Early European Colonization of the New World
Theme: Various techniques for handling governance, economic, and labor situations
Lesson 26

• audiencias , engenho , fur trade, hacienda, indentured servant, Jamestown, mestizo,
Portuguese colonial administration, Potosi, repartimiento , slavery in the New World,
Spanish colonial administration, Treaty of
Tordesillas, viceroys

• The conquests of Mexico and Peru we studied last lesson we’re not the results of Spanish royal policy, but rather individual efforts of freelance adventurers
• Gradually, however, the
Spanish monarchy extended its control over the growing
American empire, and by about 1570, the semiprivate regime of the conquistadors had given way to formal rule under the Spanish crown
Philip II, King of Spain

• The Spanish administrators established two centers of authority in the Americas
– Mexico (New Spain) with a capital of Mexico
City, built on top of Tenochtitlan
– Peru (New Castile) with a capital of Lima after rejecting the old Inca capital of Cuzco as too inaccessible
• Each was governed by a viceroy who was responsible to the king of Spain

• To ensure the viceroys didn’t become too independent and personally powerful, the kings of Spain subjected them to the review of courts known as audiencias
– Audiencias were staffed by university-educated lawyers
– They heard appeals against the viceroys’ decisions and policies and had the right to address their concerns directly to the Spanish king
– Audiencias reviewed the viceroys’ performance at the end of their terms, and negative reviews could lead to severe punishment

• Nonetheless, the viceroys wielded considerable power, partly because of the difficulties in communicating with the central government in
Spain
– It often took two years to receive a reply to a query sent from Mexico or Peru and viceroys could procrastinate by offering additional information instead of compliance

• Saint Augustine,
Florida is the oldest city in the United
States
– Founded in 1565
• Spanish mariners would take advantage of the
Gulf Stream currents to return to Spain
– Saint Augustine was a stop along the return route

• Signed by Spain and Portugal in 1494
• Divided the world along an imaginary north-south line 370 leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands
• Spain could claim any land west of that line and Portugal anything to the east, so long as the land wasn’t already under Christian rule

• The Portuguese first landed at Brazil in
1500 but their interest wasn’t sparked until
French and Dutch mariners began visiting there
• Then the Portuguese king decided to consolidate his claim and began granting large coastal territories to Portuguese nobles with the expectation they develop and colonize their holdings

• The entrepreneurs established profitable sugar plantations, the king dispatched a governor to oversee affairs, and
Portuguese interest in
Brazil rose dramatically
• The Treaty of
Tordesillas line was fairly ambiguous so the Portuguese expanded past it to claim all of Brazil
Today some 170 million people speak
Portuguese even though only about 11 million people live in Portugal

• After quickly looting through the
Aztec and Inca treasures, the
Spanish turned to mining
• Silver mining centered around the Mexican north around Zacatecas and the central
Andes at Potosi

• At Potosi, Spanish administrators recruited laborers by adapting the
Inca system of draft labor
– Requisitioned laborers from local officials who dispatched individuals from villages to work for several months in the mines
– The discovery of a vein in
1545 created a boom that brought Potosi’s population to 150,000 by 1600
Miners still work in grueling conditions in Potosi, known as
“The mountain that eats men”

• The mining industries of
Mexico and Peru produced great wealth for Spain
• The Spanish government reserved one-fifth of the silver production for itself (the quinto ) and used it to finance a powerful army and bureaucracy
• Silver from America quickly became a commodity in the global trade network
– Remember the Manila galleons from Lsn 25 Privateers such as Sir Francis
Drake forced the Spanish treasure fleet to adopt a convoy system for safety

• The agricultural and craft products that resourced the mining towns were produced on an estate or hacienda
• Workers on the hacienda were mostly native people and a small number of imported slaves
The 17 th Century Hacienda de
Nogueras housed a sugar mill that produced cane alcohol

• The repartimiento system compelled native communities to supply laborers and offered some protections for the workers
• Still compulsory labor drafts fostered callous treatment by employers and also promoted low worker productivity
• Gradually the economic incentive of paying higher wages and better conditions in order to get more motivated workers caused the repartimiento to be replaced by a market labor system

• While the Spanish concentrated on mining and established an effective administration system to compel subjugated indigenous people to provide the labor, the Portuguese concentrated on sugar plantations worked by imported
African slaves

• Colonial life in Brazil revolved around the sugar mill or engenho
• Engenhos always combined agricultural and industrial enterprises
– This requirement for heavy labor and specialized knowledge of the sugar-making process made the engenhos complex business operations
– Planters acted like landed nobility, but also had to keep track of business affairs and often operated on very tight profit margins

• The native Brazilians resisted Portuguese efforts to force them into servitude and small pox had killed much of the native population anyway
• Instead the Portuguese turned to African slaves
• Slavery on the Brazilian sugar plantations was especially arduous because of the working conditions, climate, and mistreatment

• Owners were particularly brutal
– The philosophy was that it was more economical to work a slave to death and buy a new one rather than work him less but have him live longer
– Slave children would require a financial outlay of about 12 years making them economically undesirable
Public whippings were common disciplinary tools

• French, English, and Dutch mariners sailed the North
Atlantic in search of fish and a
“northwest passage” to Asia
• The quest for a northwest passage proved fruitless, but they did find immense quantities of cod off Labrador,
Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and New England
• By the early 17 th Century, they had dislodged the Spanish colonists north of Florida
“Sack ships” such as the Real
Friendship carried dried cod from Newfoundland to
European markets

• These fishing stations gave way to permanent colonies
– Port Royal (Nova Scotia) settled by the French in 1604
– Quebec settled by the French in 1608
– Jamestown founded by the
British in 1607
– Massachusetts Bay colony settled by the British in 1630
– New Amsterdam settled by the
Dutch in 1623, only to be seized by the British in 1664 and rechristened New York
Captain John Smith helped found
Jamestown

• Settlement life was extremely difficult
• Most settlers did not expect to cultivate food crops; instead hoping to sustain their communities through valuable commodities such as fur, pitch, tar, lumber, and, more disappointingly, silver and gold
• Relied heavily on provisions shipped from
England, and when those didn’t arrive they sometimes avoided starvation only because
Indians provided them food

• In Jamestown, food shortages and disease were so severe that only 60 of the colony’s
500 inhabitants survived the winter of
1609-1610
– Some settlers went so far as to disinter corpses and consume the flesh of the dead
– One man reportedly even slaughtered and ate his wife
In 1587, 117 settlers established the first English colony in the New World on Roanoke Island and later vanished without a trace

North American Fur Traders and
Settlers
• As fisherman bartered with local people they discovered that the fur trade was much more lucrative than fishing
• Explorers found a convenient entrance to the rich furproducing regions through the Hudson
Strait and Hudson Bay and began the systematic exploitation of the northern lands
The Hudson Bay Company controlled the fur trade from its headquarters at
York Factory

North American Fur Traders and
Settlers
• Royal agents, adventurers, businessmen, and settlers built a chain of forts and trading posts stretching into the
North American interior
• Indigenous people trapped animals and exchanged the pelts for European manufactured goods such as wool blankets, iron pots, firearms, and alcohol
Frederic Remington painting of rival fur traders racing to an Indian camp,
National Archives of Canada

North American Fur Traders and
Settlers
• Beaver hats became a staple of European fashion
• During the peak of the trade, the Hudson Bay Company supplied enough beaver pelts from Canadian trade to manufacture 600,000 beaver hats in England – and they still fell short of demand

North American Fur Traders and
Settlers
• As trappers pushed inland looking for untapped beaver grounds, fighting often broke out
– Iroquois Indians, allied with Dutch fur traders and provided firearms by them, attacked the
Hurons living north of the
Great Lakes
– The Hurons were greatly diminished and the
Iroquois increased their power
The North American beaver

North American Fur Traders and
Settlers
• The Hudson Bay
Company established
Fort Severn at the mouth of the Severn
River on Hudson Bay in 1689
• Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville captured it for the French in 1690
• d’Iberville conducted a campaign against
British interests in
Newfoundland from
1695 to 1697
Fort Severn

North American Fur Traders and
Settlers
• In 1697, d’Iberville returned to France and was selected to lead an expedition to rediscover the mouth of the
Mississippi River and colonize Louisiana
• In 1699, d’Iberville worked his way westward from
Pensacola to Mobile Bay to
Ship Island
• On Feb 14 he landed at
Biloxi, claimed the area for
France, and then built Fort
Maurepas in Ocean Springs
Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville
Landing at Biloxi painting by
William Steele

France, Spain, England, U.S., Confederacy, Republic of West
Florida, Magnolia State, State of Mississippi

North American Fur Traders and
Settlers
• Settler-cultivators were even more disruptive to native ways of life than fur traders because they displaced indigenous people and turned hunting grounds into plantations
• Tobacco proved to be an especially lucrative cash crop
– In 1638 three million pounds of tobacco were exported to Europe
• In the 18 th and 19 th Centuries, rice, indigo, and cotton were added as prominent plantation crops
John Rolfe is credited with introducing tobacco cultivation to Virginia

North American Fur Traders and
Settlers
• Colonists displaced Indians but could not subjugate them as a labor force
• Initial demands for labor were met by indentured servants from Europe
– People with little future in Europe who agreed to sell a portion of their working lives in exchange for passage across the Atlantic and a new start in life

North American Fur Traders and
Settlers
• The first slaves arrived in Virginia from Africa in about 1610, but numbers remained small until the late 17 th Century
• Between 1670 and 1720, slaves increasingly replaced indentured servants
• The northern climate and soil was not favorable for cash crops so slavery was not prominent there
– Still New England profited from the slave trade

“Molasses to rum to slaves
Who sail the ships back to Boston
Ladened with gold, see it gleam
Whose fortunes are made in the triangle trade
Hail slavery, the New
England dream!”
Song from the play 1776

• Spanish
– Royal backing
– Stronger royal control through viceroys and audiencias
• In HIS 102 we’ll see how this autocratic colonial style did not well-prepare the Latin
American countries for governing themselves after independence
– Waged military campaigns of conquest against the indigenous centralized states like the Aztecs and
Incas
• British and French
– Private investors played a greater role
– No viceroys or audiencias ; maintained their own assemblies and influenced the choice of governors
– Tried to negotiate with and justify their claims to the varied indigenous peoples and societies; eventually dominated by a combination of disease, numbers, and violent conflict

• Spanish
– About 85% of the
Spanish immigrants were male
– Much interaction with native women
• Soon gave rise to an increasing mestizo (or mixed) society
• British
– Women were more numerous among
British settlers
– Mostly married within their own groups
• Mingling between people of different ancestries was especially uncommon in the British colonies

Seven Years’ War
Review from Lesson 25
• Commercial competition ultimately generated violence that culminated in the Seven Years’ War
(1756-1763)
– In North America, the
Seven Years’ War merged with the ongoing French and
Indian War which pitted the British and
French against each other
George Washington fought for the
British and was defeated in the opening battle of the French and
Indian War at Fort Necessity in the
Ohio Country

• The British emerged victorious and as result they gained control of North America from the French
• The war helped create conditions that led to the
American Revolutionary War because the British colonists no longer needed British protection from the French and would come to resent the taxes imposed by Britain to pay for its military commitments
– More about that in HIS 102

• Final Exam Review