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Within Jane E. Megan’s “Potosi: A Motor of Global Change,” one of Spain’s wealthiest and diverse cities takes center stage. I found it revealing that the importance over the resource of silver would transition from the Aymara kingdoms to the Inca empire to Spanish colonial rule. Potosi would hold significance as one of Spain’s prosperous cities in the Americas giving the European nation a rich silver mine to exploit. What’s interesting is that other European powers and even parts of Asia would take note of the city of Potosi and its rich silver resource. From 1600s to 1700s, the population within Potosi was an estimated 160,000, with a mixture of native Andeans, non-Spanish Europeans, and women all seeking to gain in the wealth of the city through trade. Potosi would become a diversified city within the Spanish colonial system. However, even with the city’s famous wealth and modernization, Megan notes the equally infamous treatment of the indigenous population which would take place within the city. Spaniards utilized Iberian laws of property to justify forced native labor through mining for silver in order to gain tribute for the crown. Exploitation associated with the “mitia,” or the forced labor draft, was common place for natives in the city. Even English colonial onlookers viewed the city as a hell on earth for indigenous people.
It is eye opening then to discuss the similarities and differences between the Yoruba cities in Africa and the Spanish city of Potosi. In Ademide Adelusi Adelayi’s, “Yoruba City Planning,” the author discusses the Yoruba’s ability to create social and political infrastructures that resemble urban cities. But in comparison to the Spanish’s efforts in the Americas, there has been significantly little research and evidence gathered for the complex nature of Yoruba oral and built traditions which helped develop in-depth city planning. The Yoruba’s tendency to settle in large densely populated areas and then build upon a society from within can be considered indigenous urbanism within Africa. Yoruba cities were permanent regions fortified with settlements and a divided interior. My fellow classmate, Alec Correa, puts its best, “Yoruba’s ability to adapt and expand its cities through the use of rulers and structured societies is a major reason the city flourished.” Even in the present, Yoruba cities such as Lagos are estimated at being one of the fastest growing cities in the world with the metropolitan Largos set to reach 20 million residents by 2025. In the case of present day Potosi, which never regained the dynamism of its first century of existence, it holds an estimated 150,000 residents and is experiencing a significant slow down in migration. Similar to the concepts brought up in Micheal A. Gomez Exchanging Our Country’s Marks and chapter eight of the Atlantic World, native cultures and traditions had a tendency to adapt and further develop within the colonial world. Even as European trade and culture dominated the Americas and parts of Africa, indigenous cultures proved to be long lasting surviving even to the present day.