The Encomenderos of New Spain, 1521-1555

The Encomenderos of New Spain, 1521-1555 PDF Author: Robert Himmerich y Valencia
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292731086
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
While the Spanish conquistadors have been stereotyped as rapacious treasure seekers, many firstcomers to the New World realized that its greatest wealth lay in the native populations whose labor could be harnessed to build a new Spain. Hence, the early arrivals in Mexico sought encomiendas—"a grant of the Indians of a prescribed indigenous polity, who were to provide the grantee (the encomendero) tribute in the form of commoditiesand service in return for protection and religious instruction." This study profiles the 506 known encomenderos in New Spain (present-day Mexico) during the years 1521-1555, using their life histories to chart the rise, florescence, and decline of the encomienda system. The first part draws general conclusions about the actual workings of the encomienda system. The second part provides concise biographies of the encomenderos themselves.

The Encomenderos of New Spain, 1521-1555

The Encomenderos of New Spain, 1521-1555 PDF Author: Robert Himmerich y Valencia
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292731086
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
While the Spanish conquistadors have been stereotyped as rapacious treasure seekers, many firstcomers to the New World realized that its greatest wealth lay in the native populations whose labor could be harnessed to build a new Spain. Hence, the early arrivals in Mexico sought encomiendas—"a grant of the Indians of a prescribed indigenous polity, who were to provide the grantee (the encomendero) tribute in the form of commoditiesand service in return for protection and religious instruction." This study profiles the 506 known encomenderos in New Spain (present-day Mexico) during the years 1521-1555, using their life histories to chart the rise, florescence, and decline of the encomienda system. The first part draws general conclusions about the actual workings of the encomienda system. The second part provides concise biographies of the encomenderos themselves.

The Encomenderos of New Spain, 1521-1555

The Encomenderos of New Spain, 1521-1555 PDF Author: Robert Theron Himmerich
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Encomiendas (Latin America)
Languages : en
Pages : 636

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Book Description


Moctezuma's Children

Moctezuma's Children PDF Author: Donald E. Chipman
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292782640
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Though the Aztec Empire fell to Spain in 1521, three principal heirs of the last emperor, Moctezuma II, survived the conquest and were later acknowledged by the Spanish victors as reyes naturales (natural kings or monarchs) who possessed certain inalienable rights as Indian royalty. For their part, the descendants of Moctezuma II used Spanish law and customs to maintain and enhance their status throughout the colonial period, achieving titles of knighthood and nobility in Mexico and Spain. So respected were they that a Moctezuma descendant by marriage became Viceroy of New Spain (colonial Mexico's highest governmental office) in 1696. This authoritative history follows the fortunes of the principal heirs of Moctezuma II across nearly two centuries. Drawing on extensive research in both Mexican and Spanish archives, Donald E. Chipman shows how daughters Isabel and Mariana and son Pedro and their offspring used lawsuits, strategic marriages, and political maneuvers and alliances to gain pensions, rights of entailment, admission to military orders, and titles of nobility from the Spanish government. Chipman also discusses how the Moctezuma family history illuminates several larger issues in colonial Latin American history, including women's status and opportunities and trans-Atlantic relations between Spain and its New World colonies.

Tree of Hate

Tree of Hate PDF Author: Philip Wayne Powell
Publisher: UNM Press
ISBN: 082634576X
Category : Black Legend (Spanish history)
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
This work is an exploration of 'the Black Legend', the popular myth that colonial Spain and her military religious agents were brutal and unrelenting in their conquest of the Americas.

From Colony to Nationhood in Mexico

From Colony to Nationhood in Mexico PDF Author: Sean F. McEnroe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139536338
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
In an age of revolution, Mexico's creole leaders held aloft the Virgin of Guadalupe and brandished an Aztec eagle perched upon a European tricolor. Their new constitution proclaimed 'the Mexican nation is forever free and independent'. Yet the genealogy of this new nation is not easy to trace. Colonial Mexico was a patchwork state whose new-world vassals served the crown, extended the empire's frontiers and lived out their civic lives in parallel Spanish and Indian republics. Theirs was a world of complex intercultural alliances, interlocking corporate structures and shared spiritual and temporal ambitions. Sean F. McEnroe describes this history at the greatest and smallest geographical scales, reconsidering what it meant to be an Indian vassal, nobleman, soldier or citizen over three centuries in northeastern Mexico. He argues that the Mexican municipality, state and citizen were not so much the sudden creations of a revolutionary age as the progeny of a mature multiethnic empire.

The First Letter from New Spain

The First Letter from New Spain PDF Author: John F. Schwaller
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292760698
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description
The founding of la Villa Rica de la Veracruz (the rich town of the True Cross) is prominently mentioned in histories of the conquest of Mexico, but scant primary documentation of the provocative act exists. During a research session at the Spanish archives, when John Schwaller discovered an early-sixteenth-century letter from Veracruz signed by the members of Cortés’s company, he knew he had found a trove of historical details. Providing an accessible, accurate translation of this pivotal correspondence, along with in-depth examinations of its context and significance, The First Letter from New Spain gives all readers access to the first document written from the mainland of North America by any European, and the only surviving original document from the first months of the conquest. The timing of Cortés’s Good Friday landing, immediately before the initial assault on the Aztec Empire, enhances the significance of this work. Though the expedition was conducted under the authority of Diego Velázquez, governor of Cuba, the letter reflects an attempt to break ties with Velázquez and form a strategic alliance with Carlos V, the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain. Brimming with details about the events surrounding Veracruz’s inception and accompanied by mini-biographies of 318 signers of the document—socially competitive men who risked charges of treason by renouncing Velázquez—The First Letter from New Spain gives evidence of entrepreneurship and other overlooked traits that fueled the conquest.

Spain, a Global History

Spain, a Global History PDF Author: Luis Francisco Martinez Montes
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788494938115
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
From the late fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the Hispanic Monarchy was one of the largest and most diverse political communities known in history. At its apogee, it stretched from the Castilian plateau to the high peaks of the Andes; from the cosmopolitan cities of Seville, Naples, or Mexico City to Santa Fe and San Francisco; from Brussels to Buenos Aires and from Milan to Manila. During those centuries, Spain left its imprint across vast continents and distant oceans contributing in no minor way to the emergence of our globalised era. This was true not only in an economic sense-the Hispano-American silver peso transported across the Atlantic and the Pacific by the Spanish fleets was arguably the first global currency, thus facilitating the creation of a world economic system-but intellectually and artistically as well. The most extraordinary cultural exchanges took place in practically every corner of the Hispanic world, no matter how distant from the metropolis. At various times a descendant of the Aztec nobility was translating a Baroque play into Nahuatl to the delight of an Amerindian and mixed audience in the market of Tlatelolco; an Andalusian Dominican priest was writing the first Western grammar of the Chinese language in Fuzhou, a Chinese city that enjoyed a trade monopoly with the Spanish Philippines; a Franciscan friar was composing a piece of polyphonic music with lyrics in Quechua to be played in a church decorated with Moorish-style ceilings in a Peruvian valley; or a multi-ethnic team of Amerindian and Spanish naturalists was describing in Latin, Spanish and local vernacular languages thousands of medicinal plants, animals and minerals previously unknown to the West. And, most probably, at the same time that one of those exchanges were happening, the members of the School of Salamanca were laying the foundations of modern international law or formulating some of the first modern theories of price, value and money, Cervantes was writing Don Quixote, Velázquez was painting Las Meninas, or Goya was exposing both the dark and bright sides of the European Enlightenment. Actually, whenever we contemplate the galleries devoted to Velázquez, El Greco, Zurbarán, Murillo or Goya in the Prado Museum in Madrid; when we visit the National Palace in Mexico City, a mission in California, a Jesuit church in Rome or the Intramuros quarter in Manila; or when we hear Spanish being spoken in a myriad of accents in the streets of San Francisco, New Orleans or Manhattan we are experiencing some of the past and present fruits of an always vibrant and still expanding cultural community. As the reader can infer by now, this book is about how Spain and the larger Hispanic world have contributed to world history and in particular to the history of civilisation, not only at the zenith of the Hispanic Monarchy but throughout a much longer span of time.

The True History of The Conquest of New Spain

The True History of The Conquest of New Spain PDF Author: Bernal Diaz del Castillo
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 1603848177
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description
This rugged new translation--the first entirely new English translation in half a century and the only one based on the most recent critical edition of the Guatemalan MS--allows Diaz to recount, in his own battle-weary and often cynical voice, the achievements, stratagems, and frequent cruelty of Hernando Cortes and his men as they set out to overthrow Moctezuma's Aztec kingdom and establish a Spanish empire in the New World. The concise contextual introduction to this volume traces the origins, history, and methods of the Spanish enterprise in the Americas; it also discusses the nature of the conflict between the Spanish and the Aztecs in Mexico, and compares Diaz's version of events to those of other contemporary chroniclers. Editorial glosses summarize omitted portions, and substantial footnotes explain those terms, names, and cultural references in Diaz's text that may be unfamiliar to modern readers. A chronology of the Conquest is included, as are a guide to major figures, a select bibliography, and three maps.

The Spanish Caribbean and the Atlantic World in the Long Sixteenth Century

The Spanish Caribbean and the Atlantic World in the Long Sixteenth Century PDF Author: Ida Altman
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803299575
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
The Spanish Caribbean and the Atlantic World in the Long Sixteenth Century breaks new ground in articulating the early Spanish Caribbean as a distinct and diverse group of colonies loosely united under Spanish rule for roughly a century prior to the establishment of other European colonies. In the sixteenth century no part of the Americas was more diverse; international; or as closely tied to Spain, the islands of the Atlantic, western Africa, and the Spanish American mainland than the Caribbean. The Caribbean experienced rapid growth during this period, displayed considerable ethnic and religious diversity, developed extensive networks of exchange both within and beyond the region, and played an important role in the broader Spanish colonization of the Americas. Contributors address topics such as the role of religious orders, the development of transatlantic and regional commercial systems, insular and regional political dynamics in relation to imperial objectives, the formation of colonial society, and the effects on Caribbean colonial society of the importation and incorporation of large numbers of indigenous captives and enslaved Africans.

Colonialism and Postcolonial Development

Colonialism and Postcolonial Development PDF Author: James Mahoney
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139483889
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
In this comparative-historical analysis of Spanish America, Mahoney offers a new theory of colonialism and postcolonial development. He explores why certain kinds of societies are subject to certain kinds of colonialism and why these forms of colonialism give rise to countries with differing levels of economic prosperity and social well-being. Mahoney contends that differences in the extent of colonialism are best explained by the potentially evolving fit between the institutions of the colonizing nation and those of the colonized society. Moreover, he shows how institutions forged under colonialism bring countries to relative levels of development that may prove remarkably enduring in the postcolonial period. The argument is sure to stir discussion and debate, both among experts on Spanish America who believe that development is not tightly bound by the colonial past, and among scholars of colonialism who suggest that the institutional identity of the colonizing nation is of little consequence.