Spanish Conquest of Mexico and Flemish Bankers

The primary beneficiary of an unjust society is the one who ends up with the money in the end.

From Ferhrenbach, Lone Star, Updated Edition, 20-21, 23:

"Cortes and others were disappointed  to find that Mexico did not possess extensive gold deposits.  But the chagrin was soon ameliorated  by the discovery of virtually inexhaustible silver lodes, at Potosi and elsewhere.  A stream of metal eventually amounting to billions of dollars was begun to Europe."

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"Spaniards quickly reduced the agricultural civilizations of the Middle American plateaus.  The reduction was characterized by brutalities that with the passage of time historians tend to ignore, but in the end it was complete, and final....  Millions of Mexican Indians continued to live in various stages of Spanish servitude....  Both Charles V and his son, Philip II of Spain, were increasingly desperate for money to finance their enormous European wars.

It was not really possible to bring crippling pressures against the encomenderos, who operated the mines and plantations with the sword and lash but who also fed millions of silver pesos into the treasury of the Crown.  The Indians would not have performed these services without the severest repression...."

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"Two events called forth the Coronado expedition in 1540....  No one believed the possibility of conquerable empires was exhausted.  Further, the Crown was insatiable in its demand for specie, which poured through Madrid without lasting benefit, to enrich the Flemish and German bankers who financed German wars.  The viceregal government of New Spain not only believed in the existence of more golden cities, but was prepared to implement the belief."

So, in reality, the Indian was the slave of a slave (encomendero) of a slave (King).  And the true master was ....  

Note:  "I am rich by God's grace without injury to any man" (Jacob Fugger, in Men of Wealth).

"When Fugger writes to Charles V for payment of his loan he asks plainly that "the money which I have paid out, together with the interest upon it, shall be reckoned up and paid, without further delay."

https://archive.org/stream/MenOfWealth/menofwealth#page/n31/mode/2up

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Continuous warfare and other expenses of state are a constant drain on Charles's treasury. Like any ruler of the time, his costs outrun his sources of revenue. Loans from bankers fill the gap, and they are often repaid by leases on sources of royal income.
Thus the Fuggers are granted in 1525 the revenues from the Spanish orders of knighthood, together with the profits from mercury and silver mines. The bankers therefore become, in a sense, both revenue collectors and managers of state assets. But their high rates of interest can quickly cripple a kingdom engaged in too many unprofitable wars."

Read more: http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?ParagraphID=idu#ixzz3QEP02JCZ