William S. Atwell
· 2022
Abstract
The most successful of those leaders were Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–1598) and the first Tokugawa shogun, Ieyasu (1542–1616), whose commercial and foreign policies have been the subjects of numerous studies. China’s other major source of silver at this time was the New World, where fabulously rich mines had been discovered by the Spanish during the 1540s. As D. A. Brading, Harry E. Cross and others have demonstrated, however, it was not until the mercury amalgamation process of refining was disseminated throughout Spanish-America several decades later that bullion production there began to soar to the heights which would transform world monetary history. From 1487 to 1520 government revenues from gold and silver mining were reported together. Since the amount of gold mined is thought to have been very small, however, the totals are listed as if they were only silver.