Impact of
Colonization
Colonial Administration
• Spain: four viceroyalties
• Intendant System
• Official exercises broad powers
• Reports to monarchy
Plantation and Encomienda
System
•
•
•
•
•
Spanish men move and create haciendas
Import livestock
Plantations in tropical areas; sugar
Used natives as labor
Encomienda
• Used natives as labor, or demand tribute
Effects on Native Americans
•
•
•
•
•
1492: est. 50 million Native Americans
Disease decimates population (small pox, typhus, flu, etc.)
Overwork kills many
Forced work leads to malnutrition
Violence and warfare
Bartolome de Las Casas
• Franciscan friar
• Fiercest critic of Spanish actions
• Convinced Charles V to tone down enconmienda system
Writing of Las Casas
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight
or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and
depressed on both sides…they ceased to procreate. As for the
newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked
and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason,
while I was in Cuba, 7,000 children died in three months. Some
mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation…In
this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and
children died from lack of milk… and in a short time this land
which was so great, so powerful and fertile…was depopulated…
Spread of Christianity
• Jesuit missionaries followed conquistadors
• Converted natives to Christianity
• Taught loyalty to colonial masters
COLONIAL LIFE
Colonial Cultures
•
•
•
•
•
•
First explorers maintain relationships with native women
Colonies with women take on European culture
England: strict line drawn between natives and English
France: encouraged relationships with natives
Most women were of African origin
Mixing creates complex identities
• Mestizo: mixed Native American and Spanish decent
SOCIAL HIERARCHY
Creoles:
People of pure
European blood
But born in the
New World
Mestizos:
Indian +
European
blood
V
Viceroys Penisulares:
Native Spaniards
C
M&M
I&A
Indians and Africans
Mulattos:
African +
European blood
Columbian Exchange
• Trade of goods, food, culture, disease between New World
and Old.
Columbian Exchange: Food
New World
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Maize (corn)
White potatoes
Sweet potatoes
Peanuts
Tomatoes
Squash
Pumpkin
Pineapples
Papaya
avocados
Old World
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Rice
Wheat
Barley
Oats
Rye
Turnips
Onions
Cabbage
Lettuce
Peaches
Pears
sugar
Columbian Exchange:
Domesticated Animals
New world
•
•
•
•
Dogs
Llamas
Guinea pigs
Fowl (some species)
Old World
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Dogs
Horses
Donkeys
Pigs
Cattle
Goats
Sheep
Barnyard fowl
Columbian Exchange: Disease
New World
• Syphilis???
Old World
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Small pox
Flu
Mumps
Measles
Bubonic Plague
Dysentery
Cholera
Malaria
Typhoid