Gold (29 page)

The town of Springs
:
H. E. Frimmel, D. I. Groves, et al., “The Formation and Preservation of the Witwatersrand Goldfields, the World's Largest Gold Province,” in
Economic Geology
, 100th Anniversary volume, 2005, 769–97,
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/geo6xx/geo646a/646A_PW/Papers/Surface-related_Papers/Frimmel05_WitsAu_EG100thAV.pdf
.

Forty percent of all the gold
:
Ibid.

The property covered
:
Herbie Trouw, Aurora underground manager and thirty-year veteran of the goldfield, interview with author.

Yet underground, the Aurora mine
:
Ibid.

In the exchange of fire
: See also Shain Germaner, “ ‘Bad Brad' Group Had Been Scouting,” IOL News, September 14, 2011,
http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/mpumalanga/bad-brad-group-had-been-scouting-1.1137200#.UXA74b_Xf0A
; “Aurora Justifies Mine Killings,”
Mail & Guardian
, August 13, 2010,
http://mg.co.za/article/2010-08-13-aurora-justifies-mine-killings
; “Mystery of Aurora Corpses,”
Mail & Guardian
, August 13, 2010,
http://mg.co.za/article/2010-08-13-mystery-of-aurora-corpses
.

A 2001 monograph
:
Peter Gastrow,
Theft from South African Mines and Refineries
, Chapter 2, “The Product Theft of Gold,” Monograph No. 54, 2001, Institute for Security Studies,
http://www.iss.co.za/Pubs/Monographs/No54/Chap2.html
.

At the Barberton mine
:
Martin Creamer, “Barberton's Criminal Mining Smashed,”
Mining Weekly
, September 10, 2010,
http://www.miningweekly.com/article/barbertons-criminal-miningsmashed
.

At just one of its mines
:
Gold Fields production from
http://www.goldfields.co.za/ops_south_deep.php
; gold price from Kitco at
http://www.kitco.com/scripts/hist_charts/yearly_graphs.plx
.

How many companies
:
For Gold Fields fourth-quarter profit in 2011 see
http://www.iol.co.za/business/companies/gold-fields-profits-increase-1.1236780#.Ubmm2JXXf0A
.

I have a little catalogue
: Thracian Treasures
(Varna, Bulgaria: Slavena Publishing House, 2006).

Today our asset menu
:
For date of invention of money, see Peter Bernstein,
The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000), 32.

Yet by the fourteenth century
:
Ibid., 110.

C
HAPTER
2: R
IVER OF
G
OLD

Spaniards came well equipped
:
See for example
http://www.classicalfencing.com/horsetraining.php
;
http://www.pbs.org/gunsgerms steel/pdf/episode2.pdf
.

When he set out
:
Bernstein,
The Power of Gold
, 113.

He mentioned it 114 times
:
See Jennifer Marx,
The Magic of Gold
(New York: Doubleday, 1978), 322–24; Richard Cowen at mygeology
page.ucdavis.edu/cowen/~GEL115/115ch8.html
. I have preferred Cowen's number as a more recent count.

“A thing like a ball of stone”
:
http://www.clio.missouristate.edu/chuchiak/hst%20350-theme%209-spanish-weapons-and-armor.htm
.

“Gazing on such wonderful sights”
:
http://www.chnm.gmu.edu/worldhistorysources/sources/conquestofnewspain.htm
.

The Florentine Codex
:
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, “Malinche Begs Mexicas to Help Spaniards,”
Florentine Codex
, Book 12, Chapter 18,
http://www.faculty.fullerton.edu/nfitch/nehaha/aztec11.html
; also at
http://www.historians.org
.

He was the bastard son
:
Bernstein,
The Power of Gold,
122–23.

The culture and appearance of the Andean people
:
John Hemming,
The Conquest of the Incas
(London: Macmillan, 1970; rev. ed., Penguin, 1983), 60.

They worked as part of
:
María Rostworowski de Diez Canseco,
History of the Inca Realm
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 182.

They could move their armies
:
Liesl Clark, “The Lost Inca Empire,” January 11, 2000,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/lost-inca-empire.html
.

“Such magnificent roads”
:
Hemming,
The Conquest of the Incas
, 101.

Their surgeons could drill holes
:
Valerie A. Andrushko and John W. Verano, “Prehistoric Trepanation in the Cuzco Region of Peru: A View into an Ancient Andean Practice,”
American Journal of Physical Anthropology
137 (2008): 4–13.

Early in 1527
:
Hemming,
The Conquest of the Incas,
25.

They had “glimpsed the edges of a great civilization”
: Ibid., 26.

The Inca's ancestors
:
Ibid., 121.

The throne did not pass
:
Ibid., 29.

He did not know whether his forces
:
Ibid., 30.

Now the Spanish force entered the shadow
:
Account of Spanish march to Cajamarca, first meeting with Atahualpa, and all events up to attack on Atahualpa and slaughter of Incas: Ibid., 31–43.

He had meant to capture them
:
Ibid., 45.

With the Inca in Spanish hands
:
Ibid., 49.

They valued gold
:
That gold was not the most valuable substance: from Ben Roberts, formerly head of the Department of Prehistory, British Museum, London, now on the faculty of Durham University.

In Cajamarca today
:
Hemming,
The Conquest of the Incas,
48.

A solid-gold sacrificial altar
:
Ibid., 65. Hemming says it weighed 19,000 pesos, and I have converted using 1 peso = 27.5 grams.

The wonders dazzled the Spaniards
:
Asian influence; see Bernstein,
The Power of Gold,
129.

In a single month they retrieved
:
Ibid., 130; conversion rate from
http://www.measuringworth.com
.

In Atahualpa, Pizarro had the tap
:
Hemming,
The Conquest of the Incas,
50–51.

Because of the Inca's divinity
:
Inca ruling through generals and Spaniards stripping Cuzco: Ibid., 55–65.

On April 14, 1533
:
Atahualpa's last days: Ibid., 71–78.

Pizarro was vilified
:
Ibid., 80–83.

Some died in fights
:
Pizarro's death: Bernstein,
The Power of Gold,
131.

C
HAPTER
3: T
HE
M
ASTER OF
M
EN

Spanish galleons
:
See general history in “The Spanish Treasure Fleets of 1715 and 1733: Disasters Strike at Sea,”
http://www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/129shipwrecks/
.

In 1523 the French corsair
:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1860715_1860714_1860704,00.html
.

There would be “no peace beyond the line”
:
Ian K. Steele, “Imperial Wars,” in
The Oxford Companion to American Military History
, ed. John Whiteclay Chambers II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 327.

Even so the great fleets
:
Bernstein,
The Power of Gold,
135.

Spain had driven out
:
Expulsion of Jews and Muslims: Bernstein,
The Power of Gold,
140.

“Gold and silver merely acquired”
:
Marie-Thérèse Boyer-Xambeu, Ghislain Delaplace, and Lucien Gillard,
Private Money and Public Currencies: The 16th Century Challenge
, trans. Azizeh Azodi (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), 116.

Merchants increased the use of bills of exchange
:
Bernstein,
The Power of Gold,
153–57.

In the late 1600s
:
Stephen Quinn, “Goldsmith-Banking: Mutual Acceptance and Interbanker Clearing in Restoration London,”
Explorations in Economic History
34 (1997), 411–32,
http://www.econ.tcu.edu/quinn/finhist/readings/goldsmiths.pdf
.

The great historian
:
Barry Eichengreen,
Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919–1939
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

The president of the World Bank
:
Alan Beattie, “Zoellick Seeks Gold Standard Debate,”
Financial Times
, November 7, 2010,
http://ft.com/cms/s/0/eda8f512-eaae-11df-b28d-00144feab49a.html#axzz2OfGvMLkz
.

On the American right
:
See for example Ron Paul, “Honest Money,”
http://www.ronpaul.com/on-the-issues/fiat-money-inflation-federal-reserve-2/
: “If our money were backed by gold and silver,
people couldn't just sit in some fancy building and push a button to create new money. They would have to engage in honest trade with another party that already has some gold in their possession.”

Similar silver coins
:
Bernstein,
The Power of Gold,
78.

In 1785
:
see for example “Thomas Jefferson, Propositions respecting Coinage,”
The Founders' Constitution,
University of Chicago Press web edition, eds. Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner,
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/al_8_5s5.html
.

Congress set a silver standard
:
See the Coinage Act of April 2, 1792,
http://www.constitution.org/uslaw/coinage1792.txt
.

A declining world gold supply
:
Bernstein,
The Power of Gold,
247.

In 1797 the report of a French fleet
:
Ibid., 199–201.

In 1803 they sold Louisiana
:
See first paragraph of note to “Primary Documents in American History, Louisiana Purchase,” online at Library of Congress,
http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Louisiana.html
.

The bankers running the transaction
:
For details of the sale, see
http://www.baringarchive.org.uk/features_exhibitions/louisiana _purchase
.

By 1834 the supply of gold in America
:
Congress reset gold price: Bernstein,
The Power of Gold,
248.

On January 24, 1848, James Marshall panned some bright flakes
:
Timothy Green,
The New World of Gold
(New York: Walker, 1981), 5.

In the next seven years, 500,000 men
:
“The California Gold Rush,”
http://www.ceres.ca.gov/ceres/calweb/geology/goldrush.html
.

“The whole country from San Francisco to Los Angeles”
:
Green,
The New World of Gold,
5.

“Three men using nothing but spoons”
:
Richard B. Lyttle,
The Golden
Path: The Lure of Gold Through History
(New York: Atheneum, 1983), 110.

Dozens of new companies formed
:
Maureen A. Jung, “Capitalism Comes to the Diggings,” in
A Golden State: Mining and Economic Development in Gold Rush California
, eds. James J. Rawls and Richard J. Orsi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 53–54.

The inrush of investment supported the development
:
Robert Whaples, “California Gold Rush,”
http://www.eh.net/encyclopedia/article/whaples.goldrush
.

The chain pumps brought to California
:
Ronald H. Limbaugh, “Making Old Tools Work Better,” in
A Golden State
, 31.

Tradition bathes the California gold rush in a honeyed light
:
Daniel Cornford, “ ‘We All Live More like Brutes than Humans': Labor and Capital in the Gold Rush,” in
A Golden State,
78.

Some Americans brought slaves
:
Ibid., 84.

A miner had to wash 160 pails
:
Freezing water and brutish work: Ibid., 89.

Even the investors suffered
:
Jung, “Capitalism Comes to the Diggings,” in
A Golden State,
54.

In terms of today's money
:
Measuringworth.com
equates purchasing power of $500 million in 1848 equal to $15 billion today.

Robert Whaples
:
Email from Robert Whaples to author, March 4, 2013.

At the official U.S. government price
:
Gold production nearly 2 percent of U.S. GDP: Whaples, “California Gold Rush.”

New discoveries elsewhere in the world added even more production
:
Green,
The New World of Gold,
1.

“As the creditor of the whole earth”
:
Growth in Bank of England and Bank of France gold stocks: Ibid., 9.

In 1871 Germany bought £50 million worth of gold
:
Ibid., 21.

“We chose gold”
:
Bernstein,
The Power of Gold,
250.