Latin American Social Issues

Latin American Social Issues

The recent history of Latin America is a story of profound political and economic change. During the second half of the 20th century, Latin America witnessed a transformation of society as the region struggled to find itself in the face of modernity and economic expansion.

Crushing poverty facilitated alternative forms of religious faith that spoke to the condition of many Latin Americans. Migration from the countryside to the city and north to the United States spoke to a yearning for a better life.

A thriving drug trade centered on a global market employed organized violence against national governments that tried to curb the trade. Centuries of oppression led to an organized and influential indigenous movement that mobilized to demand Indian rights and autonomy.


Latin American countries plunged into the uncertainty of the oil industry with the hopes of increased revenues and instead found unpredictable results and mixed blessings. These factors offer a window into the dramatic social transformation of Latin America from 1950 to the present.

Latin American spirituality underwent profound changes in recent history. Liberation theology spoke to a new turn in the role of the Catholic Church in Latin America, although it was not a phenomenon unique to the region. For centuries, the church stood as a conservative element in association with the state; the church legitimized authoritarian rule.

However, beginning in the 1960s, many priests, nuns, and lay workers drew on their personal experiences working with the poor to question the responsibility of the church in the unequal distribution of wealth in Latin America.

Some Latin American theologists began to speak of the role of the church and Christians in helping the poor, a mission clearly laid out in the Bible. Liberation theology is an understanding of the Christian faith developed out of the suffering and social injustice experienced by the poor.

As such, it is a critique of society and the ideologies supporting the dominant hegemony, including the traditional role of the Catholic Church. It gave the poor a voice and created new forms of community-based activism. Liberation theology was a formidable force in Latin America for a few decades—especially in Central America, Brazil, and Chile.

Liberation theory gained momentum in 1968 when a group of 130 Latin American bishops met in Medellín, Colombia to discuss the church and its relationship to the populace. The bishops promoted an empowering education jadwal for illiterate rural peasants that affirmed the dignity and self worth of the students. This education was carried out in small community-based groups where people could gather together to read the Bible and discuss its relevance to their lives without a priest or church building.

Engaging Catholicism without a priest represented a new idea. Rural priests often served thousands of parishioners and could only visit some communities once a year. Priests, nuns, and lay people used the Medellín conference as a springboard for a new approach to their work with the poor.

Those Catholic personnel dedicated to the poor quickly learned through their charitable work that the condition of the lowest classes of Latin American society could only be relieved through sweeping structural changes. This would involve direct political action.

Some base communities served as the vehicle for political action as participants experienced an awakening, or consciousness-raising about their devalued position in society. Many Christian-based communities served not only as sites of literacy education and Bible study but also places where a reinterpretation of traditional religion promoted a transformative perspective on the world.

Latin American Social Issues

Some groups worked toward improvements in local basic services, such as healthcare and transportation. In spite of this, base communities represented a small fraction of Catholics, and by the 1980s, enthusiasm for liberation theology waned.

Protestantism is a relatively new player in Catholic Latin America. Brazil is home to Latin America’s largest Protestant community with half of the region’s estimated 40 million Protestants, but Central America boasts the largest number of evangelicals in terms of the percentage of the population.

European migration to the continent brought the traditional Protestant churches, such as German Lutheranism and British Anglicanism. Despite the influence of European immigrants, North American missionaries bear the responsibility for the tremendous growth in Protestantism in Latin America, especially evangelical forms like Pentecostalism.

Sharing liberation theology’s sense of consciousness-raising, Pentecostalism allows participants a refuge from suffering and social injustice by providing a spiritual space in which believers can regain some feeling of control over their lives.

Additionally, unlike Catholicism and mainstream Protestantism, Pentecostalism permitted anyone to become a spiritual leader, even the illiterate and poverty stricken. Women, in particular, have been attracted to evangelical churches due to their inclusive nature.

Evangelicalism has taken hold throughout the wartorn countries of Central America, especially in rural areas. In Guatemala rural Mayan women, mostly widows, fill evangelical churches in search of a sense of community that has been lost. These churches provide a network of support that replaces destroyed kinship ties. Protestant churches offer a religious alternative and a message of hope to the underdogs of society.

For women, the evangelical Protestant ban on drinking alcohol makes Protestant husbands an attractive marriage partner. In addition, the phenomenon associated with Pentecostalism in particular, such as speaking in tongues and faith healing, has given women positions of power within their religious communities.

Despite North American origins, evangelical Protestantism in Latin America is a unique phenomenon. Its churches emphasize the notion of community and belonging more than its northern counterparts. In addition, in Latin America being an evangelical does not necessarily denote a right-wing conservative political identity as it tends to in North America.

Latin America’s economic setbacks have not only influenced new religious movements but have also led to mass migrations of people. Latin Americans have moved from the countryside to the city and from Latin America to North America. Prior to the 1930s the majority of Latin America’s population resided in rural areas.

The global economic depression of the 1930s dealt a hard blow to the Latin American export economy, and rural residents began to leave the countryside. This exodus peaked over a 30-year period from 1950 to 1980 and succeeded in transforming Latin America’s social structure from predominantly rural to overwhelmingly urban.

By 1980 family-based farming was no longer viable as market-oriented modern agribusiness became the norm. Thousands streamed into Latin America’s major cities in search of industrial jobs and a better life. Women comprised a majority of the rural-urban migrants, as industrialization opened many jobs for female workers. Rapid urbanization quickly outpaced housing, basic services, and job markets.

Rural residents arrived in the cities to find dirty, disease-ridden, and overcrowded shantytowns with spotty electrical power and water shortages. Rural-urban migration caused a labor surplus, which led to the rise of a vast informal sector of the economy consisting of street vendors, rubbish scavengers, and prostitutes.

Latin Americans also migrated north to the United States for economic, political, and social reasons. Mexicans currently represent the greatest percentage of Latin Americans immigrating to the United States.

They often have come looking for work, and many resided in the south-west long before it belonged to the United States. During the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Mexicans and Mexican Americans routinely crossed back and forth over the border, with little or no regulation.

During the 1930s, the government supported the repatriation of Mexican workers to provide more jobs for Americans. However, with the onset of World War II, labor shortages fueled the Bracero Program, which allowed Mexican agricultural workers to come into the country on a temporary basis. The Bracero Program lasted until 1964.

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 called for penalties for those hiring undocumented workers, but also granted amnesty to many undocumented immigrants already living in the United States. The Immigration Act of 1990 favored the legal immigration of family members of U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

Cuban Immigrants

Many Cuban immigrants came to the United States fleeing a repressive political regime. Cubans enjoyed a privileged status in relation to other Latin American immigrants due to the U.S. foreign policy on Cuba. As early as 1960 the U.S. government had created a special center for Cuban refugees, and their path to legal residence in the United States was easily cleared.

These first waves of immigrants represented the Cuban elite and middle class and individuals and families with financial resources, specialized job training, and American connections. In 1980 Fidel Castro opened the door for Cubans to leave the island, and a deluge of mostly male semi- and unskilled workers flowed into south Florida.

This migration overwhelmed U.S. authorities, and many of the refugees were placed in detention camps for months. Currently U.S. officials observe a quota on Cuban immigrants, but the Cuban-American community continues to thrive and grow.

Central Americans also have migrated to the United States seeking refuge from wars and violence that have disrupted the economy and everyday life, especially in El Salvador and Guatemala. In the 1980s migrants from El Salvador left their homes due to civil war and political repression.

Unlike Cubans fleeing political repression, many Salvadorans were denied permanent residency and deported. Churches in the U.S. southwest developed a “sanctuary movement” to protest U.S. treatment of these refugees, providing a safe haven for those fleeing violence.

In the 1990s a small minority of Salvadoran immigrants brought violence to the United States in the form of street gangs. Many of these gang members were targeted by U.S. immigration officials in Los Angeles, California, and sent back to El Salvador.

Not only are Latin Americans moving north, Latin America drugs are making the trip as well. One of the largest social problems facing Latin America is drug traficking, especially in Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru. The drug trade embodies simple supply and demand economics.

This multinational drug trade negatively affects U.S.–Latin American relations as many of the region’s leaders believe that the U.S. war on drugs focuses unfairly on the supply side of the equation. Unfortunately, in countries suffering from crushing poverty, drugs represent a viable economic option. The debt crisis of the 1980s and the collapse of prices for tin and coffee on the international market fueled the Latin American drug trade.

In several Latin American countries, Peru and Bolivia in particular, the drug trade acted as an economic buffer, offering alternative sources of income when other options vanished. The drug trade creates an atmosphere of violence. Drug cartels breed corruption and threaten the integrity and stability of the state, democracy, security, public health, susila values, and international reputation.

Drug Trade

Poverty and unemployment in Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia—along with the high prices Latin American cocaine fetched in the United States—fueled the drug trade and offered viable economic alternatives. Colombia and Bolivia saw a significant boost to its national economy from drug revenues, but violence and corruption went hand-in-hand with the economic boom.

In Peru, the world’s largest producer of coca leaves, the environmental destruction wrought by the drug trade is appalling. Large tracks of rain forest have been clear-cut for cultivation, and the pesticides and herbicides used for growing coca have leached into forest water systems.

The involvement of guerrillas in the drug trade has further complicated the situation, and threats to the integrity of the state continue in these nations. Despite billions of U.S. dollars poured into curbing the Latin American drug trade, major traffickers have been affected very little.

The drug trade has impacted Latin American indigenous groups in remote rural areas, as they are often caught in the crossfire between traffickers and the government. In Peru many have fled the countryside for shanty-towns in the cities, hoping to escape the violence brought on by traffickers and guerrillas, especially the Shining Path.

Such issues have led to an explosion of indigenous groups organizing for a better life. The sophistication and power of indigenous organizations forced many Latin American states to negotiate with Indian peoples and create new legislation that protected their rights.

The traditional relationship between the state and its native peoples is changing, with indigenismo policies that strove for assimilation abandoned in favor of embracing multiculturalism and pluriethnicity. Despite claims of embracing multiculturalism, not all Latin American states have actually implemented policies aimed at improving the lives of indigenous peoples.

One of the best-known indigenous movements occurred in 1994 in Chiapas, Mexico. Landless Maya formed the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) as an outlet for their struggle for rights and recognition in national life. The EZLN briefly occupied several towns in Chiapas. When negotiations with the Mexican state began, the first demands of the Zapatistas centered on Indian autonomy and rights.

The EZLN did not advocate a separation from the Mexican nation-state, but rather called for the state to implement the tenets of the constitution of 1917 regarding indigenous peoples. The Zapatistas drew international attention to the plight of Mexico’s indigenous population and provided inspiration to other Indian groups in Latin America.

Oil Industry

The oil industry directly affects the quality of life for all Latin Americans; unpredictable oil prices have varying impacts on the economy as a whole. Latin America has a few significant oil-producing countries: Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. In fact, Mexico and Venezuela have become key suppliers to the United States. Latin America’s oil industry has undergone many transformations.

From the 1930s to the 1970s, foreign owners controlled significant portions of the Latin American oil economy, with the exception of Mexico, which nationalized its oil industry in 1938. By the 1970s Latin America’s oil industry was mostly nationalized, as foreign investors looked to the oil fields of the Middle East instead.

The Latin American oil industry has been subject to the volatile political, economic, and social history of Latin America, with varying degrees of success. While some nations expected their large oil reserves to clear the way for economic development, the region’s major oil-exporting economies experienced obstacles in transforming oil revenues into a continuous source of funding.

High oil prices aided significant producers that were dependent on exports for revenue and foreign exchange, like Mexico, Venezuela, and Ecuador. For oil-importing countries, such as Brazil, Peru and Chile, the price of oil served as a vital factor in inflation, production costs, the trade balance, and currency strength. In the past 20 years, oil prices have been more precarious than any other export commodity.

The impact of an unpredictable oil market fluctuates depending on a nation’s reliance on oil production and exports. The historical and current state of Latin America’s oil industry suggests that it is the management of oil resources, not oil wealth itself, that can create economic problems.

Latin America’s tremendous economic growth and development after 1950 transformed the region but intensified the misery of many Latin Americans. Rapid growth and urbanization led to mass migrations of people trying to find a niche in a hostile environment. Industrial progress brought thousands of rural residents into Latin America’s major cities with the hope of a living wage, but failed to alleviate poverty.

Devastating poverty fuels the drug trade, which for many peasants and indigenous people offers the only viable economic endeavor for survival. The oil industry, especially in Mexico and Venezuela, promised hope but has seemingly failed to materialize into concrete change for the better.

Liberation theology and the growth of evangelical Protestantism speak to a suffering poor searching for a ray of light in a bleak world. The promises of prosperity that accompanied economic growth proved to be empty for many people in Latin America. Although Latin America experienced economic progress, true transformations of society and social justice continue to elude the region.

Maroon Societies in the Americas

Maroon societies is a term designating communities of runaway slaves in the Americas, the formation of which constituted a recurrent feature of the history of African slavery over nearly 400 years, from the first importation of African slaves in the early 1500s through the selesai abolition of slavery in the Western Hemisphere in Brazil in 1888. The term derives from the Spanish cimarrón, originally referring to feral cattle but by the early 1500s also signifying runaway slaves.

Maroon societies were most common in the Caribbean and Brazil but were also widespread in North America and elsewhere. To slave owners and ruling groups they represented a constant and serious challenge to the institution of African slavery generally, while to slaves they represented the possibility of life outside the shackles of the slave regime. Often called palenques in the Caribbean region and Quilombos in Brazil, they had a history closely linked to the hundreds of slave rebellions that also mark the history of the Americas.

Ranging from small nomadic bands to extensive settled communities of thousands of people that endured for decades, even centuries, on the fringes of the plantation economy, Maroon societies came into existence almost as soon as African slavery in the Americas did. Most of their members were African-born, as they reproduced many of the social and cultural features of their homeland in their new surroundings.

Among the first official acknowledgments of the existence of such communities was a report to the Council of the Indies from Hispaniola of March 1542, in which Archdeacon Álvaro de Castro estimated that 2,000 to 3,000 runaway slaves were at large on the island. A follow-up report of July 1546 described some of the island’s numerous Maroon communities, some hundreds strong, and the mixed success of Spanish efforts to subdue them.


Often mixing with indigenous groups and allying with their slave masters’ enemies, Maroon communities displayed tremendous resilience in the face of persistent efforts to eradicate them and horrific punishments meted out to captured runaways, which included castration, amputation of limbs, branding, garroting, and burning alive.

The hinterlands of plantation economies throughout the Caribbean, Mexico, Brazil, North America, and elsewhere witnessed the formation of Maroon societies alongside the very introduction of slavery.

In Mexico, rapid Indian depopulation prompted colonists to import upward of 120,000 African slaves in the years between 1521 and 1650. Many thousands were compelled to work in the silver mines and ranches north of Mexico City centered on Zacatecas.

From the 1560s to the 1580s, a series of revolts and uprisings rocked the region, as runaway African slaves joined forces with besieged Indians to raid ranches and storehouses, attack travelers, and return to their hidden hamlets in caves, arroyos, and other places beyond the reach of the authorities.

Jungles of Veracruz

In the 1570s, the Crown issued a series of draconian laws intended to discourage such uprisings, which nonetheless failed to have the desired effect. In 1609, a rebel Maroon community in the jungles of Veracruz, led by Yanga, successfully negotiated a peace treaty with the Spanish authorities that granted them their freedom. Nearly a century later, the community was thriving. Slave uprisings and the formation of Maroon societies continued until the selesai abolition of slavery in Mexico in 1829.

Some palenques survived for decades, later becoming towns and municipalities, such as El Cobre in eastern Cuba, where a slave uprising in 1731 led to the creation of a stable community that 50 years later had a fugitive slave population of over 1,000 scattered throughout the Sierra del Cobre.

In 1800, following a recommendation of the Council of the Indies, the Crown declared the slave-descended inhabitants of El Cobre free. Other well-known palenques in eastern Cuba included El Frijol and Ciénaga de Zapata, which survived through much of the 19th century.

Despite their best efforts to extinguish such fugitive slave communities, colonial authorities were often compelled to negotiate with them—as in the district of Popayán in Colombia, where in 1732 the Audiencia of Quito authorized a local official to offer a treaty of peace to the palenque called El Castillo, granting its inhabitants their freedom if they would agree to accept no more runaway slaves. The palenque refused the offer, and in 1745 a series of military expeditions finally captured and defeated El Castillo.

More than a century earlier, in the early 1600s, in the Cartagena district of Colombia, a runaway slave named Domingo Bioho, claiming to be African royalty and adopting the title King Benkos, staged a series of raids on plantations and farms around Cartagena and founded a fortified palenque called San Basilio.

After defeating two expeditions sent to subdue his independent kingdom, in 1619 King Benkos negotiated a favorable treaty with the Spanish authorities, only to be betrayed, captured, and hanged. Despite this setback, San Basilio survived for another century and was finally suppressed in 1713–17.

Similar episodes unfolded in the British and French Caribbean islands. In Martinique in 1665, a Maroon who called himself by his master’s name, Francisque Fabulé, led a group of 400–500 Maroons who staged repeated attacks against plantations and settlements. The French Sovereign Council negotiated a treaty with Fabulé that granted him his freedom and a promise that his band would not be punished. He was later condemned to life in the galleys.

In 1771, a decree of the Supreme Council of Martinique lamented the existence of fugitive slave communities on the island, where they had built huts, cleared land, and planted crops, and from which they sallied forth to commit various depredations. In the French island of Guadeloupe in 1668, the governor reported more than 30 Maroons living in Grande-Terre and recommended an example be made by capturing and beheading them.

Despite the authorities’ best efforts, however, the Maroon societies could not be eradicated. Nearly 70 years later in Guadeloupe, in 1737, a group of 48 Maroons led by one Bordebois was put on trial; eight were sentenced to be garroted. Similar events transpired on Jamaica, Antigua, Barbados, and other islands in the British Antilles.

North American Societiea

Slave hunt in Dismal Swamp area

In British North America and, after 1783, the United States of America, Maroon societies formed and reformed repeatedly. There is evidence for at least 50 such communities during the period 1672–1864 in the mountains, forests, and swamps from Florida to Louisiana to Virginia.

Most notable among these were those in the Dismal Swamp area in the Virginia–North Carolina borderlands, where thousands of runaway slaves and their descendants survived repeated efforts to capture and subdue them. Sometimes Maroons allied with local Indians, forming mixed communities of Indians and fugitive slaves.

Other times Indian individuals and polities allied with Euro-American authorities, assisting them in their eradication efforts, as occurred among the Notchee Indians in South Carolina in 1744, in Georgia in 1772, and in other places.

Communities descended from Maroon societies can be found in many parts of the Americas. In the 1980s, it was estimated that more than 10 percent of the population of the Republic of Suriname was descended from six Maroon or “Bush Negro” communities or tribes that formed in the 1500s and waged a century-long war for liberation against the Dutch authorities before finally winning their freedom in 1762.

The collective memory of the modern-day descendants of such Maroon societies has provided fertile ground for historians, anthropologists, linguists, and other scholars interested in exploring this chapter of the history of Africans in the Americas.

Stono Rebellion

Stono Rebellion

The Stono Rebellion of 1793 was the largest uprising of African slaves on the mainland of North America during the colonial period. It began when nigh 20 slaves, probable first-generation Africans, attacked a local store nigh 15 miles southwest of Charles Town, South Carolina, too secured guns, powder, too other weapons.

Throughout the encounter, the slaves demonstrated a familiarity with armed forces tactics, learned from armed forces grooming inwards Africa. After all of the slaves had been killed or captured past times the militia, South Carolina regime instituted draconian measures inwards an attempt to command the dark bulk inwards the colony.

Despite the apparent success inwards suppressing the rebellion, a grave too oft unwarranted fright of slaves conspiring to kill their masters too escape from bondage would persist alongside white South Carolinians throughout the colonial too antebellum periods.


The uprising began early sun morning, nine September 1739. The slaves surprised too killed local storekeepers too and therefore began attacking whites who lived inwards the surrounding countryside, equally they slow made their agency toward the Castilian fort at St. Augustine, Florida. The slaves believed they would have liberty too sanctuary from the Spanish, who had long encouraged runaway slaves from the British colonies.

In a fateful coincidence, the rebels encountered the mounted political party of Lieutenant Governor William Bull, Sr., too his entourage. The lieutenant governor too his political party evaded capture too made their agency on horseback to audio the alarm. Meanwhile, the rebellious slaves, flushed with both their success too seized liquor, encamped.

They raised a banner too shell drums inwards an attempt to attract to a greater extent than slaves to their revolt too past times afternoon, their numbers had increased to betwixt lx too i hundred. At the same time, the white militia had mustered too embarked for the African camp.

Possessing superior numbers, training, too firepower, the militia overwhelmed the slaves inwards a brief, tearing fight. About a dozen of the rebels were killed past times the get-go volley too most of the residue were caught piece others fled into the countryside.

The escapees were pursued for a calendar week earlier a large grouping of them was caught too killed thirty miles due south of the original struggle. Others managed to evade capture for months too i slave was captured to a greater extent than than 2 years afterwards the uprising. Most of those captured were interrogated, tried, too summarily executed.

The Stono Rebellion generated considerable conspiracy-minded hysteria inwards South Carolina. More than 20 whites had been killed with relative rest during the uprising. The slaves had acted inwards a agency that demonstrated prior planning too discussion, too without Lieutenant Governor Bull’s conduct chances run across with the rebels, the destruction to the colony could bring been far worse. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 province of emergency prevailed inwards Stono through the winter, equally fears remained elevated too the white colonists passed rumors of farther revolts.

In the aftermath of the uprising, South Carolina took several steps inwards an attempt to command its African majority. The get-go was a stronger too to a greater extent than regular organisation of patrols, greatly expanding the ability of the militia.

In the jump of 1740, a thorough revision of the colony’s slave codes was enacted. Slaves would instantly live on held equally personal chattel, enabling stricter command over humans held equally property.

Furthermore, prohibitions on slave assemblies too gatherings, on instruction Africans to write, too on possessing liquor were all reinforced. However, the novel slave code also mandated that masters render their slaves with adequate article of apparel too prohibited masters from requiring operate on Sundays.

In an attempt to trammel the break of Africans entering the colony, specially because it was believed that late arrived slaves had led the rebellion, a duty of £100 was enacted for each novel African imported during the side past times side iii years. It was hoped that this duty would sharply cut back the break of blacks entering the colony too assistance the colony to accomplish a white bulk population.

Despite these efforts, South Carolina had picayune success inwards attracting white settlers to the colony. The dark bulk persisted too legislative efforts to curtail the activities of dark slaves largely failed.

The Stono Rebellion remains the bloodiest known conspiracy of African slaves inwards North America. In the eyes of whites living inwards South Carolina too other colonies with meaning enslaved populations, it highlighted what could come about if the vigilant command of blacks was relaxed, too fueled a conspiracy-minded fright of time to come slave uprisings.

War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748)

War of the Austrian Succession

The War of the Austrian Succession was primarily between the Austrian Empire and Prussia, although several other European countries were eventually brought into the conflict. There were underlying causes that led to this renewal of European hostilities aside from the question of the Austrian succession.

The Treaty of Utrecht, which was signed in 1713 to end the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–13), did not settle the underlying problems between ambitious powers seeking to extend their influence in Europe and the world.

Before the War of the Austrian Succession began, British and Spanish antagonism was prominent in European society. The British were furious with the Spanish over the limited amount of trade the Asien to Privilege, which was signed in 1713, granted the British with Spanish colonies in the Americas.


British captains attempted to get around this agreement by resorting to smuggling, which resulted in the Captain Jenkins Incident. Captain Jenkins claimed he was captured by the Spanish, who cut off one of his ears, which he kept to show to the British parliament. The British government declared war on Spain in October 1739 and commenced hostilities against the Spanish fleet in the Caribbean, but they were defeated.

Despite hostilities between Spain and England, the immediate cause of the War of the Austrian Succession was the death of Charles VI of Austria in 1740, which gave his daughter, Maria Theresa, control over Austria.

When Maria came to the throne, the Austrian military and bureaucracy were in a weakened state. With regard to trade, Austria was a very weak country because its mercantile system was centered predominately on a rural base, which failed to generate a significant degree of revenue.

Austria had fought a bitter war against the Ottoman Empire that drained the treasury, leaving only 90,000 gulden for government spending. This war also angered many Hungarians since they were responsible for quartering the Empire’s soldiers.

This financial burden and discontent were domestic issues with which Maria Theresa was forced to deal when she assumed the throne in 1740. These problems created a great deal of instability in Austria, and many countries hoped to divide up Austrian territory for their own benefit.

An anti-Austrian coalition was formed, as neighboring countries were interested in seizing Austrian lands. This is evidenced by the fact that Prussia was interested in acquiring Silesia, France was interested in the Austrian Netherlands, Spain wanted to acquire more territory in Italy, and Piedmont-Sardinia wanted Milan.

Frederick the Great, the ambitious king of Prussia, struck quickly against the Austrians by sending troops into Silesia in December 1740. Frederick the Great attempted to turn Prussia into a powerful country through the creation of a strong military and a centralized government that could effectively generate revenue through taxation.

The Austrian government faced larger problems as the Bohemian nobles were unhappy with Habsburg rule and revolted since they wanted to be placed under the control of the elector of Bavaria.

At this point, war enveloped the European continent as British and Austrian governments sided together to counter the ambitious design of the French, Prussian, Bavarian, and Spanish governments. Many of the European countries became concerned about the balance of power since they did not want one country to become too powerful in Europe.

Prussian Invasion of Silesia

With the Prussian invasion of Silesia and the revolt in Bohemia, Maria was forced to ask the Hungarian diet for assistance in 1741. The inability of the Austrians to repel the Prussian invasion forced Maria to assemble the Hungarian diet to acquire further assistance in the war effort.

Prussian invasion of Silesia

The diet attempted to assert Hungarian interests over Austrian interests as it demanded the institution of better economic policies, an alteration in the coronation oath, and greater Hungarian control over the region.

Maria agreed to negotiate these terms, with the exception of the demand concerning the coronation oath, in order to acquire further Hungarian assistance in the war, but she refused to honor this agreement in its entirety.

As the war continued to deteriorate for the Austrians, Maria was forced to approach the diet again. She promised to give Hungarians greater control over the administration of Hungary, more Hungarian influence in regard to allocation of tax money, the selection of Hungarians to ecclesiastical offices in Hungary, and the promise to give more territory to Hungarian domains.

The members of the diet accepted this usulan and promised to provide the Austrian empress with at least 4 million gulden and a minimum of 60,000 troops. Despite the fact that Maria considered Hungarian opinion when creating government policies, she failed to implement most of the demands to which the Hungarians agreed.

The Hungarians also fell short on their promises regarding the number of troops they could offer to the service of the Crown, which helps to explain the poor performance of the Austrian war effort.

The Peace of Dresden, which was signed in 1745 between the Prussian and Austrian governments, confirmed Prussia’s control over Silesia. Despite the fact that Prussia and Austria negotiated a peace settlement the conflict still continued among the other European powers.

The British became involved in the war with the fear that the expansion of French influence on the European continent would affect Hanover. George II, who was king of England and elector of Hanover, led an army that defeated the French forces at Dettingen in June 1743, but the threat of an army led by Charles Edward Stuart, who was attempting to restore the Stuart dynasty to the throne of England, forced the British to recall a significant portion of their army back to England in 1745.

The invasion failed as Charles could not acquire enough support from the English population, forcing him to give up his march on the English capital.

The remains of the Stuart army were smashed by the duke of Cumberland at Culloden Moor in April 1746. Despite this success by the English at home, the recall of a major portion of the English army allowed the French to capture the Austrian Netherlands.

The war was also fought outside the European continent as the French and British combated with each other for a stronger position on the Indian subcontinent and in North America.

The French were able to launch a successful offensive against the British in India by capturing Madras from the British. The British were able to gain some ground on the French in North America as a coordinated attack by colonists from New England and the Royal Navy captured the French fortress of Louisburg.

The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which was signed in 1748, forced England to relinquish control of the fortress of Louisburg in Nova Scotia to the French and in exchange, the French returned the Austrian Netherlands to Austria and Madras to the English. Spain and Piedmont-Sardinia each gained territory as the Spanish acquired Parma, and Piedmont-Sardinia acquired some territory in Milan.

The War of the Austrian Succession was an important step in turning Prussia into a strong European power for the acquisition of Silesia increased the population of Prussia, provided Prussia with an abundant amount of coal and iron, and gave the Prussians a thriving textile industry.

Maria Theresa lost territory, but her husband was acknowledged by the German princes as the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Maria spent the rest of her reign attempting to reacquire Silesia from Frederick the Great as she centralized the Austrian administration and undertook reforms in the Austrian army and economic base to accomplish this goal.

Africa and the Slave Trade

enslaved africans

The discovery of the Americas created new economic opportunities with agriculture the foundation of these opportunities. In 1493, only a year after his first voyage, Christopher Columbus introduced sugarcane into the Caribbean, the crop on which Europeans built the first plantations in the New World.

Sugarcane demanded a large labor force, particularly at harvest. Europeans sought to meet the demand for labor by using criminals, orphans, indentured servants, and Native Americans.

But there was still a need for laborers. Native Americans succumbed to Old World diseases, and the supply of European laborers met only a fraction of the demand. In the mid-15th century, the Portuguese addressed the duduk perkara of labor by enslaving Africans to grow sugarcane on the Madeira Islands in the Atlantic Ocean.


The Spanish used slavery in their New World colony Hispaniola (now the island of Haiti and the Dominican Republic), importing the first slaves in 1502. The institutionalization of slavery in the New World spurred trade in slaves. The fact that demand for slaves outpaced the growth in supply by natural increase nearly everywhere in the Americas perpetuated the slave trade over four centuries.

Portugal Leads Slave Trade

Portugal monopolized the trade at the outset. The Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 granted Portugal access to Africa and with it, slaves. After 1528, Portuguese shipping companies supplied Spain with slaves through a series of asientos, or contracts.

An asiento specified the delivery of slaves in piezas de India, which quantified labor rather than slaves. Men tallied more piezas than women because of the expectation that men would yield more labor than women. For the same reason, the young were worth more than the old.

Shipping slaves

A cargo of 100 piezas constituted the smallest number of slaves if all were young males and the largest if all were elderly females. Of course slave traders rarely got the “ideal” of all young men fit for the rigors of the plantation.

Market conditions yielded a mix, with a majority being young men with some women also included, particularly those of childbearing age in hopes of perpetuating the slave population by reproduction. A cargo might also contain the prepubescent and elderly because of their low prices. Their purchase, however, entailed risk because they were susceptible to disease and early death.

The value of labor and therefore of slaves fluctuated over time. In 1693, the records of the Portuguese Cacheau Company reveal that one pieza was worth 1.6 slaves. In 1715, however, records of the South Sea Company of Great Britain reveal that the value of one pieza had declined to 1.04 slaves. These figures imply an increase in the demand for slaves over time. Supply rose to meet demand.

Slaves sale

Between 1521 and 1550, Spain imported into its colonies 15,000 slaves, 500 per year on average, and between 1551 and 1595, they brought in 36,300 slaves, amounting to 810 per year on average. The largest importer of slaves, Brazil, imported more than 200,000 during these years.

In total Portugal had shipped 264,000 slaves to the New World by 1600. Portugal so dominated trade that by 1600, its maritime rival Britain had shipped only 2,000 slaves to the Americas. No other nation participated in the trade until after 1600.

Portugal’s trade in slaves benefited from political instability in Africa. War engulfed the empire of Jolof, spanning modern Senegal and Gambia, in the middle of the 16th century. Warlords enslaved prisoners, trading them with Portugal for guns.

At the same time, the deterioration of the central government of Kongo, modern Angola, Cabinda, and the Republic of the Congo permitted the Portuguese access to the interior of the kingdom and to a larger number of slaves than had been possible when Kongo confined Portugal to the coast.

In 1614, Portugal allied with the Jaga, a group hostile to the Ndongo rulers of Angola. The resulting war won Portugal captives it sold as slaves. New alliances after 1640 gave Portugal access to slaves in Luanda, the modern capital of Angola.

Political instability gave Europeans more slaves than they might otherwise have expected, for Africa was impenetrable to Europeans into the 19th century. Tropical diseases made it hazardous for Europeans to roam the interior of the continent in search of slaves. Where African tribes remained united, they kept Europeans at arm’s length.

Instead, Europeans established fortresses along the western coast of Africa, the first at Elmina, a town in Ghana, in 1482, and awaited the delivery of slaves from African merchants and chieftains. Once at the coast, slaves waited in dungeons, pens, or stockades until the arrival of a ship. Both Africans and Europeans, intermingling for the first time, were at risk of disease. Confinement in tight quarters on the coast and aboard ship exacerbated the danger to Africans of an epidemic.

Slave Ship Conditions

Once onboard the ships, slaves endured lengthy waits until the captain had enough slaves and the right force and direction of wind to sail. Seldom less than a month, the wait on the coast sometimes stretched to half a year. All the while slaves, packed 100–1,000 per ship, depending on its size, occupied little more than six square feet of space with two or three feet of headroom. Slavers separated men from women, shackling the men in pairs to reduce the danger of rebellion.

Long chains tethered groups of slaves, kept below deck most of the time, for movement to the deck for fresh air and meals. The duration of the wait on the coast and the voyage to the Americas tempted the all-male crews to rape female slaves.

Once a ship set sail, slaves were vulnerable to the vicissitudes of weather and wind. Rain prevented them from getting fresh air on deck and increased the incidence and spread of diseases. Storms imperiled even the most promising crossing.

In 1738, a storm assailed the Dutch ship Leusdan only days from its destination. When it began to leak, the crew, fearing a fight over the lifeboats, locked some 660 slaves below deck, leaving them to drown. Only the crew and 14 slaves on deck survived. The absence of wind brought ships to a standstill and strained the food supply. Ship captains rarely had more than three months of food at the start of a voyage and reduced slave rations on long trips.

The crossing from the Guinea Coast was especially perilous because ships had to traverse the doldrums twice and thereby risk a lengthy calm. One study estimated the mortality rate for ocean crossings of fewer than 20 days at 8 percent, though the death rate increased to nearly one-quarter for voyages longer than two months. Malaria, yellow fever, and intestinal ailments accounted for two-thirds of deaths, and smallpox, scurvy, and suicide the remaining third.

Once a ship reached its destination, an inspector boarded to check slaves for disease, quarantining all slaves if he found one with a communicable disease and prolonging their stay aboard ship until contagion had passed. On land, slaves at last had fresh food and water.

Traders amassed slaves for sale once ashore, selling the young and old first and holding men and women of childbearing age for sale until last in the expectation that prices would rise with the eagerness of buyers to close the deal.

The fact that ovulating women fetched a higher price than pre- and postmenopausal women contradicts the assertion of slave traders that they did not sell slaves for the purpose of breeding. Traders sold most slaves by auction, though an alternative was to fix the price for a group of slaves of similar age and physical condition and allow buyers to choose from among this group.

Other Nations Enter the Slave Trade

Portugal’s hold on the slave trade began to weaken in the 17th century, as the Netherlands entered the fray. After 1630, the Dutch imported into northern Brazil slaves they wrested from Portugal. Taking Curaçao in 1634, the Dutch used it to funnel slaves to their colonies and to those of Portugal, Spain, Britain, and France.

In 1637, the Netherlands captured the Portuguese fortress at Elmina, making it the point of origin of the Dutch slave trade. After 1667, the Netherlands imported slaves into Suriname. In total the Netherlands brought 39,900 slaves to the New World between 1601 and 1650 with the number rising to 76,400 between 1726 and 1770. Thereafter the Netherlands’s share of the slave trade decreased rapidly.

Britain also contested Portuguese dominance. The spread of tobacco in Virginia after 1617 opened British North America to the slave trade. In 1619, the Dutch landed 20 slaves, the first shipment of its kind, in Jamestown. During much of the 17th century, the slave trade in the thirteen colonies was more trickle than deluge.

In 1640, Virginia had only 150 slaves and in 1670, fewer than 1,000. In contrast to Latin America and the Caribbean, slaves in the thirteen colonies increased their numbers through reproduction, diminishing the need to import slaves.

The slave trade in British North America was strongest after the decline of indentured servitude around 1670 and the rise of rice plantations along the Carolina coast about 1700. The thirteen colonies, according to one estimate, imported between 1619 and 1750, roughly 201,500 slaves, an average of 1,550 per year. By comparison the French imported 1,690 slaves per year on average into the island of Martinique between 1664 and 1735 and the Spanish 3,880 per year on average into its colonies between 1640 and 1750.

Following the pattern of British North America, the colonization of the Caribbean opened it to the slave trade. Settling Barbados in 1624, Britain imported the first slaves in 1627. Thereafter the slave trade grew with the spread of sugar cultivation as the trade had in the thirteen colonies with the tobacco boom.

Barbadian imports increased from 6,500 slaves between 1640 and 1644 (an average of 1,300 per year) to 36,400 between 1698 and 1707 (an average of 3,640 per year). In Jamaica sugar and the slave trade took hold in the middle of the 17th century.

Between 1651 and 1675, planters imported 8,000 slaves, an average of roughly 330 per year, roughly one-sixth the number imported into Barbados. By the turn of the century, however, Jamaica had eclipsed Barbados, importing between 1676 and 1700 77,100 slaves, an average of roughly 3,210 per year.

Extrapolating the number of imports from the Royal African Company, a slave trading firm granted a monopoly by King Charles II, to all traders throughout Jamaica, planters imported into the island roughly 7,800 slaves between 1708 and 1711, an average of 2,600 per year.

Between 1655 and 1674, Barbados supplied Jamaica with one-third of its slaves though the proportion fell by the turn of the 18th century to 5 percent. By then most imports came from Africa though the voyage to Jamaica was 1,000 miles farther west than Barbados. The Leeward Islands were the last of Britain’s Caribbean holdings to enter the slave trade. By 1670, island planters had imported only 7,000 slaves.

The numbers grew to 44,800 between 1672 and 1706, an average of 1,280 per year, with another 43,100 between 1707 and 1733, an average of 1,600 per year. In total the British imported 250,000 slaves into the Caribbean by 1700, and throughout the Americas, traders of all nations bought and sold 266,100 slaves between 1519 and 1600.

This represents an average of 3,300 per year, with the number rising to roughly 1.3 million between 1726 and 1750, an astonishing average of 52,000 per year. In all the New World absorbed more than 1.5 million slaves between 1519 and 1750.

Quebec Act

Quebec Act

Both the timing too provisions of the Quebec Act (passed into constabulary past times the British Parliament on 22 June 1774, with a engagement of enactment of 1 May 1775) convinced many residents of the master 13 British North American colonies that metropolitan officials were conspiring to deprive them of their liberties.

American colonists, predisposed past times parliamentary legislation over the previous decade to view evil intent inwards whatever policy first of the British ministry, were joined past times the Whig opposition inwards British Parliament inwards their tearing protests against the Quebec Act because of its apparent threat to the colonies’ political, religious, too economical interests.

Passed hastily belatedly inwards a parliamentary session, with all official papers connected to its grooming suppressed, too with the populace barred from the nigh controversial debates, meaning colonial too British interests regarded the Quebec Act equally business office of a larger plot to subvert the English linguistic communication constitution on both sides of the Atlantic.

While the Quebec Act appeared presently subsequently the Coercive Acts (it was explicitly associated with those acts past times American supporters of independence from Great Britain), considerable prove indicates that nigh of the act’s basic provisions had been nether consideration past times majestic officials for nearly a decade.


Designed to resolve problems of British governance inwards French-speaking Canada (renamed Quebec subsequently the conquest of 1760), the Quebec Act provided for the institution of the Catholic Church inwards the province, preserved existing French civil constabulary amongst English linguistic communication criminal law, maintained the organisation of seigneurial nation tenure, too arranged for all political authorization to reside with the governor too an appointed executive council.

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 finally meaning element, the imposition of a western boundary that extended provincial jurisdiction into the Ohio River valley, was added to the draft legislation of the Quebec Act subsequently tidings of the Boston Tea Party (16 Dec 1773) reached England.

Clearly intended to reconcile the Canadian population to life nether British rule, the human activity has been praised past times modern historians for its liberal too tolerant elements. Yet many American colonists, too equally the small-scale British population residing inwards Quebec, expressed stupor too horror over the unprecedented nature of the Quebec Act’s provisions for the hated Catholic Church.

Strident anti-Catholicism explains why, although the Quebec Act nullified the western claims of 4 American colonies too imposed nonrepresentative regime on a vast surface area of the continental interior, the loudest protests against it came from Protestant New England.

There memories of devastating raids past times parties of French Canadians too allied Native Americans during intercolonial wars all the same haunted the collective consciousness. The view that the Quebec Act represented a conspiracy arose principally out of speculation over British Prime Minister Sir Frederick North’s aims inwards enacting the law.

Suspicious critics on both sides of the Atlantic interpreted the content too timing of the Quebec Act equally a signal of the North ministry’s intention to trammel the recalcitrant 13 colonies to the Atlantic seaboard, too to employ a pacified Canadian territory too population equally a base of operations for offensive operations inwards the lawsuit of armed conflict with the colonial American population.

Unbeknownst to many of its opponents, strategic considerations regarding Canada were inwards fact at the view of the Quebec Act. Imperial policymakers placed groovy weight on the opinions of Sir Guy Carleton, Quebec’s state of war machine governor.

Carleton thought of Quebec inwards state of war machine terms, too considered his substitution employment to hold upwards ane of securing the allegiance of the French Catholic majority, specially inwards the context of increasing instability inwards the 13 colonies subsequently 1765.

s recommendations, based on his belief inwards the social influence of Quebec’s seigneurs too clergy, were intended to insulate the say from the growing radicalism of the 13 colonies.

The omnibus nature of the Quebec Act meant that it probable offended to a greater extent than colonial Americans too British Whigs than whatever other unmarried slice of majestic legislation during the decade prior to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War.

The American Continental Congress, coming together inwards Philadelphia inwards Oct 1774, determined to insist that Parliament repeal the Quebec Act on the grounds that it constituted a parliamentary endeavour “by the influence of civil principles too ancient prejudices, to dispose the inhabitants [of Quebec] to human activity with hostility against the gratis Protestant colonies, whenever a wicked ministry building shall chuse to at nowadays them” (Ammerman, 70).

Opponents of the Quebec Act inwards United Kingdom of Great Britain too Northern Ireland went fifty-fifty further, disputation that the Quebec Act subverted the church, law, too constitution of England at ane stroke, too alert of the grave consequences of “digging the pit for America into which nosotros ourselves must fall” (Lawson, 135).

Additionally, had the damage of the Quebec Act been followed to the letter, the Canadian habitants mightiness convey realized that this ostensibly liberal policy very placed severe limitations on the traditional practise of church building authorization inwards Quebec, too that it reflected a policy of “gentle but steady too determined anglicization”.

If the Quebec Act’s creators genuinely believed that inwards 1774 they could exceed such legislation without bothering to consider the broader context of potential reaction to its provisions on both sides of the Atlantic, it would look to indicate, at best, their astonishing political tone-deafness inwards the midst of an majestic crisis.

At worst, the Quebec Act could hold upwards viewed equally a reflection of the North ministry’s wishing to permit the appearance of conspiratorial policymaking against constitutional interests on both sides of the Atlantic inwards society to acquaint a demo of forcefulness against colonial too domestic opposition. Expressions of suspicion concerning the Quebec Act, emanating inwards United Kingdom of Great Britain too Northern Ireland too America, represented to a greater extent than than exactly “a stick with which to compaction the ministry” (Lawson, 149).

The Quebec Act violated the majestic axiom of the British constitution next the flag, it appeared to repudiate the thought of Protestant ascendancy, too it appeared amidst a seat out of other political developments that appeared to threaten the constitution at abode too throughout the larger empire.

Louis XV

Louis XV

When Louis XIV died in 1715, his great-grandson and heir Louis XV was five years old. The child king’s regent was Philippe II, duc d’Orléans, related to the royal Bourbon dynasty. Philippe II, in the period of French history often called “the Regency,” became known for a sensational lifestyle.

The duke, famous for his sensual appetite, resigned his regency in 1723 largely because of the adverse publicity brought about by his lifestyle that was in effect funded by the French people. He died later that year.

Philippe II’s downfall was followed by that of the financial network set up in France by the Scottish economist John Law. Philippe II had employed Law to help the French economy, which had suffered severely from the almost incessant wars of Louis XIV.

Law’s note-issuing bank was a spectacular success, until it collapsed after a bank run in 1720, plunging France and Europe into a severe economic crisis that contributed to the French Revolution. John Law was exiled from France.


Had Louis XV followed a more conservative fiscal policy, the revolution might have been delayed, or averted. However, with dire consequences, Louis XV’s reign was marked by the same disastrous spending on maintaining France’s position in Europe as the reign of Louis XIV.

With the resignation of Orléans, catastrophe was averted by the appointment of Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury, who essentially served as the king’s first minister. Louis XV left most of the government of France to Cardinal Fleury.

Fleury stabilized France’s currency, built roads, expanded the reach of the merchant marine, and stimulated the economy. He set his sights on peace, although the War of the Polish Succession was unavoidable because of Louis XV’s marriage to Marie Leszcynska, a member of Polish royalty.

Although Cardinal Fleury attempted to make the kingdom more fiscally responsible, the dynastic wars of Europe continued to drain the French treasury, as they had during the reign of King Louis XIV. Indeed, during the reign of King Louis XV, two of the largest wars in French history, the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War, took place.

These wars would be global conflicts, because not only were France and England combatants in Europe, but the fighting spread to overseas colonies. The War of the Austrian Succession highlighted the rise of Maurice de Saxe to French command; he had joined the French army in 1720. De Saxe was a son of King Augustus II of Poland.

The kala of Maurice de Saxe marked the apogee of the reign of King Louis XV. With the death of Cardinal Fleury during the war in 1743, Louis XV lost his most important minister. He sought to govern on his own but lacked the abilities to do so.

Too much influence was given to his mistresses, Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry. At the same time, unchecked by the king, corruption worked to sap the strength and morale of the army.

In 1756, in a move at least partly attributed to Madame de Pompadour’s influence, Louis XV embarked on what has become known as the diplomatic revolution of the 18th century. Orchestrated by Maria Theresa’s foreign minister von Kaunitz, the diplomatic revolution saw the alliance of France, the Holy Roman Empire (of which Austria-Hungary was the most important part), and Russia.

With Frederick the Great of Prussia occupied with the Russians and Austrians, in the fall of 1757, Louis XV sent a French army under Marshal Soubise to attack Frederick from the rear. Unfortunately, Soubise, a product of the favoritism now governing France, proved no match for Frederick.

Then on August 1, 1759, a French army commanded by the marquis de Contades suffered a serious defeat at the hands of a British, Hanoverian, and Prussian army led by Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. Contades was only saved a near-rout like Soubise’s because Sir George Sackville, through cowardice or incompetence, refused to charge the enemy with his cavalry squadrons.

While the war was going badly for Louis XV in Europe, it was worse overseas. British prime minister William Pitt had set as his goal the destruction of France’s colonies. The war began in 1754 with a skirmish in North America where George Washington made his first appearance in command against forces from New France (Canada). In North America, the conflict became known as the French and Indian wars.

In 1760 the French finally surrendered to Jeffrey, Lord Amherst at Montreal. In India, the British East India Company, supported by regular British troops, fought its own struggle with the French Compangnie des Indes, buttressed by French troops sent from France to support it. Yet, in India too, the balance of power tipped in favor of the British.

In February 1763, the Seven Years’ War was brought to an end for England and France by the Treaty of Paris, by which France relinquished its claims on New France. France, however, retained its islands in the French West Indies which, because of their great production of sugar, the French government valued more than New France. The end of the war found the reputation of French arms, raised to new heights by Maurice de Saxe, at its lowest point in the century. Financially, the years of war were a calamity for France.

Efforts to reform the financial system of France proved frustrated by opposition, and Louis XV lacked the personal determination to force them through opposition. Although the last decade of Louis XV’s reign passed in relative peace, it was only the quiet before the storm. Only 15 years after his death, the French Revolution destroyed the monarchy.

Viceroyalty of New Spain

For 300 years (1521–1821), the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the richest and most important political jurisdiction in Spain’s American holdings, expanded from its original boundaries in central Mexico south and west to the Pacific Ocean; south and east to include the Yucatán Peninsula, Florida, the Caribbean, northern South America, and Central America to contemporary Panama (the latter in a jurisdictional subdivision called the Kingdom of Guatemala); and north to include significant portions of what later became the U.S. Southwest.

At the political, economic, and demographic center of this vast colony was the Basin of Mexico, at the heart of which lay Mexico City, built atop the ruins of the aztec capital of Tenochtitlán.

Consequences of Colonial Rule

Three hundred years of colonial rule bequeathed to New Spain an enduring legacy whose consequences remain amply apparent in Mexico and Central America today. Most fundamentally, the new colonial order created new social and racial hierarchies, with Spaniards dominant, Indians subordinate, and, as time passed, mestizos (“mixed-race” Spaniards and Indians) occupying a widening middle ground.

During the first century of colonial rule, the colony’s major social institutions can be identified as the following: the colonial state and its byzantine administrative apparatus; the Roman Catholic Church, both its “regular” and “secular” branches; encomienda; Indian communities; and the patriarchal family.


From around the mid-1600s, hacienda, generally accompanied by debt peonage, displaced encomienda as the principal institution governing land-labor relations between Spaniards and Indians, largely in consequence of steep population declines among Indians resulting from the ravages of epidemic diseases, which effectively rendered encomienda obsolete.

Secular Church's Power Grows

During the same period, the so-called secular church (the ecclesiastical hierarchy emanating from Rome, with the pope at its head) grew in power relative to the regular church (composed of quasi-independent missionary or “mendicant” orders such as the Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, Jesuits, and others, each governed by specific reglas or rules).

This growing power of the secular church, densely entwined with the colonial state, was especially apparent in the most densely populated core regions, while the missionary orders remained strong in the colony’s peripheral zones, such as Yucatán, the northern deserts, and elsewhere.

The overall animo of the colonial period was for the regular church to initiate the process of conversion in peripheral areas, and, over time, as populations grew and the state extended its reach, to cede ecclesiastical authority to the encroaching secular church.

Far from a monolithic institution, the colonial church was wracked by division and conflict, both within and between its major branches. By the end of the colonial period, the Roman Catholic Church, both regular and secular, was not only one of the colony’s most important social institutions, but also far and away its largest landowner.

Contrary to a popularly held view, surviving Indian communities in New Spain and elsewhere retained various forms of collective (or “corporate”) landownership throughout the colonial period. This too became a crucial colonial legacy, especially evident in liberal efforts to privatize landownership in the decades after independence in 1821, efforts fiercely resisted by both the church and Indian communities.

Industry

The Basin of Mexico became and remained the colony’s breadbasket and major source of grain, meat, and other foodstuffs, as well as domestic industry such as obrajes, with expanding market relations especially important in the fertile and well-watered zones north and west of Mexico City.

In the 1540s, the discovery of large deposits of silver northwest of the Basin of Mexico, centered on the province of Zacatecas, provided the colonial state with a steady supply of silver bullion, fueling a price revolution in Iberia and the rest of Europe and transforming the regional colonial economies of Zacatecas, Guanajuato, and other mining regions.

By the mid-1600s, the sprawling colony sank into what one scholar dubbed “New Spain’s century of depression,” though the nature and extent of that “depression” remain the subject of scholarly debate. Compared to the thriving colonies of British North America and elsewhere, however, New Spain did experience a prolonged period of relative economic stagnation.

The imperial state’s efforts to redress its colonies’ relative economic decline, launched after the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–13), are known collectively as the Bourbon Reforms, named after the ruling dynasty that assumed power in Spain after the fall of the Habsburgs.

In a process similar to that unfolding elsewhere in the Americas, as time passed, the “creoles” (or criollos, i.e., Spaniards born in the Americas) became an increasingly important and powerful group, despite its relatively small size—a gradual shift that by the late 1700s led to a growing sense of American identity and the first stirrings for independence from Spain.

Indian and “mixed-race” rebellions and uprisings occurred throughout the colonial period, but most remained local and regional and focused on redress of specific grievances relating to colonial governance or perceived abuses by individual authorities.

Demographics

The demographic makeup of the colony changed markedly over time, from its initial overwhelming preponderance of Indians and tiny number of Spaniards, to steep Indian population decline, to increasing number of mestizos and others of “mixed race,” Africans, and a small but growing number of creoles.

New Spain’s population at the end of the colonial period is estimated at around 6 million—around 50 percent Indian, 30 to 40 percent “mixed race,” 10 to 20 percent Spanish and creole, and less than 1 percent African.

In sum, 300 years of colonial rule left a profound and lasting legacy across New Spain, in every realm of society. Grappling with the nature of that legacy remains one of the most challenging and central tasks facing scholars of postconquest Mexico and Central America.