The Rule of Spain in the New World

By the latter half of the 17th century, the rule of Spain in the New World was reaching 200 years. Times were changing, both in the New World and in Europe, and the leaders of Spain knew it. Their problem was what to do about it. Spain had never had a coherent policy in its imperial rule. Since 1492, Spain was seemingly constantly at war, with an endless series of crises thrown into the mix. Solutions had to be found for the here and now, the future would take care of itself.

In this major series of articles Erick Reddington starts his look at the independence of Spanish America by considering how Spain ruled its vast American territories.

King Felipe V of Spain in the 1720s.

Spain was both blessed and cursed by its enormous New World Empire. Stretching (theoretically) from nearly the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego, this was a land mass over 6,000 miles long. Contained within were millions of people, natives, slaves, and colonists. Wealth unimagined in 1491 was under the control of the Spanish. Every year, the West Indies Fleet, also called the Treasure Fleet, would cross the Atlantic and bring gold, silver, and raw materials to Spain. So much gold had crossed the Atlantic that it had caused runaway inflation several times. The Potosi mine in modern day Bolivia produced more silver than any other mine in history. Sugar and tobacco were grown throughout the Spanish Caribbean Basin. These consumer products were then exported for fabulous profits. Wool was grown and shipped to Catalonia for finishing in textile mills there.

These blessings show the problem with the Spanish view of their empire. Despite the incredible wealth and large population base, the empire was seen by Spanish authorities in Madrid as a cow to be milked, not as a flower to cultivate and help blossom. The empire existed to provide the government with mineral wealth and raw materials to fuel strength and power projection for Spain’s many foreign wars and domestic crises. There was little thought given to investing the vast amounts of New World wealth into improving Spanish infrastructure or national wealth. There was even less thought given to improving the empire except where it would lead to immediate increases in wealth extracted. All trade had to flow to Spain. Trade with any other country by the empire directly was forbidden. So many slaves needed to be imported because it was deemed cheaper to work them to death and buy new ones rather than care for them as human beings. Disease was so rampant amongst everyone in the empire that life seemed cheap and transitory; therefore, it was important to get what one could now, and tomorrow could take care of itself.

From Hapsburg to Bourbon

In 1700, the last Hapsburg king of Spain, Charles II, died. He willed his crown to the French Prince Phillippe of Anjou, who became King Filipe V. When Filipe went to Spain, he brought with him several advisors whom, he hoped, would help him make the Spanish Empire more efficient. What they found was appalling. The Spanish government was run by a series of nearly ad hoc committees, rather than government ministries, which was common throughout Western Europe. Tax collection was inefficient and corrupt. Overall corruption was so rampant that it was an expected supplement to meager and irregular salaries. Piracy was rampant. The colonial military was corrupt, untrained, poorly supplied, and totally incapable of all but the most basic of military needs. The French who had followed Filipe V to Spain knew the imperial structure was bad, but they had no idea how bad it really was. Things had to change. Spain’s empire was a giant with feet of clay.

Filipe V was prevented from making many major changes due to the War of Spanish Succession and the need to secure his right to the throne. Once the war was done, he and his successors would embark on a series of reforms lasting several decades with the intent of strengthening the empire before it was too late. Later called the Bourbon reforms, this was a drive to improve infrastructure, agriculture, commerce, and shipping in Spain itself and in the empire. The inefficiencies of the past were to be left behind, and the French mercantilist economic principles of Jean-Baptiste Colbert would strengthen Spain and bring back her glory.

Mercantilism Now!

Mercantilism as an economic theory was all the rage in the 18th century. The idea that national wealth could best be preserved through having a positive balance of foreign trade seemed obvious at the time. Imports were to be discouraged through high tariffs and domestic manufacturing. Exports were encouraged by the state to increase the flow of foreign wealth into the country. Domestic industry was to be encouraged through state subsidies and direct intervention in the economy by the state. Thus, the whole nation would be wealthy. This is an oversimplification, but for our purposes, this is the gist of what these economists wanted.

The wealth of the nation, or economic prosperity in modern parlance, was not the goal of mercantilism, at least for the Bourbon Reformers. National wealth was only a means to an end. Strengthening the state and providing the economic basis for the projection of power, both politically and economically, was the end goal. The reformers of the Bourbon dynasty saw that the Spanish Empire had all the elements needed for massive economic prosperity and national strength. There was little coherence in policy and strategy. Their brand of economic philosophy would change that in their view. It was the rational thing to do.

Rationalizing Government

The rational thing to do. Rationalism was all the rage in France in the 18th century. From society and the structure of the state to individuals and human relationships, everything in life could be reordered based upon the principles of rational thought. This movement was part of the enlightenment. Although many of the enlightenment tenets regarding freedom and secularism did not reach Spain along with the Reformers, many of the ideas of rationalism were imported from France. This is partially why the Reformers were so appalled at the inefficiencies of the Spanish imperial structure. The belief that people respond to logical, rational principles meant that the vast wealth of Spanish America could be harnessed if the right ideas were implemented. The first step was a rationalization of the law.

Law in the Spanish Empire was a dizzying layer upon layer of laws passed by the Cortés, royal decrees, decrees of the Council of the Indies, and local decisions made by administrators over the centuries. Jean de Orry, an advisor brought by Filipe V from France, focused on streamlining the tax collection system to reduce corruption and increase revenues flowing into the treasury. The position of Intendant was created on the French model. Intendants were appointed for every province to have a direct representative of royal power. Cardinal Alberoni, Orry’s successor neutered the Council of the Indies to eliminate a rival power source and reduce that body’s corruption. Within Spain itself, the ancient internal divisions amongst Castile, Aragon, and other sub-regions were eliminated, thereby spreading a financial burden which previously had only fallen on Castile.

One area of primary importance was rationalizing trade. As good mercantilists, increasing the amount of legal trade was of the utmost importance. This meant, of course, eliminating illegal trade. Since regulating hundreds or thousands of small firms was difficult, granting large-scale, sweeping monopolies not only would help streamline regulation, but it would also give the powerful monopoly holders an enormous incentive help the government stamp out illegal trade and endemic piracy. These monopolies would, in time, grow into large corrupt organizations themselves, which would fuel a large amount of colonial dissatisfaction, but this would be in the future.

Military reform was also on the Reformer’s agenda. This would be one of their biggest failures. The military establishments in the colonies were embarrassments. Even in Europe, military service attracted only the most desperate. Few were willing to accept poor pay, brutal discipline, and the prospect of death unless there was no other choice. In the empire, where the lowest classes were tied to the land through slavery or the hacienda system, and other classes had economic opportunities, the talent pool to recruit from was shallow at best. Spanish-born officers sent to the Americas, called Peninsulares, were hostile and dismissive to those born in the New World. The Criollos, those of Spanish descent in the Americas resented the hostility of their social betters. Since Peninsulares made up the highest ranks of the military while Criollos were the junior officers, this was a mix for disaster. This racial tension led to another problem.

Racial Caste System

In Spanish America, race was a much different concept than it is in the 21st century. Within the empire, there was a mix of peoples. Native Americans were the original inhabitants. Thousands of tribes spread over thousands of miles each with their own language and culture. Their numbers were reduced dramatically by the introduction of European diseases after first contact. Population was further reduced by the heavy-handed attempts at enslavement. Throughout the empire, there were constant battles with the natives, with small scale raids common. Tribes from the outskirts of New Spain such as the Pueblo to the Araucanians in the southern Andes provided a source of trade and converts as well as allies against other tribes. Relations with the tribes was complex and difficult at the best of times.

With the failure of attempts to mass enslave the Native Americans, another labor source needed to be found. Sugar, the primary agricultural source of wealth, and mining are very labor intensive. There were not enough colonists to do the work, so the Spanish as well as the other colonial nations, began importing Africans to work the plantations and the mines. Slaves were captured along the coast of Africa from what were called factories or purchased from African tribes willing to work with the colonial powers. After being processed, they were packed aboard ship and sent to the New World in appalling conditions along what was later termed the Middle Passage. Since the cost of slaves was so low, it was in many cases cheaper to import more slaves than provide care to those already purchased. This exploitation of an entire people would have consequences up to the present day. Fears of slave rebellion would influence Spanish law and military policy. The monopoly on the slave trade, the asiento, was a major source of resentment by those who lived in Spanish America and was also a diplomatic chip the Spanish used in influencing foreign policy decisions. No one asked the slaves what their opinion was of the asiento.

Spanish attitudes toward racial mixing were not strict. Since most of the colonists who came to the New World were male, there was a shortage marriage partners for these men. Since nature will always find a way, very quickly a new racial group arose, called mestizos. Mestizos were multi-racial people descended from a mix of Spanish, Native American, and/or African parentage. Existing in a place above Natives and slaves, the Mestizos occupied a strange place in colonial society. They were free people in the legal sense of the term, but they faced a great deal of racial discrimination due to their mixed parentage.

Above the Mestizos were the Criollos. These were people who saw themselves as “pure” Spanish but were born in the Americas. Over time, these people came to accept many of the tenets of the enlightenment and believed that they should have the same rights and privileges as Spanish-born Peninsulares. Although legal restrictions on Criollos were few, the growing resentments of this class caused these few restrictions to be blown up into some of the major issues that would lead to the later revolutions.

At the top of the heap were the Peninsulares. They were Spanish-born and therefore saw themselves as the natural leaders of Spanish America. Usually they were wealthy landowners, military officers, or government officials. Many had no intention of making the New World their permanent home. They were in the Americas to make their mark or build their fortune, then retire back in Spain. The haughty attitudes and entitled place in society caused resentment among all the other classes.

Effects of the Reforms

The Bourbon Reforms were a mixed bag. The mainstream view that the reforms were a direct cause of the later revolutions. The reforms while good intentioned, had the effect of preventing the development of the colonies economically and politically for the benefit of Spain proper. The resentment the reforms engendered, together with the racial resentments against the Peninsulares, led to revolution. This ignores the other social and political events happening in Spanish America and the world as a whole.

By the end of the 18th century, the French Revolution had taken the principles of the Enlightenment and attempted to put them into action. Rhetoric about the freedom of peoples and the rights of man exploded out of France and arrived on the shores of the Spanish Empire. The American Revolution provided inspiration to many in the New World. It also stoked fears in the Spanish colonial authorities that the events of Saratoga and Yorktown could be repeated.

New ideas, wars, revolutions, and economic changes would all combine to make the Spanish colonial situation a volcano ready to explode. To understand fully why, it is important to look at the individual colonies. Next time, as a prelude to the Wars of Independence, we will take a tour of Spanish America and the four Viceroyalties that governed the empire. Each one had their own unique conditions, peoples, cultures, and reasons for discontent.

What do you think of Spanish America? Let us know below.

Now, read about Francisco Solano Lopez, the Paraguayan president who brought his country to military catastrophe in the War of the Triple Alliance here.

Changing our View of History? The Columbian Exchange and the Ecological Mindset

Alfred Crosby, one of the most influential historians of the 20th century, passed away on March 14, 2018. An environmental historian, he documented new perspectives on colonialism and imperialism through ecological approaches to history. One of his most lasting influences is a new perspective on the Columbian Exchange. Here, Christopher DeCou gives a brief outline of the Columbian Exchange and why it is so influential to our understanding of world history today.

A depiction of Christopher Columbus encountering the Arawak people on the island of Hispaniola in December 1492.

What is the Columbian Exchange?

The textbook definition of the Columbian Exchange is the “biological and demographic exchange of the Old and New Worlds products and peoples.” Let’s unpack that definition a bit more to see why it is so innovative.

Crosby did not coin the term Columbian Exchange, for it was in use well into the 19th century. Just one example is the now famous Chicago World’s Fair of 1892 as the centennial celebration for Columbus’ discovery of the Americas. The World’s Fair made numerous references to the ways that Europeans and Indigenous peoples interacted and exchanged materials. American History textbooks also included the Columbian Exchange in teaching as an important moment in early American history. However, in all these cases, the type of exchange that was described was surface level interaction and cultural. In other words, historians were more interested in thinking about how Columbus and later Europeans “civilized” the Americas with the printing press, philosophy, art, etc. while the indigenous peoples gave White Europeans tacos.

Crosby turned that focus on its head. Rather than thinking about ideas, he gave priority and agency to the environment. This requires a radical shift in thinking, an ecological compared to an ideological view.

First consider demography, the study of populations and their changes. In the 1960s, historians were interested in trying to quantify population dynamics and attempted to reconstruct historical interactions through statistical methods. One of the interesting questions vexing American historians, broadly defined, was the number of the people present in pre-Columbian North and South America and how disease decimated those populations, and consequently how did these changes impact social changes. Historical texts from the Spanish gave a variety of anecdotal evidence, but surveys and estimates on indigenous population were scanty. Historians had known for years that Columbus and his men had smallpox on board and brought this to the Taino people; but Crosby provided estimates based on new archaeological research and traced the story of disease throughout the Caribbean and Mesoamerica to the rest of the Americas. In other words, Crosby focused on disease as his historical agent. By making disease the focus of his study, he illustrated how disease demolished indigenous populations, sometimes killing more than 90% of certain populations. These population dynamics created labor supply demands with European indentured servants and also African slaves.

Another example of this biological perspective was the introduction of various plant and animal species into new environments. While Europeans introduced Old World diseases into the New World, the New World offered numerous types of plants that flourished in new environments. For instance, the tomato was discovered in Cuzco and brought back to Spain because of Pizarro. The new plant had a fantastical history in Europe, before it became a staple of the European diet. The New World strawberries followed an even more dramatic path. The strawberry was an Old World food, but by the 15th and 16th centuries a variety of diseases had impacted production of the fruit. When explorers found a similar plant in South America, they grafted New World strawberries to those of the Old Word and created hybrid plants that they found were resistant to the diseases affecting Old World strawberries. These new plants allowed for an agricultural revolution to shape the European continent.

Furthermore, New World goods traveled even further than Europe. Contact across the Atlantic and Pacific connected New World plants with Africa and Asia. For instance, manioc was quickly picked up by West African farmers and soon spread throughout the continent to become the most widely cultivated crop in Africa. While India and Indonesia had reputations since antiquity about their spices, the New World chili spread throughout the rest of East Asia and became one of the most important food items. Maize had a similar global impact.

One could give even more examples, such as the reintegration of horses into the New World and its impact on indigenous economies, the introduction of cattle and its impact on desertification, but the point remains. As Crosby tried to illustrate, the Columbian Exchange is more than a cultural affair. It is a way to see biological and demographic changes and their social impacts.

Why is the Columbian Exchange important?

Although these biological influences and their global interactions were important, Crosby’s legacy is far more ideological. One of the comments I made above was that Crosby wanted people to shift their perspective. Truthfully, most of the biological stories were already known beforehand. The history of the tomato was always a light-hearted example in the story about “evil Catholic Spain” and “freedom fighting Britain.” So, what is the real significance here?

We have to step back for a second and see that history at its most basic is how we narrate stories of the past. And until Crosby (and the other critics that contributed to this shift), most mainstream historians focused on a civilizational approach to history. The story of America was framed in European terms. It is easy to mock 19th century versions of history for their view of European superiority and their omissions; but, even in the 20th and 21st centuries, as historians have tried to incorporate more regions and parts of the world to tell more global or world histories, they can still fall prey to this worldview. In some ways, while the details might be more comprehensive, the story is really the same. The ultimate cause for social change was European demands and European exploration. This is still a story of European progress and European success.

If we take Crosby seriously, then what he is really criticizing in his book is not just historical narrative and the “facts” of history but who is the focus of history. For Crosby then, the Columbian Exchange is a story about the environment. People are certainly actors, but they are constrained by factors of the environment. In this way, population changes, food sources and food scarcity, disease – all of these environmental forces are just as important to that story. Moreover, if we allow the environment to become central to the perspective of the past, then suddenly we are able to create a new kind of global history that links geography in new ways. No longer is this just a European story, but suddenly we can see that North and South America were just as important as Africa and Asia in creating history. When we shift our focus to say disease, suddenly the boundaries and geographies that might have seemed important before must also change and reveal new ways of seeing and imagining the past.

Conclusion

Today, the Columbian Exchange is considered a standard portion of any history survey course; but, we often forget that the biological and demographic focus that Crosby integrated in his work is far more revolutionary. Crosby was calling on historians and teachers to change their worldview and discover a new way of seeing the past that moves beyond Euro-centric visions of the past and calls people to action.

What do you think of this article and Crosby’s perspective? Let us know below.

In Search of El Dorado - The fascinating life of Sir Walter Raleigh

Born to a Protestant family in Devon, England in 1552, Sir Walter Raleigh was not only a prolific writer, poet and courtier of the Virgin Queen, but also a commendable explorer. Knighted by Queen Elizabeth I in the year 1585 and recognized nation-wide for his numerous talents, Raleigh is now mockingly remembered as the man who laid his cloak across a muddy pool so that Her Majesty could cross it without getting her feet dirty! Prapti Panda explains all.

Sir Walter Raleigh and his son Walter. 1602.

Raleigh had to face extreme difficulties right from his childhood. When he was a boy, his family suffered greatly, trying to outrun the Roman Catholic Church that flourished under the rule of Mary I of England. In 1569, he joined troops in subduing civil uprisings in France but eventually returned to pursue his education as an undergraduate in the well-known Oriel College, Oxford. Many such events, such as his successful abortion of the Irish rebellion, followed that showed his ambition and skills that ultimately culminated in him gaining favor with the Virgin Queen.

THE FIRST HINT OF A LIFELONG CAREER

Sailing with his half-brother Humphrey Gilbert to America in 1578 turned out to be the first of many expeditions he would undertake. Therein, after two attempts, he managed to set up a British colony on Roanoke Island under the governance of John White. But after he sailed back to England and got delayed in returning, the colonists disappeared, and today their settlement is known popularly as the ‘Lost City of Roanoke Island’, but the people of America honored him by naming the state capital of North Carolina as Raleigh. Moreover, Raleigh County, West Virginia and Mount Raleigh in British Columbia are also named after him.

But all of this hard work and gallantness of his was thrown to the wind when Queen Elizabeth found out that he had secretly married one of her ladies-in-waiting, Elizabeth Throckmorton, and imprisoned them both in the Tower of London. He regained his reputation by capturing the incredible treasure-laden ship Madre de Deus and presenting it to the Queen. Some historians believe that that was when his obsession with gold started.

THE LURE OF GOLD

In the year 1594, the first hint of the existence of a ‘City of Gold’ reached him. He read the accounts of several people including Gonzalo Pizarro, Francisco Lopez and Francisco de Orellana that described the exploration of the Amazon basin and the Lower Orinoco.  By the time he decided to embark on a voyage to Guiana, he had become sure of the existence of El Dorado, the city that contained immeasurable wealth and which he dubbed Manoa. In his book, Discovery of Guiana, Raleigh recounts that it was the account of a Spaniard by the name of Juan Martinez, who was serving at the time as master of munitions to Diego Ordas, a Knight of the Order of Santiago, which provided the final proof that he needed.

Martinez, Raleigh believed, was the first European to ‘find’ El Dorado. The story was that Martinez, fearing execution due to mismanagement of some armaments that he was supposed to be in charge of, set out in a canoe down the Orinoco and was rescued by natives who took him to Manoa, the seat of their emperor. After several months of living there, Martinez was sent back to his land, laden heavily with gifts of gold which were eventually robbed off of him.

But Raleigh was not too dogmatic in his beliefs either. He reached out to various people connected with the story and was told with solid proof that left absolutely no room for doubts - in his mind at least. Then, he set sail to the New World in 1595 in search of Manoa. In reality, he had another, more significant objective - he wanted to weaken Spanish colonization of South America and build British influence there. If there was one thing that Raleigh had no qualms about stating, it was his contempt towards the Spanish. In the Discovery of Guiana, he never forgets to insert a jab or a wry comparison to his Spanish ‘friends’.

Although he gave exaggerated reports of the gold he found in Guiana when he went back to England, he was not successful in finding Manoa. Yet, silently, his belief in its existence was not shaken. In 1600, he was appointed governor of the Channel Island in Jersey and focused on improving defenses and administration.

Once again, Raleigh was struck by a bout of bad luck when Queen Elizabeth died in 1603. Her successor, King James I, son of Mary, Queen of Scots, was not quite ready to be favorably disposed towards him. In fact, King James was of a platonic nature, eager to amend relations with the Spanish. His first step was accusing Raleigh of treason and throwing him once more into the Tower of London - his only concession being that he was spared his life. During his imprisonment, Raleigh penned the popular Historie of the World.

A ray of hope appeared for Raleigh in 1616, when King James allowed him to travel a second time to Guiana in search of El Dorado in exchange for a massive fortune and strict orders to not attack the Spanish. But as ill luck would have it, one of his long-time friends and confidante Lawrence Keymis’ troops attacked a Spanish outpost on the banks of the Orinoco River, defying Raleigh’s orders and resulting in the untimely death of his son Walter.

On his return to England, again empty-handed, the Spanish Ambassador was angry, wanting King James to punish Raleigh for breaking the peace treaty. With no other way out, King James ordered Raleigh’s execution. So it was that on October 29, 1618, the world saw the last of a valiant man who traversed dangerous waters and explored uncharted lands, a man who was not afraid of going after what he believed in. Now he lies in a grave in St Margaret’s Church, Westminster, London, known mainly as a name that history students remember. 

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The author: Prapti Panda has a deep interest in history - especially colonization and the Industrial Revolution. She spends her days researching and reading about the Royal Family and is a compulsive writer. Her first book, based on the European colonization of Latin America, will be out soon.

REFERENCES

The Discovery of Guiana, Walter Raleigh- 1595

BBC UK - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/raleigh_walter.shtml

WEB- https://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/THE-DEATH-OF-RALEIGH-Elizabeth-I-The-Golden-Age