3 - Mining frontiers and the gold economy

Summary

New Granada had quickly become renowned for its gold following the conquests of the mid-sixteenth century, and gold mining continued to be of central importance to the colonial relationship throughout the centuries of Spanish rule. Of all New Granada's resources, gold seemed the most significant to Spanish governments, because it financed trade with Spain, stimulated interregional commerce, and provided an important source of revenue to the royal exchequer. This point was forcefully expressed by a late eighteenth-century observer, when he noted that

the principal and almost sole motive for the subsistence of this vast kingdom and its commerce with Spain … is the gold which is taken from the numerous mines worked in the provinces of Popayán, Chocó, and Antioquia; the other provinces, such as the Audiencias of Quito and Santa Fe, subsist upon this gold and the trade with the mining provinces. …

Thus, insofar as both external trade and domestic markets depended on gold production, the development of the mining sector is clearly a major theme in New Granada's economic history during the eighteenth century, and one that deserves close attention. However, before we examine the progress of mining and its role in New Granada's economic life in the late colonial period, we should from the outset be careful not to exaggerate the wealth that gold generated.