The Rise and Fall of Spain: How the Richest Empire on Earth Went Bankrupt

In the 1500s, Spain owned the richest silver mountain on Earth. Cerro Rico, at Potosí in today's Bolivia, and the mines of Mexico sent more than 16,000 tonnes of silver to Seville by the official count. Yet King Philip II stopped paying his debts four times, his heirs defaulted again and again, and by 1700 the Spanish Empire was broke, beaten and about to be carved up at the Treaty of Utrecht. This animated map documentary follows the silver from the Andes to Seville, Genoa, Amsterdam and Ming China to explain how the greatest windfall in history became a trap. You'll see the year 1492 that made Spain, Charles V's inheritance and the election he bought on credit, the Potosí mines and the mita forced-labour draft, the treasure fleets and the price revolution, the Genoese bankers and the "borrower from hell", the Dutch Revolt and the Spanish Armada, copper money, the 1640 revolts of Catalonia and Portugal, and the War of the Spanish Succession. We also look at the "resource curse" (Dutch disease) debate and why historians still disagree about the decline of Spain. *Chapters* 0:00 Intro 1:45 1492: The Year Spain Won the Lottery 4:58 The Accidental Emperor 9:31 The Mountain Made of Money 13:38 The Treasure Fleets 17:22 Too Much Money 21:41 The King Who Stopped Paying 25:16 The War That Ate the Silver 29:05 1588: Betting It All on a Fleet 33:37 Fake Silver 37:31 1640: The Year It Cracked 41:23 The Last Habsburg 44:15 So What Really Went Wrong? *Sources (selection)* Earl J. Hamilton, American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501–1650 (1934). Review: https://eh.net/book_reviews/american-... Drelichman & Voth, Lending to the Borrower from Hell (Princeton UP, 2014). Papers: https://econ-papers.upf.edu/papers/11... · https://www.jvoth.com/Serial_Defaults... Drelichman, "The Curse of Moctezuma: American Silver and the Dutch Disease", Explorations in Economic History (2005) Drelichman & Voth, "Institutions and the Resource Curse in Early Modern Spain" (2008): https://economics.ubc.ca/wp-content/u... J.H. Elliott, "The Decline of Spain", Past & Present (1961); Henry Kamen, "The Decline of Spain: A Historical Myth?", Past & Present (1978) UNESCO World Heritage: City of Potosí: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/420/ Library of Congress, "A short story about Potosí": https://blogs.loc.gov/international-c... Álvarez-Nogal & Chamley, "Debt policy under constraints", Economic History Review (2014) Ruth MacKay, Life in a Time of Pestilence (Cambridge UP, 2019) #mapsodic #history #spanishempire #animatedhistory