Bringing Silver Value Back on Track
Silver is a precious metal with a wide array of uses. Silver value has been an acknowledged standard since ancient times when it was the major currency of trade. Although silver value has diminished over the recent times, it still plays a major role in the international market today.
The first known source of silver is believed to be the mines around Anatolia, now known as Turkey, in 4000 BC. This supplied the flourishing cultures around Greece, Crete, and the Near East. Around 2500 BC the Chaldeyans developed a process called “cupellation” to extract silver from silver-lead ores. During the rise and fall of civilizations around Europe and Asia Minor, silver value remains high, with major silver sources moving from Laurium (near Athens, and produced the largest amount of silver during this era), Asia Minor, Sardinia, Asia, Spain, Germany, and Austria-Hungary.
Silver trading in the Americas started in the 1500’s when Europeans exchanged personal items including silver for fur pelts with the Native American tribes. During these times, the natives live off the land and have no knowledge about silver value. However, they liked the shape and designs of the silver jewelries, brooches, and pins that they prefer them for trade. Eventually it became the medium for the fur trade.
The development of amalgamation using mercury to extract silver from alloys increased silver production. The first silver mines in the New World were believed to be in Bolivia and Mexico in the 1500’s. This brought into existence the international silver standard. Silver exploitation started in Peru a centrury later.
By the middle of the 1800’s the beaver population had dwindled because of the high demand for fur, causing t...
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...hlorine. This is why billions of dollars are spent on silver for water purification systems.
These are just a fraction of the uses of Silver in different industries. The tensile strength, conductivity, catalytic activity, and corrosion free properties of silver make versatile and its applicability is endless. The increasing demand for silver will eventually deplete the silver reserves and will, in turn increase silver value.
Although currently low, many have predicted a rise of silver value in the not-so-distant future because of its increasing demands in a multitude of industries. Many people in trade are expecting a “silver bubble” or a price explosion that would skyrocket the silver value and eventually create another economic panic. Like gold, silver may come in paper silver of different forms such as silver certificates, pool accounts, and leverage accounts.
On a stop in Colorado during a business trip to California in 1883, Coin became fascinated with silver and took up a pick to try his hand at mining. Calling his mine “Silver Bell,” Harvey’s mine was the second largest producer in the area; however, due to the increase in transportation costs, increasing labor unrest, and the plummeting market value of silver, Harvey abandoned his mine. From Coin’s mining days, he formed an interest in silver as opposed to gold as the U.S. monetary system standard. In 1891, he became the chairman of the Trans-Mississippi Congress, whose interest was in promoting legislation that would benefit the states west of the Mississippi.
The global flow of silver effected the mid-sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century economically because silver made the world go round, socially because everyone was dependent on some sort of trade, and politically because silver was a high priority to important world powers. In this document based assignment, it would have been convenient to have a document about the opinion of either a Potosi Indian or a peasant from the commercial city of Hangzhou because both points of view would give further insight into the negative side of this time periods lust for silver, and how the insanity ruined lives.
Around the beginning of the sixteenth centruy, many countires had started to explore farther away and finding new territories. New products like sugar and taobacco began to emerge around the world in many places. Many countries in Europe were gaining power due to the control of colonies in the Americas. Asian countries did not explore as much, but still managed to remain large and powerful for a while. The global flow of silver had economic effects on inflating prices of goods and stimulating econimic policy of mercantilism, and social effects on negative effects on the lower class around the world during the mid-sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century.
During the period 1550-1800, the colonization of the Americas by European civilizations led to massive shifts in economic power from the West to East and vice-versa. An increase in global competition among western civilizations and against their asian counterparts drove Europeans to search for wealth elsewhere, and thus colonizing the Americas. One of the easiest ways to generate a profit, increase a civilizations wealth, and ultimately their military power was through the silver trade. In monopolizing said trade, Europe was able to establish a somewhat steady economic connection to the very wealthy Asian civilizations. However, european nations were struggling to keep control of the silver trade out of Asian hands, which caused major shifts
Areas within Japan, such as Nagasaki, acted as the biggest suppliers of silver to regions across the globe. By leaving out Japan, the opportunity to fully analyze the connections established by Japan with other regions and the effects on Japan’s economy and society has been eradicated. However, with the documents provided, the silver trade drastically changed trade around the world by connecting different and distant regions across the world and establishing communication on a global scale. The emergence of silver catapulted many societies to amass their wealth and power on silver, and shifted the economies and societies of these regions towards relying on their stability through a dependence on
The creation of societies in the West resulted in the blossoming of three new industries: mining, ranching, and farming. Mining began at large with the discovery of gold in California in 1849 and continued with other discoveries and “rushes” later on; these rus...
Fur trading started between the Europeans along with the Aboriginals when the most valuable beaver pelts were substituted for metal and clothing goods such as iron knives and axis, copper kettles, blankets and trinkets. The beaver pelts were well desired by the Europeans for the reason that using this fur for headgear provided an elegant way to keep dry. However these pelts were for fashion, as men and women could be instantly noted within the social hierarchy by according to their beaver hats. It was so valuable that the sand on the floor was filtered to save every hair that had fallen off. For the Europeans, captivating advantages of the rich furs from the Indians in the New World was a major factor in generating handsome profits, and there is no other pelt exchanging business enterprise like the Hudson's Bay Company.
Aboriginal women had occupied an essential position in the fur trade of the North American region from its birth during the 17th and 18th centuries. Even though this is true, the role of women, especially those of the Native American society, has been ignored a great deal in the entire history of fur trade. Contrary to the belief that the whole fur trade activity was only male-dominated, it very much depended upon Native women and their participation and labor in order to ensure survival as well as economic success. This paper will attempt to illuminate how Native women played the role as important producers when it comes to fur trade of the American Plains and, of course, the Canadian region. This paper will also deal with the two important company's namely the North West and Hudson's Bay Company and tell how each functioned during the time of fur trade. The term “fur traders” is the term often used to described anyone who was interested in the traffic of furs. The traditional picture has been that of a male in buckskin shirt and a raccoon cap, dispensing alcohol and trinkets to gullible savages, in turn for the quality furs worth 10 times their value.
The fortune of silver and gold discovered in Colorado’s mountains were locked inside complex ores consisting of granite, quartz and other metals that rendered them useless, unless they could be separated (Egan. NPS). Miners originally imported stamp mills and Spanish arrastras to extract the gold and silver but both these methods were inefficient and lost upwards of 70 percent of the sought after mineral (NPS). In 1867, chemistry professor Nathanial P. Hill discovered an efficient method called the Swansea process to separate the precious metals and opened the Boston Colorado Smelter in Blackhawk (NPS).
Yushao Wu, Junwu Dang, Fang Liu, Tong Au, & Lili Wang. (2014). China Report of the Development on Silver Industry. Beijing: Social Science Academic
-Discuss the silver vs. gold argument, listing at least one argument for silver and one argument for gold.
Colorado also has a rich mining history which began in about 1859 with the discovery of gold and development of new reserves, Colorado’s present day industry is a modern, innovative, safe and environmentally responsible citizen that extracts a wide variety of minerals such as; gold, Marble, and gypsum from the earth, valued at more than $2 billion each year. (Colorado Mining Association, 2007)
In Salinas Valley around the 1850s, gold was found by a man named James W. Marshall in California. The first people to hear and be familiar with the “Gold Rush” were the people in Oregon, Hawaii, and Latin America who started to flock to the state. Everyone told and the word spread which led around 300,000 people to California from the US. At first, gold was found on the ground and was to be picked up. Later on, gold was discovered from streams and riverbeds.
Gold, nothing can compare to this precious metal. A symbol of wealth and prosperity, it has been a value for explorers and adventurers and a lure for conquerors. Today it is vital to commerce and finance; popular in ornamentation, and increasing importance in technology.
Around 1848 gold was discovered in the American River, which ran right through California. By 1849 tens of thousands of people from around the world mad...