Notes

1. The colonial South was a kaleidoscope of different people and cultures. Yet all residents of the region shared two important traits. First, they lived and worked in a natural environment unlike any other in the American colonies. Second, like humans everywhere, their presence on the landscape had profound implications for the natural world. Before the Europeans arrived, the Americas were grouped into many city-states. Two of the biggest being the Incas and the Aztecs. Politically, they had one main ruler who was the head of the entire clan, almost like a semi-theocracy.

2. Historians have traditionally agreed that this was one of the most important turning points in world history. They go a long way in explaining the gradual ascent of a wealthy, powerful, and imperial Europe. This event led to the emergence of the first-ever completely global market, one that fierce international rivals sought to dominate. Europe eventually found itself at the center of the global economic network, commanding large empires. There were many long-term consequences of the European conquest of the Americas and the global exchange that ensued. It took the Spanish only a few years to find and plunder the two wealthiest empires in the Americas. Huge silver mines found in Mexico and Peru in the mid-16th century meant that Spain instantly became the largest supplier of silver in the world.

3. The Portuguese experience in Africa and their involvement in slave trading was extended to the Americas. Europeans sought economic gain and social mobility; they utilized coerced laborers or slaves to create plantations and mine deposits of precious metals or diamonds.

4. Spanish land grants were known as encomienda. Serfdom in Western Europe and encomienda were similar in that they were used as coercive labor to pay tributes owed to the nobles. Peasants were indebt therefore they had to pay off debts through agricultural labor, natives were protected by the landlords therefore they have to pay them back. Serfdom and Encomiendas were naturally a way to control lower class people and they were also essentially slaves, sold, bought, and worked. They were different in that Encomiendas were natives entrusted to lords and it was a way to spread religion and to spread Christianity. Whereas Serfdom was a way to please the noble class.

5. Hernan Cortes: In 1519, Hernán Cortés led an expedition into Mexico. He fought the Aztecs with the assistance of Indian allies. At Tenochtitlan, Moctezuma II was captured and killed. By 1535 most of central Mexico was under Spanish control as the Kingdom of New Spain.

Francisco Pizarro: In 1519, Hernán Cortés led an expedition into Mexico. He fought the Aztecs with the assistance of Indian allies. At Tenochtitlan, Moctezuma II was captured and killed. By 1535 most of central Mexico was under Spanish control as the Kingdom of New Spain.

Lestrados: The Ilustrados constituted the Filipino educated class during the Spanish colonial period in the late 19th century. They were the middle class who were educated in Spanish and exposed to Spanish liberal and European nationalist ideals.

Capitancies: Strips of land along Brazilian coast granted to minor Portuguese nobles for development; enjoyed limited success in developing the colony

Intendencies: Royal official appointed by the 18th-century kings of the Bourbon dynasty in Spain. Modeled after the French intendants, the intendentes were to serve as instruments of royal centralization and administrative reform but were frequently resisted as conflicting with local privileges.

6. Conquistadors is a term used to refer to the soldiers and explorers of the Spanish Empire or the Portuguese Empire in a general sense. They colonized much of the world for Spain and Portugal in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The conquistadors were professional warriors, using European tactics, firearms, and cavalry. Their units would often specialize in forms of combat that required long periods of training that were too costly for informal groups. Their armies were mostly composed of Iberian and other European soldiers. Conquistadores used steel swords and armor against the wooden clubs and cotton armor of the Aztecs.

7. Upon arriving in the Americas, the Spanish and Portuguese sought precious metals or land that could be worked for profit, usually by slave labor. For example, Columbus and the Spanish settlers that followed him to the island of Hispaniola divided the land amongst themselves and virtually enslaved the indigenous Taino. Massive demographic catastrophe occurred wherever Europeans made contact with indigenous Americans. There were many long-term consequences of the European conquest of the Americas. It took the Spanish only a few years to find the two wealthiest empires in the Americas. Connected to all major continents on the planet, the slave trade was a key aspect of the first fully global trade. The sugar and slave trade became known as the triangular trade because the English colonies in North America were also involved.

8. Those that were considered “nobility” in the native cultures were used to foster the Spanish message, collecting taxes and imposing the labor requirements. In an effort to escape such requirements, Indians began to leave villages and seek private employment during the 1800’s. (Add more if need be)

9. The Spanish crown, unwilling to see a new nobility arise in the New Worlds among the conquerors with their grants of Indian serfs, moved to end the institution in the 1540s. The corwn limited the inheritability of encomiendas and prohibited the right to demand certain kinds of labor fro the India,s Although encomiendas continued to exist in marginal regions at the fringes of the empire, they were all but gone by the 1620s.

10. The colonies started to redistribute the wealth and to invest the capital in their own administration, defence and other developments instead of sending it all to Spain. As Spain was dependent on the influx of silver, this had a very negative effect on its economy. So the growth that the American colonies experienced when they started to invest their surpluses in their own environment, caused a recession in the Spanish economy.

11. The other aspect of the Spanish colonial economy was the exploitation of land. Gold had always been a draw for conquistadors and later Spanish settlers; the gold and jewels stolen from the Aztecs were triumphantly displayed throughout Spain to drum up interest and support for the colonization venture. . But in 1545, the Spanish demand for gold deliveries slowed after a remote mountaintop in Bolivia, at a place called Potosí, began to yield silver. Lots and lots of silver. More silver, over the next hundred years, than had existed in all of Europe up to that time. Suddenly, the New World became a cash cow for Spain, which used its 20% of the proceeds to wage nearly endless wars in Europe.

12. European countries started to think about forming empires, spreading Christianity, and ruling the world.
Perhaps the key motivator behind exploration in this era was economic. Europeans longed for the luxuries of the Far East, including silks, pepper, and spices, but the Far East trade was dominated by Muslims and Venetians who hauled the goods over land, making them extremely expensive. Europeans wanted to find their own trade routes and cut out the middle men, and with their better ships, maps, and navigational tools, they finally had the technology to do it. The time was ripe to explore, discover, and expand.

13. During most of the next century, Brazil held its position as the world's leading sugar producer. Sugar cane had to be processed in the field. It was cut and pressed in large mills, and the juice was then heated to crystallize into sugar. This combination of agriculture and industry in the field demanded large amounts of capital for machinery and large quantities of labor for the backbreaking work.

14. As a part of a global struggle against Spain ,the Dutch seize a portion of northeastern Brazil an controlled its sugar production. Although the Dutch were expelled from Brazil in 1654, by the 1680s the Dutch, English and French had established their own plantation colonies in the CAribbean and were producing sugar with slave laborers. This competition, which led to a rising price for slaves and a falling world price for sugar, undercut the Brazilian sugar industry, and the colony entered into hard times.

15. The War of Spanish Succession ensued, and the result at the Treaty of Utrecht was recognition of a branch of the Bourbon family as rulers of Spain; the price wa some commericial concessions that allowed French merchants to operate in Seville and permitted England to trade slaves in Spanish America and even to send one ship per year to trade for silver in the Americas. Spain's commercial monopoly was now being broken not just by contraband trade but by legal means as well.

16. Pombal abolished slavery in Portugal, but not in Brazil. To help increase population growth, Indians were removed from missionary control and mixed marriages were encouraged. New immigrants were sent from Portugal. The reforms had minimal societal impact: the colony remained based on slavery. The trade balance first improved, but then suffered when demand for Brazilian products remained low.

17. In New Granada, the widespread Comunero Revolt occurred in 1781. A more serious outbreak, the rising led by Tupac Amaru, broke out among Peruvian Indians. Brazil escaped serious disturbances. The movements had different social bases, but they demonstrated increased local dissatisfaction with imperial policies. Sharp social divisions among colonial groups hindered effective revolutionary action until Spain and Portugal were weakened by European political and social turmoil.