Spanish colonization of the Americas
The Spanish colonization of the Americas began in 1493 on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola after the initial 1492 voyage of Genoese mariner Christopher Columbus under license from Queen Isabella I of Castile. These overseas territories of the Spanish Empire were under the jurisdiction of Crown of Castile until the last territory was lost in 1898. Spaniards saw the dense populations of Indigenous peoples as an important economic resource and the territory claimed as potentially producing great wealth for individual Spaniards and the crown. Religion played an important role in the Spanish conquest and incorporation of indigenous peoples, bringing them into the Catholic Church peacefully or by force. The crown created civil and religious structures to administer the vast territory. Spanish men and women settled in greatest numbers where there were dense indigenous populations and the existence of valuable resources for extraction.
The Spanish Empire claimed jurisdiction over the New World in the Caribbean and North and South America, with the exception of Brazil, ceded to Portugal by the Treaty of Tordesillas. Other European powers, including England, France, and the Dutch Republic, took possession of territories initially claimed by Spain. Although the overseas territories under the jurisdiction of the Spanish crown are now commonly called "colonies" the term was not used until the second half of 18th century. The process of Spanish settlement, now called "colonization" and the "colonial era" are terms contested by scholars of Latin America and more generally.
It is estimated that during the period 1492–1832, a total of 1.86 million Spaniards settled in the Americas, and a further 3.5 million immigrated during the post-independence era ; the estimate is 250,000 in the 16th century and most during the 18th century, as immigration was encouraged by the new Bourbon dynasty. The indigenous population plummeted by an estimated 80% in the first century and a half following Columbus's voyages, primarily through the spread of infectious diseases. Practices of forced labor and slavery for resource extraction, and forced resettlement in new villages and later missions were implemented. Alarmed by the precipitous fall in indigenous populations and reports of settlers' exploitation of their labor, the crown put in place laws to protect their newly converted indigenous vassals. Europeans imported enslaved Africans to the early Caribbean settlements to replace indigenous labor and enslaved and free Africans were part of colonial-era populations. A mixed-race casta population came into being during the period of Spanish rule.
In the early 19th century, the Spanish American wars of independence resulted in the secession of most of Spanish America and the establishment of independent nations. Continuing under crown rule were Cuba and Puerto Rico, along with the Philippines, which were all lost to the United States in 1898, following the Spanish–American War, ending its rule in the Americas.
Imperial expansion
The expansion of Spain's territory took place under the Catholic Monarchs Isabella I of Castile and her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon, whose marriage marked the beginning of Spanish power beyond the Iberian Peninsula. They pursued a policy of joint rule of their kingdoms and created the initial stage of a single Spanish monarchy, completed under the eighteenth-century Bourbon monarchs. The first expansion of territory was the conquest of the Muslim Emirate of Granada on 1 January 1492, the culmination of the Christian Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula, held by the Muslims since 711. On 31 March 1492, the Catholic Monarchs ordered the expulsion of the Jews in Spain who refused to convert to Christianity. Having departed from the port of Palos de la Frontera on 3 August 1492, on 12 October 1492, Genoese mariner Christopher Columbus and his crew made landfall in the Western Hemisphere, and in 1493 permanent Spanish settlement of the Americas began.Castile and Aragon were ruled jointly by their respective monarchs, but they remained separate kingdoms. When the Catholic Monarchs gave official approval for the plans for Columbus's voyage to reach "the Indies" by sailing West, the funding came from the queen of Castile. The profits from Spanish expedition flowed to Castile. The Kingdom of Portugal authorized a series of voyages down the coast of Africa and when they rounded the southern tip, were able to sail to India and further east. Spain sought similar wealth, and authorized Columbus's voyage sailing west. Once the Spanish settlement in the Caribbean occurred, Spain and Portugal formalized a division of the world between them in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. The deeply pious Isabella saw the expansion of Spain's sovereignty inextricably paired with the evangelization of non-Christian peoples, the so-called "spiritual conquest" with the military conquest. Pope Alexander VI in a 4 May 1493 papal decree, Inter caetera, divided rights to lands in the Western Hemisphere between Spain and Portugal on the proviso that they spread Christianity. These formal arrangements between Spain and Portugal and the pope were ignored by other European powers, with the French, the English, and the Dutch seizing territory in the Caribbean and in North America claimed by Spain but not effectively settled. Portugal's claim to part of South America under the Treaty of Tordesillas resulted in the creation of Portuguese colony of Brazil. Although during the rule of Charles V, the Spanish Empire was the first to be called "The empire on which the sun never sets", under Philip II the permanent colonization of the Philippine Islands made it demonstrably true.
General principles of expansion
The Spanish expansion has sometimes been succinctly summed up as being motivated by "gold, glory, God", that is, the search for material wealth, the enhancement of the conquerors' and the crown's position, and the expansion of Christianity to the exclusion of other religious traditions. In the extension of Spanish sovereignty to its overseas territories, authority for expeditions of discovery, conquest, and settlement resided in the monarchy. Expeditions required authorization by the crown, which laid out the terms of such expedition. Virtually all expeditions after the Columbus voyages, which were funded by the crown of Castile, were done at the expense of the leader of the expedition and its participants. Although often the participants, conquistadors, are now termed "soldiers", they were not paid soldiers in ranks of an army, but rather soldiers of fortune, who joined an expedition with the expectation of profiting from it. The leader of an expedition, the adelantado was a senior with material wealth and standing who could persuade the crown to issue him a license for an expedition. He also had to attract participants to the expedition who staked their own lives and meager fortunes on the expectation of the expedition's success. The leader of the expedition pledged the larger share of capital to the enterprise, which in many ways functioned as a commercial firm. Upon the success of the expedition, the spoils of war were divvied up in proportion to the amount a participant initially staked, with the leader receiving the largest share. Participants supplied their own armor and weapons, and those who had a horse received two shares, one for himself, the second recognizing the value of the horse as a machine of war. For the conquest era, the names of two Spaniards are popularly known because they led the conquests of two indigenous empires, Hernán Cortés, leader of the expedition involved in the conquest of the Aztec Empire, and Francisco Pizarro, leader of the conquest of the Inca in Peru. Spanish conquerors took advantage of indigenous rivalries to forge alliances with groups seeing an advantage for their own goals. This is most clearly seen in the conquest of the Aztec Empire with the alliance of the Nahua city-state of Tlaxcala against the Aztec Empire resulting in lasting benefits to themselves and their descendants.Caribbean islands and the Spanish Main
Patterns of the first Spanish settlements in the Caribbean were to endure there and had a lasting impact on the Spanish Empire. Until his dying day, Columbus was convinced that he had reached Asia, the Indies. From that misperception the Spanish called the indigenous peoples of the Americas, "Indians", lumping a multiplicity of civilizations, groups, and individuals into a single category. The Spanish royal government called its overseas possessions "The Indies" until its empire dissolved in the nineteenth century.In the Caribbean, because there was no integrated indigenous civilization such as found in Mexico and Peru, there was no large-scale Spanish conquest of indigenous peoples, but there was indigenous resistance to Spanish colonization. Columbus made four voyages to the West Indies as the monarchs granted Columbus vast powers of governance over this unknown part of the world. The crown of Castile financed more of his trans-Atlantic journeys, a pattern they would not repeat elsewhere. Effective Spanish settlement began in 1493, when Columbus brought livestock, seeds, agricultural equipment. The first settlement of La Navidad, a crude fort built on his first voyage in 1492, had been abandoned by the time he returned in 1493. He then founded the settlement of La Isabela on the island they named Hispaniola.
File:De Bry 1c.JPG|thumb|Theodor de Bry illustration depicting Spanish atrocities during the conquest of Hispaniola. Las Casas wrote about the cruelty of Spanish settlers: "They erected certain Gibbets, large, but low made, so that their feet almost reached the ground, every one of which was so ordered as to bear Thirteen Persons in Honour and Reverence of our Redeemer and his Twelve Apostles, under which they made a Fire to burn them to Ashes whilst hanging on them"
Spanish explorations of other islands in the Caribbean and what turned out to be the mainland of South and Central America occupied them for over two decades. Columbus had promised the crown that the region he now controlled held a huge treasure in the form of gold and spices. Spanish settlers initially found relatively dense populations of indigenous peoples, who were agriculturalists living in villages ruled by leaders not part of a larger integrated political system. The Spanish saw these populations as a source of labor, there for their exploitation, to supply their own settlements with foodstuffs, but more importantly for the Spanish, to extract mineral wealth or produce another valuable commodity for Spanish enrichment. The labor of dense populations of Taínos were allocated as grants to Spanish settlers in an institution known as the encomienda, where particular indigenous settlements were awarded to individual Spaniards. There was surface gold found in early islands, and holders of encomiendas put the indigenous to work panning for it. For all practical purposes, this was slavery.
Queen Isabel put an end to formal slavery, declaring the indigenous to be vassals of the crown, but Spaniards' exploitation of indigenous labor continued. The Taíno population on Hispaniola went from hundreds of thousands or millions – the estimates by scholars vary widely – but in the mid-1490s, they were practically wiped out. Disease and overwork, disruption of family life and the agricultural cycle rapidly decimated the indigenous population. From the Spanish viewpoint, their source of labor and viability of their own settlements was at risk. After the collapse of the Taino population of Hispaniola, Spaniards began raiding indigenous settlements on nearby islands, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica, to enslave those populations, replicating the demographic catastrophe there as well. The names of two indigenous leaders who rebelled against Spanish colonization, Enriquillo and Hatuey in the Dominican Republic, have become important.
Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos denounced Spanish cruelty and abuse in a sermon in 1511, which comes down to us in the writings of Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas. In 1542, Las Casas wrote a damning account of this demographic catastrophe, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. It was translated quickly to English and became the basis for the anti-Spanish writings, collectively known as the Black Legend. Las Casas spent his long life attempting to defend the indigenous populations and to enlist the Spanish crown in establishing protections for them, seen most prominently in the enactment of the New Laws of 1542, restricting Spaniards' inheritance of encomiendas.
The first mainland explorations by Spaniards were followed by a phase of inland expeditions and conquest. In 1500 the city of Nueva Cádiz was founded on the island of Cubagua, Venezuela, followed by the founding of Santa Cruz by Alonso de Ojeda in the present-day Guajira Peninsula. Cumaná in Venezuela was the first permanent settlement founded by Europeans in the mainland Americas, in 1501 by Franciscan friars, but due to successful attacks by the indigenous people, it had to be refounded several times, until Diego Hernández de Serpa's foundation in 1569. The Spanish founded San Sebastián de Uraba in 1509 but abandoned it within the year. There is indirect evidence that the first permanent Spanish mainland settlement established in the Americas was Santa María la Antigua del Darién.
Spaniards spent over 25 years in the Caribbean where their initial high hopes of dazzling wealth gave way to continuing exploitation of disappearing indigenous populations, exhaustion of local gold mines, initiation of cane sugar cultivation as an export product, and forced migration of enslaved Africans as a labor force. Spaniards continued to expand their presence in the circum-Caribbean region with expeditions. One was by Francisco Hernández de Córdoba in 1517, another by Juan de Grijalva in 1518, which brought promising news of possibilities there.
Even by the mid-1510s, the western Caribbean was largely unexplored by Spaniards. A well-connected settler in Cuba, Hernán Cortés received authorization in 1519 by the governor of Cuba to form an expedition of exploration-only to this far western region. That expedition was to make world history. The Caribbean islands became less central to Spain's overseas colonization, but remained important strategically and economically, especially the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola. Smaller islands claimed by Spain were lost to the English and the Dutch, with France taking half of Hispaniola and establishing the sugar-producing colony of St-Domingue, as well as also taking other islands.