AP World 19.1

The peoples who inhabited the Iberian Peninsula had long lived at the frontier of Mediterranean Europe. During the Middle Ages their lands were a cultural frontier between Christianity and Islam. Conflicts created a strong tradition of military conquest and rule over peoples of other beliefs and customs. A number of Christian kingdoms emerged, such as Portugal on the Atlantic coast, Aragon in eastern Spain, and in the center of the peninsula, Castile, the largest of all. By the mid-15th century, the rulers Ferdinand of Aragon and his wife Isabella of Castile carried out a program of unification that sought to eliminate the religious and eventually the ethnic divisions in their kingdoms. With the fall in 1492 of Granada, the last Muslim kingdom, the cross triumphed throughout the peninsula. Moved by political savvy and religious fervor, Isabella ordered the Jews of her realm to convert or leave the country. As many as 200,000 people may have left, severely disrupting some aspects of the Castilian economy. It was also in 1492, with the Granada war at an end and religious unification established, that 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 westward around the globe. 

Iberian Society and Tradition 

Like many Mediterranean peoples, the Spanish and Portuguese were heavily urban, with many peas- ants living in small towns and villages. That pattern was also established in America, where Europeans lived in cities and towns surrounded by a rural native population. Many commoners who came to America as conquerors sought to recreate themselves as a new nobility, with native peoples as their serfs. The patriarchal family was readily adapted to Latin America, where large estates and grants of American Indian laborers provided the framework for relations based on economic dominance. The Iberian peninsula had maintained a tradition of holding slaves-part of its experience as an ethnic frontier-in contrast to most of medieval Europe, and African slaves had been imported from the trans-Sahara trade. The extension of slavery to America built on this tradition. 

The political centralization of both Portugal and Castile depended on a professional bureaucracy, usually made up of men trained as lawyers and judges. This system is worthy of comparison with the systems in China and other great empires. Religion and the church served as the other pillar of Iberian politics; close links between church and state resulted from the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslims, and these links, including royal nomination of church officials, were also extended to the New World. 

Spanish and particularly Portuguese merchants also shaped traditions that became relevant in the American colonies. Portugal had been moving down the African coast since 1415, establishing trading posts rather than outright colonies. In the Atlantic islands, however, more extensive estates were established, leading to a slave trade with Africa and a highly commercial agricultural system based on sugar. Brazil would extend this pattern, starting out as a trade factory but then shifting, as in the Atlantic islands, to plantation agriculture. 

The Chronology of Conquest 

The Spanish and Portuguese conquest and colonization of the Americas falls roughly into three periods during the early modern centuries. First came an era of conquest from 1492 to about 1570 (Map 19.1), during which the main lines of administration and economy were set out. The second phase was one of consolidation and maturity from 1570 to about 1700 in which the colonial institu- tions and societies took their definitc form. Finally, during the 18th century, a period of reform and reorganization in both Spanish America and Portuguese Brazil (Map 19.2) intensified the colonial relationship and planted the seeds of dissatisfaction and revolt. 

The period from 1492 to about 1570 witnessed a remarkable spurt of human destruction and creation. During roughly a century, vast areas of two continents and millions of people were brought under European control. Immigration, commerce, and exploitation of native populations linked these areas to an emerging Atlantic economy. These processes were accompanied and made pos- sible by the conquest and destruction of many American Indian societies and the transformation of others, as well as by the introduction in some places of African slaves. Mexico and Peru, with their large sedentary populations and mineral resources, attracted the Spaniards and became the focus of immigration and institution building. Other conquests radiated outward from the Peruvian and Mexican centers. 

The Caribbean Crucible 

The Caribbean experience served Spain as a model for its actions elsewhere in the Americas. After Columbus's first trans-Atlantic voyage in 1492, a return expedition in the next year established a colony on the island of Santo Domingo, or Hispaniola (Map 19.1). 

In the Caribbean, the agricultural Taino people of the islands provided enough surplus labor to make their distribution to individual Spaniards feasible, and thus began what would become the encomienda, or grant of indigenous people to individual Spaniards in a kind of serfdom. The holder of an encomienda, an encomendero, was able to use the people as workers or to tax them. Gold hunt- ing, slaving, and European diseases rapidly depopulated the islands, and within two decades little was left there to hold Spanish attention. The Spaniards occupied the larger islands like Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico but did not settle the islands of the lesser Antilles. A few strongly fortified ports on the larger islands, such as Havana, San Juan, and Santo Domingo, guarded Spain's commercial life- line, but on the whole the Caribbean became a colonial backwater for the next two centuries, until sugar and slaves became the basis of its resurgence. During the 17th century, the English, French, and Dutch began to settle the smaller islands and to compete with Spain by creating their own plantation colonies. 

In the 40 years between the first voyage of Columbus and the conquest of Mexico, the Caribbean served as a testing ground. It was here that the Columbian Exchange (see Chapter 17) of peoples, crops, domesticated animals, diseases, and cultures began in earnest. The Spaniards established Iberian-style cities but had to adapt them to American realities. Hurricanes and the native peoples' resistance caused many towns to be moved or abandoned, but the New World also provided opportunities to implant new ideas and forms. Unlike cities in Europe, Spanish American cities usually were laid out according to a grid plan or checkerboard form, with the town hall, major church, and governor's palace in the central plaza (Figure 19.2). Spaniards applied Roman models and rational town planning ideas to the new situation. Conquest came to imply settlement. 

To rule, Spain created administrative institutions: the governorship, the treasury office, and the royal court of appeals staffed by professional magistrates. Spanish legalism was part of the institutional transfer. Notaries accompanied new expeditions, and a body of laws was developed, based on those of Castile and augmented by American experience. The church, represented at first by individual priests and then by missionaries such as the Dominicans, participated in the enterprise. By 1530, a cathedral was being built on Hispaniola, and a university soon followed. 

Rumors and hopes stimulated immigration from Castile, which claimed control of the new lands, but also from the other Iberian kingdoms, and by the 1510s the immigrants included larger numbers of Spanish women. Also, Spanish and Italian merchants began to import African slaves to work on the few sugar plantations that operated on the islands. The arrival of both Spanish women and Afri- can slaves marked a shift from an area of conquest to one of settlement. The gold-hunting phase had given out in the islands by the 1520s and was replaced by the establishment of ranches and sugar plantations. The adventurous, the disappointed, and the greedy repeated the pattern as expeditions spun off in new directions. 

Depopulation of the Tainos led to slaving on other islands, and in 30 years or so, most of the indigenous population had died or been killed. The people of the Lesser Antilles, or "Caribs," whom the Spaniards accused of cannibalism and who were thus always subject to enslavement, held out longer because their islands were less attractive to European settlement. To meet the labor needs of the islands, African slaves were imported. As early as 1510, the mistreatment and destruction of the American Indians led to attempts by clerics and royal administrators to end the worst abuses. The activities of men such as Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484-1566; Figure 19.3), a conquistador turned priest, initiated the struggle for justice. 

Expeditions leaped from island to island. Where the native peoples and cultures were more resil- ient, their impact on the societies that emerged was greater than in the Caribbean, but the process of contact was similar. By the time of the conquest of Mexico in the 1520s and Peru in the 1530s, all the elements of the colonial system of Latin America were in place. Even in Brazil, which the Portuguese began to exploit after 1500, a period of bartering with the Native Americans was slowly replaced by increasing royal control and development of a sugar plantation economy. There, as in the Caribbean, resistance and subsequent depopulation of the native peoples led to the importation of African laborers. 

The Paths of Conquest 

No other race can be found that can penetrate through such rugged lands, such dense forests, such great mountains and deserts and cross such broad rivers as the Spaniards have done... solely by the valor of their persons and the forcefulness of their breed. 

These words, written by Pedro Cieza de Leon, one of the conquistadors of Peru, underlined the Spaniards' pride in their accomplishments. In less than a century, a large portion of two continents and islands in an inland sea, inhabited by millions of people, was brought under Spanish control. Expeditions, usually comprising 50 to 500 men, provided the spearhead of conquest, and in their wake followed the women, missionaries, administrators, and artisans who began to form civil society. 

The conquest was not a unified movement but rather a series of individual initiatives that usually operated with government approval. The conquest of the Americas was two pronged: one prong was directed toward Mexico; the other was aimed at South America. 

We can use the well-documented campaign in Mexico as an example of a conquest. In 1519 Hernán Cortés, an educated man with considerable ability as a leader, led an expedition of 600 men to the coast of Mexico. After hearing rumors of a great kingdom in the interior, he began to strike inland. Pitched battles were fought with towns subject to the Aztec empire, but after gaining these victories, Cortés was able to enlist the defeated peoples' support against their over- lords. With the help of the Indian allies, Cortés eventually reached the great Aztec island capital of Tenochtitlan. By a combination of deception, bold- ness, ruthlessness, and luck, the Aztec emperor Moctezuma II was captured and killed (Figure 19.4). Cortés and his followers were forced to flee the Aztec capital and retreat toward the coast, but with the help of the Aztecs' traditional enemies, they cut off and besieged Tenochtitlan. Although the Aztec confederacy put up a stiff resistance, disease, starvation, and battle brought the city down in 1521. Tenochtitlan was replaced by Mexico City. The Aztec poets later remembered, 

We are crushed to the ground, 

we lie in ruins. 

There is nothing but grief and suffering 

in Mexico and Tlatelolco, 

where once we saw beauty and valor. 

By 1535, most of central Mexico, with its network of towns and its dense, agricultural populations, had been brought under Spanish control. It became the core of the viceroyalty of New Spain, which eventually also included most of Central America, the islands of the Caribbean, and the Philippines and extended from the southwest of the present United States all the way to Panama. 

The second trajectory of conquests led from the Caribbean outposts to the coast of northern South America and Panama. From Panama, the Spaniards followed rumors of a rich kingdom to the south. In 1532, after a false start, Francisco Pizarro led his men to the conquest of the Inca empire, which was already weakened by a long civil war. Once again, using guile and audacity, fewer than 200 Spaniards and their native Indian allies brought down a great empire. The Inca capital of Cuzco, high in the Andes, fell in 1533, but the Spanish decided to build their major city, Lima, closer to the coast. By 1540, most of Peru was under Spanish con- trol, although an active resistance continued in remote areas for another 30 years. 

From the conquests of densely populated areas, such as Mexico and Peru, where there were surpluses of food and potential laborers, Spanish expeditions spread out in search of further riches and strange peoples. They penetrated the zones of semi-sedentary and nomadic peoples, who often offered stiff resistance. From 1540 to 1542, in one of the most famous expeditions, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, searching for mythical cities of gold, penetrated what is now the southwestern United States as far as Kansas. At the other end of the Americas, Pedro de Valdivia conquered the tenacious Araucanians of central Chile and set up the city of Santiago in 1541, although the Araucanians continued to fight long after. Buenos Aires, in the southern part of the continent, founded by an expedition from Spain in 1536, was abandoned because of resistance and was not refounded until 1580. Other expeditions penetrated the Amazon basin and explored the tropical forests of Central and South America dur- ing these years, but there was little there to attract permanent settlement to those areas. By 1570, there were 192 Spanish cities and towns throughout the Americas, one-third of which were in Mexico and Central America. 

The Conquerors 

The Spanish captains led by force of will and personal power. "God in heaven the king in Spain, and me here" was the motto of one captain, and sometimes, absolute power could lead to tyranny. The crown received one-fifth of all treasure. Men signed up on a shares basis; those who brought horses or who had special skills might get double shares. Rewards were made according to the contract, and premi- ums were paid for special service and valor. There was a tendency for leaders to reward their friends, relatives, and men from their home province more liberally than others, so that after each conquest there was always a group of unhappy and dissatis- fied conquerors ready to organize a new expedi- tion. As one observer put it, "if each man was given the governorship, it would not be enough." 

Few of the conquerors were professional sol- diers; they represented all walks of Spanish life, including a scattering of gentlemen, and some- times even former slaves and freedmen. Some of the later expeditions included a few Spanish women such as Inés Suárez, the heroine of the conquest of Chile, but such cases were rare. In general, the conquerors were men on the make, hoping to better themselves and serve God by converting the heathen at the same time. Always on the lookout for treasure, most conquerors were satisfied by encomiendas. These adventurous men, many of humble origins, came to see themselves as a new nobility entitled to dominion over a new peasantry: the American Indians. 

The reasons for Spanish success were varied. Horses, firearms, and more generally steel weap- ons gave them a great advantage over the stone technology of the native peoples. This techno- logical edge, combined with effective and ruth- less leadership, produced remarkable results. Epidemic disease also proved to be a silent ally of the Europeans. Finally, internal divisions and rivalries within American Indian empires, and their high levels of centralization, made the great civilizations particularly vulnerable. It is no accident that the peoples who offered the stiffest and most continuous resistance were usually the mobile, tough, nomadic tribes rather than the centralized states of sedentary peasants. 

By about 1570, the age of the conquest was coming to a close. Bureaucrats, merchants, and colo- nists replaced the generation of the conquerors as institutions of government and economy were created. The transition was not easy. In Peru a civil war erupted in the 1540s, and in Mexico there were grumblings from the old followers of Cortés. But the establishment of viceroys in the two main colonies and the creation of law courts in the main centers signaled that Spanish America had become a colony rather than a conquest. 

Conquest and Morality 

Conquest involved violence, domination, and theft. The Spanish conquest of the Americas created a series of important philosophical and moral questions for Europeans. Mancio Serra was not alone in questioning the conquest. Theologians and lawyers asked: Who were the Indians? Were they fully human? Was it proper to convert them to Christianity? Could conversion by force or the conquest of their lands be justified? Driven by greed, many of the conquistadors argued that conquest was necessary to spread the gospel and that control of Indian labor was essential for Spain's rule. In 1548 Juan Gines de Sépulveda, a noted Spanish scholar, basing his arguments on Aristotle, published a book claiming that the conquest was fully justified. The Spaniards had come to free the Indians from their unjust lords and to bring the light of salvation. Most importantly, he argued, the Indians were not fully human, and some peoples "were born to serve." 

In 1550 the Spanish king suspended all further conquests and convoked a special commission in Valladolid to hear arguments for and against this position. Father Bartolomé de Las Casas-former conqueror and encomendero, Dominican priest, bishop of Chiapas, untiring defender of the Indians, and critic of Spanish brutality-presented the contrary opinion against Sépulveda. Las Casas had long experience in the West Indies, and he believed that the inhabitants were rational people who, unlike the Muslims, had never done harm to Christians. Thus, the conquest of their lands was unjustified. The Indians had many admirable customs and accomplishments, he said. He argued that "the Indians are our brothers and Christ has given his life for them." Spanish rule in order to spread the Christian faith was justified, but conversion should take place only by peaceful means. 

The results of the debate were mixed. The crown had reasons to back Las Casas against the dangerous ambitions of the Spanish conquerors. Sépulveda's book was censored, but the conquests nevertheless continued. Although some of the worst abuses were moderated, in reality the great period of conquest was all over by the 1570s. It was too little, too late. Still, the Spanish government's concern with the legality and morality of its actions and the willingness of Spaniards such as Las Casas to speak out against abuses are also part of the story. The interests of many other conquerors and officials, however, ran in the opposite direction. 

The Peoples of the Iberian Peninsula

• Cultural frontier between Christianity and Islam during the Middle Ages.

• Emergence of Christian kingdoms: Portugal, Aragon, and Castile.

• Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile worked to unify their kingdoms in the mid-15th century.

• Fall of Granada in 1492 marked a triumph for Christianity; Isabella ordered Jews to convert or leave, affecting the Castilian economy.

• 1492: Isabella and Ferdinand supported Columbus's expedition to reach the East Indies.

Iberian Society and Tradition

• Urban society in Spain and Portugal; peasants lived in towns/villages.

• Conquerors in America sought to recreate a nobility with native Americans as serfs.

• Maintained slavery as part of tradition, including African slaves from the trans-Sahara trade.

• Political centralization relied on a professional bureaucracy.

• Strong connections between the church and state, extending to the New World.

Chronology of Conquest

• Three periods of Spanish and Portuguese conquest:

  1. Era of conquest (1492-1570)

  2. Consolidation and maturity (1570-1700)

  3. Reform and reorganization (18th century).

• Rapid introduction of European control over large areas and populations during the first period.

• Significant immigration and exploitation of native populations.

The Caribbean Experience

• First colony established in Hispaniola after Columbus's voyage.

• Taino people’s surplus labor led to the encomienda system.

• Caribbean became a colonial backwater until the rise of sugar plantations.

• Spanish cities in the New World adopted grid patterns, influenced by Roman models.

Paths of Conquest

• Conquests of Mexico and Peru set precedents for subsequent expeditions across the Americas.

• Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztec Empire; Francisco Pizarro conquered the Inca Empire.

• Explorations continued into the Americas by other figures like Francisco Vázquez de Coronado.

Conquerors and Their Impact

• Conquistadors were mainly men seeking wealth and status, forming a new nobility over native populations.

• Spanish technological advantages aided conquest, alongside internal conflicts among native empires.

• By 1570, Bureaucrats and merchants began replacing the initial generation of conquerors as colonial institutions were established.