The Spanish Conquistador
Spanish conquistadors. In their search for gold, they instead found a mountain of silver and they hired indigenous slaves to mine it all out and hand it over to the Spanish. Spain became incredibly rich but made their taxes poorly and experienced inflations that caused them to lose a majority of their wealth. China experienced a similar thing when they received silver, and then created a new tax form for silver rather than goods. Silk makers were heavily needed because the Chinese needed something that they could trade with Japan to get silver to pay for their new taxes. With the overwhelming amount of silver, this created another inflation and that caused the downfall of their economy.