ABSTRACT
The history of silver is one of the few topics treated by economic historians which has caught the attention of civil servants, of other administrators, and of students of economics. During the Middle Ages and until the thirties of the sixteenth century most of the supplies for all the European countries had come from Germany and from other parts of the disintegrating Holy Roman Empire to the south and east. Adolf Soetbeer’s enterprising work on the output of precious metal since the discovery of America, has been the accepted source for figures concerning the production of silver in central Europe for some sixty years now. The erroneous impression conveyed by the work of Soetbeer concerning the decline in silver production, which accompanied the great increase in the inflow of American treasure, is easy to explain. Aristotle remarks that an educated man will not expect greater precision in answering any question than the nature of the subject matter allows.
