In 1607, Jamestown was a struggling swamp camp, Mexico City already had a university, and the king of Spain was declaring his fourth bankruptcy in fifty years. How did the richest empire on Earth, sitting on the biggest silver mines ever found, end up begging its creditors for time? This video follows the money from Potosí to Seville to Antwerp: the Price Revolution, an economy that bought instead of made, the Armada of 1588, borrowing against silver fleets that hadn't landed yet, Dutch and English privateers, and the slow loss of Portugal, the Netherlands and the Americas. A story about treasure, debt, and the difference between having money and making it.

Sources

J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469–1716 (London: Edward Arnold, 1963).
Earl J. Hamilton, American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501–1650 (Harvard University Press, 1934).
Geoffrey Parker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II
Henry Kamen, Spain, 1469–1714: A Society of Conflict (Longman, multiple editions).
"The Rise and Fall of Spain (1270–1850)," Economic History Review 66, no. 1 (2013).