Silver from Potosí (1545) made the Spanish peso the first truly global currency: from 1571, Manila galleons carried it across the Pacific to China.
The events
- Silver discovered at Potosí1545 · Potosí. Vast silver deposits were found in the Cerro Rico in the Andes. Potosí became one of the world's largest cities, and silver mined by indigenous forced labour (the mita) flowed to Europe and China, transforming the world economy.
- Spanish Manila and the Manila galleons1571 · Manila. Miguel López de Legazpi founded Spanish Manila. Galleons sailing between Manila and Acapulco carried American silver in exchange for Chinese silk and porcelain, linking Asia and the Americas by regular trade for the first time.
More amazing facts
- 1519 · 1521 While Magellan's expedition circled the globe, Cortés fought the Aztecs.
- 1521 · 1697 The last independent Maya kingdom fell only in 1697, 176 years after Tenochtitlan, when Peter the Great was already ruling Russia.
- 1543 · 1547 Ivan IV was crowned tsar in 1547, four years after Copernicus published that the Earth goes round the Sun.
- 1556 · 1584 Ivan the Terrible, the Mughal emperor Akbar and Elizabeth I were contemporaries: from 1558 to 1584 all three reigned at the same time.
- 1564 In 1564 Ivan Fyodorov printed the Apostol in Moscow, and Shakespeare was born in England.
- 1565 · 1572 Ivan the Terrible's Oprichnina (1565–1572) and France's St Bartholomew's Day massacre (1572) were bloody purges of the same decade.