Conflict and Cooperation on the Rio de la Plata: Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch Merchants in the Mid-seventeenth Century

This chapter examines the flow of silver, especially unregistered silver, from Potosí into the Atlantic market and explains the variations in historical estimates concerning the levels of outgoing silver though an understanding of the connections between Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch trading networks. It was largely unregistered silver that flowed through the port of Buenos Aires, first in the hands of the Portuguese and later, due to geopolitical shifts, through Dutch merchants. The collapse of the trading network from Potosí through Tucumán and Buenos Aires to Portuguese Brazil following the breakup of the Union of Crowns in 1640 left Spanish merchants without attractive investments. Subsequently, the increasing amounts of silver leaving through Buenos Aires was a result of merchants in Peru investing their unregistered silver in revived commercial activity made possible by the arrival of Dutch merchants following the Peace of Münster (1648). This trade was not without risks to the Dutch who were forbidden by the terms of the treaty from trading directly with Spanish ports in the New World. However, in practice such trade was not necessarily illegitimate and was often carried through commercial instruments and sustained by the institutional framework of the Spanish Empire.