Spanish colonization of the Americas

01The Spanish colonization of the Americas began in 1493 on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, now Haiti and the Dominican Republic, after the initial 1492 voyage of Genoese mariner Christopher Columbus under license from Queen Isabella I of Castile.

02These overseas territories of the Spanish Empire were under the jurisdiction of Crown of Castile until the last territory was lost in 1898.

03Spaniards saw the dense populations of indigenous peoples as an important economic resource and the territory claimed as potentially producing great wealth for individual Spaniards and the Crown.

04Religion played an important role in the Spanish conquest and incorporation of indigenous peoples, bringing them into the Catholic Church peacefully or by force.

05The Crown created civil and religious structures to administer the vast territory.

06Spanish men and women settled in greatest numbers where there were dense indigenous populations and the existence of valuable resources for extraction.

07The Spanish Empire claimed jurisdiction over the New World in the Caribbean and North and South America, with the exception of Brazil, ceded to Portugal by the Treaty of Tortosillas.

08Other European powers, including England, France, and the Dutch Republic, took possession of territories initially claimed by Spain.

09Although the overseas territories under the jurisdiction of the Spanish Crown are now commonly called colonies, the term was not used until the second half of 18th century.

10The process of Spanish settlement, now called colonization and the colonial era are terms contested by scholars of Latin America and more generally.

11It is estimated that during the period 1492 to 1832, a total of 1.86 million Spaniards settled in the Americas and a further 3.5 million immigrated during the post-independence era, 1850 to 1950.

12The estimate is 250,000 in the 16th century and most during the 18th century, as immigration was encouraged by the new Bourbon dynasty.

13The indigenous population plummeted by an estimated 80% in the first century and a half following Columbus's voyages, primarily through the spread of infectious diseases.

14Practices of forced labor and slavery for resource extraction and forced resettlement in new villages and later missions were implemented.

15Alarmed by the precipitous fall in indigenous populations and reports of settlers' exploitation of their labor, the crown put in place laws to protect their newly converted indigenous vassals.

16Europeans imported enslaved Africans to the early Caribbean settlements to replace indigenous labor and enslaved and free Africans were part of colonial era populations.

17A mixed-race casta population came into being during the period of Spanish rule.

18In the early 19th century, the Spanish-American wars of independence resulted in the secession of most of Spanish America and the establishment of independent nations.

19Continuing under crown rule were Cuba and Puerto Rico, along with the Philippines, which were all lost to the United States in 1898, following the Spanish-American war, ending its rule in the Americas.

20Imperial expansion The expansion of Spain's territory took place under the Catholic monarchs Isabella I of Castile and her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon, whose marriage marked the beginning of Spanish power beyond the Iberian peninsula.

21They pursued a policy of joint rule of their kingdoms and created the initial stage of a single Spanish monarchy, completed under the 18th century Bourbon monarchs.

22The first expansion of territory was the conquest of the Muslim Emirate of Granada on January 1, 1492, the culmination of the Christian reconquest of the Iberian peninsula, held by the Muslims since 7-11.

23On March 31, 1492, the Catholic monarch ordered the expulsion of the Jews in Spain who refused to convert to Christianity.

24On October 12, 1492, Genoese mariner Christopher Columbus made landfall in the Western Hemisphere, and in 1493 permanent Spanish settlement of the Americas began.

25Castile and Aragon were ruled jointly by their respective monarchs, but they remained separate kingdoms.

26When the Catholic monarchs gave official approval for the plans for Columbus's voyage to reach the Indies by sailing west, the funding came from the Queen of Castile.

27The profits from Spanish expedition flowed to Castile.

28The Kingdom of Portugal authorized a series of voyages down the coast of Africa, and when they rounded the southern tip, were able to sail to India and further east.

29Spain sought similar wealth and authorized Columbus's voyage sailing west.

30Once the Spanish settlement in the Caribbean occurred, Spain and Portugal formalized a division of the world between them in the 1494 Treaty of Tortosillas.

31The deeply pious Isabella saw the expansion of Spain's sovereignty inextricably paired with the evangelization of non-Christian peoples, the so-called spiritual conquest with the military conquest.

32Pope Alexander VI, in a May 4, 1493 papal decree inter quiteria, divided rights to lands in the Western Hemisphere between Spain and Portugal on the proviso that they spread Christianity.

33These formal arrangements between Spain and Portugal and the Pope were ignored by other European powers, with the French, the English, and the Dutch seizing territory in the Caribbean and in North America claimed by Spain but not effectively settled.

34Portugal's claim to part of South America under the Treaty of Tortosillas resulted in the creation of Portuguese colony of Brazil.

35Although during the rule of Charles V, the Spanish Empire was the first to be called the empire on which the sun never sets, under Philip II the permanent colonization of the Philippine Islands made it demonstrably true.

36General Principles of Expansion The Spanish expansion has sometimes been succinctly summed up as being motivated by gold, glory, God, that is, the search for material wealth, the enhancement of the conquerors and the crown's position, and the expansion of Christianity to the exclusion of other religious traditions.

37In the extension of Spanish sovereignty to its overseas territories, authority for expeditions, entratus of discovery, conquest, and settlement resided in the monarchy.

38Expeditions required authorization by the crown, which laid out the terms of such expedition.

39Virtually all expeditions after the Columbus voyages, which were funded by the crown of Castile, were done at the expense of the leader of the expedition and its participants.

40Although often the participants' conquistadors are now termed soldiers, they were not paid soldiers in ranks of an army, but rather soldiers of fortune who joined an expedition with the expectation of profiting from it.

41The leader of an expedition, the adelantado was a senior with material wealth and standing who could persuade the crown to issue him a license for an expedition.

42He also had to attract participants to the expedition who staked their own lives and meager fortunes on the expectation of the expedition's success.

43The leader of the expedition pledged the larger share of capital to the enterprise, which in many ways functioned as a commercial firm.

44Upon the success of the expedition, the spoils of war were divvied up in proportion to the amount a participant initially staked, with the leader receiving the largest share.

45Participants supplied their own armor and weapons, and those who had a horse received two shares, one for himself, the second recognizing the value of the horse as a machine of war.

46For the conquest era, the names of two Spaniards are popularly known because they led the conquests of two indigenous empires, Hernán Cortés, leader of the expedition involved in the conquest of the Aztec Empire, and Francisco Pizarro, leader of the conquest of the Inca in Peru.

47Spanish conquerors took advantage of indigenous rivalries to forge alliances with groups seeing an advantage for their own goals.

48This is most clearly seen in the conquest of the Aztec Empire with the alliance of the Nahua city-state of Tlaxcala against the Aztec Empire resulting in lasting benefits to themselves and their descendants.

49Caribbean Islands and the Spanish Main Patterns of the first Spanish settlements in the Caribbean were to endure there and had a lasting impact on the Spanish Empire.

50Until his dying day, Columbus was convinced that he had reached Asia, the Indies.

51From that misperception the Spanish called the indigenous peoples of the Americas Indians Indios, lumping a multiplicity of civilizations, groups, and individuals into a single category.

52The Spanish royal government called its overseas possessions the Indies until its empire dissolved in the 19th century.

53In the Caribbean, because there was no integrated indigenous civilization such as found in Mexico and Peru, there was no large-scale Spanish conquest of indigenous peoples, but there was indigenous resistance to Spanish colonization.

54Columbus made four voyages to the West Indies as the monarchs granted Columbus vast powers of governance over this unknown part of the world.

55The crown of Castile financed more of his transatlantic journeys, a pattern they would not repeat elsewhere.

56Effective Spanish settlement began in 1493, when Columbus brought livestock, seeds, agricultural equipment.

57The first settlement of La Navidad, a crude fort built on his first voyage in 1492, had been abandoned by the time he returned in 1493.

58He then founded the settlement of La Isabella on the island they named Hispaniola, now divided into Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

59Spanish explorations of other islands in the Caribbean and what turned out to be the mainland of South and Central America occupied them for over two decades.

60Columbus had promised the crown that the region he now controlled held a huge treasure in the form of gold and spices.

61Spanish settlers initially found relatively dense populations of indigenous peoples, who were agriculturalists living in villages ruled by leaders not part of a larger integrated political system.

62The Spanish saw these populations as a source of labor, there for their exploitation, to supply their own settlements with foodstuffs, but more importantly for the Spanish, to extract mineral wealth or produce another valuable commodity for Spanish enrichment.

63The labor of dense populations of Tainos were allocated as grants to Spanish settlers in an institution known as the Encomienda, where particular indigenous settlements were awarded to individual Spaniards.

64There was surface gold found in early islands, and holders of encomiendas put the indigenous to work panning for it.

65For all practical purposes this was slavery.

66Queen Isabel put an end to formal slavery, declaring the indigenous to be vassals of the crown, but Spaniards' exploitation of indigenous labor continued.

67The Taino population on Hispaniola went from hundreds of thousands or millions, the estimates by scholars vary widely.

68But in the mid-1490s they were practically wiped out.

69Disease and overwork, disruption of family life and the agricultural cycle, which caused severe food shortages to Spaniards dependent on them, rapidly decimated the indigenous population.

70From the Spanish viewpoint, their source of labor and viability of their own settlements was at risk.

71After the collapse of the the Filipino population of Hispaniola, Spaniards began raiding indigenous settlements on nearby islands, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica, to enslave those populations, replicating the demographic catastrophe there as well.

72The names of two indigenous leaders, caciques, who rebelled against Spanish colonization, Enriquillo and Otway in the Dominican Republic, Hispaniola, have become important.

73In 1542 Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos denounced Spanish cruelty and abuse in a sermon in 1511, which comes down to us in the writings of Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas.

74In 1542 Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas wrote a damning account of this demographic catastrophe, a short account of the destruction of the Indies.

75It was translated quickly to English and became the basis for the anti-Spanish writings, collectively known as the Black Legend.

76Las Casas spent his long life attempting to defend the indigenous populations and to enlist the Spanish crown in establishing protections for them, seen most prominently in the enactment of the new laws of 1542, restricting Spaniards' inheritance of encomiendas.

77The first mainland explorations by Spaniards were followed by a phase of inland expeditions and conquest.

78In 1500 the city of Nueva Cárez was founded on the island of Cabagua, Venezuela, followed by the founding of Santa Cruz by Alonso de Ojeda in the present-day Guajira Peninsula.

79Cumana in Venezuela was the first permanent settlement founded by Europeans in the mainland Americas, in 1501 by Franciscan friars, but due to successful attacks by the indigenous people, it had to be refounded several times, until Diego Hernandez de Serpas Foundation in 1569.

80The Spanish founded San Sebastian de Uraba in 1509 but abandoned it within the year.

81There is indirect evidence that the first permanent Spanish mainland settlement established in the Americas was Santa Maria La Antigua del Darien.

82Spaniards spent over 25 years in the Caribbean where their initial high hopes of dazzling wealth gave way to continuing exploitation of disappearing indigenous populations, exhaustion of local gold mines, initiation of cane sugar cultivation as an export product, and forced migration of enslaved Africans as a labor force.

83Spaniards continued to expand their presence in the Circumcaribbean region with expeditions.

84One was by Francisco Hernandez de Córdoba in 1517, another by Juan de Grijalva in 1518, which brought promising news of possibilities there.

85Even by the mid-1510s the western Caribbean was largely unexplored by Spaniards.

86A well-connected settler in Cuba, Hernán Cortés received authorization in 1519 by the governor of Cuba to form an expedition of exploration only to this far western region.

87That expedition was to make world history.

88The Caribbean islands became less central to Spain's overseas colonization, but remained important strategically and economically, especially the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola, the crown in the mid-17th century since it failed to protect their duly appointed bishop.

89The crown expelled the Jesuits from Spain and the Indies in 1767 during the Bourbon reforms.

90Holy office of the Inquisition.

91Inquisitional powers were initially vested in bishops, who could root out idolatry and heresy.

92In Mexico, Bishop Juan de Zumarraga prosecuted and had executed in 1539 a Nahua lord, known as Don Carlos of Texcoco for apostasy and sedition for having converted to Christianity and then renounced his conversion and urged others to do so as well.

93Zumarraga was reprimanded for his actions as exceeding his authority.

94When the formal institution of the Inquisition was established in 1571, indigenous peoples were excluded from its jurisdiction on the grounds that they were neophytes, new converts, and not capable of understanding religious doctrine.

95Society.

96Demographic impact of colonization.

97It has been estimated that over 1.86 million Spaniards emigrated to Latin America in the period between 1492 and 1824, with millions more continuing to immigrate following independence.

98Native populations declined significantly during the period of Spanish expansion.

99In Hispaniola, the indigenous Taino pre-contact population before the arrival of Columbus of several hundred thousand had declined to 60,000 by 1509.

100The population of the Native American population in Mexico declined by an estimated 90 percent, reduced to 1 to 2.5 million people by the early 17th century.

101In Peru, the indigenous Amerindian pre-contact population of around 6.5 million declined to 1 million by the early 17th century.

102The overwhelming cause of the decline in both Mexico and Peru was infectious diseases, such as smallpox and measles, although the brutality of the encomienda also played a significant part in the population decline.

103Of the history of the indigenous population of California, Sherburn F.

104Cook, 1896-1974, was the most painstakingly careful researcher.

105From decades of research, he made estimates for the pre-contact population and the history of demographic decline during the Spanish and post-Spanish periods.

106According to Cook, the indigenous Californian population at first contact in 1769 was about 310,000 and had dropped to 25,000 by 1910.

107The vast majority of the decline happened after the Spanish period, during the Mexican and U.S.

108periods of Californian history, 1821-1910, with the most dramatic collapse, 200,000-25,000, occurring in the U.S.

109period, 1846-1910.

110Spanish-American populations and race.

111The largest population in Spanish America was and remained indigenous, what Spaniards called Indians, Indios, a category that did not exist before the arrival of the Europeans.

112The Spanish crown separated them into the República de Indios.

113Europeans immigrated from various provinces of Spain, with initial waves of emigration consisting of more men than women.

114They were referred to as Españols and Españolas, and later being differentiated by the terms indicating place of birth, peninsular for those born in Spain, Criollo-slash-Criollo-slash-Criollo-slash-Emeriana for those born in the Americas.

115Enslaved Africans were imported to Spanish territories, primarily to Cuba.

116As was the case in peninsular Spain, Africans, Negroes, were able by their freedom, horro, so that in most of the empire free blacks and mulatto, black plus Spanish populations outnumbered slave populations.

117Spaniards and indigenous parents produced mestizo offspring, who were also part of the República de Españols.

118Economy.

119Early economy of indigenous tribute and labor.

120In areas of dense, stratified indigenous populations, especially Mesoamerica and the Andean region, Spanish conquerors awarded perpetual private grants of labor and tribute to particular indigenous settlements.

121In encomienda they were in a privileged position to accumulate private wealth.

122Spaniards had some knowledge of the existing indigenous practices of labor and tribute, so that learning in more detail what tribute particular regions delivered to the Aztec empire prompted the creation of Codex Mendoza, a codification for Spanish use.

123The rural regions remained highly indigenous, with little interface between the large numbers of indigenous and the small numbers of the República de Españols, which included blacks and mixed-race castas.

124Tribute goods in Mexico were most usually lengths of cotton cloth, woven by women, and maize and other foodstuffs produced by men.

125These could be sold in markets and thereby converted to cash.

126In the early period for Spaniards, formal ownership of land was less important than control of indigenous labor and receiving tribute.

127Spaniards had seen the disappearance of the indigenous populations in the Caribbean, and with that, the disappearance of their main source of wealth, propelling Spaniards to expand their regions of control.

128With the conquests of the Aztec and Inca empires, large numbers of Spaniards emigrated from the Iberian Peninsula to seek their fortune or to pursue better economic conditions for themselves.

129The establishment of large, permanent Spanish settlements attracted a whole range of new residents, who set up shop as carpenters, bakers, tailors, and other artisan activities.

130Sugar and slavery The early Caribbean proved a massive disappointment for Spaniards, who had hoped to find mineral wealth and exploitable indigenous populations.

131Gold existed in only small amounts, and the indigenous peoples died off in massive numbers.

132For the colony's continued existence, a reliable source of labor was needed.

133That was of enslaved Africans.

134Cane sugar imported from the Old World was a high value, a low-bulk export product that became the bulwark of tropical economies of the Caribbean islands and coastal Tierra firme, the Spanish main, as well as Portuguese Brazil.

135Silver.

136Silver was the bonanza the Spaniards sought.

137Large deposits were found in a single mountain in the Viceroyalty of Peru, the Cerro Rico in what is now Bolivia, and in several places outside of the dense indigenous zone of settlement in northern Mexico, Socatacus, and Guanajuato.

138In the Andes, Viceroy Francisco de Toledo revived the indigenous rotary labor system of the Mita to supply labor for silver mining.

139In Mexico, the labor force had to be lured from elsewhere in the colony, and was not based on traditional systems of rotary labor.

140In Mexico, refining took place in Haciendas de Minas, where silver ore was refined into pure silver by amalgamation with mercury in what was known as the patio process.

141Ore was crushed with the aid of mules, and then mercury could be applied to draw out the pure silver.

142Mercury was a monopoly of the crown.

143In Peru, the Cerro Ricos ore was processed from the local mercury mine of Juancavelica, while in Mexico mercury was imported from the Almaden mercury mine in Spain.

144Mercury is a neurotoxin which damaged and killed human and mules coming into contact with it.

145In the Juancavelica region, mercury continues to wreak ecological damage, development of agriculture and ranching.

146To feed urban populations and mining workforces, small-scale farms, ranchos, estancias, and large-scale enterprises, haciendas, emerged to fill the demand, especially for foodstuffs that Spaniards wanted to eat, most especially wheat.

147In areas of sparse population, ranching of cattle, ganadomare, and smaller livestock, ganadomenar, such as sheep and goats ranged widely and were largely feral.

148There is debate about the impact of ranching on the environment in the colonial era, with sheep herding being called out for its negative impact, while others contest that.

149With only a small labor force to draw on, ranching was an ideal economic activity for some regions.

150Most agriculture and ranching supplied local needs, since transportation was difficult, slow, and expensive.

151Only the most valuable low-bulk products would be exported.

152Agricultural export products.

153Cacao beans for chocolate emerged as an export product as Europeans developed a taste for sweetened chocolate.

154Another important export product was cochineal, a colorfast red dye made from dried insects living on cacti.

155It became the second most valuable export from Spanish America after silver.

15619th century.

157During the Napoleonic Peninsular War in Europe between France and Spain, assemblies called juntas were established to rule in the name of Ferdinand VII of Spain.

158The Libertadores, Spanish and Portuguese for liberators, were the principal leaders of the Spanish-American Wars of Independence.

159They were predominantly Criolos, America's born people of European ancestry, mostly Spanish or Portuguese, bourgeois and influenced by liberalism and in some cases with military training in the mother country.

160In 1809, the first declarations of independence from Spanish rule occurred in the Viceroyalty of Peru.

161The first two were in Upper Peru, present-day Bolivia, at Charcas, present-day Sucre, May 25th, and La Paz, July 16th, and the third in present-day Ecuador at Quito, August 10th.

162In 1810, Mexico declared independence, with the Mexican War of Independence following for over a decade.

163An 1821 Treaty of Córdoba established Mexican independence from Spain and concluded the war.

164The plan of Iguala was part of the peace treaty to establish a constitutional foundation for an independent Mexico.

165These began a movement for colonial independence that spread to Spain's other colonies in the Americas.

166The ideas from the French and the American Revolution influenced the efforts.

167All of the colonies, except Cuba and Puerto Rico, attained independence by the 1820s.

168The British Empire offered support, wanting to end the Spanish monopoly on trade with its colonies in the Americas.

169In 1898, the United States achieved victory in the Spanish-American War with Spain, ending the Spanish colonial era.

170Spanish possession and rule of its remaining colonies in the Americas ended in that year with its sovereignty transferred to the United States.

171The United States took occupation of Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico.

172Puerto Rico continues to be a possession of the United States, the United States, now officially continues as a self-governing, unincorporated territory.

173In popular culture, in the 20th century, there have been a number of films depicting the life of Christopher Columbus.

174One in 1949 stars Frederick March as Columbus.

175With the 1992 commemoration and critique of Columbus, more cinematic and television depictions of the era appeared, including a television miniseries with Gabriel Byrne as Columbus.

176Christopher Columbus.

177The Discovery, 1992, has George Coriface as Columbus with Marlon Brando as Tomás de Torquemada and Tom Selleck as King Ferdinand and Rachel Ward as Queen Isabella.

1781492.

179The Conquest of Paradise stars Gerard Depardieu as Columbus and Sigourney Weaver as Queen Isabelle.

180A 2010 film, even the rain starring Gail Garcia Bernal, is set in modern Cachabamba, Bolivia during the Cachabamba water war, following a film crew shooting a controversial life of Columbus.

181A 1995 Bolivia-made film is in some ways similar to even the rain is to hear the birds singing, with a modern film crew going to an indigenous settlement to shoot a film about the Spanish conquest and end up replicating aspects of the conquest.

182For the conquest of the Aztec Empire, the 2019 eight-episode Mexican television miniseries Hernán depicts such historical events.

183Other notable historical figures in the production are Malinche, Cortés cultural translator, and other conquerors Pedro de Alvarado, Cristóbal de Alad, Bernal Díaz del Castillo.

184Showing the indigenous sides are Zika Tenkatl, a leader of the Spaniards' Tlaxcalan allies, and Aztec emperors Moctezuma II and Quitluwac.

185The story of Dona Marina, also known as Malinche, was the subject of a Mexican television miniseries in 2018.

186A major production in Mexico was the 1998 film, The Other Conquest, which focuses on a Nahua man in the post-conquest era and the evangelization of central Mexico.

187The epic journey of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca has been portrayed in a 1991 feature-length Mexican film.

188Cabeza de Vicerca, the similarly epic and dark journey of Lope de Aguirre, was made into a film by Werner Herzog, Aguirre, The Wrath of God, 1972, starring Klaus Kinski.

189The mission was a 1996 film idealizing a Jesuit mission to the Guarani in the territory disputed between Spain and Portugal.

190The film starred Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons, and Liam Neeson and it won an Academy Award.

191The life of 17th century Mexican nun, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, renowned in her lifetime, has been portrayed in a 1990 Argentine film, I, the worst of all, and in the television miniseries Juana Inés.

19217th century Mexican trickster Martin Garutuza was the subject of a late 19th century novel by Mexican politician and writer Vicente Riva Palacio.

193In the 20th century, Garutuza's life was the subject of a 1935 film and a 1986 telenovela, Martin Garutuza.

194For the independence era, the 2016 Bolivia-made film made about Mestiza independence leader Juana Azarduy de Padilla, Juana Azarduy, Guerrilla de la Patria Grande, is part of the recent recognition of her role in the independence of Argentina and Bolivia.

195This was the English Wikipedia article about the Spanish colonization of the Americas as of October 27th, 2024 narrated by AI-generated voice via the open-source software Sony Translate.

196So,