were not severe in the context of modern price movements. While his assessment is correct, the effect on contemporary populations of the price movements of the sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries were perceived in relation to contemporary experience, and, while later developments may contribute to an understanding of that which occurred earlier, they do not change the ways events were perceived by contemporaries. For the Europeans of the sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, the price increases did amount to a revolution.
Gould (1964) also contended that significant upward movement in prices had begun well before the beginning of the massive importation of gold and silver from the Americas, and, thus, the inflation of the period could not be laid solely at the foot of the increase in precious metals imports. This observation is certainly valid, and it does not preclude a role for gold and silver imports in the inflation. It simply does not accord such imports the sole or central role.
Gould (1964) also noted that price movements for all goods and services neither began at the same time, nor continued to move in unison. This phenomenon certainly indicates that additional causal factors were at work.
There does exist ample evidence that the massive importation of gold and silver from the Americas did affect price levels in Europe. Such imports both contributed to the debasement of the currency (Gould, 1970), and stimulated commodity and product demand--both domestically (Europe), and by the colonies for European goods (Hamilton, 1965). Thus, regardless of what other causal factors for the price inflation existed, the massive importation of American gold and silver will remain as an important causal factor, if not the only, or even the most significant, factor.
Sixteenth century price inflation in Europe was detected first in Spain (Hamilton, 1965). Although some contemporary Spanish economists, writers,...