Summary

Summary of 410-412 reading.

The chapter talks about the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs and Incas in South America in the early 16th century. Within a century the Spaniards had already established a dozen major cities, impressive universities, hundreds of churches, missions and cathedrals, an elaborate administrative bureaucracy and network of regulated international commerce. The economic base of the colonial society was in agriculture and in solver and gold mining. Both cases required the forced labor of natives. A distinctive social order formed. At the top were the Spanish Settlers who were politically and economically dominant. They saw themselves as residents of a Spanish Kingdom, subject to Spanish monarch, yet separate requiring much self government. They "obeyed the rules of the crown, but didn't enforce them." Though the settlers themselves were a divided community. There were descendants of the original conquistadors. They were trying to protest their privileges against immigrant newcomers. There were spaniards that were born in the americas, creoles, and there were those born in Spain, peninsulares. Creoles resented the pretensions to superiority of those born in Spain. Landowning spaniards felt threatened by the growing wealth of commercial groups practicing less prestigious occupation. Spanish missionaries were were very concerned with how the natives were being treated. Something very distinctive of the colonies was the emerging of a mixed race population known as the mestizos. They were the product of union between native women and spanish men. Native women married into spanish households because they wanted the security from abuse for themselves and for their children. Men married the native women because the crown encouraged them to and because there were 7 men to one women. The mestizo population grew and eventually became the majority of the population. They were looked down upon by spaniards, but their usefulness as artisans, clerks, labor supervisors, and low level officials in church and state government, along with their growing population led to their recognition as a distinct social group. At the bottom of society were the native indians. They were subject to abuse, and exploitation and were the main source of labor. They were also required to pay tribute to Spanish overlords. Their empire and religion were destroyed by conquering Spaniards. Their numbers diminished and they began gravitating toward the lifestyle of their conquerers. They began speaking spanish, converted themselves to christianity and moved to urban areas to find work for wages. They also began eating beef and chicken, along with using plows and shovels as apposed to their native digging sticks. But some natives continued their originals ways. Natives markets operated regularly, corn and squash continued to be the core of their diet, and they continued their religion. Colonial Spanish America became a society of ethnic and cultural mixing and change.