Mercury, Mining, and Empire: The Human and Ecological Cost of Colonial Silver Mining in the Andes by Nicholas A. Robins (review)

Mercury, Mining, and Empire examines silver and mercury production in the Andes following the European invasion in the sixteenth century and the effects of those activities on two communities where extraction was carried out: Potosí in Bolivia (silver) and Huancavelica in Peru (mercury). Before the invasion, both had participated in the tightly integrated, multifaceted, and complex Inca economic and religious system that dominated the Andean highland and coastal regions. Robins cogently and forcefully argues that native Andean peoples were conscripted into the ranks of “foot-soldiers” of a global protocapitalism (p. 4), and that the oppressive, caste-based colonial system affected native people’s minds and bodies and relationships within their communities.

The metallurgical process at the heart of this system was amalgamation, introduced by the Spanish. Amalgamation extracts silver from low-grade silver ores by pulverizing them, and then mixing them with mercury. The mercury is then burned off, leaving silver metal. The toxic effects of mercury on the human organism are well-known and were recorded in Potosí by many contemporary observers. Indigenous peoples already were considered subhuman by the invaders. The devastating effects of mercury poisoning on these same indigenous peoples reified this perception and were used to justify further exploitation. This stance, which sociologists label emotional distancing, has rationalized human exploitation and aggression for millennia.

Between 1550 and 1800, the ore resources of Huancavelica and Potosí produced 80 percent of the world’s silver. Silver was essential to building the modern capitalist economy. Robins reports that the silver these communities produced moved from Spain to Britain, France, Holland, and Italy, where silver was exported as pesos of eight, underwriting British and Dutch trade with the Levant, the East Indies, China, and Persia. In many cases, silver moved directly from Callao in Peru to Acapulco, Mexico, where it then was shipped to Manila. By 1600, silver pesos of eight had become a global currency. Robins argues that these events provide the first widespread example of racial exploitation—indeed, of genocide—of an industrial capitalist nature tied to a worldwide market.

Robins’s exhaustive archival data from Bolivia, Peru, and Spain provide essential documentation for his historical narrative. His ingenious and novel use of EPA pollution dispersion models enables him to estimate the level of mercury toxicity in both Huancavelica and Potosí during different time periods. These invaluable data are illustrated in maps of the respective communities that show mercury levels at particular points in time; some of these data are more clearly presented in a 2011 article by Robins and collaborators in Atmospheric Environment (vol. 45 [2011]: 7619–26).

One of the many strengths of this impressive book is Robins’s use of wholly independent data sets (historical/archival and environmental studies). These intersect and make for a convincing case study. The sixty pages of endnotes, apart from a glossary and extensive bibliography, speak to Robins’s thorough scholarship. This socio-environmental history, as Robins calls it, is a pathbreaking contribution to the field.

To Robins’s moral outrage regarding the Andean example of racial exploitation and genocide, I contribute the voice of an archaeologist. The Andes was one of the five world regions where civilization emerged. Andean peoples invented ingenious agricultural strategies to manage a precipitous environment, one that offered a range of ecological niches determined by altitude within tropical latitudes. The Andes also present daunting topographical obstacles, in the form of miles-deep canyons, or barrancas. Andean engineers spanned these barrancas with unique, tightly woven, swinging fiber bridges, across which llama trains, alpacas, and people could move. Unfortunately for the later inhabitants, the Andes are rich in metallic ore minerals. The region was one of two world areas where metallurgy independently emerged. Ancient Andean metalworkers fully availed themselves of those mineral deposits, smelting and co-smelting ores from a variety of deposits to produce alloys of copper-tin...