Hacker News Reader

Comment by vondur | Hacker News Reader

The poor natives in Peru were doomed once the Spanish discovered all of the silver present. I believe they basically enslaved the local indigenous population.

View on HN

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_colonial_Spanish_Am...

Ironically, all the gold and silver the Spanish extracted and transferred to Spain did the Spanish little good, as it simply resulted in inflation.

Like what we do today with fiat money.

The main losers of this were all the European nations which did not get the gold/silver influx, as they also got the same inflation but without the compensating revenue.

"did the Spanish little good" ?!? All of South America is now Spanish speaking.. how did that happen ? and their genetics are spread thoroughly.. I dont see 580 million people speaking the Dutch language (who were known as cooperators, traders, culturally respectful in many cases)

edit- respeito ao Brasil, lar da vuvuzela barulhenta

Correction: most of South America. Brazil was a Portuguese colony thanks to the Treaty of Tordesilhas from 1494 and therefore speaks Portuguese, not Spanish.

(Brazilian gold ended up in England, helping fuel the industrial revolution)

> All

Brazil, with the largest area, population, and economy doesn't count?

The US speaks English. Fat lot of good that did the colonial British :-)

> I dont see 580 million people speaking the Dutch language (who were known as cooperators, traders, culturally respectful in many cases)

I don't mean to engage in a flame war like we saw above, but "cooperators, culturally respectful" does not apply to any European Empire, afaik:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/10/dutch-colonial-history-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_colonization_of_the_Amer...

> the Dutch language (who were known as cooperators, traders, culturally respectful in many cases)

Really? The Dutch brutally enslaved large parts of Africa and Asia.

Hey, the Spaniards fought the Ottomans and the French incessantly for quite a while using the silver from the Americas. ;) Also the Spanish defaulted on loans a few times during this period. So yeah, they kinda spent all their money on stuff that did more harm in the long run.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com