Colonial Empires and Revolution in
the Western Hemisphere
• Focus Question:
– How did Spain and Portugal administer their
American colonies, and what were the main
characteristics of Latin American society in the
18th C?
– What characterized revolution? How “free” were
the free states?
The Society of Latin America
• 16th Century Latin America
– Portugal: Brazil
– Spain: Central America, most of South America
• Multiracial society/Racial Caste System
– Mestizos: Intermarriage between Spanish and
indigenous peoples
– Mulattoes: Intermarriage between Europeans and
Africans
– Zambos: indigenous and African descent
The Society of Latin America
• The Economic
Foundations
– Gold and Silver
– Agriculture
• Estates & Peons
– Trade
• Colonies a source of
raw materials for
exports
– Gold, silver,
diamonds, sugar,
animal hides
Aboriginal Slavery
Pack train of llamas
Mines of Potosi, Peru, 1590
African Slavery
• Middle Passage
• or System of Asiento
• 16th C 75,000 Africans
– 18th C 9.5 million enslaved
Palenques & Quilombos
• La Republica de Zambos, 1599
• 16th C portrait of Don Francisco de Arobe,
black ruler of an Ecuadorian province
Commerce, Smuggling, Piracy
• Casa de Contratacion (house of trade)
• est. 1503 in Seville
• Wealthier merchants of Seville and Cadiz
– Maintained trade monopoly
• Seville Merchant oligarchy or guilds
– kept the colonial markets under stocked
– forced colonists to pay exorbitant prices for all
European goods acquired through legal channels.
• generated colonial discontent and stimulated the
growth of contraband trade.
England’s Challenge to Spain
• England’s Challenge to Spain: Piracy:
• Queen Elizabeth
– Sir Francis Drake,1577
• “singe the King of Spain’s beard”
– seized treasure ships
– ravaged colonial towns
• Treaty of Madrid in 1670 between England
and Spain.
1573 Spanish Inquisition
• Persuasion
• Coercion
• Natives that
practiced
tradition were
charged with
heresy
• punished
– Hanged or
burned at the
stake
Legacy of Inquisition?
• Methods of repression continued by Totalitarian Regimes &
Police States
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Creation of racial & religious Ghettos
Forcible wearing of badges of shame
Formal state & religious propaganda
Spying
Seizure of property
Intimidation & torture
Sexual humiliation
Good cop/bad cop routine
Physical restraint
Separation of families
• No recognition of natural or civil rights
• Threat and repression of Humanity
New Laws of the Indies (1542)
• Dominican bishop Antonio de Valdivieso of
Nicaragua
– tried to enforce the abolition of indigenous slavery
by the New Laws (assassinated 1550)
• Franciscan Toribio de Benavente or Motolinia
(Realist or moderate)
– Believed the encomienda was necessary for the
prosperity and security of the indies
Institutions of Conquest
•
•
•
•
Mission, Presidio, Pueblo, Rancho
Encomienda
Repartimiento or mita
Slavery
– New political climate marked by a growing belief
in the constitutional inferiority of indigos peoples
The Mission
• The Mission
– The Franciscans and Other
Mendicant Orders
– Salvation in return for
labor
The Mission (1986)
–The Jesuit missionary Father Gabriel (Jeremy Irons) with
the Guaraní´ Indians of Paraguay before their slaughter by
Portuguese troops.
© Warner Brothers/Courtesy Everett Collection
Wards of the Friars
• Francis Guest
– As is commonly known, Spanish law made the
missionaries the legal guardians of their Indian
converts.
– In virtue of their conversion and baptism the
neophytes became the wards of the friar
• Lands confiscated
• Neophytes became property of the friars
Components of the Mission System: the
Pueblo
• The Pueblo
– Agricultural Towns
– Indian Labor
– Hope to Decrease
Reliance on Mexico
and Missions
Components of the Mission System: the
Presidio
The Presidio
• Forts to Protect the
Mission
• Garrisons Return
Fugitives
• Garrisons Capture New
Neophytes
• Four Built
• Weak Militarily
Components of the Mission System: the
Rancho
The Rancho
– Mission Herds
– Use Indian Labor
– Major Source of
Wealth in Mission
System
– Give Missions
Power over Spanish
Government
Forced System of Labor
• Excessive confining work
– Brick Manufacture
• Men made adobe bricks
• Women aided in transporting bricks & tiles
– Weaving lucrative for the mission
• Women & Children employed in processing wool and
weaving
– Evidence of piece rate system, paid “in kind”
18th C Perspectives
• French Explorer Jean Francois Galaup Comte
de La Perouse
– Likened the Indians of Mission San Carlos in 1786
to the Slaves of Santo Domingo
• Descriptions lf serious charges of cruelty
– George Vancouver Expeditions
– Naturalist Archibald Menzies, 1792
– Documents & letters authored by military
authorities in 1785 & cited by George Bancroft
Native Resistance
“Cooperation”
Passive Resistance
Fugitivism
Active Resistance
Revolt
Homicide
Raids on livestock
Revitalization
Resistance
• Indigenous Women
– They enjoyed economic
importance as producers
and traders of goods
– countered male abuse
– played leading roles in
the organization o
resistance
Theodor de Bry (1528 – 1598)
Impact of the Mission System and
Spanish Settlement
Land
Population
Culture
Mission Santa Barbara
Latin America: 19th & early 20th C
• Q: What role did liberalism and nationalism
play in Latin America Between 1800 and
1870?
• Q: What were the major economic, social and
political trends in Latin American in the late
19th and early 20th Centuries.
Challenge to Spanish & Portuguese
Colonialism
• Influence of Enlightenment ideals &
upheavals in the Napoleonic era
– The Wars for Independence
• Creole Elites: descendants of Europeans
• Simon Bolivar of Venezuela
• Jose de San Martin of Argentina
– Principle of Equality of all people under law
– Free trade
– Free press
» Did not apply to everyone
Toussaint L’Ouverture,Haiti, 1804
© North Wind Picture Archives
Nationalistic Revolts
• Mexican Independence, 1810
– Miguel Hidalgo Y Costilla
– Represented a peoples revolution
• September 16, 1910 crushed
• Creoles & Peninsulars united to defeat the
popular revolution
– Augustin de Iturbide, first emperor of Mexico,
1821
• No political or economic changes
“Liberator” of
South America
• Venezuela (1819)
•Colombia
•Ecuador
•Perus
•Simon Bolivar
leading his troops
across the Andes in
1823 to fight in Peru
© SuperStock
“Liberators” of
South America
•San Jose Martyn is
shown leading his
troops at the Battle
of Chacabuco,
Chile, 1817.
By1824:
“Free
States”:
Uruguay,
Paraguay,
Colombia,
Venezuela,
Argentina,
Bolivia
Chile
• Latin America in the First Half of the
Nineteenth Century
Nation Building
• The Difficulties of Nation Building (1830-187)
– Consequences of Wars for independence
• Loss of population, property and livestock
• Boundary disputes
• Poor transportation and communication challenged
unity and fostered regionalism
• European & American intervention
• Monroe Doctrine, 1823
Political Obstacles
• Different types of leadership
• Caudillos (leaders) of New Republics
– National Caudillos
• Autocrats: Supported elites and controlled state
revenues, favored centralized power and unity of
states
– worked against the majority’s interests
– Sometimes were modernizers in that they build
infrastructure, canal, ports, schools,
Economic Patterns
• Great Britain & America dominated Latin
American economy
– Raw materials & new Markets
• Incredible disparity of wealth
– Landed elite
• Land basis of wealth, social prestige, political power
• Controlled government, courts
• Maintained system of debt peonage
Foreign Investments
• 1870 – 1913 foreign investments boomed
– British investment:
• Growth from 85 to 757 million pound, 2/3 of all foreign
investments
– Railroads
– Mining
– Public utilities
• Slavery technically abolished in 1888
• Most people remained subservient and
dependent on elite and foreigners
Catholic Church
• Enormous land holdings-Exercised great
power
• Clerics took position in new governments
following independence
– Considerable influence
• Conflict of church & state
– Liberals wanted to curtail powers of church
– Conservatives hoped to maintain privileges and
power of church
Working Class
• Growth of labor unions
– Radical unions advocated use of the general strike
as an instrument for change
• Lack of suffrage
• Political Change after 1870
– Landed Elite
• Controlled government
• produced constitutions similar to those of the US and
Europe
• limited suffrage maintained concentration of power
Dictators
• Some landowners made use of dictators to
maintain the interests of the ruling elite.
– Porfirio Diaz , Mexico, Ruled 1876 – 1910,
• established a conservative, centralized government
– support of the army, foreign capitalists, large landowners,
and the catholic church.
• Consequences of Dictatorship:
– real wages of working class declined,
– 95% of rural population owned no land,
– 1000 families owned the land.
Economy after 1870
• Growth of economy
– Modernization & wealth a veneer
– Enjoyed by the wealthy minority
• Rural elites dominated workers
– Indians impoverished
– Debt servitude
– Dependent on foreigners
Emiliano Zapata
•Liberal landowner
Francisco Madero,
forced Diaz from
power
•Madera’s
ineffectiveness to
carry out sufficient
reform triggered a
demand for agrarian
reform led by Zapata
© Snark/Art Resource, NY
Mexican Revolution, 1910
• He aroused the revolutionary impulse of
landless
– Seized the haciendas (plantations) of the wealthy
• Impact of revolution
– destroyed the economy
– new constitution in 1917
United States Intervention
• United States emergence as a world power
– interfered into the economies of Latin America
• The Spanish American War 1898
– Platt Amendment (1901) Cuba
– Foraker Act (1900) Puerto Rico
• Between 1898 – 1934
– sent military forces to Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala,
Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Columbia, Haiti,
and the Dominica Republic
Imperialists
• Take up the White Man's burden-Send forth the best ye breed-Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild-Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child..."
• Rudyard Kipling - McClure's Magazine 12 (Feb. 1899).
Zionsim
Palestine in 1900