READ: European Colonies in the Americas

European control in the Americas was first dominated mostly by the Spanish, and some Portuguese. But other European countries would challenge the Iberian monopoly.

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By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

According to the article, what two European powers were most important in the early colonization of the Americas in the late 1400s and 1500s? What was their relationship as they expanded into the Americas?
What industries first developed in the Spanish colonies of New Spain and Peru?
What methods did the King of Spain use to control the huge territory included in New Spain?
What were the two so-called “republics” in the Spanish colonies? Who was included within each of these groups?
According to the final section of the article, what empires followed Spain and Portugal in the Americas, and in what ways did they differ?

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At the end of the third read, you should be able to respond to these questions:

To what extent does this article explain how political, economic, and cultural factors affected society from 1450 to 1750?
What evidence does this article contribute to your understanding of how societies in Europe, the Americas, and Africa changed in this period?

Now that you know what to look for, it’s time to read! Remember to return to these questions once you’ve finished reading.

European Colonies in the Americas

By William H. Beezley

European control in the Americas was first dominated mostly by the Spanish, and some Portuguese. But other European countries would challenge the Iberian monopoly.

Dividing up the Americas

In 1493, Pope Alexander VI received reports of Spanish and Portuguese voyages, including those led by Cristobal Colombus—a.k.a Christopher Columbus—and Pedro Álvares Cabral. What he learned prompted him to issue a Papal Bull, meaning an official decree, to announce Europe’s acquisition of the Americas. He divided the Atlantic between Spain and Portugal at 100 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands, and commanded explorers from both countries to convert any pagans they encountered to Christianity. Portuguese King John II rejected the decision, in part because the Pope was Spanish by birth. So Spanish and Portuguese representatives re-negotiated and the new treaty was called the Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494. It re-drew the division at 270 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands. This would have implications for colonial and commercial competition through the period to 1750.

The treaty’s imaginary line gave Spain all the Americas, except where it crossed the eastern hump of South America, giving the Portuguese a claim to northeastern Brazil. Each kingdom was excluded from the other’s territories. The Portuguese got control of West Africa, where the slave trade quickly developed. They also now had the shortest route around the Cape of Good Hope to East Africa, and onward to the riches of Asia. The Spanish, sailing from the west coast of Mexico, arrived in the Philippines and claimed the islands as a gateway to Asia. But the Tordesillas Treaty required them to ship spices, silks, and other goods—and people—from Manila across the pacific to Mexico, then overland to Veracruz, and across the ocean to Spain.

Colonies in the Americas

The Spanish dominated the Americas at first with the creation of the colonies of New Spain and Peru. These new European settlements included indigenous, African, and Asian populations. The societies that emerged from these settlements were based on the richest silver mines in the world, sugar production, and the making of natural red and blue dyes. These communities in everyday life celebrated Catholic practices, ethnic hierarchy, and Spanish culture. The Portuguese at first only settled trading posts in Brazil, but soon built up sugar plantations and mining communities. Other European nations, especially the English, Dutch, and French challenged the Iberian monopoly first with pirates, then naval assaults, and imperial battles. At the end of era, the Russians appeared in the far north of the Americas settling fur trade outposts.

The Spanish Hapsburg kings created the Imperial system of colonies initially as “kingdoms” in the sense that the crown (the kings and their government) already ruled other kingdoms in Europe. (Yes, that meant one monarch ruling several kingdoms on two continents!) Of the non-European possessions, the most important was New Spain, the largest colony in the world, established in 1535. How large, you ask? This possession included no less than the modern-day regions of:

Mexico
Central America
Venezuelan coast
Spanish Caribbean
Northern territories now part of the United States
Southern border of Alaska
Philippines

Of course, the king in Spain couldn’t really run this kingdom in the Americas on a day-to-day basis. So, it was administered by a viceroy (a vice king) making it a “viceroyalty.” The viceroy had councils of judges, called audiencias, in each regional division. The most common government was the town council, established in all settlements, and eventually even included indigenous communities. The Viceroyalty of Peru – encompassing all Spanish possessions in South America during this time—was established in 1542.

Governing the Spanish colonies

Just to make things a bit more confusing, colonial societies like the Viceroyalty of New Spain were divided into two so-called republics. But this word has a very different meaning here than the kinds of governments we call republics today. It really meant two levels of society with different rules. The first was the republic of Spaniards, called españoles. It included all Spaniards and individuals associated with them including enslaved Africans, children of Spanish-Indian couples, Asians, and any other non-Indians. The other was the republic of Indians, called indios. This group included all indigenous people not living in major Spanish towns. The Spaniards, like a lot of imperialists, misjudged the indigenous to be childlike and easily influenced by other Spaniards who took advantage of them. As a result, no Spaniards or other non-Indians could spend the night in an indigenous community, with the exception of Spanish Friars (the members of some Catholic religious orders). The Friars were supposed to both protect the indigenous people and convert them to Catholicism. Though perhaps well-intended, this plan for social division—which was still based on the idea that the indigenous were inferior to Spaniards—broke down almost immediately.

The Spanish king’s advisors wanted the Spanish viceroyalties to replicate the best aspects the Spanish kingdoms. Their many projects formulated the structure of towns, the permanence of Spanish families, and the maintenance of social hierarchy. A 1573 law outlined the founding of new towns, and it decreed that married Spaniards must either bring their wives to the colonies or return to Spain.

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Sumptuary laws (dress codes) limited clothing, weapons, and transportation by different social classes. These laws helped make Mexico City, and Lima to a lesser extent, as spectacular as any cities in Europe, and more so than others in the Americas.

Spaniards built their first colonial city at Havana, but with the rapid conquest of the Aztec Empire’s capital (1521) Mexico City became the largest and most important city in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and the administrative center shifted there. Similarly, the conquest of the Inca Empire (1532) resulted in the Viceroyalty of Peru, with a capital at Lima. Both cities followed urban planning guidelines that became part of the new laws governing towns. This required a central plaza with locations for political, military, religious, and commercial authorities (like the Zócalo in today’s Mexico City and the Plaza de Armas in modern-day Lima). The rest of the city had to follow a grid pattern of streets. Specifications outlined geographic orientation and location near water, timber, and other resources.

Social life in the two Spanish viceroyalties centered around the political and religious practices brought from Spain. Public fiestas celebrated the monarch and his life passages such as coronation, birthdays, military victories, marriage, children, and death. They also celebrated the religious calendar, including Nativity, Three Kings Day, Holy Week, and, above all, Corpus Christi. In New Spain, Day of the Dead was celebrated. All holy days of obligation and commercial holidays such as trade fairs were also observed. Each town, parish, social order, and guild had a patron saint and celebrated that saint day. All these celebrations featured processions and fireworks, often with food, drink, and music. By the middle of the sixteenth century, Mexico City had a printing press, university, and regular performance of plays and operas.

These viceroyalties, including the capital cities, really only had a small Spanish population. The label “Spanish” included Spaniards—individuals born in Spain who had Christian parents. But it also included criollos or colonials—individuals born in the Americas. Even together, these two populations were greatly outnumbered by three other groups:

The mestizos, with mixed ethnic parents, usually Spanish fathers and indigenous mothers
The Africans, some enslaved and some free
The indigenous peoples

Nevertheless, it was that small population identifying as Spaniards who dominated government, economy, and society.

Governing elsewhere in the Americas

Outside of Spanish America, the colonies of other European empires were growing. These both shared some similarities with the Spanish model, and were also each quite unique.

The Portuguese initially established trading posts, called feitorias, to exchange goods with the local indigenous peoples. Merchandise included brazil wood used as a red commercial dye, precious stones, and exotic handcrafts. Threats from Spain and France pushed the Portuguese crown to attempt more permanent settlement. They created and gave out 15 captaincies to prominent noblemen to settle, govern, and exploit. Only two of those intended settlements prospered, and that was thanks to the introduction of sugar plantations. So, in 1548, Portugal’s king created a general colonial administration and sent Tomé de Sousa as the first governor at the capital of Salvador. Sugar, slavery, and mining dominated the economy and shaped the society.

Of course, it wasn’t all Spanish and Portuguese settlements. The English settled colonies that focused on growing different cash crops like tobacco, producing commercial goods like rum, and practicing many different religions including such Protestant faiths as the Puritans and the Quakers. These colonies were mostly on the eastern coast of North America and were run without any general administration. The English also controlled sugar plantations and commercial colonies in the Caribbean, but they weren’t the only ones in this region. In what is now Haiti and French Guinea, the French were also constructing sugar-producing colonies. The Dutch settled in various Caribbean islands, after losing a colony in Brazil and selling another that became New York, which had belonged to the Dutch West India Company. The labor in these colonies was generally carried out by enslaved Africans. Then there were the Russians, who created trading posts in the far Pacific Northwest. All these colonial efforts prompted intense international rivalries that resulted in global wars for imperial domination after 1750.

The world beyond Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia experienced dramatic political and economic changes beginning about 1750. New colonial policies resulted from the Bourbon royal family’s domination of Spain, and the French and English rivalry intensified. And of course, radically new economic and political thinking were being expressed in policies that drew on the ideas of the Enlightenment.

Author bio

William H. Beezley teaches Latin American history at the University of Arizona. The Mexican government awarded him the Ohtli medal for his contributions to the nation’s culture. His books on Latin America have been translated into Spanish and Mandarin, and he has appeared a cultural expert on “The Desert Speaks” and “In the Americas with David Yetman.” He just completed a documentary on Mexican women who used embroidery to express their domestic, civil, and human rights.

Sources

Baskes, Jeremy. “The Colonial Economy of New Spain.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin America, 2018. Accessed 19 November 2020. https://oxfordre.com/latinamericanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.001.0001/acrefore-9780199366439-e-493?rskey=snm4y0&result=5

Burkholder, Mark A. and Lyman L. Johnson. Colonial Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Curcio-Nagy, Linda A. The Great Festivals of Colonial Mexico City. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004.

Fragoso, João and Thiago Krause. “Colonial Elites: Planters and Land Nobility in 17th- and 18th-Century Brazil.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin America, 2019. Accessed 19 November 2020. https://oxfordre.com/latinamericanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.001.0001/acrefore-9780199366439-e-324?rskey=snm4y0&result=2

"King Phillip II dictates the layout of new towns, 1573.” Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520 – 1820. Accessed 19 November 2020. https://vistas.ace.fordham.edu/lib/16th/layout/history-visual-culture/

Image credits

The Cantino Planisphere, a Portuguese map from 1502. On the left side of the map, a vertical line shows the border of the Treaty of Tordesillas. The Portuguese got more from the treaty than they would have with the Pope’s proposal, but either way Spain got a lot more of the Americas than did Portugal. © Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images.

Location of the Viceroyalty of Peru: Location of the Viceroyalty of Peru in 1750. By WHP, CC BY-NC 4.0. Explore full map here: https://www.oerproject.com/OER-Materials/OER-Media/Images/WHP-Maps/1750-layer-2

Painting of a Spanish man, African woman, and child of mixed heritage in the Spanish Americas, eighteenth century. © DeAgostini/Getty Images.

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