Spanish colonization of the Americas

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Conquista)
Jump to navigationJump to search
"Conquista" redirects here. For other uses, see Conquista (disambiguation).

Flag of Spanish conquistadors with crown of Castile on a red flag, used by Hernán
Cortés, Francisco Pizarro and others

Spanish and Portuguese empires in 1790.

Part of a series on
European colonization
of the Americas
Americas (orthographic projection).svg
First wave of European
colonizationBritishCouronianDanishDutchFrenchGermanHospitallerNorsePortugueseRussia
nScottishSpanishBasqueSwedishItalianColonization of CanadaColonization of the
United StatesDecolonization
P history.svg History portal
vte
The Spanish colonization of the Americas began under the Crown of Castile, and was
spearheaded by the Spanish conquistadors. The Americas were invaded and
incorporated into the Spanish Empire, with the exception of Brazil, British
America, and some small regions in South America and the Caribbean. The crown
created civil and religious structures to administer this vast territory. The main
motivations for colonial expansion were profit through resource extraction[1] and
the spread of Catholicism through indigenous conversions.

Beginning with the 1492 arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean and
gaining control over more territory for over three centuries, the Spanish Empire
would expand across the Caribbean Islands, half of South America, most of Central
America and much of North America. It is estimated that during the colonial period
(1492–1832), a total of 1.86 million Spaniards settled in the Americas and a
further 3.5 million immigrated during the post-colonial era (1850–1950); the
estimate is 250,000 in the 16th century, and most during the 18th century as
immigration was encouraged by the new Bourbon Dynasty.[2]

By contrast, the indigenous population plummeted by an estimated 80% in the first

century and a half following Columbus's voyages, primarily through the spread of
disease, forced labor and slavery for resource extraction, and missionization.[3]
[4][5][6][1] This has been argued to be the first large-scale act of genocide in
the modern era.[7][8][9]

In the early 19th century, the Spanish American wars of independence resulted in
the secession and subsequent division of most Spanish territories in the Americas,
except for Cuba and Puerto Rico, which were lost to the United States in 1898,
following the Spanish–American War. The loss of these territories ended Spanish
rule in the Americas.

Contents
1 Imperial expansion
1.1 General principles of expansion
1.2 Caribbean islands and the Spanish Main
1.3 Mexico
1.4 Peru
1.5 Chile
1.6 New Granada
1.7 Venezuela
1.8 Río de la Plata and Paraguay
1.9 End of era of exploration
1.10 Factors affecting Spanish settlement
1.11 Establishment of early settlements
1.12 Ecological conquests
2 Civil governance
2.1 Early institutions of governance
2.1.1 House of Trade
2.1.2 Assertion of royal control in the early Caribbean
2.2 Spanish law and indigenous peoples
2.3 Indigenous peoples and colonial rule
2.4 Council of the Indies
2.5 Viceroyalties
2.6 Audiencias, the high courts
2.7 Civil administrative districts, provinces
2.8 Cabildos or town councils
2.9 Frontier institutions – presidio and mission
3 Catholic Church organization
3.1 Early evangelization
3.2 Establishment of the church hierarchy
3.3 Jesuits
3.4 Holy Office of the Inquisition
4 Society
4.1 Demographic impact of colonization
4.2 Spanish American populations and race
5 Economy
5.1 Early economy of indigenous tribute and labor
5.2 Sugar and slavery
5.3 Silver
5.4 Development of agriculture and ranching
5.5 Agricultural export products
6 19th century
7 In popular culture
8 Dominions
8.1 North America, Central America
8.2 South America
9 See also
10 References
11 Further reading
11.1 Historiography
12 External links
Imperial expansion

Iberian territory of Crown of Castile.

The expansion of Spain’s territory took place under the Catholic Monarchs Isabella
of Castile, Queen of Castile and her husband King Ferdinand, King of Aragon, whose
marriage marked the beginning of Spanish power beyond the Iberian peninsula. They
pursued a policy of joint rule of their kingdoms and created the initial stage of a
single Spanish monarchy, completed under the eighteenth-century Bourbon monarchs.
The first expansion of territory was the conquest of the Muslim Kingdom of Granada
on January 1, 1492, the culmination of the Christian Reconquest of the Iberian
peninsula, held by the Muslims since 711. On March 31, 1492, the Catholic Monarch
ordered the expulsion of the Jews in Spain who refused to convert to Christianity.
On October 12, 1492, Genoese mariner Christopher Columbus made landfall in the
Western Hemisphere.[10]

Even though Castile and Aragon were ruled jointly by their respective monarchs,
they remained separate kingdoms so that when 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. The profits from Spanish expedition
flowed to Castile. The 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. Spain sought similar wealth, and authorized Columbus’s voyage
sailing west. Once the Spanish settlement in the Caribbean occurred, Spain and
Portugal formalized a division of the world between them in the 1494 Treaty of
Tordesillas.[11] The 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. Pope Alexander VI in a 4 May 1493
papal decree, Inter caetera, divided rights to lands in the Western Hemisphere
between Spain and Portugal on the proviso that they spread Christianity.[12] These
formal arrangements between Spain and Portugal and the pope were ignored by other
European powers.

General principles of expansion

The Spanish expansion has sometimes been succinctly summed up as "gold, glory,
God." The search for material wealth, the enhancement of the conquerors' and the
crown's position, and the expansion of Christianity. In the extension of Spanish
sovereignty to its overseas territories, authority for expeditions (entradas) of
discovery, conquest, and settlement resided in the monarchy.[13] Expeditions
required authorization by the crown, which laid out the terms of such expedition.
Virtually 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. Although 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. The
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. He
also had to attract participants to the expedition who staked their own lives and
meager fortunes on the expectation of the expedition’s success. The leader of the
expedition pledged the larger share of capital to the enterprise, which in many
ways functioned as a commercial firm. Upon 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. Participants 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.[14][15]
For the conquest era, two names of Spaniards are generally known because they led
the conquests of high indigenous civilizations, Hernán Cortés, leader of the
expedition that conquered the Aztecs of Central Mexico, and Francisco Pizarro,
leader of the conquest of the Inca in Peru.

Caribbean islands and the Spanish Main

Cover of the Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (1552), Bartolomé

de las Casas
Until his dying day, Columbus was convinced that he had reached Asia, the Indies.
From 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 of The Other. The Spanish royal government
called its overseas possessions "The Indies" until its empire dissolved in the
nineteenth century. Patterns set in this early period of exploration and
colonization were to endure as Spain expanded further, even as the region became
less important in the overseas empire after the conquests of Mexico and Peru.[16]

In the Caribbean, there was no large-scale Spanish conquest of indigenous peoples,

but there was indigenous resistance. Columbus made four voyages to the West Indies
as the monarchs granted Columbus vast powers of governance over this unknown part
of the world. The crown of Castile financed more of his trans-Atlantic journeys, a
pattern they would not repeat elsewhere. Effective Spanish settlement began in
1493, when Columbus brought livestock, seeds, agricultural equipment. The 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. He then founded the settlement of
Isabela on the island they named Hispaniola (now divided into Haiti and the
Dominican Republic).

Theodor de Bry depiction of Caribbean indigenous fighting back against Spaniards,

showing cannibalism and forcing a Spaniard to swallow molten gold.

A 16th-century illustration by Flemish Protestant Theodor de Bry for Las Casas'

Brevisima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, depicting Spanish atrocities
during the conquest of Hispaniola. Bartolome wrote: "They erected certain Gibbets,
large, but low made, so that their feet almost reached the ground, every one of
which was so ordered as to bear Thirteen Persons in Honour and Reverence (as they
said blasphemously) of our Redeemer and his Twelve Apostles, under which they made
a Fire to burn them to Ashes whilst hanging on them"[17]
Spanish 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.
Columbus had promised that the region he now controlled held a huge treasure in the
form of gold and spices. Spanish settlers found relatively dense populations of
indigenous peoples, who were agriculturalists living in villages ruled by leaders
not part of a larger integrated political system. For the Spanish, these
populations were 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. The labor of dense
populations of Tainos were allocated to Spanish settlers in an institution known as
the encomienda, where particular indigenous settlements were awarded to individual
Spaniards. There was surface gold found in early islands, and holders of
encomiendas put the indigenous to work panning for it. For all practical purposes,
this was slavery. Queen Isabel put an end to formal slavery, declaring the
indigenous to be vassals of the crown, but Spaniards' exploitation continued. The
Taino population on Hispaniola went from hundreds of thousands or millions –- the
estimates by scholars vary widely -- but in the mid-1490s, they were practically
wiped out. Disease 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. From the Spanish viewpoint, their source of
labor and viability of their own settlements was at risk. After the collapse of the
Taino population of Hispaniola, Spaniards took to slave raiding and settlement on
nearby islands, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica, replicating the
demographic catastrophe there as well.

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. In 1542 Las Casas wrote a damning account of this genocide, A Short
Account of the Destruction of the Indies. It was translated quickly to English and
became the basis for the anti-Spanish writings, collectively known as the Black
Legend.[18]

The first mainland explorations by Spaniards were followed by a phase of inland

expeditions and conquest. In 1500 the city of Nueva Cádiz was founded on the island
of Cubagua, Venezuela, followed by the founding of Santa Cruz by Alonso de Ojeda in
present-day Guajira peninsula. Cumaná in Venezuela was the first permanent
settlement founded by Europeans in the mainland Americas,[19] in 1501 by Franciscan
friars, but due to successful attacks by the indigenous people, it had to be
refounded several times, until Diego Hernández de Serpa's foundation in 1569. The
Spanish founded San Sebastián de Uraba in 1509 but abandoned it within the year.
There is indirect evidence that the first permanent Spanish mainland settlement
established in the Americas was Santa María la Antigua del Darién.[20]
Spaniards 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 importation of African slaves as a labor force. Spaniards
continued to expand their presence in the circum-Caribbean region with expeditions.
One was by Francisco Hernández de Córdoba in 1517, another by Juan de Grijalva in
1518, which brought promising news of possibilities there.[21][22] Even by the mid-
1510s, the western Caribbean was largely unexplored by Spaniards. A 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. That
expedition was to make world history.

Mexico
Main article: Spanish conquest of Mexico

Meeting of Cortés and Moctezuma, 17th c. depiction

It wasn’t until Spanish expansion into modern-day Mexico that Spanish explorers
were able to find wealth on the scale that they had been hoping for. Unlike Spanish
expansion in the Caribbean, which involved limited armed combat and sometimes the
participation of indigenous allies, the conquest of central Mexico was protracted
and necessitated indigenous allies who chose to participate for their own purposes.
The conquest of the Aztec empire involved the combined effort of armies from many
indigenous allies, spearheaded by a small Spanish force of conquistadors. The Aztec
empire was a fragile confederation of city-states[citation needed]. Spaniards
persuaded the leaders of subordinate city-states and one city-state never conquered
by the Aztecs, Tlaxcala, to join them in huge numbers, with thousands, perhaps tens
of thousands of indigenous warriors. The conquest of central Mexico is one of the
best-documented events in world history, with accounts by the expedition leader
Hernán Cortés, many other Spanish conquistadors, including Bernal Díaz del
Castillo, indigenous allies from the city-states altepetl of Tlaxcala, Texcoco, and
Huexotzinco, but also importantly, the defeated of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital.
What can be called the visions of the vanquished, indigenous accounts written in
the sixteenth century, are a rare case of history being written by those other than
the victors.[23][24][25]

The capture of the Aztec emperor Moctezuma II by Cortés was not a brilliant stroke
of innovation, but came from the playbook that the Spanish developed during their
period in the Caribbean. The composition of the expedition was the standard
pattern, with a senior leader, and participating men investing in the enterprise
with the full expectation of rewards if they did not lose their lives. Cortés’s
seeking indigenous allies was a typical tactic of warfare: divide and conquer. But
the indigenous allies had much to gain by throwing off Aztec rule. For the
Spaniards’ Tlaxcalan allies, their crucial support gained them enduring political
legacy into the modern era, the Mexican state of Tlaxcala.[26][27]

The conquest of central Mexico sparked further Spanish conquests, following the
pattern of conquered and consolidated regions being the launching point for further
expeditions. These were often led by secondary leaders, such as Pedro de Alvarado.
Later conquests in Mexico were protracted campaigns with less spectacular results
than the conquest of the Aztecs. The Spanish conquest of Yucatán, the Spanish
conquest of Guatemala, the conquest of the Tarascans/Purépecha of Michoacan, the
war of Mexico's west, and the Chichimeca War in northern Mexico expanded Spanish
control over territory and indigenous populations.[28][29][30][31] But not until
the Spanish conquest of Peru was the conquest of the Aztecs matched in scope by the
victory over the Inca empire in 1532.

Peru
Main article: Spanish conquest of Peru
Depiction of Pizarro seizing the Inca emperor Atahualpa. John Everett Millais 1845.

Extent of Inca empire at the Spanish conquest

In 1532 at the Battle of Cajamarca a group of Spaniards under Francisco Pizarro and
their indigenous Andean Indian auxiliaries native allies ambushed and captured the
Emperor Atahualpa of the Inca Empire. It was the first step in a long campaign that
took decades of fighting to subdue the mightiest empire in the Americas. In the
following years, Spain extended its rule over the Empire of the Inca civilization.

The Spanish took advantage of a recent civil war between the factions of the two
brothers Emperor Atahualpa and Huáscar, and the enmity of indigenous nations the
Incas had subjugated, such as the Huancas, Chachapoyas, and Cañaris. In the
following years the conquistadors and indigenous allies extended control over
Greater Andes Region. The Viceroyalty of Perú was established in 1542. The last
Inca stronghold was conquered by the Spanish in 1572.

Peru was the last territory in the continent under Spanish rule, which ended on 9
December 1824 at the Battle of Ayacucho (Spanish rule continued until 1898 in Cuba
and Puerto Rico).

Chile
Main articles: Conquest of Chile and Colonial Chile
[Chile] has four months of winter, no more, and in them, except when there is a
quarter moon, when it rains one or two days, all the other days have such a
beautiful sunshine...

— First relation letter from Pedro de Valdivia to emperor Charles V

Chile was explored by Spaniards based in Peru, where Spaniards found the fertile
soil and mild climate attractive. The Mapuche people of Chile, whom the Spaniards
called Araucanians, resisted fiercely. The Spanish did establish the settlement of
Chile in 1541, founded by Pedro de Valdivia.[32]

Southward colonization by the Spanish in Chile halted after the conquest of Chiloé
Archipelago in 1567. This is thought to have been the result of an increasingly
harsh climate to the south, and the lack of a populous and sedentary indigenous
population to settle among for the Spanish in the fjords and channels of Patagonia.
[33] South of the Bío-Bío River the Mapuche successfully reversed colonization with
the Destruction of the Seven Cities in 1599–1604.[32][34] This Mapuche victory laid
the foundation for the establishment of a Spanish-Mapuche frontier called La
Frontera. Within this frontier the city of Concepción assumed the role of "military
capital" of Spanish-ruled Chile.[35] With a hostile indigenous population, no
obvious mineral or other exploitable resources, and little strategic value, Chile
was a fringe area of colonial Spanish America, hemmed in geographically by the
Andes to the east, Pacific Ocean to the west, and indigenous to the south.[32]

New Granada
Main article: Spanish conquest of the Muisca
See also: Spanish conquest of the Chibchan Nations

Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada

Between 1537 and 1543, six[citation needed] Spanish expeditions entered highland
Colombia, conquered the Muisca Confederation, and set up the New Kingdom of Granada
(Spanish: Nuevo Reino de Granada). Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada was the leading
conquistador with his brother Hernán second in command.[36] It was governed by the
president of the Audiencia of Bogotá, and comprised an area corresponding mainly to
modern-day Colombia and parts of Venezuela. The conquistadors originally organized
it as a captaincy general within the Viceroyalty of Peru. The crown established the
audiencia in 1549. Ultimately, the kingdom became part of the Viceroyalty of New
Granada first in 1717 and permanently in 1739. After several attempts to set up
independent states in the 1810s, the kingdom and the viceroyalty ceased to exist
altogether in 1819 with the establishment of Gran Colombia.[37]

Venezuela
Venezuela was first visited by Europeans during the 1490s, when Columbus was in
control of the region, and the region as a source for indigenous slaves for
Spaniards in Cuba and Hispaniola, since the Spanish destruction of the local
indigenous population. There were few permanent settlements, but Spaniards settled
the coastal islands of Cubagua and Margarita to exploit the pearl beds. Western
Venezuela’s history took an atypical direction in 1528, when Spain’s first Hapsburg
monarch, Charles I granted rights to colonize to the German banking family of the
Welsers. Charles sought to be elected Holy Roman Emperor and was willing to pay
whatever it took to achieve that. He became deeply indebted to the German Welser
and Fugger banking families. To satisfy his debts to the Welsers, he granted them
the right to colonize and exploit western Venezuela, with the proviso that they
found two towns with 300 settlers each and construct fortifications. They
established the colony of Klein-Venedig in 1528. They founded the towns of Coro and
Maracaibo. They were aggressive in making their investment pay, alienating the
indigenous populations and Spaniards alike. Charles revoked the grant in 1545,
ending the episode of German colonization.[38][39]

Río de la Plata and Paraguay

Monument to Pedro de Mendoza, Buenos Aires

Argentina was not conquered or later exploited in the grand fashion of central
Mexico or Peru, since the indigenous population was sparse and there were no
precious metals or other valuable resources. Although today Buenos Aires at the
mouth of Rio de la Plata is a major metropolis, it held no interest for Spaniards
and the 1535-36 settlement failed and was abandoned by 1541. Pedro de Mendoza and
Domingo Martínez de Irala, who led the original expedition, went inland and founded
Asunción, Paraguay, which became the Spaniards' base. A second (and permanent)
settlement was established in 1580 by Juan de Garay, who arrived by sailing down
the Paraná River from Asunción, now the capital of Paraguay.[40] Exploration from
Peru resulted in the foundation of Tucumán in what is now northwest Argentina.[41]

End of era of exploration

Bust of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, who wrote epic account of years of wandering in
the North American south and southwest.
The spectacular conquests of central Mexico (1519-21) and Peru (1532) sparked
Spaniards' hopes of finding yet another high civilization. Expeditions continued
into the 1540s and regional capitals founded by the 1550s. Among the most notable
expeditions are Hernando de Soto into southeast North America, leaving from Cuba
(1539-42); Francisco Vázquez de Coronado to northern Mexico (1540-42), and Gonzalo
Pizarro to Amazonia, leaving from Quito, Ecuador (1541-42).[42] In 1561, Pedro de
Ursúa led an expedition of some 370 Spanish (including women and children) into
Amazonia to search for El Dorado. Far more famous now is Lope de Aguirre, who led a
mutiny against Ursúa, who was murdered. Aguirre subsequently wrote a letter to
Philip II bitterly complaining about the treatment of conquerors like himself in
the wake of the assertion of crown control over Peru.[43] An earlier expedition
that left in 1527 was led by Pánfilo Naváez, who was killed early on. Survivors
continued to travel among indigenous groups in the North American south and
southwest until 1536. Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was one of four survivors of that
expedition, writing an account of it.[44] The crown later sent him to Asunción,
Paraguay to be adelantado there. Expeditions continued to explore territories in
hopes of finding another Aztec or Inca empire, with no further success. Francisco
de Ibarra led an expedition from Zacatecas in northern New Spain, and founded
Durango.[45] Juan de Oñate expanded Spanish sovereignty over what is now New
Mexico.[46] He is a controversial figure in the current era, with an equestrian
statue commemorating him removed from public display in 2020.[47]

Factors affecting Spanish settlement

Cerro Rico del Potosi, the first image of silver mountain in Europe. Pedro Cieza de
León, 1553
Two major factors affected the density of Spanish settlement in the long term. One
was the presence or absence of dense, hierarchically organized indigenous
populations that could be made to work. The other was the presence or absence of an
exploitable resource for the enrichment of settlers. Best was gold, but silver was
found in abundance.

The two main areas of Spanish settlement after 1550 were Mexico and Peru, the sites
of the Aztec and Inca indigenous civilizations. Equally important, rich deposits of
the valuable metal silver. Spanish settlement in Mexico “largely replicated the
organization of the area in preconquest times” while in Peru, the center of the
Incas was too far south, too remote, and at too high an altitude for the Spanish
capital. The capital Lima was built near the Pacific coast.[48] The capitals of
Mexico and Peru, Mexico City and Lima came to have large concentrations of Spanish
settlers and became the hubs of royal and ecclesiastical administration, large
commercial enterprises and skilled artisans, and centers of culture. Although
Spaniards had hoped to find vast quantities of gold, the discovery of large
quantities of silver became the motor of the Spanish colonial economy, a major
source of income for the Spanish crown, and transformed the international economy.
Mining regions in both Mexico were remote, outside the zone of indigenous
settlement in central and southern Mexico Mesoamerica, but mines in Zacatecas
(founded 1548) and Guanajuato (founded 1548) were key hubs in the colonial economy.
In Peru, silver was found in a single silver mountain, the Cerro Rico de Potosí,
still producing silver in the 21st century. Potosí (founded 1545) was in the zone
of dense indigenous settlement, so that labor could be mobilized on traditional
patterns to extract the ore. An important element for productive mining was mercury
for processing high-grade ore. Peru had a source in Huancavelica (founded 1572),
while Mexico had to rely on mercury imported from Spain.

Establishment of early settlements

National Palace, Mexico City, built by Hernán Cortés in the Aztec central zone of
palaces and temples.
The Spanish founded towns in the Caribbean, on Hispaniola and Cuba, on a pattern
that became spatially similar throughout Spanish America. A central plaza had the
most important buildings on the four sides, especially buildings for royal
officials and the main church. A checkerboard pattern radiated outward. Residences
of the officials and elites were closest to the main square. Once on the mainland,
where there were dense indigenous populations in urban settlements, the Spanish
could build a Spanish settlement on the same site, dating its foundation to when
that occurred. Often they erected a church on the site of an indigenous temple.
They replicated the existing indigenous network of settlements, but added a port
city. The Spanish network needed a port city so that inland settlements could be
connected by sea to Spain. In Mexico, the Hernán Cortés and the men of his
expedition founded of the port town of Veracruz in 1519 and constituted themselves
as the town councilors, as a means to throw off the authority of the governor of
Cuba, who did not authorize an expedition of conquest. start of the conquest of
central Mexico; once the Aztec empire was toppled, they founded Mexico City on the
ruins of the Aztec capital. Their central official and ceremonial area was built on
top of Aztec palaces and temples. In Peru, Spaniards founded the city of Lima as
their capital and its nearby port of Callao, rather than the high-altitude site of
Cuzco, the center of Inca rule. Spaniards established a network of settlements in
areas they conquered and controlled. Important ones include Santiago de Guatemala
(1524); Puebla (1531); Querétaro (ca. 1531); Guadalajara (1531-42); Valladolid (now
Morelia), (1529-41); Antequera (now Oaxaca(1525-29); Campeche (1541); and Mérida.
In southern Central and South America, settlements were founded in Panama (1519);
León, Nicaragua (1524); Cartagena (1532); Piura (1532); Quito (1534); Trujillo
(1535); Cali (1537) Bogotá (1538); Quito (1534); Cuzco 1534); Lima (1535); Tunja,
(1539); Huamanga 1539; Arequipa (1540); Santiago de Chile (1544) and Concepción,
Chile (1550). Settled from the south were Buenos Aires (1536, 1580); Asunción
(1537); Potosí (1545); La Paz, Bolivia (1548); and Tucumán (1553).[49]

Ecological conquests
Main article: Columbian exchange
The Columbian Exchange was as significant as the clash of civilizations.[50][51]
Arguably the most significant introduction was diseases brought to the Americas,
which devastated indigenous populations in a series of epidemics. The loss of
indigenous population had a direct impact on Spaniards as well, since increasingly
they saw those populations as a source of their own wealth, disappearing before
their eyes.[52]

A mounted Mapuche carrying off a Spanish woman. Johann Moritz Rugendas

In the first settlements in the Caribbean, the Spaniards deliberately brought
animals and plants that transformed the ecological landscape. Pigs, cattle, sheep,
goats, and chickens allowed Spaniards to eat a diet with which they were familiar.
But the importation of horses transformed warfare for both the Spaniards and the
indigenous. Where the Spaniards had exclusive access to horses in warfare, they had
an advantage over indigenous warriors on foot. They were initially a scarce
commodity, but horse breeding became an active industry. Horses that escaped
Spanish control were captured by indigenous; many indigenous also raided for
horses. Mounted indigenous warriors were significant foes for Spaniards. The
Chichimeca in northern Mexico, the Comanche in the northern Great Plains and the
Mapuche in southern Chile and the pampas of Argentina resisted Spanish conquest.
For Spaniards, the fierce Chichimecas barred them for exploiting mining resources
in northern Mexico. Spaniards waged a fifty-year war (ca. 1550-1600) to subdue
them, but peace was only achieved by Spaniards’ making significant donations of
food and other commodities the Chichimeca demanded. "Peace by purchase" ended the
conflict.[53] In southern Chile and the pampas, the Araucanians (Mapuche) prevented
further Spanish expansion. The image of mounted Araucanians capturing and carrying
off white women was the embodiment of Spanish ideas of civilization and barbarism.

Cattle multiplied quickly in areas where little else could turn a profit for
Spaniards, including northern Mexico and the Argentine pampas. The introduction of
sheep production was an ecological disaster in places where they were raised in
great numbers, since they ate vegetation to the ground, preventing the regeneration
of plants.[54]

The Spanish brought new crops for cultivation. They preferred wheat cultivation to
indigenous sources of carbohydrates: casava, maize (corn), and potatoes, initially
importing seeds from Europe and planting in areas where plow agriculture could be
utilized, such as the Mexican Bajío. They also imported cane sugar, which was a
high-value crop in early Spanish America. Spaniards also imported citrus trees,
establishing orchards of oranges, lemons, and limes, and grapefruit. Other imports
were figs, apricots, cherries, pears, and peaches among others. The exchange did
not go one way. Important indigenous crops that transformed Europe were the potato
and maize, which produced abundant crops that led to the expansion of populations
in Europe. Chocolate (Nahuatl: chocolate) and vanilla were cultivated in Mexico and
exported to Europe. Among the foodstuffs that became staples in European cuisine
and could be grown there were tomatoes, squashes, bell peppers, and to a lesser
extent in Europe chili peppers; also nuts of various kinds: Walnuts, cashews,
pecans, and peanuts.
Civil governance
Main articles: Spanish Empire, Viceroyalty of New Spain, Viceroyalty of Peru, and
Intendant § The Spanish Monarchy

17th c. Dutch map of the Americas

The empire in the Indies was a newly established dependency of the kingdom of
Castile alone, so crown power was not impeded by any existing cortes (i.e.
parliament), administrative or ecclesiastical institution, or seigneurial group.
[55] The crown sought to establish and maintain control over its overseas
possessions through a complex, hierarchical bureaucracy, which in many ways was
decentralized. The crown asserted is authority and sovereignty of the territory and
vassals it claimed, collected taxes, maintained public order, meted out justice,
and established policies for governance of large indigenous populations. Many
institutions established in Castile found expression in The Indies from the early
colonial period. Spanish universities expanded to train lawyer-bureaucrats
(letrados) for administrative positions in Spain and its overseas empire.

The end of the Habsburg dynasty in 1700 saw major administrative reforms in the
eighteenth century under the Bourbon monarchy, starting with the first Spanish
Bourbon monarch, Philip V (r. 1700-1746) and reaching its apogee under Charles III
(r. 1759-1788). The reorganization of administration has been called "a revolution
in government."[56] Reforms sought to centralize government control through
reorganization of administration, reinvigorate the economies of Spain and the
Spanish empire through changes in mercantile and fiscal policies, defend Spanish
colonies and territorial claims through the establishment of a standing military,
undermine the power of the Catholic church, and rein in the power of the American-
born elites.[57]

Early institutions of governance

Nicolás de Ovando, sent by the crown to assert royal control

The crown relied on ecclesiastics as important councilors and royal officials in
the governance of their overseas territories. Archbishop Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca,
Isabella's confessor, was tasked with reining in Columbus's independence. He
strongly influenced the formulation of colonial policy under the Catholic Monarchs,
and was instrumental in establishing the Casa de Contratación (House of Trade)
(1503), which enabled crown control over trade and immigration. Ovando fitted out
Magellan's voyage of circumnavigation, and became the first President of the
Council of the Indies in 1524.[58] Ecclesiastics also functioned as administrators
overseas in the early Caribbean period, particularly Frey Nicolás de Ovando, who
was sent to investigate the administration of Francisco de Bobadilla, the governor
appointed to succeed Christopher Columbus.[59] Later ecclesiastics served as
interim viceroys, general inspectors (visitadores), and other high posts.

House of Trade
Main article: Casa de Contratación
The crown established control over trade and emigration to the Indies with the 1503
establishment the Casa de Contratación (House of Trade) in Seville. Ships and
cargoes were registered, and emigrants vetted to prevent migration of anyone not of
old Christian heritage, (i.e., with no Jewish or Muslim ancestry), and facilitated
the migration of families and women.[60] In addition, the Casa de Contratación took
charge of the fiscal organization, and of the organization and judicial control of
the trade with the Indies.[61]

Assertion of royal control in the early Caribbean

The politics of asserting royal authority to oppose Columbus resulted in the
suppression of his privileges and the creation of territorial governance under
royal authority. These governorates, also called as provinces, were the basic of
the territorial government of the Indies,[62] and arose as the territories were
conquered and colonized.[63] To carry out the expedition (entrada), which entailed
exploration, conquest, and initial settlement of the territory, the king, as
sovereign, and the appointed leader of an expedition (adelantado) agreed to an
itemized contract (capitulación), with the specifics of the conditions of the
expedition in a particular territory. The individual leaders of expeditions assumed
the expenses of the venture and in return received as reward the grant from the
government of the conquered territories;[64] and in addition, they received
instructions about treating the indigenous peoples.[65]

After the end of the period of conquests, it was necessary to manage extensive and
different territories with a strong bureaucracy. In the face of the impossibility
of the Castilian institutions to take care of the New World affairs, other new
institutions were created.[66]

As the basic political entity it was the governorate, or province. The governors
exercised judicial ordinary functions of first instance, and prerogatives of
government legislating by ordinances.[67] To these political functions of the
governor, it could be joined the military ones, according to military requirements,
with the rank of Captain general.[68] The office of captain general involved to be
the supreme military chief of the whole territory and he was responsible for
recruiting and providing troops, the fortification of the territory, the supply and
the shipbuilding.[69]

Provinces in the Spanish Empire had a royal treasury controlled by a set of

oficiales reales (royal officials). The officials of the royal treasury included up
to four positions: a tesorero (treasurer), who guarded money on hand and made
payments; a contador (accountant or comptroller), who recorded income and payments,
maintained records, and interpreted royal instructions; a factor, who guarded
weapons and supplies belonging to the king, and disposed of tribute collected in
the province; and a veedor (overseer), who was responsible for contacts with native
inhabitants of the province, and collected the king's share of any war booty. The
treasury officials were appointed by the king, and were largely independent of the
authority of the governor. Treasury officials were generally paid out of the income
from the province and were normally prohibited from engaging in personal income-
producing activities.[70]

Beginning in 1522 in the newly conquered Mexico, government units in the Spanish
Empire had a royal treasury controlled by a set of oficiales reales (royal
officials). There were also sub-treasuries at important ports and mining districts.
The officials of the royal treasury at each level of government typically included
two to four positions: a tesorero (treasurer), the senior official who guarded
money on hand and made payments; a contador (accountant or comptroller), who
recorded income and payments, maintained records, and interpreted royal
instructions; a factor, who guarded weapons and supplies belonging to the king, and
disposed of tribute collected in the province; and a veedor (overseer), who was
responsible for contacts with native inhabitants of the province, and collected the
king's share of any war booty. The veedor, or overseer, position quickly
disappeared in most jurisdictions, subsumed into the position of factor. Depending
on the conditions in a jurisdiction, the position of factor/veedor was often
eliminated, as well.[71]

The treasury officials were appointed by the king, and were largely independent of
the authority of the viceroy, audiencia president or governor. On the death,
unauthorized absence, retirement or removal of a governor, the treasury officials
would jointly govern the province until a new governor appointed by the king could
take up his duties. Treasury officials were supposed to be paid out of the income
from the province, and were normally prohibited from engaging in income-producing
activities.[72]
Spanish law and indigenous peoples

Fray Bartolome de Las Casas, Protector of the Indians

The protection of the indigenous populations from enslavement and exploitation by
Spanish settlers were established in the Laws of Burgos, 1512–1513. The laws were
the first codified set of laws governing the behavior of Spanish settlers in the
Americas, particularly with regards to treatment of native Indians in the
institution of the encomienda. They forbade the maltreatment of natives, and
endorsed the Indian Reductions with attempts of conversion to Catholicism.[73] Upon
their failure to effectively protect the indigenous and following the Spanish
conquest of the Aztec Empire and the Spanish conquest of Peru, more stringent laws
to control conquerors' and settlers' exercise of power, especially their
maltreatment of the indigenous populations, were promulgated, known as the New Laws
(1542). The crown aimed to prevent the formation of an aristocracy in the Indies
not under crown control.

Queen Isabel was the first monarch that laid the first stone for the protection of
the indigenous peoples in her testament in which the Catholic monarch prohibited
the enslavement of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.[74] Then the first such
in 1542; the legal thought behind them was the basis of modern International law.
[75]

The Valladolid debate (1550–1551) was the first moral debate in European history to
discuss the rights and treatment of a colonized people by colonizers. Held in the
Colegio de San Gregorio, in the Spanish city of Valladolid, it was a moral and
theological debate about the colonization of the Americas, its justification for
the conversion to Catholicism and more specifically about the relations between the
European settlers and the natives of the New World. It consisted of a number of
opposing views about the way natives were to be integrated into colonial life,
their conversion to Christianity and their rights and obligations. According to the
French historian Jean Dumont The Valladolid debate was a major turning point in
world history “In that moment in Spain appeared the dawn of the human rights”.[76]

First viceroy of Peru, Blasco Núñez Vela, overthrown by Spaniards for implementing
the New Laws
The indigenous populations in the Caribbean became the focus of the crown in its
roles as sovereigns of the empire and patron of the Catholic Church. Spanish
conquerors holding grants of indigenous labor in encomienda ruthlessly exploited
them. A number of friars in the early period came to the vigorous defense of the
indigenous populations, who were new converts to Christianity. Prominent Dominican
friars in Santo Domingo, especially Antonio de Montesinos and Bartolomé de Las
Casas denounced the maltreatment and pressed the crown to act to protect the
indigenous populations. The crown enacted Laws of Burgos (1513) and the
Requerimiento to curb the power of the Spanish conquerors and give indigenous
populations the opportunity to peacefully embrace Spanish authority and
Christianity. Neither was effective in its purpose. Las Casas was officially
appointed Protector of the Indians and spent his life arguing forcefully on their
behalf. The New Laws of 1542 were the result, limiting the power of encomenderos,
the private holders of grants to indigenous labor previously held in perpetuity.
The crown was open to limiting the inheritance of encomiendas in perpetuity as a
way to extinguish the coalescence of a group of Spaniards impinging on royal power.
In Peru, the attempt of the newly appointed viceroy, Blasco Núñez Vela, to
implement the New Laws so soon after the conquest sparked a revolt by conquerors
against the viceroy and the viceroy was killed in 1546.[77] In Mexico, Don Martín
Cortés, the son and legal heir of conqueror Hernán Cortés, and other heirs of
encomiendas led a failed revolt against the crown. Don Martín was sent into exile,
while other conspirators were executed.[78]
Indigenous peoples and colonial rule
Further information: Indigenous peoples of the Americas

Detail of a gallery of portraits of sovereigns in Peru, showing continuity from

Inca emperors to Spanish monarchs. Published in 1744 by Jorge Juan and Antonio de
Ulloa in Relación del Viaje a la América Meridional
The conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires ended their sovereignty over their
respective territorial expanses, replaced by the Spanish Empire. However, the
Spanish Empire could not have ruled these vast territories and dense indigenous
populations without utilizing the existing indigenous political and economic
structures at the local level. A key to this was the cooperation between most
indigenous elites with the new ruling structure. The Spanish recognized indigenous
elites as nobles and gave them continuing standing in their communities. Indigenous
elites could use the noble titles don and doña, were exempt from the head-tax, and
could entail their landholdings into cacicazgos.[79] These elites played an
intermediary role between the Spanish rulers and indigenous commoners. Since in
central and southern Mexico (Mesoamerica) and the highland Andes indigenous peoples
had existing traditions of payment of tribute and required labor service, the
Spanish could tap into these existing to extract wealth. There were few Spaniards
and huge indigenous populations, so utilizing indigenous intermediaries was a
practical solution to the incorporation of the indigenous population into the new
regime of rule. By maintaining hierarchical divisions within communities,
indigenous noblemen were the direct interface between the indigenous and Spanish
spheres and kept their positions so long as they continued to be loyal to the
Spanish crown.[80][81][82][83][84]

The exploitation and demographic catastrophe that indigenous peoples experienced

from Spanish rule in the Caribbean also occurred as Spaniards expanded their
control over territories and their indigenous populations. The crown set the
indigenous communities legally apart from Spaniards (as well as Blacks), who
comprised the República de Españoles, with the creation of the República de Indios.
The crown attempted to curb Spaniards' exploitation, banning Spaniards' bequeathing
their private grants of indigenous communities' tribute and encomienda labor in
1542 in the New Laws. In Mexico, the crown established the General Indian Court
(Juzgado General de Indios), which heard disputes affecting individual indigenous
as well as indigenous communities. Lawyers for these cases were funded by a half-
real tax, an early example of legal aid for the poor.[85] A similar legal apparatus
was set up in Lima.[86]

Cabildo building of Tlaxcala, Mexico

The Spaniards systematically attempted to transform structures of indigenous
governance to those more closely resembling those of Spaniards, so the indigenous
city-state became a Spanish town and the indigenous noblemen who ruled became
officeholders of the town council (cabildo). Although the structure of the
indigenous cabildo looked similar to that of the Spanish institution, its
indigenous functionaries continued to follow indigenous practices. In central
Mexico, there exist minutes of the sixteenth-century meetings in Nahuatl of the
Tlaxcala cabildo.[87] Indigenous noblemen were particularly important in the early
period of colonization, since the economy of the encomienda was initially built on
the extraction of tribute and labor from the commoners in their communities. As the
colonial economy became more diversified and less dependent on these mechanisms for
the accumulation of wealth, the indigenous noblemen became less important for the
economy. However, noblemen became defenders of the rights to land and water
controlled by their communities. In colonial Mexico, there are petitions to the
king about a variety of issues important to particular indigenous communities when
the noblemen did not get a favorable response from the local friar or priest or
local royal officials.
Works by historians in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have expanded the
understanding of the impact of the Spanish conquest and changes during the more
than three hundred years of Spanish rule. There are many such works for Mexico,
often drawing on native-language documentation in Nahuatl,[88][89] Mixtec,[90] and
Yucatec Maya.[91][92] For the Andean area, there are an increasing number of
publications as well.[93][94] The history of the Guaraní has also been the subject
of a recent study.[95]

Council of the Indies

Main article: Council of the Indies
In 1524 the Council of the Indies was established, following the system of system
of Councils that advised the monarch and made decisions on his behalf about
specific matters of government.[96] Based in Castile, with the assignment of the
governance of the Indies, it was thus responsible for drafting legislation,
proposing the appointments to the King for civil government as well as
ecclesiastical appointments, and pronouncing judicial sentences; as maximum
authority in the overseas territories, the Council of the Indies took over both the
institutions in the Indies as the defense of the interests of the Crown, the
Catholic Church, and of indigenous peoples.[97] With the 1508 papal grant to the
crown of the Patronato real, the crown, rather than the pope, exercised absolute
power over the Catholic Church in the Americas and the Philippines, a privilege the
crown zealously guarded against erosion or incursion. Crown approval through the
Council of the Indies was needed for the establishment of bishoprics, building of
churches, appointment of all clerics.[98]

In 1721, at the beginning of the Bourbon monarchy, the crown transferred the main
responsibility for governing the overseas empire from the Council of the Indies to
the Ministry of the Navy and the Indies, which were subsequently divided into two
separate ministries in 1754.[57]

Viceroyalties
Main articles: Viceroyalty of New Spain, Viceroyalty of Peru, Viceroyalty of New
Granada, and Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata

View of the Plaza Mayor of Mexico City and the viceroy's palace, by Cristóbal de
Villalpando, 1695

View of the Plaza Mayor, Lima, ca. 1680

The impossibility of the physical presence of the monarch and the necessity of
strong royal governance in The Indies resulted in the appointment of viceroys
("vice-kings"), the direct representation of the monarch, in both civil and
ecclesiastical spheres. Viceroyalties were the largest territory unit of
administration in the civil and religious spheres and the boundaries of civil and
ecclesiastical governance coincided by design, to ensure crown control over both
bureaucracies.[99] Until the eighteenth century, there were just two viceroyalties,
with the Viceroyalty of New Spain (founded 1535) administering North America, a
portion of the Caribbean, and the Philippines, and the viceroyalty of Peru (founded
1542) having jurisdiction over Spanish South America. Viceroys served as the vice-
patron of the Catholic Church, including the Inquisition, established in the seats
of the viceroyalties (Mexico City and Lima). Viceroys were responsible for good
governance of their territories, economic development, and humane treatment of the
indigenous populations.[100]

In the eighteenth-century reforms, the Viceroyalty of Peru was reorganized,

splitting off portions to form the Viceroyalty of New Granada (Colombia) (1739) and
the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata (Argentina) (1776), leaving Peru with
jurisdiction over Peru, Charcas, and Chile. Viceroys were of high social standing,
almost without exception born in Spain, and served fixed terms.
Audiencias, the high courts
Main article: Real Audiencia

Members of the Real Audiencia (Royal Audience) of Lima, the presidente, alcaldes de
corte, fiscal and alguacil mayor. (Nueva Crónica y Buen Gobierno, p. 488)
The Audiencias were initially constituted by the crown as a key administrative
institution with royal authority and loyalty to the crown as opposed to conquerors
and first settlers.[101] Although constituted as the highest judicial authority in
their territorial jurisdiction, they also had executive and legislative authority,
and served as the executive on an interim basis. Judges (oidores) held "formidable
power. Their role in judicial affairs and in overseeing the implementation of royal
legislation made their decisions important for the communities they served." Since
their appointments were for life or the pleasure of the monarch, they had a
continuity of power and authority that viceroys and captains-general lacked because
of their shorter-term appointments.[102] They were the "center of the
administrative system [and] gave the government of the Indies a strong basis of
permanence and continuity."[103]

Their main function was judicial, as a court of justice of second instance —court
of appeal— in penal and civil matters, but also the Audiencias were courts the
first instance in the city where it had its headquarters, and also in the cases
involving the Royal Treasury.[104] Besides court of justice, the Audiencias had
functions of government as counterweight the authority of the viceroys, since they
could communicate with both the Council of the Indies and the king without the
requirement of requesting authorization from the viceroy.[104] This direct
correspondence of the Audiencia with the Council of the Indies made it possible for
the Council to give the Audiencia direction on general aspects of government.[101]

Audiencias were a significant base of power and influence for American-born elites,
starting in the late sixteenth century, with nearly a quarter of appointees being
born in the Indies by 1687. During a financial crisis in the late seventeenth
century, the crown began selling Audiencia appointments, and American-born
Spaniards held 45% of Audiencia appointments. Although there were restrictions of
appointees' ties to local elite society and participation in the local economy,
they acquired dispensations from the cash-strapped crown. Audiencia judgments and
other functions became more tied to the locality and less to the crown and
impartial justice.

During the Bourbon Reforms in the mid-eighteenth century, the crown systematically
sought to centralize power in its own hands and diminish that of its overseas
possessions, appointing peninsular-born Spaniards to Audiencias. American-born
elite men complained bitterly about the change, since they lost access to power
that they had enjoyed for nearly a century.[102]

Civil administrative districts, provinces

See also: Corregidor (position)

Map of Spanish America ca. 1800, showing the 4 viceroyalties (New Spain, pink),
(New Granada, green), (Peru, orange), (Río de la Plata, blue) and provincial
divisions
During the early era and under the Habsburgs, the crown established a regional
layer of colonial jurisdiction in the institution of Corregimiento, which was
between the Audiencia and town councils. Corregimiento expanded "royal authority
from the urban centers into the countryside and over the indigenous
population."[105] As with many colonial institutions, corregimiento had its roots
in Castile when the Catholic Monarchs centralize power over municipalities. In the
Indies, corregimiento initially functioned to bring control over Spanish settlers
who exploited the indigenous populations held in encomienda, in order to protect
the shrinking indigenous populations and prevent the formation of an aristocracy of
conquerors and powerful settlers. The royal official in charge of a district was
the Corregidor, who was appointed by the viceroy, usually for a five-year term.
Corregidores collected the tribute from indigenous communities and regulated forced
indigenous labor. Alcaldías mayores were larger districts with a royal appointee,
the Alcalde mayor.

As the indigenous populations declined, the need for corregimiento decreased and
then suppressed, with the alcaldía mayor remaining an institution until it was
replaced in the eighteenth-century Bourbon Reforms by royal officials, Intendants.
The salary of officials during the Habsburg era were paltry, but the corregidor or
alcalde mayor in densely populated areas of indigenous settlement with a valuable
product could use his office for personal enrichment. As with many other royal
posts, these positions were sold, starting in 1677.[105] The Bourbon-era intendants
were appointed and relatively well paid.[106]

Cabildos or town councils

Main article: Cabildo (council)

Cabildo in the city of Salta (Argentina)

Spanish settlers sought to live in towns and cities, with governance being
accomplished through the town council or Cabildo. The cabildo was composed of the
prominent residents (vecinos) of the municipality, so that governance was
restricted to a male elite, with majority of the population exercising power.
Cities were governed on the same pattern as in Spain and in the Indies the city was
the framework of Spanish life. The cities were Spanish and the countryside
indigenous.[107] In areas of previous indigenous empires with settled populations,
the crown also melded existing indigenous rule into a Spanish pattern, with the
establishment of cabildos and the participation of indigenous elites as officials
holding Spanish titles. There were a variable number of councilors (regidores),
depending on the size of the town, also two municipal judges (alcaldes menores),
who were judges of first instance, and also other officials as police chief,
inspector of supplies, court clerk, and a public herald.[108] They were in charge
of distributing land to the neighbors, establishing local taxes, dealing with the
public order, inspecting jails and hospitals, preserving the roads and public works
such as irrigation ditchs and bridges, supervising the public health, regulating
the festive activities, monitoring market prices, or the protection of Indians.
[109]

After the reign of Philip II, the municipal offices, including the councilors, were
auctioned to alleviate the need for money of the Crown, even the offices could also
be sold, which became hereditary,[110] so that the government of the cities went on
to hands of urban oligarchies.[111] In order to control the municipal life, the
Crown ordered the appointment of corregidores and alcaldes mayores to exert greater
political control and judicial functions in minor districts.[112] Their functions
were governing the respective municipalities, administering of justice and being
appellate judges in the alcaldes menores' judgments,[113] but only the corregidor
could preside over the cabildo.[114] However, both charges were also put up for
sale freely since the late 16th century.[115]

Most Spanish settlers came to the Indies as permanent residents, established

families and businesses, and sought advancement in the colonial system, such as
membership of cabildos, so that they were in the hands of local, American-born
(crillo) elites. During the Bourbon era, even when the crown systematically
appointed peninsular-born Spaniards to royal posts rather than American-born, the
cabildos remained in the hands of local elites.[116]

Frontier institutions – presidio and mission

Main articles: Presidio and Spanish missions in the Americas
The San Diego presidio in California
As the empire expanded into areas of less dense indigenous populations, the crown
created a chain of presidios, military forts or garrisons, that provided Spanish
settlers protection from Indian attacks. In Mexico during the sixteenth-century
Chichimec War guarded the transit of silver from the mines of Zacatecas to Mexico
City. As many as 60 salaried soldiers were garrisoned in presidios.[117] Presidios
had a resident commanders, who set up commercial enterprises of imported
merchandise, selling it to soldiers as well as Indian allies.[118]

The other frontier institution was the religious mission to convert the indigenous
populations. Missions were established with royal authority through the Patronato
real. The Jesuits were effective missionaries in frontier areas until their
expulsion from Spain and its empire in 1767. The Franciscans took over some former
Jesuit missions and continued the expansion of areas incorporated into the empire.
Although their primary focus was on religious conversion, missionaries served as
"diplomatic agents, peace emissaries to hostile tribes ... and they were also
expected to hold the line against nomadic nonmissionary Indians as well as other
European powers."[119] On the frontier of empire, Indians were seen as sin razón,
("without reason"); non-Indian populations were described as gente de razón
("people of reason"), who could be mixed-race castas or black and had greater
social mobility in frontier regions.[120]

Catholic Church organization

Early evangelization

Modern bas-relief of Franciscan friar Motolinia

During the early colonial period, the crown authorized friars of Catholic religious
orders (Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians) to function as priests during
the conversion of indigenous populations. During the early Age of Discovery, the
diocesan clergy in Spain was poorly educated and considered of a low moral
standing, and the Catholic Monarchs were reluctant to allow them to spearhead
evangelization. Each order set up networks of parishes in the various regions
(provinces), sited in existing indigenous settlements, where Christian churches
were built and where evangelization of the indigenous was based. Hernán Cortés
requested Franciscan and Dominican friars be sent to New Spain immediately after
the conquest of Tenochtitlan to begin evangelization. The Franciscans arrived first
in 1525 in a group of twelve, the Twelve Apostles of Mexico. Among this first group
was Toribio de Benavente, known now as Motolinia, the Nahuatl word for poor.[121]
[122]

Establishment of the church hierarchy

Lima Cathedral, construction begun in 1535, completed 1649

After the 1550s, the crown increasingly favored the diocesan clergy over the
religious orders. The diocesan clergy) (also called the secular clergy were under
the direct authority of bishops, who were appointed by the crown, through the power
granted by the pope in the Patronato Real. Religious orders had their own internal
regulations and leadership. The crown had authority to draw the boundaries for
dioceses and parishes. The creation of the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the diocesan
clergy marked a turning point in the crown's control over the religious sphere. The
structure of the hierarchy was in many ways parallel to that of civil governance.
The pope was the head of the Catholic Church, but the granting of the Patronato
Real to the Spanish monarchy gave the king the power of appointment (patronage) of
ecclesiastics. The monarch was head of the civil and religious hierarchies. The
capital city of a viceroyalty became of the seat of the archbishop. The region
overseen by the archbishop was divided into large units, the diocese, headed by a
bishop. The diocese was in turn divided into smaller units, the parish, staffed by
a parish priest.
In 1574, Philip II promulgated the Order of Patronage (Ordenaza del Patronato)
ordering the religious orders to turn over their parishes to the secular clergy, a
policy that secular clerics had long sought for the central areas of empire, with
their large indigenous populations. Although implementation was slow and
incomplete, it was an assertion of royal power over the clergy and the quality of
parish priests improved, since the Ordenanza mandated competitive examination to
fill vacant positions.[123] [124] Religious orders along with the Jesuits then
embarked on further evangelization in frontier regions of the empire.

Jesuits
Main articles: Society of Jesus and Suppression of the Jesuits

Church of la Companía Society of Jesus in Cuzco, Peru

The Jesuits resisted crown control, refusing to pay the tithe on their estates that
supported the ecclesiastical hierarchy and came into conflict with bishops. The
most prominent example is in Puebla, Mexico, when Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza
was driven from his bishopric by the Jesuits. The bishop challenged the Jesuits'
continuing to hold Indian parishes and function as priests without the required
royal licenses. His fall from power is viewed as an example of the weakening of the
crown in the mid-seventeenth century since it failed to protect their duly
appointed bishop.[125] The crown expelled the Jesuits from Spain and The Indies in
1767 during the Bourbon Reforms.

Holy Office of the Inquisition

Main articles: Mexican Inquisition and Peruvian Inquisition
Inquisitional powers were initially vested in bishops, who could root out idolatry
and heresy. In Mexico, Bishop Juan de Zumárraga 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. Zumárraga was reprimanded for his actions as exceeding his authority.
[126][127] When 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.

Society
Demographic impact of colonization
Further information: Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas and
Cocoliztli epidemics

Depiction of smallpox in Book XII of the 16th-century Florentine Codex (compiled

1540–1585) in conquest-era central Mexico suffering from smallpox

Population collapse in Mexico

It 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.[128]

Native populations declined significantly during the period of Spanish expansion.

In Hispaniola, the indigenous Taíno pre-contact population before the arrival of
Columbus of several hundred thousand had declined to sixty thousand by 1509. The
population of the Native American population in Mexico declined by an estimated 90%
(reduced to 1–2.5 million people) by the early 17th century.[citation needed] In
Peru, the indigenous Amerindian pre-contact population of around 6.5 million
declined to 1 million by the early 17th century.[citation needed] The overwhelming
cause of the decline in both Mexico and Peru was infectious diseases, such as
smallpox and measles,[129] although the brutality of the Encomienda also played a
significant part in the population decline.[citation needed]
Of the history of the indigenous population of California, Sherburne F. Cook (1896–
1974) was the most painstakingly careful researcher. From decades of research, he
made estimates for the pre-contact population and the history of demographic
decline during the Spanish and post-Spanish periods. According to Cook, the
indigenous Californian population at first contact, in 1769, was about 310,000 and
had dropped to 25,000 by 1910. The vast majority of the decline happened after the
Spanish period, during the Mexican and US periods of Californian history (1821–
1910), with the most dramatic collapse (200,000 to 25,000) occurring in the US
period (1846–1910).[130][131][132]

Spanish American populations and race

Main article: Castas

Luis de Mena, Virgin of Guadalupe and racial hierarchy, 1750. Museo de América,
Madrid.
The 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. The Spanish Crown separated them into the República de
Indios. Europeans immigrated from various provinces of Spain, with initial waves of
emigration consisting of more men than women. They were referred to as Españoles
and Españolas, and later being differentiated by the terms indicating place of
birth, peninsular for those born in Spain; criollo/criolla or Americano/Ameriana
for those born in the Americas. Enslaved Africans were imported to Spanish
territories, primarily to Cuba. As was the case in peninsular Spain, Africans
(negros) were able buy their freedom (horro), so that in most of the empire free
Blacks and Mulatto (Black + Spanish) populations outnumbered slave populations.
Spaniards and Indigenous parents produced Mestizo offspring, who were also part of
the República de Españoles.[citation needed]

Economy
Further information: Latin American economy § Colonial era and Independence (ca.
1500–1850)
Early economy of indigenous tribute and labor

Tribute from one region of the Aztec Empire as shown in Codex Mendoza

Aztec maize agriculture as depicted in the Florentine Codex (1576)

In areas of dense, stratified indigenous populations, especially Mesoamerica and
the Andean region, Spanish conquerors awarded perpetual private grants of labor and
tribute particular indigenous settlements, in encomienda were in a privileged
position to accumulate private wealth. Spaniards 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. The rural regions remained highly
indigenous, with little interface between the large numbers of indigenous and the
small numbers of the República de Españoles, which included Blacks and mixed-race
castas. Tribute goods in Mexico were most usually lengths of cotton cloth, woven by
women, and maize and other foodstuffs produced by men. These could be sold in
markets and thereby converted to cash. In the early period for Spaniards, formal
ownership of land was less important than control of indigenous labor and receiving
tribute. Spaniards 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. With 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. The 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.
Sugar and slavery
Main article: Slavery in colonial Spanish America
The early Caribbean proved a massive disappointment for Spaniards, who had hoped to
find mineral wealth and exploitable indigenous populations. Gold existed in only
small amounts, and the indigenous peoples died off in massive numbers. For the
colony's continued existence, a reliable source of labor was needed. That was of
enslaved Africans. Cane 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.

Silver

Depiction of the patio process at the Hacienda Nueva de Fresnillo, Zacatecas,

Pietro Gualdi, 1846.
Silver was the bonanza the Spaniards sought. Large 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, Zacatecas and Guanajuato.[133] In the Andes, Viceroy Francisco de Toledo
revived the indigenous rotary labor system of the mita to supply labor for silver
mining.[134][135][136] In Mexico, the labor force had to be lured from elsewhere in
the colony, and was not based on traditional systems of rotary labor. In 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. Ore was
crushed with the aid of mules and then mercury could be applied to draw out the
pure silver. Mercury was a monopoly of the crown. In Peru, the Cerro Rico's ore was
processed from the local mercury mine of Huancavelica, while in Mexico mercury was
imported from the Almadén mercury mine in Spain. Mercury is a neurotoxin, which
damaged and killed human and mules coming into contact with it. In the Huancavelica
region, mercury continues to wreak ecological damage.[137][138][139]

Development of agriculture and ranching

To 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. In
areas of sparse population, ranching of cattle (ganado mayor) and smaller livestock
(ganado menor) such as sheep and goats ranged widely and were largely feral. There
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 other contest that.
[140] With only a small labor force to draw on, ranching was an ideal economic
activity for some regions. Most agriculture and ranching supplied local needs,
since transportation was difficult, slow, and expensive.[141] Only the most
valuable low bulk products would be exported.

Agricultural export products

Cacao beans for chocolate emerged as an export product as Europeans developed a
taste for sweetened chocolate. Another major export product was cochineal, a color-
fast red dye made from dried bugs living on cacti. Also cochineal is technically an
animal product, the insects were placed on cacti and harvested by the hands of
indigenous laborers. It became the second-most important export product from
Spanish America after silver.

19th century
Main article: Spanish American wars of independence

Development of Spanish American Independence

Government under traditional Spanish law
Loyal to Supreme Central Junta or Cortes
American junta or insurrection movement
 Independent state declared or established
Height of French control of the Peninsula
During 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. The
Libertadores (Spanish and Portuguese for "Liberators") were the principal leaders
of the Spanish American wars of independence. They were predominantly criollos
(Americas-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.

In 1809 the first declarations of independence from Spanish rule occurred in the
Viceroyalty of Peru. The first two were in the Alto Perú, present-day Bolivia, at
Charcas (present day Sucre, May 25), and La Paz (July 16); and the third in
present-day Ecuador at Quito (August 10). In 1810 Mexico declared independence,
with the Mexican War of Independence following for over a decade. In 1821 Treaty of
Córdoba established Mexican independence from Spain and concluded the War. The Plan
of Iguala was part of the peace treaty to establish a constitutional foundation for
an independent Mexico.

These began a movement for colonial independence that spread to Spain's other
colonies in the Americas. The ideas from the French and the American Revolution
influenced the efforts. All of the colonies, except Cuba and Puerto Rico, attained
independence by the 1820s. The British Empire offered support, wanting to end the
Spanish monopoly on trade with its colonies in the Americas.

In 1898, the United States achieved victory in the Spanish–American War with Spain,
ending the Spanish colonial era. Spanish possession and rule of its remaining
colonies in the Americas ended in that year with its sovereignty transferred to the
United States. The United States took occupation of Cuba, the Philippines, and
Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico continues to be a possession of the United States, now
officially continues as a self-governing unincorporated territory.

In popular culture
In the twentieth century, there have been a number of films depicting the life of
Christopher Columbus. One in 1949 stars Frederic March as Columbus.[142] With the
1992 commemoration (and critique) of Columbus, more cinematic and television
depictions of the era appeared, including a TV miniseries with Gabriel Byrne as
Columbus.[143] Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992) has Georges Corroface as
Columbus with Marlon Brando as Tomás de Torquemada and Tom Selleck as King
Ferdinand and Rachel Ward as Queen Isabela.[144] 1492: The Conquest of Paradise
stars Gerard Depardieu as Columbus and Sigorney Weaver as Queen Isabel.[145] A 2010
film, Even the Rain starring Gael García Bernal, is set in modern Cochabamba,
Bolivia during the Cochabamba Water War, following a film crew shooting a
controversial life of Columbus.[146] A 1995 Bolivian-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 shot a film about the Spanish conquest and end
up replicating aspects of the conquest.[147]

For the conquest of Mexico, a 2019 an eight-episode Mexican TV miniseries Hernán

depicts the conquest of Mexico. Other notable historical figures in the production
are Malinche, Cortés cultural translator, and other conquerors Pedro de Alvarado,
Cristóbal de Olid, Bernal Díaz del Castillo. Showing the indigenous sides are
Xicotencatl, a leader of the Spaniards' Tlaxcalan allies, and Aztec emperors
Moctezuma II and Cuitlahuac.[148] The story of Doña Marina, also known as Malinche,
was the subject of a Mexican TV miniseries in 2018.[149] A major production in
Mexico was the 1998 film, The Other Conquest, which focuses on a Nahua in the post-
conquest era and the evangelization of central Mexico.[150]

The epic journey of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca has been portrayed in a 1991
feature-length Mexican film, Cabeza de Vaca.[151] 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 Kinsky.[152]

The Mission was a 1996 film idealizing a Jesuit mission to the Guaraní in the
territory disputed between Spain and Portugal. The film starred Robert De Niro,
Jeremy Irons, and Liam Neeson and It won an Academy Award.[153]

The life of seventeenth-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[154]
and in a TV miniseries Juana Inés.[155] Seventeenth-century Mexican trickster,
Martín Garatuza was the subject of a late nineteenth-century novel by Mexican
politician and writer, Vicente Riva Palacio. In the twentieth century, Garatuza's
life was the subject of a 1935 film[156] and a 1986 telenovela, Martín Garatuza.
[157]

For the independence era, the 2016 Bolivian-made film made about Mestiza
independence leader Juana Azurduy de Padilla is part of the recent recognition of
her role in the independence of Argentina and Bolivia.[158]

Dominions

Spanish and Portuguese empires. Settlement in the Americas, ca. 1600. Although the
crowns asserted sovereignty over great expanses of territory, this modern map shows
the sparseness of actual European settlement in dark blue.
North America, Central America

Spanish historical presence, claimed territories, points of interest and

expeditions in North America.
Viceroyalty of New Spain (1535–1821)
Las Californias
Nuevo Reino de León
Territorio de Nutka
Nuevo Santander
Nueva Vizcaya
Santa Fe de Nuevo México
Nueva Extremadura
Nueva Galicia
Captaincy General of Guatemala
La Luisiana (until 1801).
Spanish Florida (until 1819).
Captaincy General of Cuba (until 1898)
Captaincy General of Puerto Rico (until 1898)
Santo Domingo (last Spanish rule 1861–1865)
Captaincy General of the Philippines (administered by New Spain from 1565 to 1821,
then after Mexican independence transferred to and directly administered by Madrid
until 1898)
South America
Viceroyalty of Perú (1542–1824)
Captaincy General of Chile (1541–1818)
Viceroyalty of New Granada (1717–1819)
Captaincy General of Venezuela
Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata (1776–1814)
See also
Mexico portalColombia portalArgentina portalEcuador portalVenezuela portal
Atlantic World
Cartography of Latin America
Castas
Spanish Empire
Spanish American Enlightenment
Black legend (Spain)
Hapsburg Spain
List of largest empires
Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas
Timeline of imperialism § Colonization of North America
Valladolid debate
Viceroyalty of New Spain
Viceroyalty of Peru
References
Gómez-Barris, Macarena (2017). The Extractive Zone Social Ecologies and Decolonial
Perspectives. Duke University Press. ISBN 9780822372561.
MacIas, Rosario Marquez; MacÍas, Rosario Márquez (1995). La emigración española a
América, 1765–1824. ISBN 9788474688566
"La catastrophe démographique" (The Demographic Catastrophe) in L'Histoire n°322,
July–August 2007, p. 17
Reséndez, Andrés (2016). The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian
Enslavement in America. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 9780544602670.
Trafzer, Clifford (1999). Exterminate Them! Written Accounts of the Murder, Rape,
and Enslavement of Native Americans During the California Gold Rush. Michigan State
University Press. ISBN 9780870135019.
Miranda, Deborah (2012). Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir. Heyday Books. ISBN
9781597142014.
Forsythe, David P. (2009). Encyclopedia of Human Rights. Volume 4. Oxford
University Press. p. 297. ISBN 978-0195334029.
Stannard, David (1992). American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World. Oxford
University Press. ISBN 9780195085570.
Ostler, Jeffrey (2 March 2015). "Genocide and American Indian History". Oxford
Research Encyclopedia of American History.
doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.3. ISBN 9780199329175.
Ida Altman, S.L. Cline, and Javier Pescador, The Early History of Greater Mexico,
Pearson, 2003 pp. 27–28.
Cook, David Noble. "Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)" in Encyclopedia of Latin
American History and Culture. Vol. 5, p. 253
Muldoon, James. "Papal Responsibility for the Infidel: Another Look at Alexander
VI's" Inter Caetera"." The Catholic Historical Review 64.2 (1978): 168-184.
Ida Altman et al., The Early History of Greater Mexico, pp. 35–36.
Lockhart, James and Stuart B. Schwartz, Early Latin America. New York: Cambridge
University Press 1982, pp. 78–79.
Restall, Matthew, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. New York: Oxford University
Press 2003.
Altman, Ida and David Wheat, eds. The Spanish Caribbean and the Atlantic World in
the Long Sixteenth Century. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 2019. ISBN 978-
0803299573
Las Casas, Bartolome. 1992. A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies.
London, England: Penguin Classics. pp 9
Maltby, William B. "The Black Legend" in Encyclopedia of Latin American History
and Culture vol. 1 pp. 346–348.|New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1996}}
"Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-03-20. Retrieved
2014-03-05. Sucre State Government: Cumaná in History (Spanish)
Tibesar, A.S. (1957). "The Franciscan Province of the Holy Cross of Espanañola,
1505–1559". The Americas. 13 (4): 377–389. doi:10.2307/979442. JSTOR 979442.
Sauer, Carl O. The Early Spanish Main. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press 1966.
Altman, The Early History of Greater Mexico, pp.53-54.
León-Portilla, Miguel. The Broken Spears. Boston, Beacon Press 2006 ISBN 978-
0807055007
Lockhart, James. We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of The Conquest of Mexico.
Repertorium Columbianum 2004.ISBN 978-1592446810
 Schwartz, Stuart B. Victors and Vanquished: Spanish and Nahua Views of the Fall of
the Mexica Empire. Bedford/St Martin’s 2017. ISBN 978-1319094850
Lockhart and Schwartz, Early Latin America, pp. 80-85.
Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest
Robert S. Chamberlain, The Conquest and Colonization of Yucatan. Washington DC:
Carnegie Institution.
Warren, J. Benedict. The Conquest of Michoacán: The Spanish Domination of the
Tarascan Kingdom in Western Mexico, 1521–1530. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press|1985
Altman, Ida. The War for Mexico's West. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press 2010.
Philip W. Powell, Soldiers, Indians, and Silver: North America's Last Frontier
War. Tempe: Center for Latin America Studies, Arizona State University 1975. First
published by University of California Press 1952.
Collier, Simon. "Chile: Colonial Foundations" in Encyclopedia of Latin American
History and Culture, vol. 2, p. 99.
Urbina Carrasco, Ximena (2016). "Interacciones entre españoles de Chiloé y Chonos
en los siglos XVII y XVIII: Pedro y Francisco Delco, Ignacio y Cristóbal
Talcapillán y Martín Olleta" [Interactions between Spaniards of Chiloé and Chonos
in the XVII and XVII centuries: Pedro and Francisco Delco, Ignacio and Cristóbal
Talcapillán and Martín Olleta] (PDF). Chungara (in Spanish). 48 (1): 103–114.
Retrieved December 21, 2019.
Villalobos, Sergio; Silva, Osvaldo; Silva, Fernando; Estelle, Patricio (1974).
Historia De Chile (14th ed.). Editorial Universitaria. ISBN 956-11-1163-2, p. 109.
Enciclopedia regional del Bío Bío (in Spanish). Pehuén Editores. 2006. p. 44. ISBN
956-16-0404-3.
Clements Markham, The Conquest of New Granada (1912) online
Avellaneda Navas, José Ignacio. The Conquerors of the New Kingdom of Granada
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995) ISBN 978-0-8263-1612-7
Miller, Gary. “Venezuela: The Colonial Era” in ‘’Encyclopedia of Latin American
History and Culture. Vol. 5, pp. 378-79.
Dressing, J. David. “House of Welser” in Encyclopedia of Latin American History
and Culture, vol. 5, p. 453.
Cushner, Nicolas P. “Argentina: The Colonial Period” in Encyclopedia of Latin
American History and Culture, vol. 1, pp. 142-43.
Lockhart and Schwartz, Early Latin America, pp. 84-85.
Lockhart and Schwartz, Early Latin America pp. 84-85.
Keen, Benjamin and Keith Haynes. A History of Latin America. 9th edition. Boston:
Wadsworth 2013 pp. 76-78
Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar Núñez. The Narrative of Cabeza De Vaca, Translation of La
Relacion, ed. Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz. Lincoln, NE: University of
Nebraska Press 2003. ISBN 0-8032-6416-X
Carte, Rebecca A. Capturing the Landscape of New Spain: Baltasar Obregón and the
1564 Ibarra Expedition. Tucson: University of Arizona Press 2015.
Simmons, Marc, The Last Conquistador: Juan de Oñate and the Settling of the Far
Southwest, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1991 pp. 193–94
Writer, Amanda Martinez. "Oñate statue taken down, for now". Taos News. Retrieved
2020-06-17.
Lockhart and Schwartz, Early Latin America, p.89.
Lockhart and Schwartz, Early Latin America, pp. 87-88
Crosby, Alfred W., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of
1492. Greenwood Press 1973.
Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–
1900. 2nd edition. New York: Cambridge University Press 2015. ISBN 978-1107569874
Cook, Noble David. Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650. New
York: Cambridge University Press 2010. ISBN 978-0521627306
Powell, Philip Wayne. Soldiers, Indians, Silver. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press 1969.
Melville, Elinor G.K. A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the
Conquest of Mexico. New York: Cambridge University Press 1994.
Parry, J.H. (1953). The Sale of Public Office in the Spanish Indies Under the
Habsburgs. Ibero-Americana 37. University of California Press. p. 4.
Brading 1971, pp. 33-94.
Kuethe, Allan J. "The Bourbon Reforms" in Encyclopedia of Latin American History
and Culture 1996, vol. 1, p. 399-401
Nader, Helen, "Antonio de Fonseca" in Bedini 1992, pp. 282–283
Cook, Noble David. "Nicolás de Ovando" in Encyclopedia of Latin American History
and Culture 1996, vol. 4, p. 254
Delamarre-Sallard, Catherine (2008). Manuel de civilisation espagnole et latino-
américaine (in Spanish). Editions Bréal. p. 130. ISBN 978-2-7495-0335-6.
Sanz Ayán, Carmen (1993). Sevilla y el comercio de Indias (in Spanish). Ediciones
Akal. p. 23. ISBN 978-84-460-0214-7.
Andreo García, Juan (2007). "Su Majestad quiere gobernar: la Administración
española en Indias durante los siglos XVI y XVII". In Bautista Vilar, Juan;
Peñafiel Ramón, Antonio; Irigoyen López, Antonio (eds.). Historia y sociabilidad:
homenaje a la profesora María del Carmen Melendreras Gimeno (in Spanish). EDITUM.
p. 279. ISBN 978-84-8371-654-0.
Góngora 1998, p. 99.
Lagos Carmona 1985, p. 119.
Lagos Carmona 1985, p. 122.
Historia general de España 1992, p. 601.
Góngora 1998, p. 97.
Muro Romero, Fernando (1975). Las presidencias-gobernaciones en Indias (siglo XVI)
(in Spanish). CSIC. p. 177. ISBN 978-84-00-04233-2.
Malberti de López, Susana (2006). "Las instituciones políticas en la región de
Cuyo". In Instituto de Historia Regional y Argentina "Héctor Domingo Arias" (ed.).
Desde San Juan hacia la historia de la región (in Spanish). effha. p. 141. ISBN
978-950-605-481-6.
Bushnell, Amy (1981). The King's Coffer: Proprietors of the Spanish Florida
Treasury 1565-1702. Gainesville, Florida: University Presses of Florida. pp. 1–2.
ISBN 0-8130-0690-2. Retrieved May 23, 2019.
Bushnell 1981, pp. 1–2; Chipman 2005
Parry, John Horace (1990) [1966]. The Spanish Seaborne Empire (First paperback
ed.). Berkeley, California: University of California Press. pp. 202–203. ISBN 978-
0-520-07140-7. Retrieved 22 October 2013.
Bushnell 1981, p. 1–2; Chipman 2005.
"1512–1513: Laws of Burgos", Colonial Latin America, Peter Bakewell, 1998,
retrieved 2008-10-08
Esparza, José Javier (2015). La cruzada del océano: La gran aventura de la
conquista de América (in Spanish). La Esfera de los Libros. ISBN 9788490602638.
Scott, James Brown (2000). The Spanish origin of international law (4th ed.).
Union, NJ: Lawbook Exchange. ISBN 978-1-58477-110-4.
Dumont, Jean (1997). El amanecer de los derechos del hombre : la controversia de
Valladolid (in Spanish). Madrid: Encuentro. ISBN 978-8474904154.
Cook, Noble David. "Blasco Núñez Vela" in Encyclopedia of Latin American History
and Culture, vol. 4, p. 204.
Warren, J. Benedict."Questionnaires from the Trial of the Second Marqués del Valle
for Conspiracy, 1566" in The Harkness Collection in the Library of Congress:
Manuscripts concerning Mexico, a guide. Washington, D.C. 1974.
Fernández de Recas, Guillermo S. Cacicazgos y nobiliario indígena de la Nueva
España. Instituto Bibliográfico Mexicano 1961
Gibson, Charles. ‘’The Aztecs under Spanish Rule. Stanford: Stanford University
Press 1964
Lockhart, James. The Nahuas after the Conquest. Stanford: Stanford University
Press 1992.
Rowe, John. “The Incas Under Spanish Colonial Institutions”. Hispanic American
Historical Review, vol. 37 (2) May 1957
Spalding, Karen. "Social climbers: Changing patterns of mobility among the Indians
of colonial Peru." Hispanic American Historical Review 50.4 (1970): 645-664.
Spalding, Karen. "Kurakas and commerce: a chapter in the evolution of Andean
society." Hispanic American Historical Review 53.4 (1973): 581-599.
Borah, Woodrow. Justice by Insurance: The General Indian Court of Colonial Mexico
and the Legal Aides of the Half-Real. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press 1983. ISBN 978-0520048454
Borah, Woodrow. "Juzgado General de Indios del Perú o Juzgado Particular de Indios
de el cercado de Lima." Revista chilena de historia del derecho 6 (1970
The Tlaxcalan Actas: A Compendium of the Records of the Cabildo of Tlaxcala (1545-
1627) James Lockhart, Frances Berdan, and Arthur J.O. Anderson. 1986. University of
Utah Press 1986. ISBN 978-0874802535
Gibson, Charles. The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule. Stanford: Stanford University
Press 1964.
Lockhart, James. The Nahuas After the Conquest. Stanford University Press 1992.
Terraciano, Kevin. The Mixtecs of colonial Oaxaca: Ñudzahui history, sixteenth
through eighteenth centuries. Stanford University Press, 2004.
Farriss, Nancy Marguerite. Maya society under colonial rule: The collective
enterprise of survival. Princeton University Press, 1984.
Restall, Matthew. The Maya world: Yucatec culture and society, 1550-1850. Stanford
University Press, 1999.
Stern, Steve. Peru's Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Conquest: Huamanga to
1640. 2nd edition. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 1992.
Andrien, Kenneth J. Andean World: Indigenous History, Culture, and Consciousness
under Spanish Rule, 1532-1825. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press 2001.
Ganson, Barbara. The Guaraní Under Spanish Rule in Río de la Plata. Stanford:
Stanford University 2003.
Cano, José (2007). "El gobierno y la imagen de la Monarquía Hispánica en los
viajeros de los siglos XVI y XVII. De Austrias a Borbones". La monarquía de España
y sus visitantes: siglos XVI al XIX Colaborador Consuelo Maqueda Abreu (in
Spanish). Editorial Dykinson. pp. 21–22. ISBN 9788498491074.
Jiménez Núñez, Alfredo (2006). El gran norte de México: una frontera imperial en
la Nueva España (1540–1820) (in Spanish). Editorial Tebar. p. 41. ISBN 978-84-7360-
221-1.
Mecham 1966, p. 111-137.
Mecham 1966, p. 26.
Burkholder, Mark A. "Viceroyalty, Viceroy" in Encyclopedia of Latin American
History and Culture 1996, vol. 5, p. 408-409
Góngora 1998, p. 100.
Burkholder, "Audiencia" in Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture
1996, vol. 1, p. 235-236
Fernando Cervantes, "Audiencias" in Encyclopedia of Mexico. Chicago: Fitzroy
Dearborn 1997, p. 109.
Garavaglia, Juan Carlos; Marchena Fernández, Juan (2005). América Latina de los
orígenes a la Independencia (in Spanish). Editorial Critica. p. 266. ISBN 978-84-
8432-652-6.
Burkholder, Mark A. "Corregidor" in Encyclopedia of Latin and mexicpo is the best
History and Culture 1996, vol. 2, p. 272
Brungardt, Maurice (2006). "Corregidor/Corregimiento". Iberia and the Americas:
culture, politics, and history. 1. Santa Barbara: ABC Clio. pp. 361–363.
Lockhart & Schwartz 1983, p. 66-67.
Bennassar 2001, p. 98.
Delgado de Cantú, Gloria M. (2005). El mundo moderno y contemporáneo (in Spanish).
1. Pearson Educación. p. 90. ISBN 978-970-26-0665-9.
Orduña Rebollo, Enrique (2003). Municipios y provincias: Historia de la
Organización Territorial Española (in Spanish). INAP. p. 238. ISBN 978-84-259-1249-
8.
De Blas, Patricio (2000). Historia Común de Iberoamérica (in Spanish). EDAF. p.
202. ISBN 978-84-414-0766-4. cabildo.
Bennassar 2001, p. 99.
 Orduña Rebollo, Enrique (2003). Municipios y provincias: Historia de la
Organización Territorial Española (in Spanish). INAP. p. 237. ISBN 978-84-259-1249-
8.
Historia general de España 1992, p. 615.
Pérez Guartambel, Carlos (2006). Justicia indígena (in Spanish). Universidad de
Cuenca. pp. 49–50. ISBN 978-9978-14-119-9.
Bosco Amores, Juan (2006). Historia de América (in Spanish). Editorial Ariel. p.
273. ISBN 978-84-344-5211-4.
Bennassar 2001, p. 101.
Lockhart & Schwartz 1983, p. 322.
Gibson 1966, p. 191-192.
Altman, Cline & Javier Pescador 2003, pp. 321-322.
Ramírez, Susan E. "Missions: Spanish America" in Encyclopedia of Latin American
History and Culture 1996, vol. 4, p. 77
Miranda, Gloria E. (1988). "Racial and Cultural Dimensions of "Gente de Razón"
Status in Spanish and Mexican California". Southern California Quarterly. 70 (3):
265–278. doi:10.2307/41171310. JSTOR 41171310.
Ricard, Robert (1966). The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Toribio de Benavente Motolinia, Motolinia's History of the Indians of New Spain.
Translated by Elizabeth Andros Foster. Greenwood Press 1973
Padden, Robert C. (1956). "The Ordenanza del Patronazgo of 1574". The Americas
(12): 333–354. doi:10.2307/979082. JSTOR 979082.
Schwaller, John F (1986). "The Ordenanza del Patronazgo in New Spain, 1574–1600".
The Americas. 42 (42): 253–274. doi:10.2307/1006927. JSTOR 1006927.
Brading 1993, pp. 241-247.
Don, Patricia Lopes. "The 1539 inquisition and trial of Don Carlos of Texcoco in
early Mexico." Hispanic American Historical Review 88, no. 4 (2008): 573-606.
Castaño, Victoria Ríos. "Not a Man of Contradiction: Zumárraga as Protector and
Inquisitor of the Indigenous People of Central Mexico." Hispanic Research Journal
13, no. 1 (2012): 26-40.
MacIas, Rosario Marquez; MacÍas, Rosario Márquez (1995). La emigración española a
América, 1765–1824. ISBN 9788474688566.
"The Story Of... Smallpox". Pbs.org. Retrieved 2019-03-02.
Baumhoff, Martin A. 1963. Ecological Determinants of Aboriginal California
Populations. University of California Publications in American Archaeology and
Ethnology 49:155–236.
Powers, Stephen. 1875. "California Indian Characteristics". Overland Monthly
14:297–309. on-line
Cook's judgement on the effects of U.S rule upon the native Californians is harsh:
"The first (factor) was the food supply... The second factor was the disease. ...A
third factor, which strongly intensified the effect of the other two, was the
social and physical disruption visited upon the Indian. He was driven from his home
by the thousands, starved, beaten, raped, and murdered with impunity. He was not
only given no assistance in the struggle against foreign diseases, but was
prevented from adopting even the most elementary measures to secure his food,
clothing, and shelter. The utter devastation caused by the white man was literally
incredible, and not until the population figures are examined does the extent of
the havoc become evident."Cook, Sherburne F. 1976b. The Population of the
California Indians, 1769–1970. University of California Press, Berkeley|p. 200
Brading, D.A. and Harry Cross, “Colonial Silver Mining: Mexico and Peru.” Hispanic
America Historical Review 52 (1972): 545-579.
Bakewell, Peter J. Miners of the Red Mountain: Indian Labor in Potosí, 1545-1650.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press 1984.
Cole, Jeffrey A., The Potosí Mita, 1573-1700: Compulsory Labor in the Andes,
Stanford: Stanford University Press 1985.
Tandeter, Enrique, Coercion and Market: Silver Mining in Colonial Potosí, 1692-
1826. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press 1993.
Whitaker, Arthur P.The Huancavelica Mercury Mine: A Contribution to the History of
the Bourbon Renaissance in the Spanish Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press
1941.
Brown, Kendall W., "The Spanish Imperial Mercury Trade and the American Mining
Expansion Under the Bourbon Monarchy," in The Political Economy of Spanish America
in the Age of Revolution, ed. Kenneth J. Andrien and Lyman L. Johnson. Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press 1994, pp. 137-68.
Robins, Nicholas A., Mercury Mining and Empire: The Human and Ecological Cost of
Colonial Silver Mining in the Andes. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2011.
Van Ausdal, Shawn, and Robert W. Wilcox. "Hoofprints: Cattle Ranching and
Landscape Transformation" in A Living Past: Environmental Histories of Modern Latin
America, eds. John Soluri, Claudia Leal, and José Augusto Pádua. New York: Berghahn
2019, pp. 183-84
Van Young, Eric. Hacienda and Market in Eighteenth-Century Mexico: The Rural
Economy of the Guadalajara Region, 1675–1820. Berkeley: University of California
Press 1981.
[1] Columbus
[2] Christopher Columbus TV miniseries
[3] Christopher Columbus: The Discovery.
[4] 1492: The Conquest of Paradise.
[5] Even the Rain
[6] To Hear the Birds Singing
[7] Hernán
[8] Malinche
[9] The Other Conquest
[10] Cabeza de Vaca
[11] Aguirre, the Wrath of God.
[12] The Mission.
[13] I, the Worst of All
[14] Juana Inés
[15] Martín Garatuza
[16] Martín Garatuza
[17] Juana Azurduy: Guerrillera de la Patria Grande
Further reading
Main article: Historiography of Colonial Spanish America
Altman, Ida and David Wheat, eds. The Spanish Caribbean and the Atlantic World in
the Long Sixteenth Century. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 2019. ISBN 978-
0803299573
Brading, D. A., The First America: the Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the
Liberal State, 1492–1867 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Burkholder, Mark A. and Lyman L. Johnson. Colonial Latin America, 10th ed. Oxford
University Press 2018. ISBN 978-0190642402
Chipman, Donald E. and Joseph, Harriett Denise. Spanish Texas, 1519–1821. (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1992)
Clark, Larry R. Imperial Spain’s Failure to Colonize Southeast North America: 1513
- 1587 (TimeSpan Press 2017) updated edition to Spanish Attempts to Colonize
Southeast North America (McFarland Publishing, 2010)
Elliott, J. H. Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–
1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007)
Gibson, Carrie. Empire's Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean from Columbus to
the Present Day (New York: Grove Press, 2015)
Gibson, Carrie. El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America
(New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2019)
Gibson, Charles. Spain in America. New York: Harper and Row 1966. ISBN 978-
1299360297
Goodwin, Robert. América: The Epic Story of Spanish North America, 1493-1898
(London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019)
Hanke, Lewis. The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America (Boston:
Little, Brown, and Co., 1965).
Haring, Clarence H. The Spanish Empire in America (London: Oxford University Press,
1947)
Kamen, Henry. Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492–1763 (HarperCollins,
2004)
Lockhart, James and Stuart B. Schwartz. Early Latin America: A History of Colonial
Spanish America and Brazil. New York: Cambridge University Press 1983. ISBN 978-
0521299299
Merriman, Roger Bigelow. The Rise of the Spanish Empire in the Old World and in the
New (4 Vol. London: Macmillan, 1918) online free
Portuondo, María M. Secret Science: Spanish Cosmography and the New World (Chicago:
Chicago UP, 2009).
Resendez, Andres (2016). The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian
Enslavement in America. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 448. ISBN 978-0544602670.
Restall, Matthew and Fernández-Armesto, Felipe. The Conquistadors: A Very Short
Introduction (2012) excerpt and text search
Restall, Matthew and Kris Lane. Latin America in Colonial Times. New York:
Cambridge University Press 2011.
Thomas, Hugh. Rivers of Gold: the rise of the Spanish Empire, from Columbus to
Magellan (2005)
Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America (Yale University Press, 1992)
Historiography
Cañeque, Alejandro "The Political and Institutional History of Colonial Spanish
America" History Compass (April 2013) 114 pp 280–291, doi:10.1111/hic3.12043
Herzog, Tamar (2018). "Indigenous Reducciones and Spanish Resettlement: Placing
Colonial and European History in Dialogue". Ler Historia (72): 9-30.
doi:10.4000/lerhistoria.3146. ISSN 0870-6182.
Weber, David J. "John Francis Bannon and the Historiography of the Spanish
Borderlands: Retrospect and Prospect." Journal of the Southwest (1987): 331–363.
See John Francis Bannon
Weber, David J. “The Spanish Borderlands, Historiography Redux.” The History
Teacher, vol. 39, no. 1, 2005, pp. 43–56. JSTOR, online.
External links
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Spanish colonization of the Americas
Spanish Exploration and Conquest of North America
Spain in America (Edward Gaylord Bourne, 1904) 'Spain in America'
The Spanish Borderlands (Herbert E. Bolton, 1921) 'The Spanish Borderlands'
Indigenous Puerto Rico DNA evidence upsets established history
The short film Spanish Empire in the New World (1992) is available for free
download at the Internet Archive
“The Political Force of Images,” Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520–
1820.