Chapter 19 Introduction

• The new Latin American empires of Spain and Portugal maintained special contacts with the West

• The militarily superior European invaders conquered their land and imposed Western forms on the indigenous cultures

• Latin America became part of the world economy as a dependant region

• Iberians mixed with African and native Indian cultures to create new political and social forms in a distinct civilization.

• Indian civilization, although battered and transformed survived to influence later societies

• Europeans sought economic gain and social mobility by using coerced laborer or slaves to create plantations and mine deposits of precious minerals or diamonds.

I) Spaniards and Portuguese: From Reconquest to Conquest

• Iberians had long occupied a frontier zone where different cultures interacted

• In the 8th century Muslims invaded and conquered, later Christians formed small states and began a long period of reconquest.

• Castile and Aragon were united through the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile in the 15th century and sought to eliminate religious and ethnic diversity in their kingdom.

• Granada, the last Muslim kingdom fell in 1492, and Castile expelled its Jewish population.

• With the kingdom unified, Isabella and Ferdinand were willing to support the project of a Genoese mariner named Christopher Columbus who hoped to reach the east Indies by sailing west.

a) Iberian Society and Tradition

- Features of Iberian societies became part of their American experience

- They were heavily urban, many peasants lived in small centers. Commoners coming to America sought to become nobles holding Indian-worked estates.

- The patriarchal family was readily adapted to Latin America, where large estates and grants of American Indian laborers, or encomiendas, provided a framework for economic dominance.

- The Iberian tradition of slavery also came to the new world.- Political patterns came as well with political centralization in

Portugal and Castile dependant on a professional bureaucracy- Religion and the Catholic Church were closely linked to the

state- The merchants of Portugal had extensive experience with the

slave trade and plantation agriculture on earlier colonized Atlantic islands.

b) The Chronology of Conquest

- The first conquest period was from 1492 and 1570 and established the main lines of administration and economy.

- The second period lasted to 1700 and colonial institutions and societies took definite form.

- The 3rd period during the 18th century was a time of reform and reorganization that planted the seeds of dissatisfaction and revolt.

- From the late 15th century to the 17th, two continents and millions of people fell under European control. They were joined to an emerging Atlantic economy and many Indian societies were destroyed or transformed in the process

c) The Caribbean Crucible- The Caribbean experience was a model for Spanish actions in Latin

America. After Columbus’ original voyage in 1492, a return expedition the next year established a colony on the island of Santo Domingo, or Hispaniola.

- Columbus and his successors established more colonies in Puerto Rico(1508), and Cuba(1511) before finally heading to the mainland in Panama(1513).

- The Indians of an islands were distributed among Spaniards as laborers to form encomendero (land grants).

- European pressures and diseases quickly destroyed indigenous populations and turned the islands into colonial backwaters.

- The Spaniards established Iberian style cities adapted to New World conditions. The church joined the process building cathedrals and universities.

- By the 16th century Spanish women and African slaves joined the earlier arrivals, marking the shift from conquest to settlement. Ranches and sugar plantation replaced gold searching.

- Most of the Indians had died, some clerics and administrators, such as Bartolome de las Casas began the struggle for justice for Indians.

d) The Paths of Conquest- The conquest of Latin America was not a unified movement, but

rather a series of individual initiatives operating with government approval

- One prong of conquest was directed toward Mexico, the other at South America

- Hernan Cortes led an expedition into Mexico (1519) where he defeated the Aztecs and captured and killed Moctezuma II in Tenochititlan.

- Tenochititlan was replaced by Mexico City, and by 1535 most of central Mexico had been brought under Spanish control as the kingdom of New Spain.

- Francisco Pizarro began the conquest of the Inca empire, already weakened by civil war, in 1533.

- Other Spanish expeditions expanded colonial borders; Fransico Vazquez de Coronado explored the American southwest in the 1540’s, Pedro de Valdivia conquered Chile and founded Santiago in 1541.

- By 1570 there were 192 Spanish urban settlements in the New World.

d) The Conquerors

- The conquest process was regulated by agreements between leaders and their government, leaders received authority in return for promises of sharing spoils with the crown

- Most of the conquerors were not professional soldiers, the men joined expeditions to receive a share of the spoils

- They saw themselves as a new nobility entitled to domination over the Indian peasantry. They triumphed because they had better weapons, horses, and ruthless leadership

e) Conquest and Morality

- The Spanish conquest and treatment of Indians raised significant philosophical and moral issues. Were the conquest, exploitation, and conversion justified?

- Many argued the Indians were destined to serve Europeans and converting them to Christianity was a necessary duty.

- Father Bartolome de las Casas defended the Indians, recognizing them as human and arguing that conversion had to be accomplished peacefully.

- The result was a moderation of the worst abuses, but the decision came too late to help most Indians.

II) The Destruction and Transformation of American Indian

Societies- All indigenous people suffered from European

conquest- This was a demographic catastrophe of incredible

proportions as disease, war, and mistreatment caused the loss of millions of individuals

- One example is the population of central Mexico during the 16th century fell from 25 million to less than 2 million

- The Spanish reacted by concentrating Indians in towns and seizing their lands, an entirely different type of society emerged

a) Exploitation of the Indians- The Spanish maintained Indian institutions that served their needs- The traditional nobility, under Spanish authority, presided over

taxation and labor demands.- Enslavement of Indians, except in warfare, was prohibited, but in its

place the government awarded land grants (encomiendas) to conquerors who used their Indians harshly as a source of labor and taxes.

- From 1540 the crown modified the system to prevent the development of a new American nobility, and the encomiendas disappeared by 1620, replaced by a system of forced labor, called the mita in Peru.

- This caused thousands of Indians to work in mines or state projects, some escaped their villages to work for wages from urban employers.

- Despite these disruptions, Indian culture remained resilient and modified Spanish forms to Indian ways

b) In Depth: The Great Exchange

- The Spanish and Portuguese arrival ended the isolation of the New World from other societies.

- Millions of Europeans and Africans settled in the Americas after 1500.

- The Columbian exchange (biological and ecological) changed the character of both the new and old societies.

- Old World diseases decimated new world populations and Old World animals quickly multiplied in their new environment and transformed the structure of Indian society.

- Both Old and New Worlds exchanged crops and weeds, the spread of American plants, especially maize, manioc, and the potato had a major effect allowing population expansion in many world regions.

III) Colonial Economies and Governments

- More than 80% of Spanish America’s population was engaged in agriculture and ranching, but mining was the essential activity.

- The Spanish maritime commercial system was organized, until the 18th century around the exchange of New World precious metals, especially silver, for European manufactured goods.

- The exchange made Latin America a dependant part of the world system.

a) The Silver Heart of the Empire

- The major silver mines opened in Mexico and Peru during the middle of the 16th century

- Wealthy urban centers were created around the mines at Potosi in Bolivia and Zacatecas in Mexico.

- While mining techniques were European, the mines were worked by Indians, at first through forced methods and later for wages

- The discovery of extensive mercury deposits at Huancavelica in Peru was vital for silver extraction, and the government had a monopoly on the mercury used.

- Private individuals worked the mines at their expense, but the crown owned all the subsoil rights and received 1/5 of the production.

- The industry was a stimulus for the general economy because it was dependant on a supply of food and other materials for the workers.

b) Haciendas and Villages

- Spanish America remained an agricultural economy as large sedentary Indian populations continued traditional patterns.

- When their population dwindled, Spanish rural estates (haciendas) emerged, using Indian and mixed-ancestry workers to produce grain, grapes, and livestock primarily for consumers in the Americas

- The haciendas became the basis of wealth and power for a local aristocracy and in some regions there was competition between haciendas and Indian farmers.

c) Industry and Commerce

- Sheep raising led to the formation of small textile sweatshops worked by Indian woman, and Latin America became self-sufficient in foodstuffs and material goods, requiring only from Europe luxury goods.

- Spain felt silver ruled the commercial system and all trade was reserved for the Spaniards and funneled through Seville and Cadiz. A board of trade was set up in Seville which controlled commerce, working in conjunction with a merchant guild, or consulado, which handled much of the silver.

- To protect their silver fleets from rivals and pirates, the Spanish organized a convoy system made possible by the development of heavily armed ships called galleons.

- Strongly fortified Caribbean ports provided shelter for the ships and only one fleet was lost before the system ended in 1730

- Spain used the silver for state expenses and for manufactured goods for the Americas, which contributed to general European inflation.

- Spain’s wealth still depended more on taxes than American silver, and the prospect of its continuing import resulted in unwise government spending.

d) Ruling an Empire: State and Church- Sovereignty over the Spanish empire rested with the crown

based on a papal grant awarded in return for bringing the lands into the Christian community.

- The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) drew a north-south line around the earth, the eastern region belonging to Portugal, the west to Spain. All the Americas except Brazil went to Spain.

- The King ruled from Spain in a bureaucratic system built on a juridical core of university trained lawyers from Spain called letrados, who had both legislative and administrative authority. Laws were many and contradictory at times, but the Recopilacion (1681) codified the laws into the basis for government in the colonies.

- The king ruled through the Council of the Indies in Spain, which issued the laws and advised him. Viceroys (high ranking nobles) had extensive powers and the two viceroyalties, one based in Mexico City and the other in Lima, were divided into ten divisions controlled by superior courts, or audiencias, staffed by royal magistrates.

d) Ruling an Empire: State and Church- The church profoundly influenced colonial culture and

intellectual life, the clergy preformed both secular and religious functions. Intellectual life was centered around religion, and more than 70 universities flourished in Spanish America, run by the clergy.

- A stunning example of colonial intellectual life was nun Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1651-1695) who was an author, poet, musician, and social thinker. She was welcomed at the court of the viceroy, where her intelligence and beauty were celebrated, but she eventually was forced to give up her secular concerns to concentrate on spiritual matters by her superiors.

- The Spanish converted Indians and established Christian villages, some even defended Indian rights and studied their culture.

- The Inquisition controlled morality and orthodoxy.

IV) Brazil: The First Plantation Economy

- The Portuguese reached Brazil in 1500 as Pedro Alvares Cabral voyaged to India.

- Their was little European interest at first apart from dyewood trees.

- When French merchants became interested a new system was developed in 1532

- Portuguese nobles were given land grants (captaincies) to colonize and develop.

- Towns were founded and sugar plantations were established using Indian and later African slaves workers. Indian resistance was broken by disease, military force and , after the Jesuits arrived, missionary activity.

- A royal governor in 1549 created an administration with a capital at Salvador.

- Port cities developed to serve the growing number of sugar plantations increasingly worked by African slaves.

a) Sugar and Slavery

- Brazil became the world’s leading sugar producer, and the growth and processing of sugar cane required large amounts of capital and labor.

- With a single crop produced by slave labor Brazil was the 1st plantation colony.

- White planter families, linked to merchants and officials, dominated colonial life

- Slaves composed about ½ of the total population at the close of the 17th century, and occupied the bottom level of the social hierarchy.

- In between was a growing population of mixed origins, poor whites, Indians, and Africans who were artisans, small farmers, herders and free workers.

- Portugal created a bureaucratic administrative structure under the direction of a governor general and regional governors often acted independently and reported directly to Lisbon.

- Missionaries had an important role, they ran ranches, mills, schools, and church institutions.

- By the 17th century Brazil became the predominant Portuguese colony and remained closely tied to Portugal, there were no universities or printing presses to stimulate independent intellectual life.

b) Brazil’s Age of Gold- Brazil lost its dominate position as a sugar producer when the

Dutch, English and French established sugar plantations in the Caribbean in the 17th century.

- Backwoodsmen explorer Paulistas discovered gold in the Minas Gerais region in1695, and people rushed to the mines and formed new settlements.

- Brazil became the greatest source of gold in the Western world, as the mines were worked by slaves and the government tightly controlled production.

- The gold and later diamond discoveries opened the interior to settlement, devastated Indian populations and weakened coastal agriculture.

- The government controlled the slave trade and the mines stimulated new ventures in farming and ranching.

- Rio de Janeiro, nearer to the mines, became a major port and the capital in 1763

- Gold and diamonds did not contribute to Portugal's economic development, instead allowed it to import manufactured goods instead of creating its own industries.

V) Multiracial Societies

- The conquest and settlement of Latin American by Europeans formed large multiethnic societies

- Indians, Europeans, and Africans came together in hierarchies of color, status, and occupation

- Mixed peoples (castas) were a major population segment by the 18th century

a) The Society of Castas- Indian women suffered sexual exploitation from Europeans and

the crown sponsored marriage in a society where there were few European women. The result was a mestizo population with a higher status than Indians.

- A similar process occurred in colonies with a large African slave population, creating new social distinctions based on race and place of birth.

- At the top were Europeans, African slaves and Indians were at the bottom. Mestizos filled the intermediate categories, with restrictions placed on mixed origin people, but social mobility was not halted.

- Over time distinctions grew between Spaniards born in Spain (peninsulares) and the New World (Creoles). The later dominated local economies and developed a strong sense of identity that later contributed to independence movements.

- Women were under male authority, upper class women were confined to household occupations, but many lower class women participated in the economy.

VI) The Eighteenth-Century Reforms

- Spain and Portugal shared in the 18th century European intellectual ferment and in changes forced by new demographic and economic trends.

- In Spain and its colonies small clubs and associations, called amigos del pais or friends of the country, met in cities to discuss and plan all kinds of reforms.

- European population growth and 18th century wars gave the colonies new importance.

- Both Spanish and Portuguese empires revived, but with the long term results that eventually led to the fall of both.

a) The Shifting Balance of Politics and Trade

- Spain's colonial system by the 18th century was in need of serious reform

- Spain was weakened by poor rulers, foreign wars, and internal civil and economic problems

- France, Britain, and Holland were dangerous enemies, during the 17th century they seized Spanish Caribbean Islands and developed their own plantation societies.

- The flow of silver dropped and local aristocrats took control over their regions while corruption was rampant in government.

- Disputes over Spanish royal succession caused the War of the Spanish Succession, an international war in 1701, and the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) ended the fighting but opened the colonies up to some foreign trade.

b) The Bourbon Reforms- The new Bourbon dynasty (1713) worked to

strengthen Spain. Charles III (1759-1788) instituted fiscal, administrative and military reforms, French bureaucratic models were introduced that reformed taxation and opened ports to less restricted trade by Spanish merchants

- The Jesuits were expelled from Spain but the church remained an ally of the regime

- In the Americas, under the authority of Jose de Galvez, broad general reforms followed. Creoles were removed from upper bureaucratic positions and the intendancy system, borrowed from the French, provided better defense and administration.

b) The Bourbon Reforms

- As an ally of France, Spain was involved in the 18th century Anglo-French wars, and the English seized Florida and occupied Havana. The losses stimulated military reform and more troops were sent to the New World and Creole militias were formed.

- Frontiers were defended and expanded, California was settled.- The government took an active role in the economy, more

liberal trade regulations expanded Caribbean commerce. Cuba became a full plantation economy and Buenos Aires presided over a booming economy based on beef and hides.

- The more open trade damaged local industries and the Bourbon changes although revitalizing the empire, stimulated growing dissatisfaction among colonial elites.

c) Pombal and Brazil

- The Marquis of Pombal directed Portuguese affairs from 1755-1776. He labored to strengthen the economy and lessen his countries dependence on England in regards to the flow of Brazilian gold to London

- The authoritarian Pombal suppressed opposition to his policies, expelling the Jesuits and reforming administrators working in Brazil to end lax or corrupt practices. He abolished slavery in Portugal but not Brazil.

- Indians were removed from missionary control and mixed marriages were encouraged

- New areas began to flourish, among them the underdeveloped Amazon territory.

- The reforms had minimal effect on society, Brazil remained based on slavery and demand for their products was low.

d) Reforms, Reactions, and Revolts

- The American Iberian colonies shared world growth in population and productive capacity by the middle of the 18th century

- While they experienced a boom, many reforms had disrupted old power patterns and at times produced rebellion.

- The widespread Comunero Revolt in New Granada occurred in 1781, and the more serious outbreak in the Tupac Amaru uprising broke out among Peruvian Indians.

- Brazil escaped serious disturbances.- The movements had different social bases, but demonstrated

increased local dissatisfaction with imperial policies- Sharp social divisions among colonial groups hindered

effective revolutionary action until Spain and Portugal were weakened by European political and social turmoil.

e) Global Connections: Latin American Civilization and the World Context

The large colonies of Spain and Portugal provided an important place in the expanding world economy.

European rivals were able to benefit directly from Iberian colonial trade by the 18th century due to weakened internal situation.

Portugal and Spain transferred their cultures to the Americas, recreating there a version modified by local influence

Surviving Indian populations adapted to the colonial situation and a distinctive multiethnic and multiracial cultures emerged that mixed the cultures of all participants.

Where slavery prevailed, African cultures played a major role.Latin American culture was distinct from the West, but related to it.Latin American products remained in demand in world markets,

maintaining a society with its economic life dependant on outside factors.