Mining Mercury for the Common Good
Debating the Public Good and Wealth in Huancavelica
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3323873 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Renee Raphael (University of California, Irvine, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 114 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 638-645 |
| Publication date | 2023-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Isis (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-1753 • E-ISSN: 1545-6994 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/726114 |
| OpenAlex | W4385865367 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 6 |
This contribution uses the career and writings of Juan Solórzano Pereira (1575–1655) to probe the relationship between mercury, governance, and the obligations of individuals to the early modern Iberian state. It focuses specifically on two terms often employed in the context of practical governance—“bien público” (public good) and “hacienda” (treasury)—by placing Solórzano Pereira’s 1647 Politica Indiana and administrative documents generated during his tenure at the mercury mine of Huancavelica (modern Peru) in dialogue. Read in tandem, these texts reveal that Solórzano Pereira articulated the relationship between mercury, the bien público, and the hacienda through comparisons between mining and agriculture, a conception of nature as an agential force, and period understandings of the “common.” While historians of practical governance often dismiss appeals to the bien público and the hacienda as hollow rhetoric, this essay reveals that the terms were important for period actors in conceptualizing the distribution of labor and materials
Corporate governance · Economics · Management · Mercury (programming language · Political science · Rhetoric · Sociology · Theology · Treasury · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Studies in Latin America · Latin American history and culture · Law · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |