Chapter 25

NEW WORLDS: THE AMERICAS AND OCEANIA

  1. Colliding worlds
  2. The Spanish Caribbean
  3. Indigenous peoples were the Taino
  4. Lived in small villages under authority of chiefs
  5. Showed little resistance to European visitors
  6. Columbus built the fort of Santo Domingo, capital of the Spanish Caribbean
  7. Taino conscripted to mine gold
  8. Encomiendas: land grants to Spanish settlers with total control over local people
  9. Brutal abuses plus smallpox brought decline of Taino populations
  10. The conquest of Mexico and Peru
  11. Hernan Cortés
  12. Aztec and Inca societies wealthier, more complex than Caribbean societies
  13. With 450 men, Cortés conquered the Aztec empire, 1519-1521
  14. Tribal resentment against the Mexica helped Cortés
  15. Epidemic disease (smallpox) also aided Spanish efforts
  16. Francisco Pizarro
  17. Led a small band of men and toppled the Inca empire, 1532-1533
  18. Internal problems and smallpox aided Pizarro's efforts
  19. By 1540 Spanish forces controlled all the former Inca empire
  20. Iberian empires in the Americas
  21. Spanish colonial administration formalized by 1570
  22. Administrative centers in Mexico and Peru governed by viceroys
  23. Viceroys reviewed by audiencias, courts appointed by the king
  24. Viceroys had sweeping powers within jurisdictions
  25. Portuguese Brazil: given to Portugal by Treaty of Tordesillas
  26. Portuguese king granted Brazil to nobles, with a governor to oversee
  27. Sugar plantations by mid-sixteenth century
  28. Colonial American society
  29. European-style society in cities, indigenous culture persisted in rural areas
  30. More exploitation of New World than settlement
  31. Still, many Iberian migrants settled in the Americas, 1500-1800
  32. Settler colonies in North America
  33. Foundation of colonies on east coast, exploration of west coast
  34. France and England came seeking fur, fish, trade routes in the early seventeenth century
  35. Settlements suffered isolation, food shortages
  36. Colonial government different from Iberian colonies
  37. North American colonies controlled by private investors with little royal backing
  38. Royal authority and royal governors, but also institutions of self-government
  39. Relations with indigenous peoples
  40. Settlers' farms interrupted the migrations of indigenous peoples
  41. Settlers seized lands, then justified with treaties
  42. Natives retaliated with raids on farms and villages
  43. Attacks on European communities brought reprisals from settlers
  44. Between 1500 and 1800, native population of North America dropped 90 percent
  45. Colonial society in the Americas
  46. The formation of multicultural societies
  47. In Spanish and Portuguese settlements, mestizo societies emerged
  48. Peoples of varied ancestry lived together under European rule
  49. Mestizo: the children of Spanish and Portuguese men and native women
  50. Society of Brazil more thoroughly mixed: mestizos, mulattoes, zambos
  51. Typically the social (and racial) hierarchy in Iberian colonies was as follows:
  52. Whites (peninsulares and criollos) owned the land and held the power
  53. Mixed races (mestizos and zambos) performed much of the manual labor
  54. Africans and natives were at the bottom
  55. North American societies
  56. Greater gender balance among settlers allowed marriage within their own groups
  57. Relationships of French traders and native women generated some métis
  58. English disdainful of interracial marriages
  59. Cultural borrowing: plants, crops, deerskin clothes
  60. Mining and agriculture in the Spanish empire
  61. Silver more plentiful than gold, the basis of Spanish New World wealth
  62. Conquistadores melted Aztec and Inca gold artifacts into ingots
  63. Two major sites of silver mining: Zacatecas (Mexico) and Potosi (Peru)
  64. The global significance of silver
  65. One-fifth of all silver mined went to royal Spanish treasury (the quinto)
  66. Paid for Spanish military and bureaucracy
  67. Passed on to European and then to Asian markets for luxury trade goods
  68. Large private estates, or haciendas, were the basis of Spanish American production
  69. Produced foodstuffs for local production
  70. Abusive encomienda system replaced by the repartimiento system
  71. Repartimiento system replaced by free laborers by the mid-seventeenth century
  72. Resistance to Spanish rule by indigenous people
  73. Various forms of resistance: rebellion, indolence, retreat
  74. Difficult for natives to register complaints: Poma de Ayala's attempt
  75. Sugar and slavery in Portuguese Brazil
  76. The Portuguese empire in Brazil dependent on sugar production
  77. Colonial Brazilian life revolved around the sugar mill, or engenho
  78. Engenho combined agricultural and industrial enterprises
  79. Sugar planters became the landed nobility
  80. Growth of slavery in Brazil
  81. Native peoples of Brazil were not cultivators; they resisted farm labor
  82. Smallpox and measles reduced indigenous population
  83. Imported African slaves for cane and sugar production after 1530
  84. High death rate and low birth rate fed constant demand for more slaves
  85. Roughly, every ton of sugar cost one human life
  86. Fur traders and settlers in North America
  87. The fur trade was very profitable
  88. Native peoples trapped for and traded with Europeans
  89. Impact of the fur trade
  90. Environmental impact
  91. Conflicts among natives competing for resources
  92. European settler-cultivators posed more serious threat to native societies
  93. Cultivation of cash crops--tobacco, rice, indigo, and later, cotton
  94. Indentured labor flocked to North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
  95. African slaves replaced indentured servants in the late seventeenth century
  96. Slave labor not yet prominent in North America (lack of labor-intensive crops)
  97. New England merchants participated in slave trade, distillation of rum
  98. Christianity and native religions in the Americas
  99. Spanish missionaries introduced Catholicism
  100. Mission schools and churches established
  101. Some missionaries recorded the languages and traditions of native peoples
  102. Native religions survived but the Catholic Church attracted many converts
  103. In 1531, the Virgin of Guadalupe became a national symbol
  104. French and English missions less successful
  105. North American populations not settled or captive
  106. English colonists had little interest in converting indigenous peoples
  107. French missionaries worked actively, but met only modest success

  III.        Europeans in the Pacific

  1. Australia and the larger world
  2. Dutch mariners explored west Australia in the seventeenth century
  3. No spices, no farmland
  4. Australia held little interest until the eighteenth century
  5. British captain James Cook explored east Australia in 1770
  6. In 1788, England established first settlement in Australia as a penal colony
  7. Free settlers outnumbered convicted criminal migrants after 1830s
  8. The Pacific Islands and the larger world
  9. Spanish voyages in the Pacific after Magellan
  10. Regular voyages from Acapulco to Manila on the trade winds
  11. Spanish mariners visited Pacific Islands; some interest in Guam and the Marianas
  12. Indigenous Chamorro population resisted but decimated by smallpox
  13. Impact on Pacific islanders of regular visitors and trade
  14. Occasional misunderstandings and skirmishes
  15. Whalers were regular visitors after the eighteenth century
  16. Missionaries, merchants, and planters followed