“Material Authority” PI Joshua Batts published his research article “No Silver Lining Here: Mining and Mistrust in Japanese–Spanish Correspondence, 1598–1609,” in Critical Historical Studies Vol 12, No. 2 (Fall 2025). The article is part of the special forum “Early Modern Monetary Relations” that Batts coedited with scholars Shweta S. Banerjee (University of Toronto), Andrew Edwards (University of St. Andrews), and Ellen Nye (Purdue University).
Introduction: Plurality, Entanglements, and Empire in Early Modern Monetary Relations
https://doi.org/10.1086/737703
No Silver Lining Here: Mining and Mistrust in Japanese–Spanish Correspondence, 1598–1609
https://doi.org/10.1086/737705
Abstract
This paper reassesses Japan’s relationship to the Spanish Indies at the turn of seventeenth century. During a “Spanish Decade” lasting from 1598–1609, the Tokugawa shogunate saw in the Spanish Indies the potential to bring foreign trade to Eastern Japan, to extend commerce across the Pacific Ocean, and to access valuable mining technologies at a time when Japan’s production was booming. But authorities and intermediaries struggled to agree on the volume of trade, the geography of exchange, and how, if at all, to share expertise. The paper assesses three paths of Japanese outreach: the “Old Road” of existing exchange between southwest Japan and the Philippines; the “New Road” proposed between eastern Japan and Spanish America; and the “Silver Rut,” in reference to the precious metal’s role as both a catalyst and impediment to bridging the gap between two of the early modern world’s leading silver producers.