Page 375 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

an economic and social system that permitted the conquer- ing Spaniards to collect tribute from the Indians and use them as laborers. In return, the holders of an encomienda were supposed to protect the Indians, pay them wages, and supervise their spiritual needs. In practice, this meant that the settlers were free to implement the paternalistic system of the government as they pleased. Three thousand miles from Spain, Spanish settlers largely ignored their government and brutally used the Indians to pursue their own economic interests. Indians were put to work on plantations and in the lucrative gold and silver mines. In Peru, the Spanish made use of the mita, a system that allowed authorities to draft native labor to work in the silver mines.
In the New World, the Spanish developed an adminis- trative system based on viceroys. Spanish possessions were initially divided into two major administrative units: New Spain (Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean islands), with its center in Mexico City, and Peru (western South America), governed by a viceroy in Lima. Each viceroy served as the king’s chief civil and military officer.
By papal agreement, the Catholic monarchs of Spain were given extensive rights over ecclesiastical affairs in the New World. They could appoint all bishops and clergy, build churches, collect fees, and supervise the affairs of the various religious orders that sought to con- vert the heathen. In the early years of the conquest, Catholic missionaries converted and baptized hundreds of thousands of Indians. Soon after the missionaries came the establishment of dioceses, parishes, cathedrals,
Aztec Victims of Smallpox. The indigenous populations of the New World had no immunities to the diseases of the Old World, such as smallpox. By 1520, smallpox had spread throughout the Caribbean and Mesoamerica. This sixteenth- century drawing by a Franciscan friar portrays Native Americans afflicted with smallpox. The pustules that often covered the body are clearly depicted. The figure at the lower right twists in agony—representing the immense pain experienced by those who contracted the disease.
schools, and hospitals—all the trappings of civilized European society.
New Rivals on the World Stage
Q FOCUS QUESTIONS: How did the arrival of the Dutch, British, and French on the world scene in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries affect Africa, India, Southeast Asia, China, and Japan? What were the main features of the African slave trade, and what effects did it have on Africa?
Portugal and Spain had been the first Atlantic nations to take advantage of the age of exploration, starting in the late fifteenth century, and both had become great
CHRONOLOGY The Portuguese and Spanish Empires in the Sixteenth Century
Bartholomeu Dias sails around the tip of 1488 Africa
Voyages of Columbus 1492–1502 Treaty of Tordesillas 1494 Vasco da Gama lands at Calicut in India 1498 Portuguese ships land in southern China 1514 Magellan’s voyage around the world 1519–1522 Spanish conquest of Mexico 1519–1522 Pizarro’s conquest of the Inca 1530–1535
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