1. AP Chapter 19 Early Latin America

2. Spaniards and Portuguese: From Reconquista to Conquest Like many Med. Peoples, the Spanish and Portuguese were heavily urban, with many peasants living in small towns and villages The desire to live in an urban setting helped set up a pattern of Spanish cities amid a largely American Indian countryside Many commoners who came to American as conquerors sought to recreate themselves as a new nobility, with native peoples as their serfs

3. Continued The patriarchal family was readily adapted to Latin America, was where large estates and grants of American Indian laborers, or encomiendas, provided the framework for relations based on economic dominance

4. Encomienda System

5. Professional Bureaucracy The political centralization of both Portugal and Castile depended on a professional bureaucracy, usually made up of men trained as lawyers and judges The system is comparable to China Close links between Church and State resulted from the Reconquista of the peninsula from the Muslims, and these links, including royal nominations of Church officials, were also extended to the New World

6. Continued Portugal lead in the slave trade with Africa and a highly commercial agricultural system based on sugar Brazil would extend the pattern of plantations and slave trade, starting out as a trade factory but then shifting, as in the Atlantic islands, to plantation agriculture

7. Working Sugarcane

8. The Chronology of Conquest The Spanish and Portuguese conquest and colonization of the Americas falls into three periods: 1. Era of Conquest, 1492-1570 This developed the main lines of administration and economy were set out

9. Period 2: Consolidation and Maturity from 1570-1700 Colonial institutions and societies took their definite form

10. Period 3: A Period of Reform This was a period of reform and reorganization in both Spanish America and Portuguese Brazil that intensified the colonial relationship and planted the seeds of dissatisfaction and revolt in the 18 th Century

11. The Caribbean Crucible The Caribbean experience served Spain as a model for its actions elsewhere in the Americas Columbus established a colony on the island of Santo Domingo or Hispaniola New expeditions, explorations and conquest were carried out from them

12. Hispaniola

13. Continued The Spanish controlled Puerto Rico (1508), and Cuba in 1511 with a settlement established in Panama by 1513 and on the northern coast of South America

14. Encomienda The encomienda, or grant of indigenous people of serfdom began with the submission of the Taino The holder of an encomienda, an encomiendero, was able to use the people as workers or to tax them On the whole the Caribbean became a colonial backwater for the next two Centuries, until sugar and slaves became the basis of its resurgence

15. City Plans Unlike cities in Europe, Spanish American cities usually were laid out according to a grid plan or checkerboard form with the town hall, major church, and the governor’s palace in the central plaza To rule, Spain created administrative institution: the treasury office, and the royal court of appeals staffed by professional magistrates

16. Continued Spanish legalism was part of the institutional transfer The Church, represented at first by individual priests and then by missionaries such as the Dominicans, participated in the enterprise

17. Rumors and Hopes Rumors and hopes stimulated immigration from Spain By 1510 large numbers of women were immigrants Spanish and Italian merchants began to import African slaves to work on the few sugar plantations that operated on the islands

18. Disease and Conquest Disease and conquest virtually annihilated the native peoples of the Caribbean To meet the labor needs of the islands, African slaves were imported A Dominican friar, Bartolome de Las Casa, wrote of the need to save Native Americans by importing African slaves

19. Bartolome de Las Casas

20. The Paths of Conquest In less than a Century, a large portion of two continents and islands in an inland sea, inhabited by millions of people, was brought under Spanish control The conquest was not a unified movement but rather a series of individual initiatives that usually operated with government approval

21. The Conquerors The crown received one-fifth of all treasure Men signed up on a share basis for conquest Premiums were paid for special service and valor Few of the conquerors were professional soldiers Ines Suarez (a woman) helped to conquer Chile

22. Ines Suarez

23. Spanish Success The reason for Spanish success were varied Horses, firearms, and more generally steel weapons gave them a great advantage over the stone technology of the native peoples Epidemic disease also proved to be a silent ally of the Europeans Internal divisions and rivalries within American Indian Empires, and their high levels of concentration, made the great civilizations particularly vulnerable

24. Conquest and Mortality Driven by greed, many of the conquistadors argued that conquest was necessary to spread the gospel and that control of Indian labor was essential for Spain’s rule The Spaniards had come to free the Indians from their unjust lords and to bring the light of salvation Bartololme de Las Casas, argued Indians had souls and must be saved in a more peaceful manner

25. Destruction and Transformation Indians suffer a decline in population Island population had nearly disappeared by 1540 Mexico declined from 25 million in 1519 to less than 2 million in 1580 Peru declined from 10 million in 1530 to 1.5 million in 1590

26. Continued Smallpox, influenza and measles wreaked havoc on the American Indian population, which had developed no immunities against these diseases Demographic collapse made maintaining traditional social and economic structure very difficult

27. Smallpox

28. Exploitation of the Indians In Mexico and Peru, while old Indian religion and its priestly class were eliminated, the traditional Indian nobility remained in place, supported by Spanish authority, as middlemen between the tax and labor demands of the new rulers and the majority of the population At first, encomiendas were given to the individual conquerors of a region

29. Continued The holders of these grants were able to use their Indians as workers and servants or to tax them In general, the encomiendas were destructive to Indian society By the 1620s however encomiendas were gone due to a royal decree from the 1540s

30. Labor and Taxes The Colonial government increasingly extracted labor and taxes from native peoples Spaniards adopted the mita system of forced labor Native Americans left villages and began working for Spanish landowners to avoid the mita system

31. Mita System

32. Colonial Economics and Governments Agriculture and mining were the basis of the Spanish Colonial economy Spanish farms and ranches competed with Native American villages, but they also depended on Native Americans as laborers Mining was the essential activity and the basis of Spain’s rule in the West Indies It was precious metals that first began to fit Latin America into the developing World economy

33. Continued It was silver far more than gold that formed the basis of Spain’s wealth in America

34. The Silver Heart of the Empire The major silver discoveries were made in Mexico and Peru between 1545 and 1565 Potosi in upper Peru (in what is now Bolivia) was the largest mine of all, producing about 80% of all the Peruvian silver Mining labor was provided by a variety of workers

35. Continued The early use of American Indian slaves and encomienda workers in the 16 th Century gradually was replaced by a system of drafts By 1572 the mining mita in Peru was providing about 13,000 workers a year at Potosi alone By the 17 th Century the mines of Potosi and Zacatecas had large numbers of wage workers willing to brave the dangers of mining in return for the good wages

36. Mining PotosiZacatecas

37. Continued Although indigenous methods were used at first, most mining techniques were European in origin According to Spanish law, all subsoil rights belonged to the crown

38. Haciendas and Villages Spanish America remained predominately an agrarian economy, and whatever large sedentary populations lived, Indian communal agriculture or traditional crops continued As populations dwindled, Spanish ranches and farms began to emerge Rural estates, or haciendas, producing primarily for consumers in America, became the basis of wealth and power for the local aristocracy in many regions

39. Hacienda

40. Industry and Commerce America became self-sufficient for its basic foods and material goods and looked to Europe only for luxury items not locally available Spain allowed only Spaniards to trade with America and imposed tight restrictions To discourage foreign rivals and pirates, the Spanish eventually worked out a convoy system in which two fleets sailed annually from Spain, traded their goods for precious metals, and then met at Havana, Cuba, before returning to Spain

41. Spanish Convoy System

42. Continued The fleet system was made possible by the large, heavily armed ships called galleons, that were used to carry the silver belonging to the crown In general, the supply of American silver to Spain was continuous and made the Colonies seem worth the effort Much of the wealth flowed out of Spain to pay for Spain’s debts, and the purchase of manufactured goods to be sent back to the West Indies

43. Spanish Galleon

44. Continued Probably less than half of the silver remained in Spain itself The arrival of American treasure also contributed to a sharp rise in prices and a general inflation, first in Spain and then throughout Western Europe during the 16 th Century

45. Ruling an Empire: State and Church Spain controlled its American Empire through a carefully regulated bureaucratic system The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) between Castile and Portugal clarified the spheres of influence and right of possession of the two kingdoms by drawing a hypothetical north-south line around the globe and reserving to Portugal the newly discovered lands (and their routes to India) to the east of the line and to Castile all lands to the west

46. Treaty of Tordesillas