I don't mind, but as I said my memory of the details is fuzzy. if I weren't busy dealing with other stuff and wanted to refresh I'd look up something like "Spanish empire decline gold oversupply"
This is a general thing that happens to resource-rich nations - the Dutch Disease, the resource curse. If a country makes too much money pumping stuff out of the ground, it depresses industrial growth. The country gets rich, which means it can buy lots of stuff from everyone else instead of paying its own people to make it (who now expect more pay for less work). Its stronger currency accelerates imports, depresses exports. Over time the country falls behind in economic development while its resource production falls as mines are depleted. Then it ends up as a poor backwater behind its developed neighbors (unless other factors intervene).
However, this story gets oversold a bit. Being resource rich has costs (which break countries if ignored), but it has more benefits. E.g., Saudi Arabia/Qatar/Bahrain/Kuwait have regional and even global significance due to oil wealth, even though they're patches in the desert hampered by ultraconservatism.
The Spanish Empire didn't just spend all its gold and silver on wine and fancy clothes - it bought giant professional armies. It absolutely dominated 16th and 17th century Europe, conquering half of Italy and repeatedly challenging France, the strongest European power, despite having a lower population and starting in a weaker position. It also colonized much of the New World plus the Philippines, making Spanish a world languge. Sure, Britain, France, and the Netherlands preyed on and eventually supplanted Spain (and did so without Inca slaves mining for them), but Spain was the number one world power because of all the wealth it acquired.
Which the Spaniards no sooner perceived, but they, mounted on generous Steeds, well weapon'd with Lances and Swords, begin to exercise their bloody Butcheries and Strategems, and overrunning their Cities and Towns, spar'd no Age, or Sex, nay not so much as Women with Child, but ripping up their Bellies, tore them alive in pieces. They laid Wagers among themselves, who should with a Sword at one blow cut, or divide a Man in two; or which of them should decollate or behead a Man, with the greatest dexterity; nay farther,which should sheath his Sword in the Bowels of a Man with the quickest dispatch and expedition.
They snatcht young Babes from the Mothers Breasts, and then dasht out the brains of those innocents against the Rocks; others they cast into Rivers scoffing and jeering them, and call'd upon their Bodies when falling with derision, the true testimony of their Cruelty, to come to them, and inhumanely exposing others to their Merciless Swords, together with the Mothers that gave them Life.
They erected certain Gibbets, large, but low made, so that their feet almost reacht the ground, every one of which was so order'd as to bear Thirteen Persons in Honour and Reverence (as they said blasphemously) of our Redeemer and his Twelve Apostles, under which they made a Fire to burn them to Ashes whilst hanging on them: But those they intended to preserve alive, they dismiss'd, their Hands half cut, and still hanging by the Skin, to carry their Letters missive to those that fly from us and ly sculking on the Mountains, as an exprobation of their flight.
The Lords and Persons of Noble Extract were usually expos'd to this kind of Death; they order'd Gridirons to be placed and supported with wooden Forks, and putting a small Fire under them, these miserable Wretches by degrees and with loud Shreiks and exquisite Torments, at last Expir'd.
I once saw Four or Five of their most Powerful Lords laid on these Gridirons, and thereon roasted, and not far off, Two or Three more over-spread with the same Commodity, Man's Flesh; but the shril Clamours which were heard there being offensive to the Captain, by hindring his Repose, he commanded them to be strangled with a Halter. The Executioner (whose Name and Parents at Sevil are not unknown to me) prohibited the doing of it; but stopt Gags into their Mouths to prevent the hearing of the noise (he himself making the Fire)till that they dyed, when they had been roasted as long as he thought convenient. I was an Eye-Witness of these and and innumerable Number of other Cruelties: And because all Men, who could lay hold of the opportunity, sought out lurking holes in the Mountains, to avoid as dangerous Rocks so Brutish and Barbarousa People, Strangers to all Goodness, and the Extirpaters and Adversaries of Men, they bred up such fierce hunting Dogs as would devour an Indian like a Hog, at first sight in less than a moment: Now such kind of Slaughters and Cruelties as these were committed by the Curs, and if at any time it hapned, (which was rarely)that the Indians irritated upon a just account destroy'd or took away the Life of any Spaniard, they promulgated and proclaim'd this Law among them, that One Hundred Indians should dye for every individual Spaniard that should be slain.
the portuguese losing all their control over the atlantic trade to india to the dutch is also up there, although funding the industrialization of your enemies with gold that is causing incredibly disruptive inflation on your economy is spanish excelence in display
Surely some stupid thing the spanish did back when they had all the gold their slaves could mine.
my memory is fuzzy but I think mining so much gold was itself a mistake that destroyed their monetary policy
Exactly, coupled with "oh let's buy shit from abroad cuz it's better and we filthy rich, haha, nothing can go wrong in the long run"
The "west" after outsourcing all their manufacturing and moving towards a service economy :side-eye-1:
@spark155 bring us the knowledge from the book you suggested me and I haven't read yet.
How if you don't mind me asking?
I don't mind, but as I said my memory of the details is fuzzy. if I weren't busy dealing with other stuff and wanted to refresh I'd look up something like "Spanish empire decline gold oversupply"
I found this essay after some googling. Seems like it describes what you said. If anybody wants to read more about it.
This is a general thing that happens to resource-rich nations - the Dutch Disease, the resource curse. If a country makes too much money pumping stuff out of the ground, it depresses industrial growth. The country gets rich, which means it can buy lots of stuff from everyone else instead of paying its own people to make it (who now expect more pay for less work). Its stronger currency accelerates imports, depresses exports. Over time the country falls behind in economic development while its resource production falls as mines are depleted. Then it ends up as a poor backwater behind its developed neighbors (unless other factors intervene).
However, this story gets oversold a bit. Being resource rich has costs (which break countries if ignored), but it has more benefits. E.g., Saudi Arabia/Qatar/Bahrain/Kuwait have regional and even global significance due to oil wealth, even though they're patches in the desert hampered by ultraconservatism.
The Spanish Empire didn't just spend all its gold and silver on wine and fancy clothes - it bought giant professional armies. It absolutely dominated 16th and 17th century Europe, conquering half of Italy and repeatedly challenging France, the strongest European power, despite having a lower population and starting in a weaker position. It also colonized much of the New World plus the Philippines, making Spanish a world languge. Sure, Britain, France, and the Netherlands preyed on and eventually supplanted Spain (and did so without Inca slaves mining for them), but Spain was the number one world power because of all the wealth it acquired.
their only "mistake" was not subjugating the goddamn Dutch & English
😬
found the protestant
--Bartolome de las Casas a Dominican (Catholic) friar and first Bishop of Chiapas, A Brief Account of the Destruction of the West Indies, first published 1542 CE, p5-6 of the 2007 Project Gutenberg translation
black legend = black book of communism
They would have become same as them in that scenario
the portuguese losing all their control over the atlantic trade to india to the dutch is also up there, although funding the industrialization of your enemies with gold that is causing incredibly disruptive inflation on your economy is spanish excelence in display