On Miners of the Red Mountain

This is a good introduction to the early era of colonial Potosí, which saw the high-water mark in silver exploitation in 1592, close to the halfway point in the period the book covers. This book honestly works as a general introduction to the forms of labor employed in Potosí—it isn’t a comprehensive study of the city or mines as a whole, but it is a great examination of how labor actually functioned in that context. Other benefits to the book is that it gives good detail on the geography and origins of the city of Potosí, as well as offers a bit of history about how the mita system came into existence (in Bakewell’s view, Toledo doesn’t deserve the blame that he’s normally given).

And yet, this book has largely been surpassed by the work of other scholars. Enrique Tandeter’s Coercion And Market: Silver Mining In Colonial Potosi, 1692 1826 comes to mind as a particularly good book on Potosí’s labor practices. Admittedly, Tandeter’s study covers the later period of Spanish Peru, but a lot of his findings are similar to Bakewell’s and far more analytical.

In sum, Bakewell’s book is better for those curious about how Potosí and the mita system came to be, while Tandeter’s is superior for those interested in the actual mechanics of mining in colonial Peru.