Gone Platinum: Contraband and Chemistry in Eighteenth-Century Colombia

This paper examines the strange career of platinum, an element first identified in coastal Colombia. Around the turn of the eighteenth century, platinum appeared alongside gold dust in the alluvial mines of the Pacific lowlands and quickly caused problems for mine owners, merchants, and the Spanish crown. It was impossible to melt using  available technology, but could be passed off as low-karat gold to unsuspecting merchants. Crown attempts to forbid platinum mining and circulation grew more elaborate until scientists in England and other parts of Europe began to experiment with the metal and publish results. They had received platinum mixed with gold dust via the contraband slave trade to the Atrato River, on the Caribbean coast. The story of how platinum went from object of loathing to scientific sensation in the course of the eighteenth century shows how increasingly rigid mercantilist policies could clash with new expectations regarding the free exchange of scientific knowledge.