Spain: Notable Concepts and Technologies

Encomienda System (All Facts)

• System established during the reign of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain

• System in which the native inhabitants of the New World were used for forced labor and herded into camps for forced conversion to Christianity

  • System under which New World natives were ordered to convert to Christianity under threat of enslavement or death

• System that involved levying tribute payments from the inhabitants of the New World to be used as forced labor

• The fortunes of Spanish settlers were threatened by their failure to find a major supply of gold in Santo Domingo / Hispaniola

  • So instead, they moved away from the futile search for the precious metal towards the cultivation of sugarcane, a profitable cash crop which they benefited from reaping via the exploitation of the New World inhabitants whom they enslaved

  • Only dwindling manpower threatened profits off of sugarcane, as only 60K of the original 250K inhabitants remained, the rest being killed off due to disease and maltreatment

• In 1510, King Ferdinand gave Spanish colonizers / settlers in America (New World / New Spain) official authorization to import African slaves into their territories

  • In 1510, the first African slaves imported into the New World in America were in Cuba

• It was eventually regulated by Spanish legislation prompted by Dominicans who visited Cuba and were appalled at the conditions experienced by the natives working there

• System which generated huge products, but consumed its own workforce

  • System which was not self-sustainable as the brutality of overseers and ravages of European diseases decimated the Natives, as there eventually became none left to exploit for labor

Smallpox (All Facts)

• Disease which devastated Mexico (New Spain)’s native inhabitant population like how the Black Death had devastated Middle Ages Europe, whom bore the brunt of the disease despite their Spaniard colonizers having also suffered from it

• Disease in which over 800K native inhabitants of Mexico (New Spain) died, threatening extinction and wiping out entire tribes which had little to no immunity or natural defenses against this illness

• Disease accompanied by other illnesses accompanying European exploration and colonization of the lands including tetanus, leprosy, typhoid fever, and a variety of intestinal, lung, and venereal diseases

Arquebusier (All Facts)

• Term used to refer to a Spanish infantryman armed with a gun

Tercios (All Facts)

• Terrifying Spanish shock troops of the Kingdom of Spain

La Real (All Facts)

• Spanish flagship of Don John of Austria in the Battle of Lepanto

Rum (All Facts)

• Spirit produced by the Spanish on their sugar plantations in Barbados around the 1600s

• It was made by refining the sugar byproduct of molasses to make the namesake cheap, deep brown alcohol with a unique taste

San Diego (All Facts)

• Ship of Sebastian Vizcaino, which returned to Mexico with the first full account of the Pacific coast of Central America

Reducciones (All Facts)

• Self-sufficient communities of Jesuit-supported Guarani natives in the colony of Paraguay

• They were efficient enough to export surplus food

• They drew envious interest from Spanish colonizers who had depended on slave labor and cruelty

• Their property was held in common

Our Lady of Atocha (All Facts)

• Spanish galleon owned by King Philip IV carrying a fleet bound from Havana, Cuba to Cadiz, Spain which was overran and sunk by a hurricane

• As a result, 260 passengers were drowned and 200M pesos went to the bottom of the sea with the ship