be gathered from these facts. Navarrete prints a document of the year 1536 which estimated that an annual income of 600,000 ducats could be derived from the Moluccas if a regular factory were established there for the development of the spice trade.[1] The value of the gold and silver that Spain derived yearly from America is variously estimated, but the contemporary estimates fall short of this estimated value of the spice trade.[2] The "Victoria," the surviving ship of Magellan's expedition, reached Seville September 8, 1522, having justified all the heroic leader's assertions to the satisfaction of the Spanish authorities.[3]
The question of the proprietorship of the Moluccas now became a pressing one, for Portugal had no intention of allowing Spain to steal in at the back door of her treasure house. February 4, 1523, Charles V. sent two ambassadors to the king of Portugal to propose an expedition to determine the line of Demarcation and in the mean while the observance
- ↑ Navarrete, V, 165.
- ↑ Gomara, Historia General de las Indias, Antwerp ed., 1554, I, leaf 300, states that in the years, 1492–1552, the Spaniards had got over $60,000,000 of gold and silver from America. Contarini, in 1525, estimated the annual income of Spain from the mines of gold and silver at 500,000 ducats. He says of the king: "Ha poi il re dell' oro, che si cava dall' Indie, venti per cento, che può montare circa a cento mila ducati all' anno." Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti, Albèri, 1st ser., II, 42. Contarini estimated Charles' revenue from his low country provinces at 140,000 ducats a year. Ibid., 25. The value of a ducat was about $2.34. Humboldt estimated the average annual supply of the precious metals from America was, 1492–1500, $250,000; 1500–1545, $3,000,000. Essai sur la Nouvelle Espagne, III, 428, second edition, from McCulloch's Commercial Dictionary, art. "Precious Metals," ed. of 1869. According to Soetbeer's researches, the annual production from 1493 to 1520 was silver, $2,115,000; gold, $4,045,500. From 1521 to 1544, silver, $4,059,000; gold, $4,994,000. Nasse, in Schoenberg, Handbuch der Polit-Oekonomie, I, 361 (1885).
- ↑ The cargo consisted of 533 quintals of cloves which cost 213 ducats. According to Crawford the quintal was worth at that time in London 336 ducats, making the value of the cargo over 100,000 ducats. The cost of the expedition was only 22,000 ducats. Thus Peschel, Zeitalter der Entdeckungen, 644, n. 4. Guillemard, Life of Magellan, 310, puts the value of the cargo at about one quarter of Peschel's estimate. In either case the value of the spice trade is vividly illustrated. Apparently Guillemard takes too low a value for the maravedi. In the sale of the Moluccas it was stipulated that the ducats be equivalent to 375 maravedis. Navarrete, IV, 393.
