Chapter 16 The World in the Age of European Expansion

1492-1763
Section 2 The Spanish and Portuguese in the Americas
Although Columbus had been heading for Asia, instead he reached the
Americas, which were soon linked through trade and settlement to the rest of
the world. In the Americas, unlike Asia, the Spanish and Portuguese who
followed Columbus established huge land empires, based on plantation
economies, mining, and the use of Native American workers and slave labor
brought from Africa. As Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans
interacted, a new multicultural civilization began to emerge.
The Spanish in the Caribbean
As it became clear that the Americas were not the islands of Japan or the
mainland of either India or China, Spanish explorers looked for other ways to
make their fortunes in these new lands. In place of trade, they turned to
colonization. Columbus had established the first colony to look for gold.
When none was found, he soothed the discouraged colonists by introducing
the encomienda system. Under this system, the colonists, or encomenderos,
were granted land and the labor of a certain number of Native Americans. The
Native Americans had to farm the Spaniards' land or work as servants. In
return, the encomenderos had to teach the Native Americans Christianity. This
basic pattern became the model for all subsequent Spanish settlements in the
Caribbean and on the mainland.
The encomienda proved to be a disaster for Native Americans. Apart
from the efforts to forcefully eradicate or utterly transform indigenous
cultures, the encomenderos frequently overworked and mistreated Native
American populations and prevented them from growing their own food. Yet
while Native Americans frequently revolted against the Spanish in an effort to
defend themselves and their cultures, they proved no match for the unseen
invaders that the Europeans had unwittingly brought with them. Diseases like
smallpox, to which the peoples of Eurasia and Africa had developed
immunities over the centuries, ravaged the Americans who had never been
exposed to them. Spreading much faster than the Europeans themselves, these
diseases soon wiped out entire settlements and led to a massive decline in the
American populations.
The Conquest of the Aztec

The search for gold and other riches drew the Spanish from the Caribbean to
the mainland. In 1519 the ambitious conquistador, or conqueror, Hernn
Corts, with a force of some 600 men and 16 horses, landed on the Mexican
coast.i[xxiv] From the local inhabitants, they soon heard of a great and
wealthy civilization farther inland. As they advanced to find it, word of their
coming quickly reached the great city of Tenochtitln, capital of the Aztec
Empire.
Corts and Moctezuma. The Aztec emperor Moctezuma II received news of
the Spaniards' arrival with some anxiety. He believed that Corts was the god
Quetzalcoatl coming to reclaim his throne. The strangers were covered with
metal and rode strange beasts, which the Native Americans had never seen.
Anxiously, Moctezuma sent rich gifts to Corts. The sight of such wealth only
caused the Spaniards to march on Tenochtitln even faster. On the way,
Corts gained allies among the many enemies of the Aztec. An Aztec
chronicler found the Spanish force a fearsome sight:
They came in battle array, as conquerors, and the dust rose in whirlwinds
on the roads. Their spears glinted in the sun, and their pennons [flags]
fluttered like bats. They made a loud clamor as they marched, for their
coats of mail and their weapons clashed and rattled. Some of them were
dressed in glistening iron from head to foot; they terrified everyone who
saw them.ii[xxv]
Moctezuma welcomed Corts and gave him a palace to use inside the city.
The conquistador soon took the emperor prisoner, however, and demanded
gold.
The battle for Mexico. With Moctezuma imprisoned, the Spanish had
seemingly taken the city without a fight, but trouble soon broke out. In May
1520 Corts briefly left the city.iii[xxvi] While he was gone, his men, horrified
by the Aztec practice of human sacrifice, attacked a religious festival, killing
many of the worshipers, including women and children.iv[xxvii] Corts
returned in late June to find the outraged Aztec besieging his men in
Moctezumas palace. Hoping to calm them, Corts allowed the captive
Moctezuma to speak to his people from the palace rooftop. This only further
enraged the Aztec, however. Moctezuma was killed in the fight that ensued,
though by whose hand is uncertain.
Deciding to retreat, Corts and his men tried to sneak out of the city on a
dark, rainy night in late June.v[xxviii] A woman drawing water spied them,
however, and gave the alarm, "Our enemies are escaping."vi[xxix] The Aztec
attacked the fleeing soldiers, and both sides suffered many casualties in what
the Spanish later called La Noche Triste, the Night of Sorrows.

The Aztec celebration of driving the Spaniards away was short-lived. A

smallpox epidemic swept through the battle-weary population, killing
thousands. In April 1521 the Spaniards returned, supported by an army of
Indian reinforcements, and laid siege to the city.vii[xxx] "Nothing can
compare with the horrors of that siege and the agonies of the starving," one
Aztec later lamented.viii[xxxi] After three months of resistance, the city fell on
August 13, 1521.ix[xxxii]
Consequences of the conquest. Once in control, the conquistadors
methodically looted the fallen empire of its gold and silver. They also tried to
suppress the Aztec religion, as the use of human sacrifice revolted them. Even
before the fall of Tenochtitln, Corts himself had torn down the images of
the Aztec gods and replaced them with Christian statues, as he described in a
report home:
The most important of these idols, and the ones in whom they have most
faith, I had taken from their places and thrown down the steps; and I had
those chapels where they were cleaned, for they were full of the blood of
sacrifices; and I had images of Our Lady and of other saints put there,
which caused . . . [the] natives some sorrow.x[xxxiii]
After the conquest, the Spanish destroyed much of Tenochtitln and built
their own capitalMexico Cityon its ruins. In the central square, they tore
down the great pyramid, and used its stones to build a Christian cathedral.xi
[xxxiv]
Thus, the Spanish gained most of present-day Mexico. From their new
base, they explored north, claiming much of what is now the United States.
To the south, they pushed into Central America. Hearing rumors of yet
another fabulously wealthy civilization somewhere in the towering Andes
Mountains, they also sent expeditions into South America. There the Spanish
soon discovered the Inca Empire.
The Conquest of the Inca
When the Spanish arrived in the Americas, the huge Inca Empire extended
from present-day Ecuador to Chile. Though the empire looked strong, its
stability was crumbling. Smallpox spread to the Andes in the late 1520s,
killing one third to one half of the population in some areas. Among the dead
was the emperor Huayna Capac.xii[xxxv] A brutal civil war broke out between
his sonsAtahualpa and Huscar. In 1531, Atahualpa emerged victorious.
Not long after his victory Atahualpa heard reports of a group of foreigners in
the empire: Francisco Pizarro and some 168 men had established a Spanish
settlement on the empire's northern coast.

Despite their strange new weapons and horses, the new emperor did not fear
the Spaniards. Eventually, in November 1532 he agreed to meet them.
[xxxvii] At the meeting, a priest urged the emperor to convert to Catholicism
and handed him a Bible. When Atahualpa threw the book down in disgust, on
Pizarros order Spanish soldiers seized the emperor and killed most of his
attendants.
Imprisoned by the Spanish, Atahualpa agreed to fill a room with gold
and another twice over with silver artifacts as a ransom. He was as good as
his word. Pizarro's share alone totaled 630 pounds of gold and more than
1,000 pounds of silver. [xxxviii] Despite Atahualpas show of good faith, in
1533 the Spanish executed him. "With Atahualpa killed . . . and the clan of
the Inca already wiped out," an Inca official explained, "the land was left
without an overlord and with the tyrants in complete possession."[xxxix]
Pizarro and his men headed south to Cuzco, the Inca capital. There
they defeated the remnants of Atahualpa's army and plundered the wealthy
city. Pizarro installed Manco Inca Yupanqui, Huayna Capacs 16-year-old
son, as puppet emperor. Yet even he soon turned against them as their
insatiable demand for silver and gold increased. Manco Incas son later
recorded his fathers reply to Spanish demands:
Ever since you entered my country, there has been nothing . . . that has
been denied you, but instead any wealth I had you now possess, whether
in the form of children or adults, both male and female, to serve you, or of
lands, the best of which are now in your power. What in the world do you
need that I have not given you? [xl]
Manco Inca soon raised a major rebellion against the Spaniards that
spread through much of the empire. At the head of a large army, he besieged
Cuzco for 10 months. Unable to re-take the city, in the end he retreated with
many of his people into the Andes Mountains where he established an
independent state beyond Spanish control. In 1572, however, the Spanish
marched into the mountains, defeated Tupac Amar, and executed him. With
the last Inca gone, the Spanish gradually extended their territory from their
new capital of Lima. They conquered Chile in the 1540s. In 1536 and 1538,
an expedition from Spain founded the colonies of Buenos Aires and
Asuncin.
The Portuguese in Brazil
Like the Spanish, the Portuguese established a land empire in the Americas.
In 1500 a Portuguese navigator, Pedro Cabral, had been blown off course
while on his way to India. Sighting the coast of Brazil, he claimed the
territory for Portugal under the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas. Brazil's vast

jungles and mighty rivers did not easily yield the spices, gold, or silver that
the Europeans desired, however, and at first little was done about the new
territory. Not until 1534, after French raids threatened Brazilian ships and
settlements, did Portugal formalize its colonization of Brazil.
King John III of Portugal granted huge tracts of land, called
captaincies, which stretched westward from the coast. These captaincies
were granted to donataries, individuals who agreed to finance colonization in
exchange for political and economic control of their new territory. Because of
mismanagement and vigorous resistance from Native Americans, only two of
the original captaincies prospered. Duarte Coelho Pereira, one of the
successful donataries, complained, "we are forced to conquer by inches what
Your Majesty granted by leagues."xiii[xli]
In 1548 King John responded to such complaints by appointing Tom de
Sousa as governor-general of Brazil. With him, the new administrator brought
colonists, bureaucrats, and Jesuit missionaries. In 1549 Sousa founded
Salvador, Brazil's first capital.

Map of the Portuguese settlements in Africa and America around 1600.

Taken from http://www.colonialvoyage.com/pafrica.jpg

Colonial Economy and Society

The conquistadors had won a vast empire for Spain that stretched from the

plains of North America to the Andes of South America. To govern these

geographically diverse and remote lands, the Spanish Crown sent an army of
bureaucrats to transform the conquistadors and the conquered peoples into a
settled society. Portugal controlled only part of the eastern coast of South
America but it faced a number of challenges in governing its territory.
Colonial government. In Brazil, a governor-general appointed by the king
was responsible for both civil and military administration. The power of the
donataries limited his authority, however, as did the lack of effective
communications among the 14 different captaincies and Portugal.

Taken from http://www.bartleby.com/67/images/latina01.gif

A more elaborate system emerged in Spanish America. The king

appointed a viceroy, or governor, to oversee each viceroyalty, or large
province. At first there were only two viceroyalties: New Spain, in Mexico
and Central America; and New Castile, in Peru. In the mid-1700s two more

were added: New Granada, stretching from Panama to Ecuador and

Venezuela; and La Plata in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Bolivia.
Since all land in the new world theoretically belonged to the king, the
viceroys ruled as his personal representatives. However, they ruled with the
advice of a council, known as the audiencia, whose members reported
directly and privately to the king in Spain. In addition, all senior officials
were appointed from Spain, where the king's Council of the Indies oversaw
the entire American empire. Thus, the Crown tried to maintain tight control
over its colonial administration.
Despite such safeguards, the system did not always work. In Spanish
America the encomenderos wielded so much local power that they often
ignored the viceroy's orders. In the 1540s, for example, Pizarros brother
Gonzalo murdered Peru's first viceroy. Later viceroys learned the practice of
"I obey but I do not execute," and simply ignored unpopular royal orders.
The colonial economy. Mines and agricultural estates provided most of the
colonial wealth. Gold mining, for example, fanned the growth of Rio de
Janeiro, which became the colonial capital of Brazil in 1763. Large, selfsufficient farming estates, called haciendas in Spanish America and fazendas
in Brazil, introduced European crops and animals to the Americas. The
Europeans largely re-created the life they had known in Europe. In areas
suitable for cattle they became ranchers, producing meat and hides.
Elsewhere they raised a variety of crops. Sugar plantations prospered in
Brazil, southern Mexico, and the Caribbean. In addition to supplying local
needs, the colonists exported goods to Europe.
The biggest challenge the colonists faced was supplying labor for the
mines and the estates. As a result of disease and forced labor, by the mid1500s the Native American population had declined in some areas by more
than 90 percent.xiv[xlii] For example, in the viceroyalty of New Spain,
covering present-day Mexico, the southwestern United States, and much of
Central America, the Native American population declined from an estimated
11 to 25 million in 1492 to 1.25 million by 1625.xv[xliii] As the Native
Americans died, some conquistadors and clergymen called for the Crown to
protect these potential Christian converts.
One of the most outspoken of these early advocates was Bartolom de Las
Casas. Las Casas had come to the Americas on Columbuss third voyage, and
had been granted an encomienda. After witnessing the plight of the Native
Americans, however, he renounced his encomienda and in 1512 became a
priest. Thereafter he was tireless in his efforts to protect the Native
Americans. The Spanish monarchs shared Las Casass concerns. Anxious for
Catholic converts, they decreed laws regulating the treatment of Native
Americans. To replace Native American labor, however, Las Casas and others

suggested the use of African slaves. Soon, thousands of Africans were being
imported to the Americas as slave labor.
The development of colonial society. The sometimes-tense coexistence of
Africans, Europeans, and Native Americans shaped the social order of the
Americas. Society in Spain and Portugal reflected the basic class divisions of
Europe: nobles, clergy, and commoners. In the Americas, wealth rather than
noble rank became the basis for high status.
As the Europeans moved into the Americas, they imposed their own
social order over the local peoples, one based not only on wealth but also on
race and even place of birth. A small group of peninsulares, Spanish or
Portuguese born in Europe, and creoles, Europeans born in the colonies, ruled
colonial society. The peninsulares looked down on the creoles. Both the
peninsulares and the creoles looked down on the people of mixed racethe
mestizos, those of Native American and European background, and
mulattoes, those of African and European ancestry. All of these people looked
down on Native Americans, Africans, and those of mixed Indian and African
parentage, the zambos.
The multicultural nature of colonial society was reflected in its
religious life. Catholic Christianity, the religion of the conquerors, spread
rapidly. Catholic missionaries established schools, convents, and universities
for the colonists. They also organized Native American settlements. Within
several generations, most of Spanish and Portuguese America was Catholic.
Both Native Americans and African religious traditions remained
important, however. In the late 1500s, for example, Father Bernandino de
Sahagn wrote about his suspicion that Native American adoration of the
Virgin Mary disguised continuing worship of the Aztec goddess Tonantzin:
At [a small mountain they call Tepeyacac] they had a temple dedicated to the mother
of the gods whom they called Tonantzin, which means Our Mother. There they performed
many sacrifices in honor of this goddess. . . .
And now that a church of Our Lady of Guadalupe [the Virgin Mary] is
built there, they also call her Tonantzin. . . . It appears to be a Satanic
invention to cloak idolatry under the confusion of this name, Tonantzin.xvi
[xliv]
African religious practices survived in many parts of the Americas in dances,
rituals, and religions such as Santeria, which mixed African and Christian
beliefs.

Mercantilism and Its Consequences

Both the Spanish and the Portuguese tried to regulate the economies of their
colonies for their own national interests by practicing an economic policy
later called mercantilism. Mercantilism became the dominant economic
policy of Europe between 1500 and 1800. It was rooted in the belief that a
countrys power depended on its wealth in gold and silver. Since there was
only a limited supply of such precious metals, Europeans thought that a
country could only grow wealthy and powerful at the expense of other
countries. Consequently, European countries used their colonies to provide
raw materials and act as markets for their own goods, but closed them off to
other nations.
In keeping with this theory, Spain, for example, prohibited its colonies from
trading with other European countries. Every year Spanish fleets carried
wine, olive oil, furniture, and textiles to the Americas, where they were
exchanged for silver, gold, sugar, dyes, and other products. The Spanish
Crown also allowed Mexican merchants to exchange silver for valuable
Chinese silks and porcelains and Asian spices from the Spanish Philippines.
Great silver strikes in Peru and Mexico enriched the Spanish treasury
for centuries. Although these riches at first made Spain the wealthiest country
in Europe, they also undermined the Spanish economy. Instead of improving
and expanding manufacturing and agriculture in Spain, for example, the
Spanish simply purchased what they wanted or needed from other countries.
The consequences of this policy of neglect became evident when the steady
flow of American silver, combined with a rise in population that stimulated
demand, caused inflation throughout Europe and the Ottoman Empire.

Section 2 Review
IDENTIFY and explain the significance of the following:
encomienda
conquistador
Hernn Corts
Moctezuma
La Noche Triste

Francisco Pizarro
Manco Inca Yupanqui
Tupac Amar
Pedro Cabral
captaincies
donataries
viceroy
mercantilism
LOCATE and explain the importance of the following:
Lima
Santiago
Buenos Aires
Asuncin
Rio de Janeiro.
1. Main Idea How did the European conquest of the Caribbean affect Native
Americans?
2. Main Idea What groups composed Spanish American society? What was
the status of each?
3. Geography: Place In the 1600s a chronicler noted that, in contrast to the
Spanish, the Portuguese in Brazil were "content to scrape along the seaside
like crabs."xvii[xlv] What geographic factors do you think contributed to the
captaincies stretching inland from the coast?
4.Writing to Inform Imagine that you are a Spanish viceroy in the 1500s.
Write a letter to the king explaining why you cannot enforce laws
reforming the abuses of the encomienda system.
5. Analyzing Using information from the section, write a short essay
analyzing (a) how the internal political problems of the Aztec and Inca
contributed to their defeat; and (b) how their defeat allowed the Spanish, in
two blows, to win a huge landed empire.

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