Spanish colonization of the Americas

This article is about the historical name given to the American territories under the sovereignty or protectorate of the Hispanic Monarchy. For the grouping of countries or territories in the Americas called "Spanish America" or "Hispanic America" because Spanish is their official language or because they have a strong Hispanic cultural presence, see Hispanic America.

Spanish colonization of the Americas

Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus.

File:Christopher Columbus6.jpg

Christopher Columbus discovers Guanahani.

Entry of Hernán Cortés into the city of Potonchán or Tabasco.

Thirteen knights of Gallo Island.

The Capture of Atahualpa, as part of the Conquest of Peru.

Founding of Santiago de Nueva Extremadura, as part of the Conquest of Chile.

Map of the Americas.

Flag of the conquistadors of Spain, with the Crown of Castile on a red tray, used by Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro and others.

The Spanish colonization of the Americas was the process by which an administration was established in the New World that sought to be an imitation or duplicate of the contemporary peninsular administration. This period extended from 1550 until August 13, 1898, in the 19th century, when the Spanish flag was lowered in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The colonization of the Americas was carried out substantially by the Crown of Castile (linked dynastically to the Kingdoms of the Indies) and is the continuation of an earlier expansion and colonizing experience of the Kingdom of Castile in the Canary Islands, where, for the first time and on a certain scale, it tried out the experience of conquering, resettling and administering a new territory inhabited by unknown peoples, assimilating and Christianizing them in the process. Thus, the last three large islands of the Canaries were completely subdued in the years 1478–1483 (Gran Canaria), 1492–1493 (La Palma) and 1494–1496 (Tenerife), although the colonizing impulse began much earlier on the other islands of the archipelago. This experience and the existence of formulas developed to solve the problems of founding new cities, pacts and confrontations with the natives of the land, the appointment and powers of the military Adelantados, and the gearing together of the administrative apparatus (religious, civil and military) were later widely used in the Americas; they have their distant antecedents in the experience of the Reconquista and the resettlement of the Iberian Peninsula, and they partly explain the extraordinary success of the colonization.

From the 15th century onward, the indigenous territories and nations were incorporated by the Spanish monarchy through the Conquest of America, as part of a broader historical process called mercantilism, giving rise to the Spanish Empire in the Americas. Over the course of the 19th century, with the fall of absolutism and the transformation of Spain into a liberal state, Hispanic American independence took place.

Thanks to the celebrated bull of Pope Paul III, Sublimis Deus of 1537, which declared the natives to be men with all the effects and capacities of Christians, there was a great contrast between the Spanish colonization and the Anglo-Saxon and French colonization in the Americas. In the Spanish Empire, social unity was conceived through the unity of the Faith of the Catholic Church.

One of the important consequences of this colonization was mestizaje in the Americas. The Monarchs established a common foreign policy marked by marriage alliances with various European royal families, which resulted in the hegemony of the Habsburgs in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. Furthermore, the discovery of America from 1492 onward profoundly changed history.

Extent of the Spanish Empire in the Americas

Main article: Spanish Empire

Colonial Cabildo of Salta (Argentina).

Morion used by the Spanish conquistadors in the Americas.

Diachronic map showing the areas of the Americas that formed part of the Spanish Empire. The native peoples of the territories that were not effectively occupied did not form part of the colonial system. For details see map.
■ The Spanish Empire at its territorial peak around 1790
■ Regions of influence (explored and/or claimed but never controlled) or disputed territories or territories under short-lived control
■ Possessions of the Portuguese Empire governed by Spain between 1580–1640 through dynastic annexation, 1580–1640.
■ Territories lost in or after 1717 through the Peace of Utrecht.

European colonies and native peoples (16th–18th centuries).

• Viceroyalty of New Spain: comprised the present-day country of Mexico, and the states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Nevada, Florida, Utah and part of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma in the United States, which until 1848 belonged to Mexico and were taken from that country in the war known as the United States intervention in Mexico (Florida was ceded by Spain to the United States through the Adams–Onís Treaty during the Mexican War of Independence). Spain kept these territories under its control from 1519 until 1821. However, it must be remembered that the independence of New Spain was begun in 1810 and formally and legally declared by the Congress of Chilpancingo in 1813 under the name of Northern America. The period between that year and the date of the consummation of the independence of Mexico (1821) was conceived by the Congress as a struggle against the metropolis and for international recognition of the new nation. It should be made clear that significant territories that formed part of the Spanish Empire, located in North America, were inhabited by native peoples who did not form part of the European colonial system, until they were incorporated in the 19th century by the emerging American states after undergoing processes of ethnic cleansing.
• Captaincy General of Guatemala: comprised the territories of Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica and the Mexican state of Chiapas. It declared its independence in 1821 and, after being part of the First Mexican Empire (except Chiapas), proclaimed its absolute independence on July 1, 1823.
• Spanish Louisiana: ceded by France, Spain held it for a short time, from 1762 until 1801. It included territories of the present-day states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Minnesota, Missouri and Iowa. Most of these territories were never effectively controlled by Spain and remained in the hands of the native peoples until the 19th century.
• Captaincy General of Venezuela: present-day Venezuela, Guyana, Trinidad and part of Colombia.
• Viceroyalty of New Granada: the present-day countries of Panama, Colombia and Ecuador.
• Viceroyalty of Peru: present-day Peru, and part of Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile and Brazil.
• Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata: the present-day countries of Argentina (eastern Patagonia is considered by some sources as part of the viceroyalty and by others as belonging to the Captaincy General of Chile), Paraguay, Uruguay and part of Bolivia. Spain never controlled the whole of the pampa, the Chaco, or Patagonia, which remained under the rule of the native peoples until the 19th century.
• Captaincy General of Chile: also called the Kingdom of Chile, and initially New Extremadura, the core of present-day Chile (according to some sources also eastern Patagonia). Spain never controlled most of the southern half of Chile or Patagonia, which remained under the rule of the Mapuche and other native peoples until the beginning of the 19th century.
• Island Territories: the present-day countries of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Bahamas (until 1670), Antigua and Barbuda (from 1493 until 1632), Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada (from 1498 until 1674), Jamaica (until 1655), Saint Christopher and Nevis (Saint Kitts and Nevis), Dominica (from 1493 until 1783), Barbados (from 1518 until 1624), Saint Lucia (from 1504 until 1654).

Causes

• Economic: the rise of mercantilism, as well as the need to find an alternative route for the trade in spices and silk from the "spice islands", the Moluccas, which had been blocked by the Turks with the capture of Constantinople in 1453, giving them total control of the Silk Road, both the inland route and the maritime route.
• Cultural: with the Renaissance, some in European society suggested the sphericity of the Earth, and the proliferation of merchants led to the proliferation of legends and exaggerated chronicles (the travels of Marco Polo, the legend of Prester John), which caused great interest in the unknown in the Europe of the time, together with an adventurous spirit toward the Far East.
• Technological: the appearance of new ships, such as caravels and galleons, which made transatlantic penetration possible, thanks to Afonso V and John II of Portugal ("the Perfect" or "the Navigator"), and through the process of naval improvement and exploration; these ships included square and triangular sails, together with a reinforced hull, an evolution of the ships of Flemish trade. These were the first ships that could make "cazadas", sailing against the wind and abeam of it, which made possible the discovery of the Canaries, the voyage up the African coast and the conquest of America. New navigational instruments, such as the astrolabe and the compass, which made it possible to find one's bearings at sea together with following the stars, as well as advances in cartography, were fundamental in enabling the European arrival in America.

The Capitulations of Santa Fe

Christopher Columbus presented his plan to John II of Portugal, but, as it was based on erroneous calculations of the size of the Earth and the distance between Europe and India, it was not taken into consideration. He then went to Castile, then engaged in the conquest of Granada, and set out his plan to the Catholic Monarchs, helped by the friars of La Rábida. Despite the technical errors, he won the support of Queen Isabella and of Cardinal Cisneros, and so, after the capture of Granada, the drafting of the agreements began. These were called the Capitulations of Santa Fe, by which the Monarchs granted Columbus the title of admiral, that of viceroy and Governor of the lands to be discovered, and one tenth of the profits obtained from the new route.

Conquest

First settlements and the question of the division

Voyages of Christopher Columbus.

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus reached America, at the Island of San Salvador, located in the archipelago of the Lucayas, in fact believing that he had reached India.

On December 5, 1492, Columbus reached the island of Hispaniola, today divided into two countries (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and there formed the first European colony in the New World.

The Castilian expansion westward produced tensions with Portugal, and both kingdoms requested the mediation of the Pope. By the bull Inter caetera of 1493, Pope Alexander VI delimited the area of influence that each kingdom could claim against the other, with a line from pole to pole located 100 leagues west of the Azores. Shortly afterward, the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 moved the boundary line to 370 leagues west of Cape Verde, thus opening a wide area in the east of South America to Portuguese expansion, which would later be known as Brazil.

The conquest of the continent

Main article: Conquest of America

From the settlements in the island areas of the Caribbean Sea, such as Cuba and Hispaniola, the Crown of Castile undertook the colonization of the American continent, establishing commercial contacts with some indigenous peoples of the coast of Venezuela that allowed the founding of the city of Nueva Cádiz in 1500 on the island of Cubagua. That kingdom was granted the royal monopoly over the exploration and economic exploitation of the Americas, to the detriment of the rest of the Hispanic kingdoms.

In 1518 an expedition led by Hernán Cortés reached the island of Cozumel, then passed along the coasts of the Yucatán Peninsula until reaching the Grijalva River, where a battle took place. On Maundy Thursday of 1519 the whole fleet arrived at San Juan de Ulúa, from where it headed for the coast of the present-day city of Veracruz. In that place Cortés received the first embassy of Moctezuma Xocoyotzin, ruler of the lordship of Tenochtitlan, and there he founded the Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz.

Once Veracruz had been founded, Moctezuma, by sending ambassadors, asked him to halt his march. But Cortés continued inland on August 16, 1519, heading for the heart of the Aztec Empire. This expedition was made up of 400 Castilian soldiers, 15 horses and 1,400 Totonac warriors. On reaching Tlaxcala, Cortés defeated Xicotencatl and established an important alliance with the Tlaxcaltecs, thus adding more warriors to his army.

Spanish historical presence, claimed territories, points of interest and expeditions in North America

On his way to Tenochtitlan the Massacre of Cholula took place. A little later he headed for the Valley of Mexico, crossing between two volcanoes: Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl. On the other side, he sighted for the first time Lake Texcoco and Mexico-Tenochtitlan. Cortés's forces entered by the Iztapalapa causeway and were received by Moctezuma Xocoyotzin. Once they were lodged in the city, the huey tlatoani chose to submit to the Crown in a private interview. In exchange, Cortés demanded to see the tribute books and the maps of the land. Meanwhile, Cortés's enterprise had not gone unnoticed by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, who sent an expedition captained by Pánfilo Narváez with express orders to apprehend him and bring him back to Cuba. For this reason, Cortés traveled to Veracruz to fight against Velázquez's men. During his absence, the Massacre of the Templo Mayor occurred, which would light the fuse of an indigenous rebellion. Moctezuma tried to calm the enraged crowd, but it repudiated him as ruler and began to stone him. The huey tlatoani was gravely wounded and died, and Cuitláhuac was named his successor. He immediately organized an army to attack the conquistadors.

Cortés organized an escape plan, since the Aztecs had besieged him in the palace of Axayácatl. On the night of June 30, 1520, they attempted to flee, but were detected. During the escape eight hundred conquistadors died, along with an undetermined but larger number of allied natives. This episode is known as the Noche Triste. A year later, and after the decisive battle of Otumba, Cortés returned with more troops and more allies; the peoples who had once been subjugated by the Aztec Empire allied themselves with the Spanish conquistadors and began to encircle the capital. The city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan was besieged for three months and, after countless battles by land and water, was finally subdued on August 13, 1521. In the battle, the Castilians, Tlaxcaltecs, Texcocans, Huejotzincas, Chalcas, Cholultecs and other allies inflicted casualties on the Mexica army numbering close to 40,000, according to Cortés's own estimates, as reported in his third letter of relation.

Founding of cities

Main article: Spanish colonial city

Mestizaje

Main article: Mestizaje in the Americas

Stoning of an adulterer in the courtyard of a tecpan.

Mestizo family of the 18th century. Mestizaje was not limited to the stage of the conquest.

Unlike other colonizers such as the English, who did not accept mestizaje because they considered races other than their own to be impure, after centuries of coexistence of Arabs, Jews and Christians in the Iberian Peninsula the Castilians had fewer racial prejudices, and for that reason mixed marriages were formed from 1514 onward under the legal cover of the Royal Decree of Ferdinand the Catholic:

"It is our will that the Indian men and women have, as they should, complete freedom to marry whomever they wish, whether with Indians or with natives of these our kingdoms, or Spaniards born in the Indies, and that no impediment be placed on them in this. And we command that no order of ours that may have been given, or may be given by Us, can impede or shall impede marriage between Indian men and women and Spanish men or women, and that all have complete freedom to marry whomever they wish, and our audiencias shall see to it that this is observed and fulfilled" (Collected in the Recopilación de Leyes de las Indias of 1680, Law 2, Title 1, Book VI). In 1556 Philip II reiterated this Royal Decree of his grandfather.

One of the most emblematic marriages of the 16th century was that of Isabel Moctezuma (Tecuichpo Ixcazochtzin before her baptism, daughter of Moctezuma II and last Empress of the Aztecs) with Juan Cano of Extremadura, with whom she had five children who would begin the lineage of the Dukes of Miravista, a title that still survives today. The palace of the Toledo-Moctezuma family in Cáceres (Extremadura) is today the seat of the Provincial Historical Archive, and the coat of arms of the Moctezumas is preserved on its facade. Some of the descendants of that marriage live in Spain and others in Mexico.

The German historian Enrique Otte records, on page 61 of his book "Cartas Privadas de emigrantes a Indias: 1540-1616" (FCE 1993), a letter from a colonist named Andrés García, dated February 10, 1571, addressed to his nephew Pedro Guiñón in Colmenar Viejo, in which he tells him of his marriage to an indigenous American woman:

"I married in this land a woman very much to my liking. And although over there it may seem a hard thing to you that I have married an Indian woman, here no honor whatsoever is lost, because the nation of the Indians is held in high esteem."

Apart from marriages there were, above all, extramarital sexual unions with indigenous women. This was also because Castilian women were always scarce in America. The classic example is that of La Malinche, lover of Hernán Cortés, with whom she even had a son, Martín Cortés (whom he recognized in 1529 by means of a papal bull of Clement VII), who should not be confused with his legitimate son of the same name. But extramarital mestizaje had other sociological expressions: concubinage (barraganería), prostitution and also rape. Polygamy, which existed among the pre-Columbian peoples, was prohibited because it was contrary to Catholic doctrine. There are no reliable statistics on the proportion of mestizo marriages compared to the other, illegal forms of mixing between Spaniards and Amerindians during the Spanish colonization of the Americas.

The variety of combinations of mestizaje that coexisted in America during the colonial period can be observed in casta painting. The vocabulary of the castas also testifies to the rigidity of this system. Today, thanks to mestizaje, the population of the Hispanic American countries shares indigenous, European and African ancestors to varying degrees.

Consolidation of the colonization

Northern extension of Spanish influence

Juan Ponce de León (Santervás de Campos, Valladolid, Spain) was one of the first Europeans to reach the present-day U.S., since he was the discoverer of Florida, to which he gave its current name.

Using the French Wars of Religion as a pretext, the Spanish Crown issued the order for the landing of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés with a Hispanic force allied with the Timucua, which led on September 2, 1565, to the end of the settlement of French pirates at Fort Caroline (their graves remain there), the fortress being renamed "San Mateo". Almost a week later Avilés would found the fort, and later city, of San Agustín de La Florida, on September 8 of that year, forty-two years before the English founded the settlement of Jamestown (May 14, 1607) in the territory of the future colony of Virginia, and fifty-five years before the Pilgrim Fathers landed (November 26, 1620) in the so-called New England to found, on December 21, the town of "New Plymouth", capital of the future colony of the same name.

In 1720, the Villasur expedition from Santa Fe met and tried to parley with the Pawnee, allies of the French, in what is now Nebraska. The negotiations were unsuccessful and a battle was fought; the Spanish were seriously defeated, with only 13 able to return to New Mexico. Although this was a small engagement, it represented the deepest penetration of the Spanish into the Great Plains, establishing there the limit of Spanish expansion and influence.

Spanish and Portuguese Empires in 1790.

In an effort to exclude Great Britain and Russia from the eastern Pacific, the Spanish Crown sent Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra north from Mexico in 1775 to find and control the fabled Northwest Passage. In 1781, a Spanish expedition during the American War of Independence left St. Louis, Missouri (then under Spanish control) and reached St. Joseph in Niles, Michigan, where they captured the fort. Spanish territorial claims based on this northward penetration were not supported in the treaty negotiations.

The Nootka Convention (1791) resolved the dispute between Spain and Great Britain over the British settlements in Oregon and British Columbia. In 1791 the King of Spain gave Alejandro Malaspina command of a scientific expedition around the world, with orders to locate the Northwest Passage and search for gold, precious stones and any American, British or Russian settlement along the northwest coast.

In 1819, by virtue of the Adams–Onís Treaty, Spain withdrew from the region, leaving numerous Spanish place names in the area.

Independence from Spain

Liberator Simón Bolívar, a criollo of Spanish origin and leader of the independence of northern South America.

Liberator José de San Martín, son of a Spanish father and mother, who led the independence of southern South America.

Main article: Hispanic American Wars of Independence

In 1776 the thirteen English colonies in North America began an unprecedented political process, declaring their independence from the European monarchical metropolis and creating a republic governed by a written constitution, under the name of the United States of America.

From 1808, during the Napoleonic Invasion of Spain, because of the Napoleonic invasion, the criollos, like the peninsulars in Spain, established juntas to govern the lands in the name of King Ferdinand VII of Spain. This experience of self-government, together with the precedent of the Independence of the United States and the influence of liberalism and the ideas of the French Revolution, greatly influenced the course of the Hispanic American War of Independence (1808–1824), from which most of the present-day Hispanic American republics emerged.

In South America, the first criollo juntas, such as those established in La Paz, the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata (1809), Venezuela (1810), Chile (1810), New Granada (1810) and Quito (1809), were suppressed by the Spanish metropolitan authorities, bringing about the defeat of all of them. The Primera Junta of Buenos Aires (1810) was the only patriot government that managed to remain, establishing a historical continuity with the later governments of Argentina. From Buenos Aires began the campaign of secession of the south of the Continent. Two great pro-independence armies were formed and attacked the royalist troops from the south and the north, led by José de San Martín and Simón Bolívar, converging at Guayaquil, where general command of the South American pro-independence troops remained in Bolívar's hands. The war for the independence of South America lasted from 1810 to 1824. In that last year, the royalists, cornered in Upper Peru, were finally defeated at Ayacucho by a South American army under the command of Marshal Antonio José de Sucre. Once the peoples of South America became independent from Spain, and after complex processes, they ended up creating the following present-day independent nations: Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Liberator Miguel Hidalgo, leader of the Independence of the United Mexican States and, indirectly, of Central America.

The peoples of the Viceroyalty of New Spain began in 1810 with the Grito de Dolores and, likewise after complex political processes, ended up creating the following present-day independent nations: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua. Later the Dominican Republic would become independent.

In 1898, the United States won the Spanish–American War and occupied the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, ending the Spanish presence in the Americas. Cuba became independent in 1902, although it would remain under U.S. tutelage until 1959, while Puerto Rico was annexed as a state associated with the United States. Other territories of Hispanic origin, such as California, Texas and Florida, were annexed and turned into states of the United States.

Today, the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries of the Americas and Europe have organized themselves into the Ibero-American Community of Nations, whose highest body of cohesion is the Ibero-American Summit.

Consequences of the colonization

Demography

Main article: Demographic catastrophe in the Americas after the arrival of the Europeans

Thanks to the bull of Pope Paul III Sublimis Deus of 1537, which declared the natives to be men with all the effects and capacities of Christians, there was a great contrast in the Americas between the Spanish and French colonization on the one hand and the Anglo-Saxon on the other: the Spaniards strove to incorporate the natives into their civilization and their Church, even at the cost of the annulment of their cultural identity.

The movement of Spaniards to America during the 16th century barely affected the demographic growth of Castile. By contrast, the so-called microbial shock had negative effects on the indigenous American population (the Castilians also suffered from it, although to a lesser extent). Quantifying these effects with the means of that era on a barely known continent was an impossible task. And the divergent estimates made by some historians in the 20th century revealed a total lack of scientific basis in their research.

With the arrival of the Castilian colonists, diseases unknown in the New World appeared in America, such as smallpox, influenza, measles and typhus, against which the native populations had no resistance. On the other hand, the Europeans came into contact with other diseases specific to America, such as syphilis, which decimated the European population when it spread in 1494 from southern Italy (a possession belonging to the Crown of Aragon).

Among the linguistic legacy of the original population are two Amerindian languages: Quechua and Guaraní, which have attained the rank of co-official languages in some Hispanic American countries, and whose survival is partly due to their use as a lingua franca during the colonial evangelizing work. During the Viceroyalty of Peru, Quechua was one of the languages that Catholic missionaries used to evangelize the natives; several manuals (called "artes") and lexicons of this and other important languages were written, such as Aymara, Mochica or Guaraní, as well as catechisms. This allowed its influence to grow over the Andean peoples and even Amazonian peoples who had not previously spoken it. One example is the wide present-day spread of the dialect called Santiago del Estero Quichua, popular in the Argentine province of Santiago del Estero.

Friar Domingo de Santo Tomás published in Valladolid (Spain) the first two works in Quechua, the Grammatica o Arte de la Lengua General de los Indios de los Reinos del Perú and the Lexicón o Vocabulario de la Lengua General del PERV, called "Quichua".

Guaraní is in turn one of the official languages of Mercosur, and is widely spoken in Paraguay, where it is co-official with Castilian, and in the Argentine provinces of Corrientes and Misiones.

Encomienda and slavery

Main article: Slavery in Latin America

With the arrival of the Christian Europeans in America, an intense theological and legal debate arose over the nature of its inhabitants, with a view to their incorporation, expulsion or destruction in the territories that would be ruled by the Spanish Empire. This controversy was settled with the opposition of the Crown to their enslavement and the incorporation of the Native Americans as subjects of the Crown with all their rights. Other European powers such as England and Portugal did not consider them as equals, and in the territories they ruled the treatment would be that of slavery.

Thus, from the beginning of the 16th century, theologians and philosophers such as Juan López de Palacios Rubios or Matías de la Paz at the University of Salamanca, and Martín Fernández de Enciso or Bartolomé de las Casas in the American territories themselves, confronted the problem of the nature of the new inhabitants from different perspectives. Finally, in 1537, the bull Sublimus Dei of Pope Paul III was promulgated, in which the natives were declared to be men in all their capacities.

From this moment on, the laws of the Spanish Crown established that the indigenous Americans (Amerindians) would not be subjected to slavery, but to a regime of servitude called "encomienda", by which they were entrusted to Spanish "encomenderos". The encomienda regime established that the natives were obliged to work for the encomendero, while the latter bound himself before the Crown to the care and evangelization of the natives. One of the most famous critics of the encomienda system was Friar Bartolomé de las Casas, whose most representative work is the Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias. The criticisms of the encomienda system by some sectors of the Church are considered by some to be the origin of the so-called "Spanish Black Legend".

However, this was not fully complied with, since in some areas of the American territory the Spaniards still carried out a type of armed expedition called a "maloca", whose aim was to capture natives in order to take them into slavery.

The decline of the Native American population could explain a shortage of indigenous labor that Spain tried to replace with slaves from Sub-Saharan Africa, bought from companies of other European powers that traded in slaves in America. It should be noted that the treatment as a person was granted to Native Americans, but not to Black people, Friar Bartolomé himself being a clear exponent of this way of thinking. The exact number of enslaved people from Africa is controversial and difficult to determine; according to different estimates, it may range between 9 and 12 million people, of whom it is estimated that 1,552,100 entered the territories colonized by Spain.

Religion

In contrast to other colonizers throughout history, such as the English, Portuguese or Dutch, the Spanish colonizers from the very first moment accepted the natives as persons endowed with a soul, and for that reason they focused part of their effort on instructing them and converting them to their religion.

Cathedral of Mexico, legacy of the Spanish conquistadors

Pope Alexander VI, in his Inter caetera bulls, established the obligation of the Crown of Castile to convert all its subjects, including Amerindians and Afro-Americans, to Christianity in its Catholic form. The tasks of achieving conversion were carried out by a great variety of procedures, and a considerable number of missionaries from different orders set out from the Iberian Peninsula for America to that end, within the framework of a renewal movement of the Spanish Church initiated by Cisneros, in which mystics such as Saint Teresa of Jesus or Saint John of the Cross and religious figures such as Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, stood out.

The methods adopted to achieve conversion were very diverse. One of the formulas employed was the one known as the doctrina. This was the commitment undertaken by the conquistador to have all the natives allotted to him in his repartimientos evangelized; children had to receive religious instruction every day and adults three days a week. The convent was the nerve center of evangelization, and numerous settlements took shape around it. There the religious attended to the spiritual needs of the new Christians as well as their material needs, since alongside the rooms for worship and the friars' living quarters they had infirmaries, schools and workshops. The missionaries themselves played an important role in the transculturation of the natives, making a special effort to incorporate them into craft activities of European tradition as a prominent part of their education. The school of San José de los Naturales, created by the Franciscans in Mexico, those organized by Bishop Vasco de Quiroga in Pátzcuaro (Michoacán), and the Jesuit Missions in present-day Argentina, Paraguay, etc., are a reference for understanding different life projects for the natives based on their incorporation into Christianity. Present in them are many of the ideas stemming from the utopian movements of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which found in America fertile ground for being put into practice.

On some occasions the Catholic religious formed close ties with the native inhabitants, becoming involved in their problems and in the abuses they suffered at the hands of some conquistadors and encomenderos, conveying these injustices to the authorities in the Peninsula. In many cases the Catholic missionaries used American languages, such as Quechua, Náhuatl or Guaraní, helping to preserve them by providing them with writing systems.

The conversion of the American population to Catholicism was widely successful. In 2004, about half of the world's Catholics were in Ibero-America, although the trend is decreasing.

On the other hand, Latin American Catholicism took on peculiar forms derived from the phenomenon known as religious syncretism, through which the old pre-Columbian and African religions and beliefs were integrated into Christianity.

Technical and scientific exchanges

See also: Columbian exchange

Spanish contributions

Chilote horses.

Napa Valley, California

The Spaniards brought to their colonies in America a series of technical elements common to the Eurasian civilizations, which spread across the continent in an astonishingly short time. Among them:

• the grapevine, from whose vine stocks the wine production of Peru, Chile, Argentina and California descends today; vinegar;
• olive trees: the first shipment of olive oil that arrived in America was brought by Hernando Colón, son of the discoverer, from his estate "Hacienda Guzmán", near Seville, which today belongs to the Guillén family;
• barley. In 1542, with the authorization of Charles V and on the initiative of the conquistador Alonso de Herrera, the first brewery in America was set up on the hacienda "El Portal", located on the slopes of Iztaccíhuatl, New Spain;
• legumes (beans, chickpeas, lentils, broad beans);
• rice, almonds, garlic, onion, prunes and other varieties of dried fruits and nuts;
• cattle, including the fighting bull (the reason why bullfights exist today in Peru, Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia or Venezuela), and with them dairy products;
• wheat, originating in ancient Mesopotamia;
• the lemon, originating in Southeast Asia, which had been brought to Spain by the Arabs;
• the orange, the apple, the pear, the peach and the fig;
• the plantain or banana, brought in 1516 from Gran Canaria to Santo Domingo by the religious Friar Tomás de Berlanga;
• sugarcane, brought from the Middle East to the territory then known as Al-Andalus by the Arabs;
• flax and hemp;
• sheep;
• the horse, which revitalized the hunting communities of the North American prairies until the 19th century and those of certain South American peoples: the Mapuche, the Pampas peoples, and so on. And, together with the horse, saddlery;
• tallow and tar;
• the wheel as an element of work and transport, since some American cultures already used wheels in toys and probably in other technical areas that have been lost. Nevertheless, archaeologists such as Stanley Boggs were skeptical about those toys found by amateurs without any archaeological guarantee. "The natives were greatly impressed by two Western devices that the Spaniards brought: the wheeled cart and the pulley. (...) Although the Mexica had pottery wheels, it had not occurred to them to use the wheel as a means of facilitating transport." P. 572 of El Imperio Español. De Colón a Magallanes, by Hugh Thomas. The noria was also introduced into America by the Spaniards.
• the plow, unknown in pre-Columbian societies, which contributed decisively to the transformation of American agriculture;
• iron: pre-Columbian indigenous societies did not know iron metallurgy; however, before the discovery of America, in Castile (and in the rest of Europe), both civil and religious ironwork had raised the working of iron to the category of an art, with all kinds of designs and filigree; iron products such as padlocks, door locks, hinges, screws, and so on, were brought to America by the Spaniards on their first voyages;
• the metallurgy of Toledo, the most advanced in Europe;
• the ceramics of Valencia: azulejos, tableware;
• firearms, whose modern technique goes back to the Swedish Loshult small bombard (circa 1350);
• gunpowder, invented by the Chinese;
• silk: although in pre-Hispanic America silk was produced in the wild and the Amerindians made fabrics and objects with its threads, sericulture was introduced by the Spaniards into New Spain at the end of the 16th century. In Valencia, between the 15th and 18th centuries, some of the best silk fabrics in Europe were produced. The Lonja de la Seda and the Colegio del Arte Mayor de la Seda bear witness to the strength of the silk industry in that city;
• paper, invented in China in the 2nd century BC, was introduced by the Arabs into the Iberian Peninsula in the 10th century;
• the modern printing press, invented by the German Johannes Gutenberg in 1453, was brought by the Spaniards to America as early as the first half of the 16th century; in 1541, two years after the Spaniards, on the initiative of Friar Juan de Zumárraga, brought the printing press to America, the Hoja de México began to be published, the seed of Mexican journalism. From those dates onward, the publication in America of dictionaries and religious, scientific and legal books, etc., contributed to the spread of European culture in the New World;
• writing: the grammar of Antonio de Nebrija of 1492, the first European grammar since Rome, which would serve as a model for those of other languages and marked a milestone in the maturing of Castilian. In 1500 La Celestina was published in Toledo, in 1508 Amadís de Gaula in Zaragoza, and later would come Cervantes, Calderón de la Barca, Quevedo, Lope de Vega, etc., whose works reached America shortly after being published in Spain;
• the Julian calendar, and later, in 1583, thanks to the bull Inter gravissimas, the Gregorian calendar was established;
• the mechanical clock, invented in Europe in the 13th century, which made it possible to order the day, define the night and organize work, measuring the cost of labor by determining the hours devoted to it;
• European and Arab architecture, of which there were good examples in the Spanish kingdoms before the discovery of America: the Alhambra of Granada, the mosque of Córdoba, Medina Azahara, the Alcázar of Seville, the Renaissance palaces of Jabalquinto, that of Cogolludo, that of the Infantado, the Colegio Mayor Santa Cruz, and countless Romanesque, Gothic and Mudéjar churches, cathedrals and palaces (the Romanesque cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, from the 12th century, has the masterpiece of European Romanesque: the Portico of Glory, by the Galician Master Mateo); the architecture of ancient Egypt, similar to the pre-Columbian, had long since (since Classical Greece) been surpassed in Europe (and in the Islamic world) by more advanced and sophisticated solutions;
• medieval castles and monasteries: the former had hardly any continuity in the New World; the monasteries did, some of them, such as that of Santa Catalina in Arequipa, truly original;
• gardening techniques: the gardens of the Generalife, dating from the 12th to 14th centuries; the Gardens of Aranjuez, those of Toledo, those of Seville, and so on;
• techniques for building large-tonnage ships, with which modern shipyards were founded in Cuba and at other points on the American continent: Guayaquil and Panama, for example;
• transoceanic navigation techniques;
• the cross-staff, used at sea from the beginning of the 15th century to determine the altitude of the heavenly bodies;
• the astrolabe, the quadrant, the marine compass (a magnetic needle mounted on gimbals that allowed it to turn freely despite the lurching of the ships), the ampolleta (a kind of hourglass), and other navigation instruments;
• cartography;
• mining techniques: in addition to introducing iron tools such as picks, crowbars, wedges and sledgehammers, the Spaniards invented mining techniques such as gangue mills driven by water power, or the amalgam method: silver was extracted from the ore by combining it with mercury and was separated from the amalgam by distilling off the quicksilver;
• universities, as instruments for the transmission of knowledge. Among other subjects, Law. The "Siete Partidas", drafted in the 13th century during the reign of Alfonso X, gathered Roman Law and formed the basis of legal relations in Castile. Their study reached the new continent as early as the 16th century, when the Spaniards founded there the first universities in America: those of Santo Domingo, Mexico and Lima;
• knowledge of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music (the "quadrivium"), which had been taught in the Hispanic universities since the 14th century;
• the financial system: money, banking, the bill of exchange, trading companies, etc.;
• dies, presses and other implements for minting coins. In 1535 the Spaniards founded the Casa de Moneda de México, the first "mint" in America. In 1565 they founded the Casa de Moneda de Lima and in 1572 the Casa de Moneda de Potosí;
• knowledge of economics: in the 16th century, the School of Salamanca was at the forefront of these studies: "It was the writers of the School of Salamanca who, before the Frenchman Jean Bodin, saw the relationship between the abundance of money, its depreciation and the correlative rise in the price of goods and services (...)." P. 252 of "El Antiguo Régimen: Los Reyes Católicos y los Austrias", Antonio Domínguez Ortiz. For his part, Joseph A. Schumpeter, in his classic work "Historia del análisis económico", refers to "The very high level of Spanish economics in the 16th century (...)". P. 207 of that work. Authors such as Luis Ortiz ("Memorial al Rey para que no salgan los dineros de estos reinos de España", 1558), Saravia de la Calle, who developed a theory of prices, Martín de Azpilicueta, who offers a quantity theory of money, and Tomás de Mercado, who set out a very modern interpretation of international exchange, are some of the names that laid the foundations of economics not only in Spain but also in Europe;
• knowledge of medicine: before the discovery of America, since the 13th century, there was already a chair of medicine in Salamanca. Around that time, its holder, Gabriel Álvarez Abarca, was also physician to the Catholic Monarchs;
• knowledge of pharmacy: in the Peninsula, pharmacy was researched and developed in the celebrated "boticas" (apothecaries' shops). To be in charge of a pharmacy it was necessary to hold the title of Master Apothecary, which was obtained through a rigorous examination. Charles I and Philip II specifically regulated the activity of apothecary shops and apothecaries in America with various provisions until, in 1628, the so-called Protomedicato was established, which through a Board controlled access to the profession of apothecary with examinations conducted by members of the University, and specified how an apothecary's shop had to operate;
• hospitals: as early as the 12th century, the Camino de Santiago was lined with hospitals that cared for pilgrims and for the poor sick of the localities where they were located. But it was the Catholic Monarchs who most promoted hospital medicine in all their Iberian dominions. Perhaps the best example of this effort is the Hospital de los Reyes Católicos of Santiago de Compostela, founded by them in 1499, today converted into the Parador Nacional of Santiago. In 1503 Isabella the Catholic instructed Governor Ovando that "he build, in the settlements where he sees it most necessary, houses for hospitals in which the poor may be received and cured, Christians as well as Indians." In 1509, on the island of Hispaniola, the hospitals of San Nicolás de Bari, San Buenaventura and Concepción de la Vega were already operating. And in New Spain, Hernán Cortés, in 1521, founded and financed the construction of what is today called the Hospital de Jesús, which is still standing and operating. Later, the Spaniards built in that same viceroyalty the hospitals of San Lázaro (1521), dedicated to lepers, San Juan de Letrán (1540), the Real de Nuestra Señora del Rosario (1562), the Caridad del Nombre de Dios (1562), the Santa Veracruz (1575), Nuestra Señora de Monserrat (1580), the Real de El Nombre de Jesús (1580), San Bartolomé (1582), San Juan de Dios (1582), and others. With the expansion of the Spanish Empire across America, the network of hospitals built by the Spaniards also spread to the other viceroyalties;
• hydraulic techniques, known since the times of Roman and Arab rule: aqueducts and reservoirs (the aqueducts of Segovia and Mérida, the Proserpina reservoir, also in Mérida, etc.), canals and irrigation systems (the huerta of Murcia)... In the mid-16th century, on the initiative of the Spaniard Friar Francisco de Tembleque, the hydraulic system of the Aqueduct of Padre Tembleque was built in New Spain, near Otumba; it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2015;
• the watermill. The windmill was little established in the New World;
• the Archimedes' screw;
• the technique of tapestry: the tapestry collections of the monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella were extremely important;
• leatherwork, repoussé, damascening, enamelwork, jet carving, mazonería, goldsmithing and jewelry;
• bookbinding;
• glass. The first glassmaking workshops in America were set up in Puebla and other towns of New Spain in the 16th century;
• the technique of stained glass, which had reached its maturity in the decoration of some Gothic cathedrals of the 13th and 14th centuries (that of León being the most outstanding);
• the painting techniques developed during the 14th and 15th centuries (tempera, oil painting...). In the 16th century Spanish painting reached its maturity with painters such as Pedro Berruguete or Sánchez Coello, attaining its highest levels of perfection in the 17th with Velázquez, Ribera, Murillo or Carreño. Foreign painters such as Titian, El Greco, Anton van Dashorst Mor ("Antonio Moro") or Jooris van der Straaten ("Jorge de la Rúa") worked for the Spanish kings and aristocrats during those centuries. In Cuzco, Mexico, Quito or Lima, painting developed by harmonizing the styles imported from Castile with indigenous influences, achieving a synthesis that distinguishes it from European painting. The technique of gold leaf ("pan de oro") for covering altarpieces was also exported to America by the Spaniards, reaching its highest expression in the Church of the Compañía (Quito);
• the Western music brought by the Spaniards during the Renaissance and the Baroque, as well as the musical instruments needed to perform it: the violin, the lute, the harp, the harpsichord, the clavichord, the organ (as early as 1530 the Spaniards brought an organ to Mexico from Seville), trumpets, kettledrums, sackbuts, the bajón, flutes, drums, etc. Special mention should be made of the Spanish guitar, the most popular instrument in Spain, which arrived in America with the first ships of the discovery and which, over time, evolved by adapting to the folklore that emerged in the different regions. As a result of that adaptation one can cite variants such as the Mexican jarana, the Colombian tiple, the Panamanian mejoranera, the Cuban tres, the Peruvian-Bolivian charango, the Puerto Rican cuatro, the Argentine criolla guitar, etc.;
• weaving techniques: carpets, garments, velvets, brocades... In Alcaraz, some of the finest carpets in Europe had been made since the 10th century. Several of them are preserved in the National Museum of Decorative Arts in Madrid;
• the technique of coffered ceilings (artesonado);
• urban planning techniques: Ferdinand the Catholic had already written to Nicolás de Ovando giving him instructions on how the new cities in America were to be planned. King Charles I did the same. But it was Philip II who, in his famous "Ordenanzas de Poblamiento" of 1573, established the rules to be followed: a large main square, wide streets "laid out with a cord", buildings within a grid, etc. The result was colonial cities that are today, in many cases, considered World Heritage Sites by UNESCO: the City of Potosí and the historic city of Sucre, in Bolivia; Cartagena de Indias and the historic center of Santa Cruz de Mompox, in Colombia; Old Havana and its fortifications, Trinidad, the historic center of Cienfuegos, and the historic center of Camagüey, in Cuba; Old San Juan, in Puerto Rico; the historic centers of Quito and Cuenca, in Ecuador; the historic centers of Mexico City, Oaxaca, Puebla, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Morelia, Zacatecas and Campeche, in Mexico; the historic district of Panama; the historic centers of Cuzco, Lima and Arequipa, in Peru; Antigua Guatemala, in Guatemala; Coro, in Venezuela; and many other colonial cities built by the Spaniards that are today candidates for inclusion on the UNESCO list: Salta, in Argentina; Villa de Leyva, in Colombia, etc.;
• military engineering, embodied in the forts of San Marcos, in La Florida; that of San Carlos de Perote, that of San Felipe de Bacalar, that of San Juan de Ulúa, the fortified enclosure of Campeche and the fort of San Diego de Acapulco, all of them in Mexico; the castles of La Punta, of La Fuerza and of the Tres Reyes del Morro in Havana; the castle of San Carlos de la Cabaña, also in Cuba; the castle of El Morro in Santiago de Cuba; the walled city of Santo Domingo; the walls of San Juan de Puerto Rico; the castle of San Felipe del Morro, also in Puerto Rico; the fort of San Lorenzo el Real de Chagres, in Panama; the castle of San Carlos de la Barra at the mouth of Lake Maracaibo, the fort of San Felipe and the Fortín Solano in Puerto Cabello, the castle of Araya and the fortifications of Cumaná, in Venezuela; the fort of San Felipe de Barajas in Cartagena de Indias, in Colombia; the fortress of Real Felipe in Callao, in Peru; the fortified enclosure of the castle of Niebla, in Chile, etc.;
• civil engineering: countless bridges (since the pre-Columbian Indo-American civilizations did not know the arch, they had to use suspended rope bridges), ports, canals and roads, in whose construction 16th-century European technology was used: cranes (the crankshaft crane, the masting crane, the treadwheel crane, the harbor crane, the wheel-driven crane, the floating crane), dredges (the clamshell dredge [there is a model in the Naval Museum of the Caribbean, in Cartagena de Indias], the spoon dredge, the drag dredge, the bucket-wheel dredge), the pile-driving machine, bailing machines, the noria de vejigar, etc. The Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, which connected Mexico City with Santa Fe de Nuevo México (today in the United States), was one of the most important engineering works carried out by the Spaniards in America, to the point of having been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2010;
• eyeglasses;
• Asian products (silk manufactures, spices, porcelain, ivories, etc.).

American contributions

Potato omelette, derived from the American indigenous contribution

Maya glyph for zero, year 36 BC. The Mesoamerican civilizations developed advanced mathematics. Using it, the Hispanic religious improved the Gregorian calendar.

The Spaniards brought to what they called the Old World (Europe, Asia and Africa) a series of technical elements developed by the pre-Columbian cultures. Among them:

• maize;
• the tomato, which would become fundamental in Italian cuisine;
• the potato (papa or patata);
• the sweet potato;
• the papaya;
• the avocado (aguacate or palta);
• the pineapple;
• the peanut (cacahuete or maní);
• vanilla;
• the pepper, which became essential in Spanish, Thai and Indian food;
• the sunflower;
• tobacco;
• cacao and chocolate;
• textile weaving techniques;
• rubber ("cautchuc", meaning waterproof in Maya) and latex;
• Andean ceramics;
• Andean textile techniques;
• urban planning techniques;
• pharmacological knowledge;
• new words such as huracán, macana, etc.

Owing to the unilateral logic of colonial domination, several technical advances developed by the pre-Columbian cultures have been lost, such as techniques for the ecological management of the environment (controlled burning, "terra preta", genetic improvement of plants and animals), hydraulic techniques, earthquake engineering, astronomy, calendar techniques, mathematics, writing, metalworking techniques, etc.

In the 16th century, Nicolás Monardes Alfaro, a physician and botanist from Seville, set up on his estate in Seville a botanical garden with plants arriving from America. After studying them, he made them known to Europeans through his work "Historia medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales", translated into several languages, in which he sets out the medicinal properties of some of them: Balsam of Tolu, coca, jalap, guaiacum, etc.

Economy

The Spanish colonization of the Americas and the bringing into regular contact of the markets of Europe, Asia and America, through the Fleets of the Indies and the Manila Galleon, meant the globalization of the world economy, which laid the foundations of capitalism, as Marx would point out in "Capital": "The modern history of capital dates from the creation in the 16th century of a world-embracing commerce and a world-embracing market" (Beginning of Chapter IV of Part Two, Book One). In addition, the exchange of agricultural products revolutionized crops on all continents, increased the productivity of the land and enriched the diet of broad sectors of the population. All this brought about momentous changes in the human geography of all the continents.

The effects produced on the European and Asian economies by the Spaniards' putting into circulation the gold and silver they extracted from America in the 16th century are still a subject of study today, without there being agreement among economic historians: while John Lynch or David Christian maintain the validity of E. Hamilton's studies, others, such as Jordi Nadal or Michel Morineau, criticize his analyses.

Expulsion of the Spaniards

Main article: Expulsion of the Spaniards from America

The expulsion of the Spaniards from America was a process of forced exile of the Castilian colonists carried out by the independent governments in the course of the Hispanic American Wars of Independence. The expulsion involved a small number of Spaniards who were opposed to living in countries that were no longer part of the Spanish Crown, but under uncertain and newly created governments. The majority of Spaniards and descendants of Spaniards would become assimilated into the population of the new countries, as is borne out by the ethnic demography of these new American states, made up for the most part of descendants of Spaniards, as is the case of Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Uruguay, or with a larger proportion of indigenous people, as is the case of Bolivia.

Colonization after the Spanish period

The conquest of the Old West by the Federal government of the United States in North America.

Some indigenous peoples, called savages in the 19th century by the national governments of some countries such as Chile, Argentina, Brazil, the United States and Uruguay, and also called Indians by some people in some countries such as Chile, Argentina or Brazil, suffered acts of war at the hands of those national states and their armed forces throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

In the conquest of America, some independent American states, such as Mexico, Argentina, Chile and the United States, also carried out actions aimed at occupying the territories of indigenous peoples at various stages of development, actions such as exploration, appropriation and conquest, like the pacification of Araucanía, the Conquest of the Desert and the conquest of the West, which involved the occupation of the territory of some indigenous peoples of uneven cultural development. In the 20th century, other American nations promoted racist policies against indigenous peoples, Afro-Americans and their descendants. Some people and scholars maintain that in these actions these countries carried out policies of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Historical figures such as Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer in the United States, Colonel Joaquín Terrazas in Mexico, General Julio Argentino Roca in Argentina, General Cornelio Saavedra Rodríguez in Chile, General Fructuoso Rivera in Uruguay, General Efraín Ríos Montt in Guatemala, etc., considered national heroes in their respective countries for a long time, are today branded as genocidal by leftist currents throughout the Americas.

See also

• Capitulations of Santa Fe
• Colonization of South America
• Conquest of America
• Hispanic America
• History of Spain
• Spanish Empire in Asia and Oceania
• Spanish Empire
• Mestizaje in the Americas
• Castilian Kingdoms of the Indies
• Sublimus Dei
• Viceroyalty of New Spain

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