European Colonization and Cultural Interactions

Flashcards based on lecture notes about European colonization and cultural interactions in the Americas.

Encomienda System

A system in which Spanish colonists were granted control over indigenous populations and could coerce them into labor.

Desire for goods, land ownership, religious freedom, political liberty, and to relieve overcrowding in Europe

What was the primary motivation for European exploration?

Requerimiento (1513)

A legal, religious, and political justification for enslavement, granting Spanish monarchs the authority to claim lands and convert inhabitants in the Americas.

Caste System

A social hierarchy based on racial ancestry in the Spanish colonies, where lower classes paid greater taxes.

Peninsulares, Criollos, Mestizos, Mulattoes, Africans, Native Americans

What were the layers of the Spanish Caste System?

Spanish Missionaries

Efforts by the Spanish to convert Native Americans to Christianity.

The Pueblo wanted to worship multiple deities in addition to the Christian God

What was the main cause of disconnect between European priests and the Pueblo people?

Pueblo Revolt

A revolt in 1680 led by Pope, which temporarily drove the Spanish out of New Mexico.

Natives wanted metal tools/horses/guns and the Spanish wanted access to the fur trade

What did the natives and Spanish share with each other?

Native American Religion

Belief in a natural world filled with spirits and multiple deities, communal land ownership, and kinship-based societies.

Spanish Religion

Monotheistic belief in a single deity, private land ownership, and the nuclear family.

Indigenous people were inferior to Europeans and needed to be cured

What was the main Spanish opinion on European settling?

Valladolid Debate

A debate in 1550-1551 in Europe about the morality of enslavement, featuring Bartolome Las Casas and Juan Gines de Sepulveda.

Bartolome Las Casas

Argued for peaceful religious conversion and indigenous rights during the Valladolid Debate.

Juan Gines de Sepulveda

Justified Spanish conquest and forced religious conversion during the Valladolid Debate.

Africans replace the natives in the labor system

What did Bartolome Las Casas suggest?