The Spanish colonization of the Americas began in 1493 on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic) 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 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 (1850–1950); the estimate is 250,000 in the 16th century and most during the 18th century, as immigration was encouraged by the new Bourbon dynasty.[6] 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.[7] 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.
1. 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 Monarch 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.[9] 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.[10] 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.
2. 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 (entradas) of discovery, conquest, and settlement resided in the monarchy.[11] 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.[12][13] 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.
3.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.[14] 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" (indios), 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.
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