Cities and Towns in the Americas

Spanish towns in America were generally based on an unvarying plan, laid down as early as 1523 and finalized in what is known as the Laws of the Indies. The plan, first used in the town of Santo Domingo on the island of Hispaniola (now occupied by Haiti and the Dominican Republic), is commonly referred to as a gridiron and may have its origin in many sources. The design called for a central square with a series of perfectly straight streets extending out in all directions and forming blocks with four-building lots. The gridiron form was not seen at that time in Spain or the rest of Europe, and its adoption in the New World is one of the legacies left by the Spanish.

In Santo Domingo, the soldiers who laid out the town were not concerned with creating a well-proportioned city, and instead possibly copied a military design with which they were familiar—that of the base of Santa Fe used by Isabella (1451–1504) and Ferdinand (1452–1516) during the siege of the Moorish stronghold of Granada in southern Spain. The design also had precursors in the ancient Greco-Roman world, and Spain may have been especially influenced by the layout of Roman cities that had been built on Spanish land. The gridiron design was also in line with the theories of Italian humanists whose work was becoming popular in Spain. Along with the gridiron design, the Laws of the Indies specified criteria in terms of terrain and climate to be observed when founding towns.

Government in Spanish America was in theory very centralized, and its major centers were towns and cities. All Spanish holdings in America were considered to be extensions of Spain itself, and most who were involved in colonial government were sent from Spain specifically for that purpose.

In Europe, the king of Spain created the Council of the Indies, which was to run all governmental affairs in the Americas. On the other side of the Atlantic, Spanish territories were divided between two viceroys—one in Mexico City (1535) and the other in Lima (1544). The viceroys were assisted by the main courts or audiencias, as well as the prelates of the Catholic Church. Below the viceroys were the governors and captain-generals, while towns and cities were run by municipal councils.

On the local level, this system was similar to Europe, with the difference that these were essentially islands of Spanish urban settlement in a countryside largely populated by Indian peasants living in a subsistence economy and supplying forced labor through the system known as the encomienda. Spanish towns were thus centers for government and for the domination of native rural populations, and with their European architecture, churches, and government buildings, they were the symbols and headquarters of Spanish culture and control. Urban growth in Spanish America was greatly stimulated by the discovery of rich resources of precious metals during the sixteenth century, and towns also became centers for international and regional trade.

All Spanish trade to the new world was monopolized by a few ports. Trade from Spain to America was channeled through the port of Seville and later Cadiz on the European side of the Atlantic. Trade was received at the ports of Veracruz for Mexico, and Cartagena in present-day Columbia and Portobelo in Panama for South America. All trading was heavily taxed, and though goods landed at certain ports, they would then be distributed to other parts of the colonies. Local merchants in Mexico City and Lima would play a significant role in this aspect of the trading process. Mining towns were also established throughout Mexico and South America, many of them to be abandoned when the mines ran dry.

The English method of establishing towns, cities, and a colonial economy was different from that of Spain. Though based on tradition and experiences in England, the construction of English-American towns and cities did not follow any predetermined plan. Furthermore, the failure to discover precious metals, along with the more decentralized English system of government, allowed England's colonial towns and cities to develop differently from those of Spanish America.

The English monarchs backed the founding of English colonies, but the colonies were much more autonomous than their Spanish counterparts. English settlers did not have large native cities, such as Cuzco or Mexico City, to occupy or rebuild, and the character of their towns varied with the nature of the colonies in which they were founded. New England towns provided for clusters of small farmers, while cities in the tobacco-growing lands of Virginia and Maryland were more oriented to trading.

Most English American cities were on or close to the coast, and the major ports were built around excellent natural harbors. The city of Boston, for example, was established by the Massachusetts Bay Company, a Puritan chartered company, in 1630 with a view to acting as the point of contact for trade and communication with the exterior. Built on a peninsula in a harbor, Boston became the capital and merchant center of a quickly growing colony; within fifteen years approximately twenty thousand colonists lived in and around Boston.

To the south, the Dutch colony of New Netherlands was captured by the British in 1664. The acquisition also brought with it the port of New Amsterdam, which was soon to be renamed New York and would continue under the English as one of the major trading locations in North America. In the American South, the best English port was Charlestown, now called Charleston. The city was established by the proprietors of the Carolina colony in 1690 and flourished as a port for agricultural products produced in what later became South Carolina.

By the eighteenth century, British America was home to some of the great cities of the Americas—Boston, New York, and Philadelphia—and they had began to compete in size and beauty with the leading cities of Spanish America. One notable difference remained, however. The cities of North America were much more likely to be lively centers of trade and artisanal industry than most of those in Spanish America. British American cities also enjoyed greater cultural and political freedom, and were better positioned to become dynamic centers for new patterns of trade and industry in the future.

see also Acapulco; Boston; Cartagena de Indias; Encomienda; Havana; Lima; Mexico City; New York; Potosí; Rio de Janeiro.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Croach, D., Garr, D. and Mundigo, A. Spanish City Planning in North America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982.

Harboy, J. Urban. "Cartography in Latin America during the Colonial Period." Latin American Research Review 18(3) (1983): 127-134.

Lockhart, J. and Swartz, S. Early Latin America: A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil Cambridge. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Markman, S. "Santa Cruz, Antigua, and the Spanish Colonial Architecture of Central America." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 15(1) (1956): 12-19.

Smith, R. "Colonial Towns of Spanish and Portugese America." Town Planning Issue, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 14(47) (1955): 3-12.