My gringo friend, I bring you news from the South! It is pronunced Potosí with stress on the last two letters, like the Spanish word for Yes. Po - to - SI. Incidentally, the name is taken from the local legend regarding the city's greatest landmark (El Cerro Rico de Potosí) (i.e. POTOJCHI from the Quechua language). Well done!
I teach AP world history modern and we have to use their official syllabus. They included a video about Potosi to show the students... Then I found this video by chance and showed it to my class as well. Excellent work here! The dumb AP textbook doesn't talk about mercury poisoning, Cocaine, and gang violence... just insane, oh and on top of all that, altitude delusions! Sounds like a nice place.
You're the adventurous sort! Yeah, Potosi kinda seems like the dangerous crazy party...you don't want to miss Lots of reward...but most likely...far more risk But hay you only live once! When I read about Potosi, I thought gotta make a video on this...should be a movie or HBO series
@@jayy3349 You are talking about the Aztecs and Incas on other tribes right? Yeah, they did all those things on the Chichimecas, Aymaras, Canaris, Tlaxcalans, etc.
Great video - very interesting and informative - thank you! As an additional related fact, the tremendous amounts of gold and silver mined and brought to Spain helped Northern Europe to develop industrial capabilities. The Spanish bought much from Northern Europe and did not develop their own manufacturing. As mentioned in an earlier comment the large amount of money was inflationary since there was more money to buy goods and services. Since ancient times, the ratio of value between silver and gold was approximately 15 to 1. This did not change during this time, so the total ratio mined was approximately the same. It wasn't until the 1860's and later that improved silver mining techniques provided so much additional silver that this ratio was broken and silver forever cheaper in relation to gold.
Another great video Epimetheus, as always. One thing you didn't mention which would have been nice to see if the effect of New World silver on China. China, being so large and self-sustaining, wanted for (almost) nothing, and conducted very little trade with the European powers. One thing China lacked, however, was precious metals. Gold was very rare, and silver was almost non-existent. Chinese currency was based almost solely on the value of their paper currency, which led to a number of problems. The Yuan and Ming in particular tried to solve financial problems by simply printing more money (which hindsight shows is a remarkably efficient way of tanking an economy.) Enter the Peso. (Peso de Ocho, aka Pieces of Eight, I never made that relation until watching this video, so thanks for that!) The Spanish finally had something China wanted; lots of silver coinage. Much more stable and reliable than manipulatable paper, China ate up all the Pesos it could, eager to trade its rare and expensive trade goods for New World silver. In short order, the Peso become the de facto currency in China and a part of regular life. Bills, contracts and receipts would have the price listed in Pesos beside the local price. The Portuguese, British and especially the Dutch would buy up or even counterfeit the Spanish coins so that they too could trade with China. The Peso became the common coin of traders not just in China, but across most of East Asia, the West Indies, the Americas and other haunts of European traders, making it the first truly global currency. Fun fact, the Chinese were particularly fond of coins with bust of Rey Carlos IV minted upon them, whom they thought looked like Buddha. They referred to these coins as the 'Fat Buddha' or 'Buddha Head' coin. For those who want to read more, I got most of my info from here; afe.easia.columbia.edu/chinawh/web/s5/s5_4.html
Until recently the phrase "vale un Potosí" ("it's worth a Potosí") was used to indicate something of extremely high value. I think today it is an archaism but I'm pretty sure it was used until well into the 20th century.
Great video! However the map is anachronistic, at the start of potosi (and for 200 years after) the Viceroyalties of Rio de la plata and New Granada were still part of the viceroyalty of Peru. Also, the coca leave or in powder form is not actually cocaine. One needs to add a bunch of chemicals like acetone during a process to turn it into cocaine. Aside from very well done!
Thanks for the great comment! I had always incorrectly thought Rio de la Plata was older for some reason...I wonder if the split up, of the viceroys, was effected at all by Peru's declining silver output anachronistic is a great word, love vocabulary :) Yeah, I read about people using a lot of powdered coca...sounded like cocaine to me :)....So cocaine is probably just the isolated element that gets you high from the coca plant...Did not know it was that specific
I guess geographically it would make sense for Spain to colonise first the eastern side of the continent first . But what actually happened was that the inca empire already had good roads, organisation and infrastructure thus easier to take over, plus all the mines were there. They may have even kept cuzco as the capital if it was so high up in the mountains, so they founded the city of Lima, conveniently near the sea to ship the silver out to panama and then spain., to the point that Lima was a major city when Buenos Aires was a village. But after about 200 years the other areas in south america had grown so much it was decided to create new viceroyalties particularly after the said minerals started shipping out of buenos aires and not lima. The coca leaf as you said its widely used in the andes, and even has a spiritual aspect to the locals. You'll fund coca tea everywhere and even coca smoothies, coca chocolate etc, its harmless gives energy.. But once it is treated with a whole bunch of chemicals then you get cocaine as the drug.
The Castilians went after the empires and the riches, franbalcal. Areas like modern Argentina were too undedeveloped and without prospect other than being a port for Bolivia (Alto Perú) but the Castilians were too bureaucratic-minded to consider that seriously for a long time: everything had to go through Lima (and then to Panama and so on to Seville, freedom of choice was not in their book). The main reason to promote La Plata was to stop Portuguese expansion.
4:32 So I was following along with the narration: Uh huh, new process from Mexico. Uh huh, here are the raw material needed for it. Uh huh, a huge pool of elemental mercury, - no wait, WHAT?!
very interesting story about a little known place at a little known time. on the backs of native labour the spanish mined so much silver that it wrecked their economy with inflation. literally, if spain hadn't eaten the brunt of american silver coming to europe, their economy would still be doing well today and they'd be a successful and powerful country.
prigual outside spain it's never taught, in america most you'd hear of spanish empire in school is columbus arriving to americas and maybe spanish-american war, nothing about economic history
It wasnt just the inflation. Most of the silver and gold arrived at Cadiz or Sevilla and would be transported of to Austrian and German banks that were financing Spain s Holy War
Bakunin in Texas we learn about the greedy filthy and violent Spaniards and their failed conquest of the Americas... to sum it up Spaniards failed in their efforts and but not all is lost at least they gave the world tacos other than that they are a mere pittance of what they once were....
Slim Pickens the smelly spaniards had nothing to do with tacos. the native mexicans like aztecs already made tortillas and made tacos with fish and meat. all the spanish brought is disease, racism, and slavery.
Things I learned in Potosi: The streets were made narrow and short to cut down on the force of the winds, apparently after Toledo's time. There are still people mining silver, but their life expectancy in the mines is 10-15 years. Coca is widely used, and legal, in Peru, Bolivia and part of Argentina. It is chewed, but is also manufacured in teabags. It is not the same as cocaine.
Well, we see a lot about the wars and general crisis in the 17 century, but I kind of miss how they get so well equipped after the discover of the new lands in America, and the silver and golden mines, it's so interesting know how those mines change the war, and how deadly the wars become, just because they had money to spend in better equipments Ahahahah, just see the paintings of the wars in the 17 century period, the armors seen so cool
Epimetheus :D big was my surprise at the final part you said thank you so much damas y caballeros! That sounds really badass and cool:D Well, keep the good job Saludos from Chile
I'm fron Bolivia and believe it or not the rich mountain still has some silver.... Potosi is a wonderful place with architecture frozen in time and the most wonderful people.
This would make such a good movie, but you know instead of cocaine-fueled entrepreneurship of the pirate age, it would be Spanish Leo DiCaprio seeking riches, falling in love with the governor's daughter, and running away with her to the American colonies. Lame.
Cool video! But note that coca is not cocaine. More precisely, it is to cocaine what alcohol-free beer is to absinthe (the leafs have about 0.5-1% of pure cocaine in it). If you chew it, you feel a little bit more energetic, less hungry and your tongue goes slightly numb for a few minutes. That's about that, comparable to the effects of a strong coffee, except that it also helps with altitude sickness. Very likely, the miners weren't so full of themselves because of cocaine from the coca leaves but because they were usually nobodies who quickly became rich which gave them an unearned sense of self-importance. The only reason coca is illegal outside of Latin America is that you can refine the cocaine in it. Similarly, some countries limit poppy seed production. I think that both are idiotic (or should I say poppycock? :-) ) since you need hectars of the stuff to produce anything, you cannot hide it and so it is easy to monitor (as for the poppy, you need the oil from an unripe plant to make opium, the seeds themselves have practically no opium content).
Great work and appropriate mocking tone for this testament to insanity. Been reading Alex del Mar History of Precious Metals, who has the same disgusted opinion of the Spanish destruction of South America.and its indigenous people. Edit for: and its...people.
Man, there are a few things you've got wrong. I am from Potosi and lived there almost all my life, and 'Quechua' is NOT a nickname, it is a language that people from the Andes know very well, including myself.
Well done! It's plain to see you had fun working on this project. My 50 cents: The Ildefonso dam broke in 1626, when Toledo was already dead, and he died peacefully in a villa, not in jail. They didn't have cocaine back then in Potosí: They chewed the coca leaves together with seashell ashes, which helps releasing the alkaloid that helps defeating hunger, weakness and most important, the altitude sickness. This is done still nowadays, for nothing beats the coca for such a purpose. The coca fields were close to Cusco.
With Dona Ana Lezama de Urinza and Dona Eustaquia de Sonza as the Assassins. They were these two badass wealthy swordswomen that went vigilante in Potosi.
Wow this should be getting seen more. I knew nothing of this crazy silver city.
My gringo friend, I bring you news from the South!
It is pronunced Potosí with stress on the last two letters, like the Spanish word for Yes. Po - to - SI.
Incidentally, the name is taken from the local legend regarding the city's greatest landmark (El Cerro Rico de Potosí) (i.e. POTOJCHI from the Quechua language).
Well done!
I teach AP world history modern and we have to use their official syllabus. They included a video about Potosi to show the students... Then I found this video by chance and showed it to my class as well. Excellent work here! The dumb AP textbook doesn't talk about mercury poisoning, Cocaine, and gang violence... just insane, oh and on top of all that, altitude delusions! Sounds like a nice place.
No officialdom glosses over every sordid subject. It's called dumbing down, I think.
You don't teach. You indoctrinate
Frankfurt institute books must BURN!
I went here about 20 years ago. It was one of the most memorable places I have ever been.
dude you need more views and subs, amazing vid, keep doing what you do.
Thank you! Glad you found my channel
Tell your buddies....Love making videos on obscure topics
Very True! Needs wayyy more views and subs!
Ancient thug life is what this video is basically about.
@@ripyungbruh8157early modern thug life
Kind of makes me want to mine silver.
You're the adventurous sort!
Yeah, Potosi kinda seems like the dangerous crazy party...you don't want to miss
Lots of reward...but most likely...far more risk
But hay you only live once!
When I read about Potosi, I thought gotta make a video on this...should be a movie or HBO series
All high on cocaine, of course, else... sounds pointless. Choose your gang: Basques or Castilians, and prepare to live fast and toothless. XD
The life expectancy of a miner is 10-15 years today.
"The priests would make a powder of the plant..."
@@froggymusicman Techno parties be like:Good idea
History especially US History has always downplayed the Spanish Empire's contributions to the world.
We still have in spain a dicho: "¡Vale más que un Potosí!"
Predator, thief, robber, colonizer, shameless
Belisimo!!
@@jayy3349 Then the powder cleansed the circulatory system...
@@jayy3349 what
@@jayy3349 You are talking about the Aztecs and Incas on other tribes right? Yeah, they did all those things on the Chichimecas, Aymaras, Canaris, Tlaxcalans, etc.
Great video - very interesting and informative - thank you!
As an additional related fact, the tremendous amounts of gold and silver mined and brought to Spain helped Northern Europe to develop industrial capabilities. The Spanish bought much from Northern Europe and did not develop their own manufacturing. As mentioned in an earlier comment the large amount of money was inflationary since there was more money to buy goods and services.
Since ancient times, the ratio of value between silver and gold was approximately 15 to 1. This did not change during this time, so the total ratio mined was approximately the same. It wasn't until the 1860's and later that improved silver mining techniques provided so much additional silver that this ratio was broken and silver forever cheaper in relation to gold.
Another great video Epimetheus, as always. One thing you didn't mention which would have been nice to see if the effect of New World silver on China.
China, being so large and self-sustaining, wanted for (almost) nothing, and conducted very little trade with the European powers. One thing China lacked, however, was precious metals. Gold was very rare, and silver was almost non-existent. Chinese currency was based almost solely on the value of their paper currency, which led to a number of problems. The Yuan and Ming in particular tried to solve financial problems by simply printing more money (which hindsight shows is a remarkably efficient way of tanking an economy.)
Enter the Peso. (Peso de Ocho, aka Pieces of Eight, I never made that relation until watching this video, so thanks for that!) The Spanish finally had something China wanted; lots of silver coinage. Much more stable and reliable than manipulatable paper, China ate up all the Pesos it could, eager to trade its rare and expensive trade goods for New World silver. In short order, the Peso become the de facto currency in China and a part of regular life. Bills, contracts and receipts would have the price listed in Pesos beside the local price. The Portuguese, British and especially the Dutch would buy up or even counterfeit the Spanish coins so that they too could trade with China. The Peso became the common coin of traders not just in China, but across most of East Asia, the West Indies, the Americas and other haunts of European traders, making it the first truly global currency.
Fun fact, the Chinese were particularly fond of coins with bust of Rey Carlos IV minted upon them, whom they thought looked like Buddha. They referred to these coins as the 'Fat Buddha' or 'Buddha Head' coin.
For those who want to read more, I got most of my info from here; afe.easia.columbia.edu/chinawh/web/s5/s5_4.html
Imagine being called fat by people across the entire world
Until recently the phrase "vale un Potosí" ("it's worth a Potosí") was used to indicate something of extremely high value. I think today it is an archaism but I'm pretty sure it was used until well into the 20th century.
Bro they really should make a show in this setting
Potosi is like a high altitude Vice city.
¡Gracias por tales excelentes videos! ★★★★★
Great video! However the map is anachronistic, at the start of potosi (and for 200 years after) the Viceroyalties of Rio de la plata and New Granada were still part of the viceroyalty of Peru. Also, the coca leave or in powder form is not actually cocaine. One needs to add a bunch of chemicals like acetone during a process to turn it into cocaine. Aside from very well done!
Thanks for the great comment!
I had always incorrectly thought Rio de la Plata was older for some reason...I wonder if the split up, of the viceroys, was effected at all by Peru's declining silver output
anachronistic is a great word, love vocabulary :)
Yeah, I read about people using a lot of powdered coca...sounded like cocaine to me :)....So cocaine is probably just the isolated element that gets you high from the coca plant...Did not know it was that specific
I guess geographically it would make sense for Spain to colonise first the eastern side of the continent first . But what actually happened was that the inca empire already had good roads, organisation and infrastructure thus easier to take over, plus all the mines were there. They may have even kept cuzco as the capital if it was so high up in the mountains, so they founded the city of Lima, conveniently near the sea to ship the silver out to panama and then spain., to the point that Lima was a major city when Buenos Aires was a village. But after about 200 years the other areas in south america had grown so much it was decided to create new viceroyalties particularly after the said minerals started shipping out of buenos aires and not lima.
The coca leaf as you said its widely used in the andes, and even has a spiritual aspect to the locals. You'll fund coca tea everywhere and even coca smoothies, coca chocolate etc, its harmless gives energy.. But once it is treated with a whole bunch of chemicals then you get cocaine as the drug.
The Castilians went after the empires and the riches, franbalcal. Areas like modern Argentina were too undedeveloped and without prospect other than being a port for Bolivia (Alto Perú) but the Castilians were too bureaucratic-minded to consider that seriously for a long time: everything had to go through Lima (and then to Panama and so on to Seville, freedom of choice was not in their book). The main reason to promote La Plata was to stop Portuguese expansion.
eek, please research more next time. PotoSí and no, coca leaves do not equal cocaine. 乁( •_• )ㄏ
4:32 So I was following along with the narration: Uh huh, new process from Mexico. Uh huh, here are the raw material needed for it. Uh huh, a huge pool of elemental mercury, - no wait, WHAT?!
I want books, series, film, games... anything. This could be its own new genre. Soooo interesting.
Yes!!
consoomer
@@boozecruiseryou are literally on UA-cam
Yo how do you only have 19k followers?
An HBO series on this would be trill as fuck
Excellent summary
very interesting story about a little known place at a little known time. on the backs of native labour the spanish mined so much silver that it wrecked their economy with inflation.
literally, if spain hadn't eaten the brunt of american silver coming to europe, their economy would still be doing well today and they'd be a successful and powerful country.
Bakunin we study this in high school in Spain
prigual outside spain it's never taught, in america most you'd hear of spanish empire in school is columbus arriving to americas and maybe spanish-american war, nothing about economic history
It wasnt just the inflation. Most of the silver and gold arrived at Cadiz or Sevilla and would be transported of to Austrian and German banks that were financing Spain s Holy War
Bakunin in Texas we learn about the greedy filthy and violent Spaniards and their failed conquest of the Americas... to sum it up Spaniards failed in their efforts and but not all is lost at least they gave the world tacos other than that they are a mere pittance of what they once were....
Slim Pickens the smelly spaniards had nothing to do with tacos. the native mexicans like aztecs already made tortillas and made tacos with fish and meat. all the spanish brought is disease, racism, and slavery.
You should hear the song Potosi from Social Waste (its a Greek band but they have added a full description and subs for that city)
Μήπως εννοείς τούς Social Waste?
Things I learned in Potosi: The streets were made narrow and short to cut down on the force of the winds, apparently after Toledo's time. There are still people mining silver, but their life expectancy in the mines is 10-15 years. Coca is widely used, and legal, in Peru, Bolivia and part of Argentina. It is chewed, but is also manufacured in teabags. It is not the same as cocaine.
New city name suggestions:
Ancap town or Helldorado
Well, we see a lot about the wars and general crisis in the 17 century, but I kind of miss how they get so well equipped after the discover of the new lands in America, and the silver and golden mines, it's so interesting know how those mines change the war, and how deadly the wars become, just because they had money to spend in better equipments Ahahahah, just see the paintings of the wars in the 17 century period, the armors seen so cool
Epimetheus hablas castellano? :o
si, hablo castellano...pero mas o meno basico :)
Epimetheus :D big was my surprise at the final part you said thank you so much damas y caballeros! That sounds really badass and cool:D
Well, keep the good job
Saludos from Chile
I'm fron Bolivia and believe it or not the rich mountain still has some silver.... Potosi is a wonderful place with architecture frozen in time and the most wonderful people.
This would make such a good movie, but you know instead of cocaine-fueled entrepreneurship of the pirate age, it would be Spanish Leo DiCaprio seeking riches, falling in love with the governor's daughter, and running away with her to the American colonies. Lame.
Amazing work. Thank you.
Damn. Never heard of this. Insane!
The art accentuated the tale perfectly. 😂👍
Cool video! But note that coca is not cocaine. More precisely, it is to cocaine what alcohol-free beer is to absinthe (the leafs have about 0.5-1% of pure cocaine in it). If you chew it, you feel a little bit more energetic, less hungry and your tongue goes slightly numb for a few minutes. That's about that, comparable to the effects of a strong coffee, except that it also helps with altitude sickness. Very likely, the miners weren't so full of themselves because of cocaine from the coca leaves but because they were usually nobodies who quickly became rich which gave them an unearned sense of self-importance. The only reason coca is illegal outside of Latin America is that you can refine the cocaine in it. Similarly, some countries limit poppy seed production. I think that both are idiotic (or should I say poppycock? :-) ) since you need hectars of the stuff to produce anything, you cannot hide it and so it is easy to monitor (as for the poppy, you need the oil from an unripe plant to make opium, the seeds themselves have practically no opium content).
Super interesting
A get rich scheme with coke involved? Sounds like a good time to me
Could be very useful mining current day cities of Chicago & New York..
Gracias ese
De nada compañero
Great work and appropriate mocking tone for this testament to insanity. Been reading Alex del Mar History of Precious Metals, who has the same disgusted opinion of the Spanish destruction of South America.and its indigenous people.
Edit for: and its...people.
How do we grow up with no mention of this in the history books?
Potosi querido, es cierto eso de que es posible un derrumbe en esa montaña? Entre las minas....
Man, there are a few things you've got wrong. I am from Potosi and lived there almost all my life, and 'Quechua' is NOT a nickname, it is a language that people from the Andes know very well, including myself.
There’s loads of things he got wrong. He’s researching is so lazy, it’s the same with many of his videos
@@adam007izesource?
Well done! It's plain to see you had fun working on this project. My 50 cents: The Ildefonso dam broke in 1626, when Toledo was already dead, and he died peacefully in a villa, not in jail. They didn't have cocaine back then in Potosí: They chewed the coca leaves together with seashell ashes, which helps releasing the alkaloid that helps defeating hunger, weakness and most important, the altitude sickness. This is done still nowadays, for nothing beats the coca for such a purpose. The coca fields were close to Cusco.
Someone needs to forward this video to the executives at HBO ASAP!
THANK YOU FOR THIS
POTOSI FUELED THE CREATION OF CAPITALISM
Ah yes, brutalized, genocide, slavery capitalism
What a crazy bit of early American history
Estimado Sr. Epimethius:
The correct pronunciation of Potosi is Poto-See, not Potosy. Gracias. :)
Coca is not cocaine. Not the same.
So no, not everyone was high in cocaine
Smart
This is like the South American version of Tombstone
Francisco de Toledo did nothing wrong.
Francisco de Toledo did everything wrong
There is no such thing as whites. We are all one human race.
you're the one that's bitching about someone else bitching. equally as annoying.
Starting assumptions
Anarcho-capitalism in a nutshell
Assassins creed : Potosi
With Dona Ana Lezama de Urinza and Dona Eustaquia de Sonza as the Assassins. They were these two badass wealthy swordswomen that went vigilante in Potosi.
morphius morph from orph
The silver also destroyed the economy of Islamic territories, devaluating their currency, that they could not obtain or produce, but Europe could.
That’s awesome🥈
0:28 y u gotta add Tony Montana from Scarface?
But Potosi is in Bolivia.
True. But it used to be in the vice-royalty of Peru before the creation of Bolivia.
Potosí-Bolivia. 🇧🇴
How do the 7 pillars of Colonialism relate to this?...
Op
Potosi is in Bolivia smh...
Mr. BergAin yes
It was called Peru at the time