New Spain

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NEW SPAIN

The viceroyalty of New Spain included all of the territory claimed by Spain in North America and the Caribbean from the conquest of the Aztec Empire in the 1520s until the final assertion of Mexican independence in 1821. Although never fully settled or controlled by Spain, this area included the entire modern nation of Mexico, and Central America north of what is now Panama. New Spain also encompassed Florida and much of the western portion of what became the United States, including California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas.

colonial administration and society

In 1528 the creation of a high court, the audiencia, marked the first step in a long and ultimately incomplete effort to establish Spanish royal authority throughout the region, followed by the appointment of a viceroy in 1535 to oversee royal interests from the capital of Mexico City. Along with its southern counterpart, the viceroyalty of Peru, New Spain was subject to the legislation of the Council of the Indies, a body of from six to ten royal councilors in Seville overseeing the entirety of Spanish holdings in the Western Hemisphere. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Spanish administration of New Spain centered on the mining of silver, the defense of the colony from other European powers, and the evangelization and assimilation of Native American peoples into the Spanish colonial system.

In addition to the earlier, better-known waves of conquistadors and missionaries, New Spain attracted numerous colonists and bureaucrats eager to exploit the mineral wealth of the New World and the labor of its indigenous inhabitants, known in New Spain as indios. Early European conquistadors and settlers established the encomienda system, in which individual Spaniards received the right to collect labor or tribute or both from specific indio communities. In areas of intensive silver mining, such as Guanajuato and Zacatecas, a separate system of forced labor known as the repartimiento required indigenous communities to make a minimum number of laborers available for hire as miners.

Africans had been present in New Spain since the earliest expeditions of exploration and conquest, participating as both conquistadors and enslaved laborers and personal servants. Over the course of the colonial period, New Spanish elites brought in some 200,000 African slaves to supplement an indigenous labor force that had been drastically reduced through diseases like smallpox and yellow fever. While the majority of the enslaved African population in New Spain remained located near the Caribbean and Pacific coasts, individual Africans of both free and enslaved status spread throughout the viceroyalty, establishing themselves in larger cities and municipalities, serving in militias, settling among indigenous communities, and participating in the silver mining booms.

Over time, members of New Spanish society formed new ethnic identities as Spaniards intermarried with Native Americans and Africans. A subtle castelike system developed, with peninsulares (natives of Spain) at the top of the social hierarchy. Creoles (individuals of Spanish descent born in the Americas) also formed part of the colonial elite, while mestizos (people of both Spanish and indio ancestry) and castas (people of a variety of mixed European, African, and indigenous ethnicities) tended to be excluded from many powerful positions. Although each separate racial classification carried specific privileges and restrictions, all groups had access to the courts. Social mobility for people of mixed ethnic ancestry was limited but possible, as wealth and occupation also played an important role in social status.

During the eighteenth century the population of New Spain grew as mining and agricultural production increased. With the exception of remote missions and military outposts in New Mexico, Spanish settlement of the northern frontier portions of New Spain had remained slow throughout the colonial period. These territories were home to numerous indigenous peoples who often resisted evangelization and "pacification" efforts, and forced labor systems like the encomienda and repartimiento were never successfully introduced there. Europeans made little effort to colonize these regions until the late seventeenth century, when French explorer and fur trader René-Robert Cavelier de LaSalle landed at Matagorda Bay in 1685. Although his colony was destroyed by disease and warfare with nearby indigenous groups, Spanish authorities from nearby Coahuila responded to the threat of French expansion into New Spain by sending their own expedition into Texas. In the early 1700s the French set up an outpost at Nacogdoches in eastern Texas, and the Spanish responded in kind with a new mission settlement of their own in San Antonio. New missions also appeared in California during this time.

bourbon reforms

During the second half of the eighteenth century, New Spain underwent a series of reforms implemented by the Bourbon dynasty. Spanish monarchs and their administrators attempted to overhaul the machinery of empire and revitalize royal control over the empire's American colonies. These Bourbon Reforms included the curtailment of ecclesiastical power, reapportionment of colonial territory, restructuring of colonial military forces, and new efforts to increase royal revenues.

Roman Catholic clergy had participated in the colonization of New Spain from the very beginning, with secular clergy (not members of a particular religious order) serving Spanish colonists in towns and cities and regular clergy establishing convents in settled urban areas and missions on the cultural frontier among newly evangelized indigenous communities. By the mid-eighteenth century the church was increasingly coming into conflict with the interests of the crown, resulting in efforts on the part of the Bourbon monarchs to reduce the power and influence of the clergy, and especially of the regular ecclesiastical orders. The best-known royal action of this sort was the expulsion of the Jesuit order from Spanish territories in 1767. While this banishment was carried out swiftly and without much resistance in many areas of Spanish America, New Spain experienced a period of intense protest following the action.

In order to rule more efficiently their American empire, the Bourbons created a new jurisdictional system in the colonies. In 1776 King Charles III authorized the reorganization of the northern frontier region into a separate semiautonomous administrative district known as the Provincias Internas (interior provinces). Northern districts like Texas, New Mexico, and the Californias were all governed by a military commander based first in Arispe, Sonora, and later in Chihuahua. In 1786 Charles III divided the rest of New Spain into twelve intendancies (administrative districts governed by an intendant, or royal governor). These political reforms increased the visible presence of royal administrators in the everyday life of the inhabitants of New Spain and disrupted traditional social relations in many areas of the viceroyalty. Additionally, the fact that most of the officials appointed to oversee these many districts of colonial government were peninsular (born in Spain) rather than Creole led to increased resentment on the part of the colonial Creole elite.

The Bourbons also felt it necessary to restructure colonial militias as a safeguard against aggression from other European powers and internal social unrest. The crown's desire to cut expenses limited its ability to furnish peninsular units for protection and control of the colonies. Thus, permanent Creole regular army units, ejércitos fijos, were established, and colonial militias expanded to include free blacks, mulattos, Indians, and mestizos. These military reforms led to increased social status for both castas and Creoles in New Spain and eventually provided the basis for the armies of independence. This provided a new degree of social and ethnic mobility and a social base for future revolutionary leadership. In order to fund the formation of these new militias and pay for imperial expenses in Europe, the Bourbons intensified tax collection efforts. Ultimately, their reforms disrupted traditional social relations within the colonial system and contributed to favorable conditions for independence movements.

relations with the united states

After the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), Spain was forced to cede Florida to Britain but received the massive Louisiana Territory from France in return. In the interim, between 1763 and the start of the American Revolution, settlers from British colonies in North America began moving southward into Florida and westward into Louisiana. During this period Spain gave Euro-American merchants the right of deposit in New Orleans, allowing them to use the port for their trade goods. In 1779 Spain joined France in supporting the American Revolution against Britain, and the Treaty of Paris on 3 September 1783 returned Florida to the Spanish Empire. Spanish authorities, concerned about the growing influence of Euro-American traders in Louisiana, attempted to close the Lower Mississippi River valley to U.S. trade from 1784 to 1788 and imposed tariffs on American imports and exports through New Orleans from 1788 to 1795. After the United States and Spain signed the Treaty of San Lorenzo (Pinckney's Treaty) in 1795, the Spanish governor of West Florida required high duties from Americans shipping goods via the Mobile River. Euro-Americans living in the borderlands also resented Spain's failure to resolve disputed land claims in the area, and they accused Spanish authorities of instigating Indian attacks. Although these actions created resentment toward the Spanish among Euro-Americans, settlers and traders from the United States continued to move into Spanish-controlled territory during the last years of the eighteenth century.

With the increased Euro-American settlement in Spanish territory and the increased tensions resulting from Spanish trade and land policies, Euro-American interest in New Spain took on a new form after the turn of the nineteenth century. As a result of the low population density in the northern regions of New Spain, Spanish officials were unable to maintain a regular schedule of border patrols. Spain's North American holdings, particularly the Floridas, seemed to lack enough troops and loyal subjects to repel independent, privately led American invasions, or filibusters. A group of businessmen in New Orleans organized themselves into the Mexico Society with the aim of eventually annexing northern portions of New Spain to the United States. From 1804 to 1807 Aaron Burr (vice president from January 1802–March 1805), disgruntled with his lack of political success in the East, conspired to form a separate nation out of portions of northern New Spain and the newly acquired Louisiana Territory of the western United States. His attempt failed from lack of support and betrayal by a co-conspirator, General James Wilkinson, but other filibustering expeditions soon followed.

mexican independence

After Napoleon invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 1808, a crisis of political legitimacy occurred throughout Spanish America. In 1810 a parish priest, Miguel Hidalgo, initiated the independence struggle in New Spain by raising a force of peasant soldiers to wrest control of the viceroyalty from peninsular Spaniards. Thousands of indios, castas, and even Creoles joined the insurrection, which experienced sporadic success during the subsequent decade. After initial large-scale battles including tens of thousands of rebels, the independence struggle settled into bitter guerrilla warfare in which individuals often changed their loyalties midstream. This chaotic political atmosphere attracted further filibustering expeditions from the United States and the Louisiana Territory as enterprising and idealistic individuals attempted to take advantage of Spain's predicament and capture Texas.

As Mexico's war for independence drew toward its close, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams signed the Transcontinental Treaty on 22 February 1819, fixing the boundary between the United States and New Spain. The treaty surrendered American claims to Texas but arranged for the United States to acquire Florida in 1821. On 24 February 1821 former royalist commander Agustin Iturbide, a Creole, joined forces with the Mexican insurgents and proclaimed the independent empire of Mexico. Iturbide's empire only lasted two years before succumbing to proponents of a republic, but 1821 marked the end of over three hundred years of Spanish dominion in North America. The new Mexican republic continued to claim jurisdiction over the former territory of New Spain, including Texas, but the border between the two new nations would remain porous for years to come.