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| Review | Journal of Social History, 40.3 | The History Cooperative
40.3  
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Spring, 2007
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REVIEWS

SECTION 4
GENDER HISTORIES

Trading Roles: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Urban Economy in Colonial Potosí. By Jane E. Mangan (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. xi plus 277 pp. $22.95 paper, $79.95 cloth).
It is hard to exaggerate Potosí: the source of half of Spanish American silver (and hence of a good deal of the world's new silver) between 1550 and 1650; a city of well over 100,000 by 1600; a place isolated, 4000 meters above sea level, in the Cordillera Real of the Andes, well east of the altiplano of what is now Bolivia; a market, despite its inaccessibility, that was the destination of goods from distant regions of South America, Europe, and east Asia; the source, because of the assumed maltreatment of native miners there, of deep criticism of Spain by its European rivals—but a source, also, of deep and lasting envy among those powers. 1
      A good deal has been published about colonial Potosí in the past few decades, in the form of editions of chronicles and other early texts, closely-focussed monographs, and books and articles treating the city directly or giving it a central role in some broader mid-Andean topic. Readers of Dr. Mangan's book will find many of these works in her bibliography. Most of them have addressed the large and obvious questions, such as Indian labor in mining and refining, output of silver (and the determinants of production), technology, local and long-distance trade, sources and patterns of essential supplies, the social history of mine and refinery owners, and government. . . .
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