Red Mountain Rendezvous: Potosi's Rapid Rise from Real de Minas to Villa Imperial

Sunday, January 6, 2013: 8:30 AM
La Galerie 2 (New Orleans Marriott)
Kris E. Lane, Tulane University
 

Luis Capoche's 1585 'Relacion de Potosi' provides perhaps the thickest description of life and work in this Andean boomtown. This paper relies on Capoche and other early writers, plus documents from Potosi's notary archives, to trace the mining camp's meteoric rise from virtually uninhabited wilderness to one of the most populous cities in the early modern world. The paper emphasizes the novelty of a remote mining camp exploding into a great city.

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