The Spanish Colonies

Hello, I'm Alan Taylor.

I'm a professor of history at the University of Virginia,

and I have written books on Colonial America,

particularly a book called American Colonies and also in the

American Revolution and a sequel known as American Revolutions.

And today I'll be speaking about the regions of colonial America.

I want to begin by setting the context of North America.

The Europeans who arrived during the 15th,

16th and 17th centuries were not the first colonists.

They were coming to a continent well inhabited by native peoples.

Those native peoples were very diverse.

They spoke many different languages.

They were divided into many different nations.

Those nations did not all cooperate with one another.

They did not think of themselves as one people.

They certainly didn't call themselves Indians.

That's something that the Europeans introduced.

Native peoples always had other native peoples as allies and trading partners,

but they also had enemies.

And so this provided opportunities for Europeans coming to the Americas to play,

divide and conquer.

Europeans were also bringing with them unwittingly

microbes that conveyed diseases, diseases that were new to native peoples.

And so there's quite a one sided exchange of these microbes

in that they would destroy many native peoples,

but not all native peoples.

So it's important to bear in mind that throughout the colonial period,

most of North America remained in the possession of these native peoples,

and for an empire to prosper,

that empire had to develop allies and trading partners

and recruit converts to their form of Christianity.

And they had to do so among the native peoples.

An empire that was more successful in building these networks with native peoples

would be an empire that could compete successfully

with the other empires.

Now, the first of those empires to come to North America in a big way

were the Spanish,

and the Spanish began in the West Indies, an arc of islands down in the Caribbean Sea.

Of course, Columbus had led the way,

but he led the way for what will become a wave of Spanish colonists.

Initially, they are coming, looking for very valuable minerals,

particularly gold and silver,

or they're trying to find some passage through the Americas

that will get them to the trade riches of Asia.

They never found that passage through the continent,

but what they did find was many native peoples

and those native peoples often revealed sources of the

gold and silver that the Spanish were looking for.

But the native population started to collapse in the places

where the Spanish first arrived because of these diseases,

and also because they were exploited by the Spanish,

who used them as tributaries or turn them into slaves.

As the population

of native peoples in these larger islands of the Caribbean

declined,

the Spanish began to replace them with enslaved people brought from Africa,

or the Spanish would start to raid the

mainland of South and Central and North America,

looking for more native peoples to turn into slaves.

In the course of these raiding expeditions, the Spanish learned about

very powerful and rich

native empires in the interior

in particular the Aztecs

of central Mexico,

who are rich in the gold and silver that the Spanish wanted.

And during the early 16th century, the Spanish were able to conquer

the Aztecs

with the help of other native peoples

as their allies.

These were native allies who were trying to overthrow the Aztecs,

but who do not yet realise that Spanish rule would be even harder on them.

So the Spanish established in Mexico, a very rich colony,

and many Spanish people came to colonise.

Most of the Spanish who did come were single men,

and they took as wives, native peoples.

And so there emerges by the 18th century, in other words, the 17 hundreds.

By the 18th century,

there emerged a mixed population known as mestizos, who come to be a majority

of the population in Mexico by the end of the 18th century.

Now Mexico is a very valuable colony to the Spanish,

and it's a very complex

colony

in terms of race

and class

and ethnicity.

It is a colony that's dedicated to the Catholic Church,

so the Spanish were very clear that they were there not just to enrich themselves,

but also to convert the native peoples.

As the Spanish expanded northward, they failed to find

a gold and silver they were looking for in places like

Florida

and Texas

and New Mexico

and Arizona and eventually California.

But in all of these places, the Spanish

found colonies

but their colonies that are economically

marginal.

They're tough places to live

as a columnist

because there aren't opportunities

to prosper

except in a small way by founding ranches

and farms,

and so very few Hispanic people would move to

these marginal colonies to the north of Mexico.

And so instead, the Spanish tried to turn native peoples into Hispanics

through missions.

Missions were run by Franciscan priests,

and their goal was to try to convert native peoples to the Catholic faith

and also to the Spanish way of life.

And so there is a remarkable series of these missions,

extending from California through New Mexico and Texas

to Florida.

Now, native peoples who lived in the vicinity of the Spanish

often figured that it was better to make their peace with

the Spanish and to try to derive some sort of economic benefit

and perhaps supernatural benefit

from allying with the Spanish and their priests.

But

further a field

there were native peoples who resisted his missions and tried to prey

upon them by raiding them to take livestock and to take captives.

And so the Spanish tended over time to develop alliances

with the native peoples in and around the missions.

And but by doing so,

they made enemies of the native peoples living in the hinterland.

So, for example, in Arizona and New Mexico,

the Spanish allied with the Pueblo and Pima and

Papago peoples who were willing to join these missions.

And they waged wars against the Navajo and Apache and Ute peoples,

living in the mountains and deserts around the Spanish

small colonies to the north.

In a similar story played out

over in Florida,

where the Apalachee and Diwali peoples and other T.

McEwan's would affiliate with the Spanish

as allies

to these missions

and they would fight against the Moscow G and Yamase peoples living to the North.

Now, by the 18th century,

these wars start to go against the Spanish and their native allies

because the native peoples who are opposed to

the Spanish are finding new trade partners,

French

and British trade partners willing to trade guns with them,

ending the Spanish monopoly over firearms.

And so natives such as the Apaches and the Command

Cheese and the Muskogee in People's all become better armed

than the Spanish and their native allies.

And as a consequence,

the native peoples allied with French and British traders

are able to destroy most of the missions in Florida

and to damage those in New Mexico

and Texas.

As we come into the 18th century. We see that trade

is becoming the primary way by which Europeans can successfully

built an empire in North America

by recruiting some native peoples as allies

and to turn them against the native allies

of other empires

that were lagging in trade.

And the French and the British are

more successful because they can produce trade goods

of higher quality

and at lower prices

than could the Spanish.

The British and the French are also much more willing to engage in the gun trade,

to provide guns and ammunition to native peoples

so that they could hunt and wage war with these weapons

than were the Spanish

who too long clung to their efforts to maintain a monopoly over firearms

in their part of the Americas.

So that when we get into the 18th century,

the French and the British will be able to

build empires at the expense of the Spanish,

in large part because their economies were superior to the Spanish

in the production of manufactured goods,

especially guns

and ammunition and other things desired by native peoples.