Haciendas and Labor Systems in Spanish America and Bourbon Reforms
Haciendas and the Ascendado
Haciendas are not new to Spanish America, with similar systems known as pascendas in Roman times. It is a Roman legacy in Iberia.
The Hacienda complex is an estate system, akin to what the United States calls the plantation complex.
''Acevedado'' refers to the man on horseback, the boss or ''jefe'', the person in charge; His power originated as a conquistador and then an encomendero.
With the banning of the encomienda, it expanded into a more formal state system.
Jurisdiction was earned by military force; ascendados had personal armies for protection.
Haciendas could be gigantic (e.g., the Sanchez Navarro family estates, the size of Portugal) or more typically the size of a plantation in the South.
Features of a Landed Estate
All had a domain, including lands, forests, and waters.
The goal was to expand the family lands through various means.
Latifundia is the acquisition of land over time, acquiring ever greater lands for your estate. Some lands might be contiguous, others in an archipelago pattern.
A river dividing the land, with a bridge belonging to the family, or a mountain range marking the boundary. Lands on the other side of the mountain could still belong to the same family.
These estates became states within a state.
Jurisdiction was practiced by the Ascendado.
On privately owned lands, the Ascendado was judge, jury, and executioner well into the 19th century.
No appeals to regional governors; the Ascendado's laws prevailed.
This led to warlordism, with military figures protecting their privately held lands and resisting imperial and gubernatorial authority.
The Ascendados viewed their lands as their governing territory.
There were abuses of power within these domains.
The Manor House (Hacienda Casa Grande)
The Casa Grande was usually fortified with a gigantic wooden door surrounded by walls.
The walls occasionally had parapets for snipers and riflemen.
The courtyard had a water source, playground, and apartments on the outside.
The manor house was large enough for a stagecoach and had garden blocks and outdoor patios.
The Casa Grande was designed as a fortress on the frontiers and in the hinterlands of cities.
Villages were made inside the external walls, with chapels inside and outside.
Villages outside depended on the hacienda's agrarian economy.
The hacienda economy was not self-sufficient but focused on cash crops for a market.
It was not a subsistence model like the encomienda but a system growing cash crops for an international market.
Haciendas were interested in growing marketable items such as sugar and coffee, which were luxury items enjoyed by the international consumer.
Natural dyes like indigo and cochineal were also significant on the market.
Hennigan from the Sisal plant in Merida, Yucatan, was used for ropes.
Massive production with large, paid labor forces governed this. Coervice mechanisms were used.
Coercive Mechanisms
The IOU system involved loaning and receiving peasant labor and tribute as payments.
This tied peasants to the estate, leading to long-term debt.
Under Spanish law, debt was hereditary, passed from fathers to sons and daughters (multigenerational debt peonage).
Children, before being born, owed labor to the ascendado.
This system led to a debtor nation reliant on usury, graft, and corruption.
Borrowing included medicine (e.g., penicillin) to keep children alive.
The ''repartamiento dei bienis'' (company stores) were region-wide monopolies on certain products, with huge markups in prices.
Ascendados fixed prices in regional meetings, especially for essential goods like seed and medicine.
This monopolistic control of pricing made it difficult for peasants to change prices.
The crown tried to break down these practices, but Creole aristocracy primarily fixed prices and created transgenerational debt.
Labor Systems in the Americas
Slavery was the oldest and one of the longest, lasting nearly four centuries (1492-1888).
Started with Indians going to Sevilla and then transferred to the African slave trade (the Middle Passage).
America's greatest original sin.
The Transatlantic Slave Trade (Middle Passage)
A triangle existed on the geographical map.
Slave vessels left from places like London or Liverpool laden with finished goods (guns, explosives, ammunition, clothing, furniture, alcohol).
Africans participated in their own slave trade, capturing other Africans.
Larger states plundered smaller towns and villages, starting in the Senegambia region and moving south to Angola and The Congo.
This led to depopulation below the Sahara.
Triangular trade started in the metropole; slave fortresses such as Lombaco were here.
Forced migration of 10 to 12 million African slaves. Only 10.5 million survived the middle passage (1.5 million deaths en route).
Deaths resulted from incurable diseases, childbirth, and mutinies.
Voyages lasted between 33 and 133 days.
The USS George lost its entire cargo of human beings to starvation.
Almost every slave went through Havana, Cuba, as a trampoline to other places.
Five to six million slaves ended up in The Caribbean, creating a racially amalgamated society with a dominant African culture.
Less than 1 million went to British North America; 2 to 3 million to Brazil; less than a million to South America.
New Spain had over 300,000 slaves, whose population grew through natural reproduction and became part of Mexico's racial profile.
Mestizaje in Southern Mexico changed the complexion of Mexico because of indigenous and African workforce.
Gold returned from Havana was paid in cash for slaves and plantation laborers, and yielded enormous amounts of gold, which was then invested in factories of London.
Resistance and Cultural Production
Slaves found methods of resistance.
Despite being stripped of identities, their cultural production (music, spiritual beliefs, cuisine) was remarkable.
There is an African component to every Caribbean city, including the Northern Coast of South America, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Central America, The Antilles, and West Indies.
Labor and the World Economy
Most labor systems were not based on wage labor or indenture but on agreements between patron and client, subject to abuse.
Latin America grew more dependent on the world economy.
Population increases required Latin America to import basic staples for human existence.
The Americas became both producer and marketer of stimulants and narcotics.
This is a byproduct of the Columbian exchange.
Bourbon Reforms
The Bourbons perfected many labor systems but also reformed them to give the crown a larger share from Creole aristocracies.
Began in 1700 and lasted through independence in the 1820s.
The Habsburgs were a German monarch from Vienna, Austria, who intermarried with the Spanish aristocracy.
The Bourbons came to power in the 1700s through the War of the Spanish Succession, which was a key event in Spanish imperial history.
Wars have unforeseen consequences.
The War of the Spanish Succession occurred from 1700 to 1713; the Treaty of Utrecht ended it.
Charles II, a Habsburg king in Spain, had hereditary defects from incestuous relationships.
On his deathbed, Charles named as his successor his cousin Philip V of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV, the Bourbon king of France.
Europe aligned against France and Spain to prevent their union under the Bourbons.
The war was about who would succeed Charles II.
England and the Holy Roman Empire led the alliance against France and Spain.
Charles is the Spanish version of Carlos.
Multiple Italian city states made up most of Italy at this time.
England gained the Eastern Seaboard of Canada from France at the Treaty of Utrecht.
France gave up territory to England and Italian city-states.
Spain seated Philip V on the throne, and the Bourbons took over.
England also got the right to sell slaves in Spanish America.
France could market its goods in Spanish territory.
The Bourbons began by redrawing the map.
Territorial Reforms of the Bourbons
Philip examined the decentralized empire run by two vice royalties (Mexico/New Spain and Peru).
New Spain included The Philippines, the Caribbean, and Northern South America; they formed what was called New Granada.
They also created a vice royalty of the Rio De La Plata (Argentina) in Buenos Aires.
The Bourbons doubled the number of vice royalties.
They added two captaincies: Chile and Venezuela.
Venezuela broke off from New Granada.
Creole Rule
By 1750, Creoles ran the show politically and had power and wealth.
The Bourbons used the French intendancy system to redraw the map.
They created departments in France of equal geographical size.
The intendancy system was designed for equal revenue from similar-sized provinces.
Political reforms led to a purge of old Creole governors and mayors.
Intendants from Spain (Peninsulares) took their place in administering and generating revenue through taxation and government monopolies.
They are customs, tariffs, duties, and so forth leaving and coming in from Spain and passed on to Spain.
Spain needed to reform The Americas because The Americas was wealthier than the mother country.
The crown wanted to confiscate wealth being generated in their empire.
Economic Reforms
Charles III sent Jose de Galves to study the flow of capital in New Spain.
Galvez discovered corruption, fraud, and contraband trade conducted by Creoles with England, Portugal, and the Dutch.
The contraband kept money from reaching Spain through taxation.
Charles III instituted a fleet system that only allowed goods to be exchanged with the royal fleet twice a year.
He constructed prototype destroyers (Guaracostas) to destroy piracy in the Caribbean.
Acapulco was the source of outgoing silver to The Philippines for China.
The reforms led to a increase in revenue for Spain.
France and Spain supported the American Revolution in 1776.
Guaracoustics are prototype destroyers.
Laissez Faire Economics
After the 1780s, justification for laissez-faire economics (free trade capitalism after the British invented it).
Spain followed suit.
Through reforms, the Bourbons allowed for intercolonial trade.
They shut down the Cadi's monopoly.
With the certification of Madrid, ships could carry goods directly to Spanish ports.
Peninsulares controlled many of the ships through joint-stock companies, creating a new guild out of Sevilla.
This was free trade still controlled by Charles III, who wanted revenue funneled to the Bourbons.
Religious Reforms
These included the expulsion of the Jesuits.
The Jesuits' independent wealth was the issue.
They were the bankers of The Americas, slave owners, real estate agents, and property owners.
In 1767, the Spanish crown expelled 4,000 Jesuits from New Spain and 1,500 from Peru.
The Jesuits were a Creole order, with many second and third sons of Creole families gaining positions.
The Jesuits criticized the Bourbon monarchy and rewrote the histories of The Americas without the Spanish crown.
This was a church-state struggle, with the church losing.
Aristocrats were behind the crown's expulsion of the Jesuits.
Labor Reforms
Beginning in 1780, the Bourbon crown required every laborer to secure a clearance certificate from Madrid to leave their job.
This was because of impending conflict and the need for miners to work in silver mines.
The American Revolution coincided with this.
The clearance certificates caused three regional rebellions in 1780 and 1781:
Tupacamaru uprising in Peru (neo-Inca).
Comunero Revolt in New Granada (textile workers and miners).
Real Del Monte strike in Mexico.
All three rebellions were peasant-led and crushed by Spain.
These rebellions terrified Creoles and set back independence.
Military Reforms
After 1800, Spain trained a colonial militia.
Three out of four officers had to be Peninsulares to keep the colonies in line.
In 1804 and 1805, Napoleon invaded Spain, putting his brother Joseph on the throne and leaving a vacuum power.
The ratio of Peninsulares was reduced to one in four.
Three out of four members of the colonial militia were Creoles.
Creoles took over the barracks when Ferdinand VII left Spain.
Creoles formed juntas (bodies of military figures) to make decisions.
Figures such as Simon Bolivar, Jose de San Martin, and Ignacio Allende cut their teeth as officers in the colonial militia and ignited independence movements because they hated the Bourbons.
Territorial Reforms of the Bourbons
Philip examined the decentralized empire run by two vice royalties (Mexico/New Spain and Peru).
New Spain included The Philippines, the Caribbean, and Northern South America; they formed