver holdings could also facilitate more accurate estimation of Chinese silver (legal plus illegal) imports. Similar analyses for other world regions could eventually yield estimates for global silver stock holdings, useful in turn for improving global silver mining and trade flow estimates. Extensive contraband silver mining and silver trade are known to have escaped official recordation, by definition. If methodologies suggested herein prove successful, then parallel non-silver-trade-good estimates could follow. Current exclusive focus upon production and trade flows should be reevaluated in the context of linkages with accumulations of goods (wealth components). Economic history could someday provide a prominent stage for the historical study of wealth holdings, thereby furnishing context for increasing wealth concentrations observable worldwide today.

Abstract.  Globalization began when all heavily populated land masses began interacting – both directly and indirectly via other land masses – in a sustained manner with deep consequences for all interacting regions. Globalization emerged during the sixteenth century. Dynamism emanating from within China played a pivotal role. Valid hypotheses concerning globalization's emergence must accommodate evidence from numerous disciplinary debates. Discussion of globalization's birth in terms of economic issues alone – for example, O'Rourke and Williamson's price convergence of the 1820s – is doomed. The central role of economic history – including Chinese economic history – becomes salient when arguments are formulated in the context of a multidisciplinary, global historical narrative.

"This title was first published in 2002.In recent years scholars have begun to conceptualize the history of the Pacific Ocean as a subset of world history. This question is taken up in the introductory chapter of this volume, which sets out four periods of modern Pacific history: a silver period, 1570s-1750; a period of early integration, 1750-1850; a gold period, 1850-c.1900; and a period of imperial strategies after the gold rushes. The next chapter looks at the fur trade of the Pacific coast of America, and its dependence on markets in China and Russia, followed by a set which focus on the era of the gold rushes, in California, Australia and New Zealand, when the pace of Pacific integration grew rapidly and new markets opened across the ocean. The last chapters examine aspects of the subsequent evolution of the Pacific Ocean into an 'American lake', looking in particular at the interlocking of politics and migration. This volume carries forward study of the 'Pacific Centuries', promoting the conceptualization of the Pacific Ocean as a coherent unit of analysis, and providing further important steps toward provision of the multi-century framework that is required for proper understanding of today's 'Pacific Century'."--Provided by publisher.

Starting with the 16th century trade of Latin American silver and Chinese silk, leading researchers trace the economic, environmental and social history of the Pacific region. Chapters examine the trade of diverse commodities within the Pacific and analyse the ecological and social impacts of this increasing economic activity. The strong Chinese marketplace emerges as crucial to early Pacific development, and is compared with Japan's central role in the region's modern economy

Preliminary Material /Tsukasa Mizushima , George Bryan Souza and Dennis O. Flynn -- Introduction /Tsukasa Mizushima , George Bryan Souza and Dennis O. Flynn -- Hinterlands, Commodity Chains, and Circuits in Early Modern Asian History: Sugar in Qing China and Tokugawa Japan /George Bryan Souza -- Hydraulic Metaphor: A Model of Global and Local Connectivity /Dennis O. Flynn and Marie A. Lee -- The Dynamics of Port-Hinterland Relationships in Eighteenth-Century Gujarat /Ghulam A. Nadri -- Ports, Hinterlands and Merchant Networks: Armenians in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century /Bhaswati Bhattacharya -- Linking Hinterlands with Colonial Port Towns: Madras and Pondicherry in Early Modern India /Tsukasa Mizushima -- Maritime Asian Trade and Colonization of Penang, c. 1786–1830 /Tomotaka Kawamura -- Toward a Transborder, Market-Oriented Society: Changes in the Hinterlands of Banten, c. 1760–1790 /Atsushi Ota -- Hinterlands and Port Cities in Southeast Asia's Economic Development in the Eighteenth Century: The Case of Tin Production and its Export Trade /Ryuto Shimada -- Trade and Crisis: China's Hinterlands in the Eighteenth Century /Ei Murakami -- Bibliography /Tsukasa Mizushima , George Bryan Souza and Dennis O. Flynn -- Index /Tsukasa Mizushima , George Bryan Souza and Dennis O. Flynn.

Trade across the Pacific will be one of the dominant forces in the economy of the next century. This collection reflects the birth of Pacific Rim history, until recently largely neglected. It addresses the development of the Pacific Rim over four centuries, combining broad historical syntheses with a range of essays on specific topics, from trade with Hong Kong to British overseas banking. It will form a major contribution to this rapidly expanding new field