Americas
Overview
Statewide Dual Credit Modern World History: Unit 1, Lesson 4
Discussion of the impact of European colonization in the Americas, including the Columbian Exchange and the encomienda system. It highlights the negative effects on indigenous populations, such as forced labor and disease.
The arrival of the Europeans in the New World led not only to the exchange of crops and commodities but also the imposition of European economics, habits and values on indigenous populations. Enslaved Africans were also imported to many regions of the Americas, which led to the creation of creole cultures. Whereas Spain created colonial societies on the ruins of the Aztec Empire (1428–1521) and the Maya (1511–1697), Portuguese settlers moved into areas that comprise much of modern-day Brazil. Profiting from forced labor, both Portugal and Spain shipped large quantities of gold and silver back to Europe. Exposure to diseases brought from Europe, coupled with overwork in the encomienda system, caused massive population declines among indigenous peoples over the course of the 16th and 17th centuries.
In North America, European exploration led to the establishment of settler colonialism, the appropriation of Native American/First Nations lands and eventually, the decimation, marginalization and displacement of Native Americans. During the colonial period (from the early 17th century until the formation of the United States), Spain, France, England, the Netherlands and Russia sent out expeditions to claim North American territory.
Spotlight On | ENCOMIENDA SYSTEM
The arrival of the Europeans in the New World resulted in an exchange of goods, ideas and people that scholars later dubbed the “Columbian Exchange.” Beginning in the 16th century, Spanish conquistadores expanded into the Caribbean, Mexico and Peru. Following conquest, colonial officials incorporated these areas into the Spanish Empire. Spanish soldiers, priests and administrators forced Iberian Catholic economic institutions, habits and values upon indigenous people. During this time, crown lawyers legally defined the status of Native Americans within the empire to more effectively tax them. To help administer its New World territory, the Spanish crown entrusted conquistadores and other officials with grants of land and Native American slaves known as encomiendas (from the Spanish word encomendar - “to entrust”). The recipients of such grants, the encomenderos, would in turn, collect tribute in the form of gold, kind, or forced labor from the Native Americans who lived on the allotted land. Spanish officials demanded that landholders provide military protection to their Native American laborers and make provisions to convert them to Catholicism. However, most encomenderos claimed the land they occupied without fulfilling their obligations to either protect or convert their Indian slaves.
Developed in part to support the needs of the early mining industry, the encomienda system allowed for the rapid development of areas like the Potosi silver mines in Bolivia. By the late 17th century, the encomienda system was increasingly seen as ineffective and brutal, and Spanish officials sought reforms in labor systems to address these issues. They instead promoted the hacienda system that resembled early modern European style feudalism. Under the terms of the hacienda system, landowners kept peasants in debt so that they could neither leave the land they were working on nor the landowner who owned the hacienda.