Download 02. Background and Spanish Colonization

Background and Spanish Colonization
What could possibly motivate people living in comfortable ignorance in Europe to
leave sight of shore? Well, the answers seem “American” from the outset: war, people,
and ideas. The Crusades of the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries were largely unsuccessful
wars designed by Europeans to rescue the Holy Land from the infidels (Muslims). While
the Crusaders failed in their quest, they encountered products Europe had long since
forgotten. The cultural exchange under such animosity led to frightful violence yet
yielded trade with the East. America’s history can be said, therefore, to turn at the
beginning on rotten meat. Spices from the East were highly sought after for the purpose
of preserving and enhancing the flavor of meat in an era when a slaughtered carcass
could spoil in a matter of hours if not consumed.
Individuals stimulated this exchange, so from the beginning America has
contributed to and benefited from making individuals shine. Marco Polo (1254-1324)
left Italy and went overland to Asia where he traveled and lived for 20 years. When he
amazingly reappeared in Europe in 1295, his Book of Various Experiences sold
remarkably well despite its bland title.
The trade inspired by Polo’s journeys ignited the flowering of humanistic
individualism known in European history as the Renaissance. New navigational
instruments were among the bounty created by this revival of curiosity and learning
centered in northern Italy. Thus, another Italian explorer sought a water route for Spain
to compete with Portugal’s around the Cape of Good Hope of Africa that dominated trade
with India and other parts of Asia. Christopher Columbus convinced Ferdinand and
Isabella of Spain to back his seemingly wild idea of sailing West to reach the East.
Having left sight of land and neared the use of half of his supplies, his mutinous
crew demanded that he turn back before the point of no return. He begged them for, “tres
dias mas.” He kept asking for three more days of progress across the Atlantic until at
last, the cry of “Tierra” sounded from the crow’s nest and his ships arrived off the coast
of Cuba. He dubbed the land the West Indies and its inhabitants, Indians. From 14921504, Columbus made several voyages along his new route never quite realizing the full
implications of his discovery. Spain was inadvertently favored by the Pope who drew an
errant line to divide the new lands encountered. The Treaty of Tordesillas of 1493 tried
to keep the peace between two Christian kingdoms, but actually short-changed Portugal
giving it only what would become Brazil. Amerigo Vespucci, an explorer and mapmaker working for the Medici of Florence, is said to be the first European to grasp that
the land Columbus opened to Europe constituted an entirely New World, hence the name,
America.
On the heels of this excitement, the Protestant Reformation broke out across
Europe beginning when Martin Luther, a German college professor, nailed 95 theses, or
points of debate, to the door of his church in Wittenberg. The Renaissance appetite for
learning coupled with the printing press nearly instantly made Luther a lightning rod for
change in the Christian Church, the central unifying institution of European society that
had fallen prey to greed and lusts of men. Europeans realized that they could extricate
themselves from the grip of corrupt men who squandered their soul-shepherding
responsibilities on trifles like cathedrals and illicit sexual relations.
The combination of new ideas and new discoveries created an irresistible flood of
change. Europeans discovered en masse that they were a people discontent, restless,
competitive, greedy, yet inspired. They chafed under spiritual oppression. Since both the
Renaissance and the Reformation spread across Europe, the first perplexing question of
American history is why is this monograph being written, read, and discussed in English
rather than in Spanish when the Spanish successfully explored and colonized the New
World almost 100 years before the English got around to starting?
Our task at first is to compare and contrast Spanish and English colonization.
Spain’s attempts, as you will see, were more orderly, swifter, and immediately lucrative.
Conquistadores got the job done! English colonies, beginning with the first permanent
settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, were from the start rowdy places to be, politically and
otherwise. Yet the dynamic nature of these English societies soon dominated the
Western Hemisphere and then the entire planet. The only other major colonial
competitor was France, of which we will see more, later.
Now, to the details of Spain’s amazing early success. Three waves of exploration
began just within seven years of Columbus’s death in 1506. The first Spanish explorer of
note behind the great pioneer was Vasco Nunez de Balboa. Balboa explored the Isthmus
of Panama in 1513 and thereby is the discoverer of something big, the Pacific Ocean.
Soon, Spanish colonies sprang up on all the coast of Central America.
The second wave of exploration involved deep punches inland on the part of
conquistadores who earned the title of conquerors. Treasure seekers like Hernando
Cortez, who destroyed the Aztec Empire of Mexico by 1521, and Francisco Pizarro, who
did the same to the Incan Empire of Peru by 1535, amassed huge fortunes which quickly
made Spain the wealthiest country in Europe. Cabeza de Vaca reached modern
California by 1536, and Hernando de Soto reached your back yard by 1541 as he
explored Florida and all the Southeast including Tennessee. He was the first European of
note to see what Abraham Lincoln called, “the Father of Waters,” the Mississippi River.
Francisco Coronado plunged in what is today the western United States all the way to
Kansas, where he immediately turned around and returned from whence he came.
Pathetic stories emanate from the clash between Spanish explorers and indigenous
peoples. Indians believed the armored Spanish soldiers and horses were one creature
since the Spanish came off their ships mounted ready for battle. These creatures were
assumed to be gods, especially when they periodically severed one of their heads from
their bodies and then reunited (dismounting and mounting the horses). Cannon, of
course, terrified Indians who reported in oral histories and written accounts that the loud
noise and bright flash of the intruders’ magic was able to make the trunks of trees
disappear. Francisco Pizarro tricked the Incan leader to ransom himself for a room full of
gold and silver. We know which room and its dimensions, so the treasure load is
estimated at twenty tons. Even at $100 per ounce average value that amounts to $64
million. Pizarro then killed the leader anyway.
By 1550, virtually all of California to Central and South America was under the
thrall of Spain, a territory 8,000 miles long and constituting the largest empire in world
history since that of Rome. One milestone of note, the first city that would be a United
States city was founded by the Spanish in Florida in 1565—St. Augustine. Portugal,
England, and all of Europe for that matter could only watch as fleets of treasure ships
returned laden with precious metals home to Spain. Well, some of the metal would be
unable to be seen because shrewd soldiers of fortune made their supply into long chains which
they wrapped around their naked bodies before putting their clothing and armor on. That method
of transportation proved detrimental to their health when their ships sank in the many ferocious
storms of the 16th century.
That kind of greed for gold was accompanied by greed for land and for glory in
converting Indians to Roman Catholicism. Every conquistador brought along monks eager to
spread their version of Christianity that was under attack in Europe. To facilitate administration
of the secular empire, bureaucratic government was instituted by both the crown and the church.
Both focused on a single representative in the New World who spoke for either the Pope or for
the king.
The amazing record-keeping and administrative capacity of Spain began as early as 1503
to form the bureaucracy to control trade. By 1524 there evolved an agency of the crown called
the Council of the Indies. This group of advisers acting in the king’s name controlled all civil and
religious affairs. To further control the empire, two viceroyalties were established by 1542. A
viceroy was a hand-picked representative of the king appointed to rule either New Spain or Peru,
the two main provinces of the empire divided at the isthmus.
For three hundred years this system remained efficient despite corruption and internal
opposition. Our own government has a long way to go to claim the capacity for stability that
long. When the empire collapsed in the early 19th century, the people left had been controlled by
Spain for so long they proved incapable of building or sustaining a political movement or society
at all comparable to that of their subservience. For example, have you ever wondered why
Mexico is one of the poorest countries of our hemisphere yet is an exporter of petroleum?
Why didn’t a class of people rise up to throw off the Spanish yoke for three hundred
years? A quick analysis of Spanish colonial society provides clues. The system of land
distribution gave encomiendas to pure-blooded Spanish settlers. An encomienda included the
land but also the labor of the Indians living on the land whom the settler was supposed to
Christianize. This arrangement sounds like independent living, but was actually a salaried
position of the crown. If you stepped out of line, your salary would be cut or ended. Ferdinand
and Isabella, especially, were monarchs who kept a tight rein using the Inquisition of the Catholic
Church to consolidate their power. Spain did not let religious dissenters go like England would.
They tortured them.
Four groups of people made up Spanish colonial society. First, Indians could not rise up.
They were virtually slaves worked to death or killed by war or fell prey to the biggest killers,
European diseases like small pox. Estimates of the death toll show a population decrease from 25
million when Columbus arrived to only 1 million by the end of the 16th century, a forgotten
holocaust. In contrast, the very top of society was subservient, too. The viceroys weren’t about
to jeopardize their positions by seeking independence. They were also salaried employees moved
around periodically to avoid attachments, and they served only for a time, hoping to return to
Spain rich.
Creoles probably had the best chance of striking out on their own to create a dynamic
society. This third group was made up of American-born pure-blooded Spaniards, but they made
up only 1.9% of the population of the empire. To contrast with English colonial society, creoles
only numbered 240,000 after 100 years. In the same amount of time, England produced 400,000
American Englishmen.
Blacks and mestizos made up the last group. African slaves were imported to America
first by the Spanish to replace the dying Indians as laborers. Mestizos were half-breeds, usually
the offspring of a Spanish man and an Indian woman. They made up 30% of the population at the
end of Spanish control and give us the word, Mexico, but they and the blacks at the bottom of
society remained subservient in a racially-derived social structure. The culture produced by the
interactions of these groups seemed poised chronologically and geographically to dominate world
history, but that was not their destiny. That distinction belongs to the outcasts of England.