The Mexico City silver merchants and their credit networks in royal mining

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• Department of History

The merchants of Mexico City concentrated most of the silver that was produced in the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Due to the fact that the white metal was the main means of exchange at the international level, these actors monopolized the exchanges that were carried out inside and outside of New Spain. The study that I carried out delves into the way in which these merchants concentrated most of the metal produced in the Viceroyalty, as of 1670, as a consequence of the regularisation of the supply of quicksilver due to the participation of the Consulate in its financing. For this,, I study the trajectories of a small number of bankers or silver buyers, who were the largest lenders of the Viceroyalty, as well as the credit relationships they established with the merchants-aviators of the main silver production nuclei, who acquired the metal in pasta in large quantities and enabled the miners with money and merchandise. Likewise, I analyse the credit instruments used to finance them.