ABSTRACT
So far as colonial Spanish administrators and the Casa de Contratación were concerned, silver was the ideal export. Gold was more profitable, but after the first round of plunder, gold took more work to acquire. Silver was as compact as gold, easy to ship, and worth enough in Europe to make the expense of the trans-Atlantic crossing worthwhile. Tobacco and sugar met the same criteria: sufficient demand in Europe and sufficient availability in Peru. Coca was not a candidate for export mainly because there was no demand for it in Europe. The reason nobody wanted to buy coca was that they had never heard of it.
