Franciscans in the Americas

Franciscans in the Americas

The Franciscans sent the greatest number of missionaries to minister in the New World. This is quite likely due to the fact that they were the largest order in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. In 1493, there were some 22,000 friars participating in various Franciscan observances. A large number of them were in Spain.

By 1517, this number had grown to 30,000, mainly due to reforms initiated by Cardinal Francisco de Cisneros in the simpler more relaxed Observant reform (which retained the name Order of Friars Minor). The Franciscan order has had a history marked by reforms and divisions. In 1517, Pope Leo X divided into two independent groups disgruntled Franciscans still unsatisfied by the medieval attempts at reform.

The result was a Conventual Franciscan group (those resisting change) and the Observant group, which would be called Friars Minor. A Capuchin reform surfaced in 1528 and became an independent group by 1619 (Order Friars Minor Capuchin). Among the three groups, the Franciscans had an overwhelming majority of religious representatives in the New World.


It has been suggested by historians that Franciscan missionaries, Friars Juan de la Deule and Juan de Tisin along with Father Ramón Pané, were the first members of a religious order to come to the Americas. These men accompanied Christopher Columbus in 1493 during his second expedition.

They had been sent by a special commission of the Franciscan order in response to royal instructions from the Spanish Crown aimed at bringing the natives of the Americas to Catholicism. Their initial chapel was built at Port Conception on Hispaniola, where in December of 1493 they offered Mass for the first time in the New World. A convent was built for them by Columbus at the stronghold of Santo Domingo.

Pane, probably more of a contemplative, accompanied Columbus on his voyage to Puerto Rico in 1496. Pane kept very exacting records of his activities and observations of the natives that have survived to this day. The Franciscans were at the vanguard of missionary activity on the newly discovered islands. In 1502, 17 more Franciscans arrived along with the first governor of Hispaniola. They would go on to build the first convent and church (San Francisco) at Santo Domingo.

Domingo became the base of operations for countless missionary expeditions to the north, south, and central continental mainland for many decades. During the next 25 years, more than 50 Franciscan missionaries attempted to evangelize the Caribbean islands, particularly Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. Friar Juan de la Deule died while ministering to Jamaicans sometime between 1508 and 1511.

In 1512, Father García de Padilla was consecrated as bishop of Santo Domingo and, two years later, another Franciscan, Juan de Quevendo, was consecrated as the first bishop of the Central American mainland at Santa Maria Darién. The eastern part of Venezuela was also established as a Franciscan apostolic mission that lasted from 1514 to 1521.

Not until after 1576 were friaries founded in the province of Caracas. In the 17th century, the Capuchins attempted to evangelize in Venezuela. Francisco de Pamplona (a former military general) began work at Darién in 1650. The Capuchin houses located there refused to accept Creoles into the order.

Expeditions to Mexico

During 1523 and 1524, two Franciscan missionary expeditions set out for Mexico from Santo Domingo. The first friars among the Mexicans were Flemish. Among them was Father Peter of Ghent (d. 1562), who spent some 40 years among the native Mesoamericans. The following year 12 more Franciscans arrived. Around 1527, a diocese was organized under the Franciscan bishop Juan de Zumárraga.

At that point, some 70 Franciscan houses rapidly surfaced in Mexico and the region was raised in status to a province. Zumárraga is credited with setting up the first printing press in the New World. Publications in 12 languages were printed and distributed throughout the Americas.

Education of the Indian children of Mexico became a priority and labor of love among the friars. However, there was some opposition on the part of the Spanish government in regard to the education of the natives.

Most convents had schools where thousands of Mexican boys were taught to read, write, and sing. Eventually the Franciscans assisted with the development of a school for girls in Mexico City. Several colleges were also founded for the sons of tribal chiefs throughout Mexico; they became centers for further missionary activity to both South and North America.

Before the end of the 16th century, friars extended missionary efforts from Guadalajara in the northwest to New Mexico in the north, northeast to the Gulf of Mexico, and south to the Yucatán, Guatemala, and Costa Rica.

Beautiful churches were constructed at Huejotzingo, Tlamanalco, Huequechula, Izamal, and Cholula. Friars Pedro de Betanzos and Francisco de la Parra became experts in the Mayan language and have handed down keys to its translation. By 1569, there were some 300 Franciscan missionaries in New Spain (Mexico) alone.

Missions to Peru

Missionary efforts to Peru were launched by Franciscans from Santo Domingo, after 1527 by Juan de los Santos, and followed by Marcos de Niza between 1531 and 1532. Earlier, Franciscans accompanied Pizarro during his conquest and exploration of the region. Evangelization progressed fairly slowly in Peru for the first 20 years due to the animosity between natives and the Spanish invaders.

From Santa Cruz eight missionaries were sent out to Peru. Friar Francisco de Aragón took 12 Franciscans and traveled south to form the main trunk from which communities in Ecuador, Chile, and Bolivia grew. A center for ministry was established at Quito as well as a college.

By 1549, a supervisor was sent to Lima to coordinate all Franciscans in the southern part of the continent. It was not until 1553 that Peru saw permanent Franciscan establishments. In Ecuador a Franciscan province was erected in 1565. Missionary activity to the east and south continued.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, many friars were lost to martyrdom in the territories of the Ucayali and the region north of the Amazon. Franciscans count 129 friar deaths on the Ucayali alone. In 1742, most of these centers of ministry were destroyed during native uprisings.

It took 50 years to restore the Franciscan missions in these areas. Attempts by Franciscans to evangelize Chile were gravely disappointing. Between 1553 and 1750, repeated hostilities between Spanish settlers and natives made activity in the region difficult.

Not until Chilean independence in 1832 did the friars resume their missionary work. In the southern part of Chile and Bolivia the Franciscans were more successful. Seven missionary colleges were established and Franciscans ministered to the people of Bolivia between the 16th and 19th centuries.

They reached Paraguay in the early 1600s and Uruguay a century later. In Argentina, Paraguay, and Peru, the Franciscan missionary St. Francis Solano (1549–1610), who was said to have had the gift of tongues (having learned numerous native languages), spent 14 years ministering to colonists and natives. He is still held in highest regard among descendants of the indigenous people of South America.

Franciscans in Florida

Franciscans arrived in Florida in 1573, eight years after the first permanent Spanish settlement. A larger influx of friars in 1587 and again in 1589 helped with the conversion of the Guale.

Many of the northern tribes of Florida were urban dwellers, so the Franciscans attempted to move into their cities and live among the people. Soon a chain of missions were established along the Atlantic coast for some 250 miles. However, during Indian uprisings of 1597, five Franciscan friars were martyred.

In 1612, the Franciscan province of Santa Elena, which was headquartered in Havana, Cuba, began to supervise missionary work in Florida. At its peak in 1675, some 40 friars maintained 36 missions and the bishop of Havana claimed 13,000 native souls and about 30,000 total Catholics (which might be an exaggeration) under his care.

Eventually, the Franciscan missions would fall victim to the struggle between England and Spain over the territory between St. Augustine and Charleston. Slaving raids, armed conflicts, and British alliances with Native American tribes caused the Florida missions to vanish. By 1706, most Franciscan houses in Florida had ceased to function.

By 1680, there were more than 60,000 Franciscan friars worldwide. This may have had to do with the growing number of friaries (2,113 in 1585 and 4,050 in 1762). There were 16 provinces in the Spanish Americas alone.

By the middle of the 18th century, at least a third of all Franciscan houses and friars were in the Spanish New World. Some of this growth reflected an increase in the number of native Franciscans in the Americas, especially in the 16th century. In fact, in Mexico, Spanish friars began to constitute a thin minority by the mid-1600s.

Texas Settlements

Texas began to be settled by Franciscans while the area was still linked to New Spain. Some missionaries refer to the areas occupied by Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California as the New Kingdom of St. Francis.

There was trouble in 1680; the Pueblo Revolt saw the uprising of many Native Americans, primarily in response to the denigration of their religion by the Spanish Franciscans as well as the disruption of the Pueblo economy. Under the direction of Popé, the revolt was successful, and Popé ruled from the former governor’s palace until his death in 1688.

Shortly after his death, the Spanish returned, reconquering the land without bloodshed by offering clemency to the inhabitants. In 1690, permanent missions began to be founded in the area of Texas, mostly through the efforts of Father Damian Mazanet.

Many Indians in Texas were open to accepting the Christian gospel. During the 1700s, some 21 Franciscan missions staffed by more than 160 friars were established in Texas and thousands of Indians embraced the faith.

During the mid-1700s, many were constructed in magnificent fashion of stone; some included fortress walls. Several examples of these still survive, particularly in the area around San Antonio, Texas. After the period of Mexican independence in the early 1800s, a large number of these missions were left to ruin.

While Mexico and Arizona had Franciscan visitors in the 1500s, it was not until the early 17th century that there was any permanent activity there. Father Juan de Padilla died in the region for his faith in 1542 during an early expedition.

By 1628, there were 43 churches and an estimate of some 30,000 Catholics (native and Spanish) in the territories. The Franciscans were the only missionaries to minister there and it has been recorded that nearly 300 Franciscans preached in the area during the 16th and 17th centuries. California did not experience Franciscan activity until 1769.

The work of Father Junípero Serra and his assistants saw the founding of 21 permanent missions extending from the initial foundation in San Diego north to San Francisco. For the next 100 years, 144 friars would labor in California, resulting in an estimated 80,000 baptisms among Native Americans and settlers.

English American Missions

In the English American colonies there was some isolated Franciscan activity in the late 1600s as well as some activity in French Canada in the early part of the 17th century. Between 1672 and 1699, English friars assisted the Jesuits with work in Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Michigan, Illinois, and Minnesota. The only permanent success seems to have been in Detroit. However, even that region was unstable. In 1706, the Franciscan priest Constantine Dehalle was killed in an Indian uprising.

Father Gabrielle de la Ribaude also gave his life near Joliet, on the banks of the Illinois River, in 1681. In New France (Canada) the first missionaries in the region were four French Franciscans in Quebec around 1615. They spent the 10 years ministering to the Huron and Algonquins in the regions of the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes.

Father Nicholas Veil was the first Franciscan to be martyred in Canada. By 1630, the British ended friar activity in most of Canada. Some work continued among the Abnaki in Nova Scotia and Arcadia until around 1633.

A group of explorers led by the Franciscan Father Louis Hennepin (1640–1701) sailed from Niagara Falls down the Mississippi. Hennepin wrote several accounts of his adventures. One of the last of the formative Franciscan missionaries in Canada was Father Emanuel Crespel, whose efforts extended all the way to the Fox River in Wisconsin during the 1720s.

Historical information on Franciscan activities during the 17th and 18th centuries is not as abundant as that of the 16th century formative period. Heroic tales of martyrs and founders survived in the form of oral traditions, written accounts, and records kept by the order. By the 17th century, the scope and goals of missionary and evangelical activity began to change.

By then it was even more necessary to educate and catechize as well as bring European culture and ideas to the native inhabitants. Dealing with a second generation of settlers, the arrival of new Europeans, as well as the issue of intermarriage, preoccupied the friars.

The mission foundations, or doctrinas, began to evolve into parishes (some were exclusively native, others were urban European, and there were many mixed communities). It was also customary to hand many of the more successful parishes and mission foundations over to diocesan secular clergy, freeing many Franciscans to attend to ministry in the more remote areas.

As the 18th century progressed, growing control by the secular clergy eventually gave way to the specialization of the Franciscans in attending to new and more isolated missionary territories in addition to the establishment of missionary colleges directed at the propagation of the faith.

St. Francis de Sales (François de Sales)

St. Francis de Sales (François de Sales)

In an age of religious division and strife, Francis de Sales (François de Sales) was a voice of reason and charity and a leader in the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Plagued by lifelong doubts about his faith, he was revered as a saintly man by both Catholics and Protestants precisely when violence was the usual recourse for religious controversy.

Francis’s father expected him to be either a lawyer or a military officer and raised him accordingly, sending him to the University of Paris to study rhetoric and humanities under the Jesuits and then to the Padua Law School. He was not much interested in the hidebound teachings of the Dominicans and Jesuits, consummate Scholastics who followed the old ideas of Thomas Aquinas.

He found himself fascinated by the new ideas of the Protestant reformer John Calvin, who taught predestination. Struggling with doubts, he finally came to the conclusion, at age 19, that his main concern was to love God in this life and to entrust his eternal fate to the hands of this God.

During Francis’s days in law school he resolved to become a priest. He became involved with the Catholic diocese of Geneva-Annecy, an area particularly hard-hit by Protestant proselytism. He was ordained in 1593, and through some papal connections was appointed provost of the diocese.


Francis’s position allowed him to begin a mission to the resident Protestants. He conceived it as based on charity toward the poor, care of the sick, and evangelical preaching instead the conventional Counter-Reformation tactics of law and military force. Francis endured daily hardships of harassment, cold, violence, and threats.

When offered another diocese by Henry IV, he refused, saying, “Sire, I am married; my wife is a poor woman, but I cannot leave her for a richer one.” Miracles were associated with his mission. The area, Protestant for some 60 years, largely returned to the Catholic Church within four years.

Francis soon became bishop of Geneva, where his patience and mildness became proverbial. He often dared to walk the streets of the city where Calvin had his headquarters 50 years earlier. In fact he dialogued with the reformed leader and scholar Theodore Beza. Though again plagued by doubts, his philosophy was “Love will shake the walls of Geneva; by love we must invade it.”

Francis produced a stream of writings that proved that the pen was mightier than the sword. Among his most famous books were Introduction to the Devout Life (1608). He also became renowned as a spiritual director, having a profound effect on the founders of two Catholic Counter-Reformation orders, later declared saints, Vincent de Paul and Jane de Chantal. Protestant King James of England and Scottish Calvinists in Aberdeen read his literature. He had a vast correspondence, perhaps sending out 20,000 letters.

He suffered an agonizing death in 1622, was beatified by Pope Alexander VII only 39 years later, and was canonized by 1665. He was declared doctor of the church in 1877 partly for his irenic affects on religious dissent and patron saint of journalists and writers in 1923.

Among the organizations that claim direct connection with him today are Visitation Sisters, Missionaries of St. Francis de Sales, Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, Salesians of Don Bosco, and the St. Francis de Sales Association.

Exclusion Laws in Japan

Exclusion Laws in Japan

In 1534, the first Portuguese ship arrived in southern Japan bringing a cargo that included firearms. For the next hundred years, Japanese-Western trade flourished and Christian missionaries converted many Japanese to Catholicism.

However in 1636 strict isolation laws were enforced, foreigners were expelled, Japanese Christians were compelled to renounce their religion on pain of death, and Japanese were forbidden to leave the country. These strict exclusion laws would last until 1854.

The Japanese had known about gunpowder since the 13th century. However in the midst of extensive civil wars in the 16th century, Japanese feudal lords were immediately impressed by the accurate firing aquebuses and cannons the Portuguese traders introduced and immediately began to buy and then make them in Japan. These new weapons changed the nature of the warfare and led to the building of heavily fortified castles.


Catholic missionaries followed merchants. Francis Xavier, associate of Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, arrived in Japan in 1549. Franciscan and Dominican missionaries soon followed. Many feudal lords, anxious to increase trade with European merchants, and seeing the deference Portuguese and Spanish merchants showed to priests, welcomed missionaries to their domains; some converted and even ordered their subjects to convert also.

Oda Nobunaga, the most powerful military leader of Japan, became a patron of the Jesuits. The number of converts increased dramatically, to 150,000 and two hundred churches by 1582 and perhaps to as many as 500,000 by 1615.

The very success of the Catholic missionaries created a backlash against Christians. Some opponents were Buddhists. Significantly political leaders began to fear the political loyalty of their Christian subjects. Thus Oda’s successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–98) banned Christianity in 1587 but did not strictly enforce his edict until 10 years later.

It was Hideyoshi’s successor Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616) who seriously persecuted Christians, beginning in 1612 when, as shogun, he ordered all Japanese converts to renounce Christianity on pain of death and then to be registered in a Buddhist temple.

He also executed some missionaries and expelled all others. His policies were ruthlessly carried out, with military force where there were large Christian communities. Tens of thousands were killed and only isolated clandestine communities remained.

The Tokugawa Bakufu, or Shogunate, expanded the ban on missionaries to include all Spanish, Portuguese, and English traders also. Only the Dutch among Europeans were allowed to send two ships annually to Nagasaki under strict supervision. Chinese ships were also allowed under license.

In 1636, another law was promulgated that prohibited all Japanese from leaving Japan and members of the sizable Japanese communities in Southeast Asia from returning. Shipbuilding was limited to small coastal vessels to prevent Japanese from secretly trading with foreigners.

Fear and insecurity motivated the newly established Tokugawa Shogunate (1603–1868) to ban Christianity and foreign contacts. Seclusion became Japan’s national policy.

Dorgon

Prince Dorgon

Dorgon was regent for his nephew between 1644 and 1650. He seized the opportunity offered by Ming general Wu Sangui (Wu San-kuei) to lead the Manchu forces inside the Great Wall and together to defeat the rebels who had seized Beijing (Peking) that ended the Ming dynasty.

After defeating the rebels Dorgon placed his six-year-old nephew on the vacant throne. With this act, the Qing (Ch’ing) dynasty was transformed from a frontier state to a national dynasty of all China.

When Manchu leader Abahai died in 1643, the Manchu clan leaders assembled to elect a new ruler among his sons. Dorgon, Abahai’s younger brother and the most able among the princes, successfully maneuvered to have five-year-old Fulin (Fulin) elected ruler, rather than an older son, so that he could be regent.

An able statesman and warrior, Dorgon continued to consolidate central power and strengthened the bureaucratic style government established by his brother. As the weakening Ming dynasty was threatened by internal revolts Abahai prepared to invade north China.


In April 1644, a rebel army led by Li Zucheng (Li Tsu-ch’eng) advanced on the capital city Beijing (Peking), taking the city before General Wu Sangui and his troops stationed at Shanhaiguan (Shanhaikuan) at the eastern terminus of the Great Wall of China could arrive to defend the city.

General Wu then invited the Manchus to assist him against the rebels, an invitation that Dorgon was delighted to accept. Prince Dorgon and Wu ousted the rebels and entered the city with their joint forces on June 6, 1644.

While Wu and some Manchu units chased down the rebels, Dorgon remained in Beijing, buried the last Ming emperor and empress (who had committed suicide) with honor, declared that the Manchus had come to restore order, and placed his young nephew on the vacant throne as Emperor Shunzi (Shun-chih).

He thus established a new national dynasty, the Qing (Ch’ing), that would last until 1911. He also confirmed most Ming officials in their positions, including the Jesuits who headed the Board of Astronomy; reduced taxes; and forbade Manchu imperial clansmen from interfering in administration.

The defeat of Li and other rebels and immediate reforms won over many northern Chinese although it took several decades to end Ming loyalist movements in southern China. However one of Dorgon’s orders, that all Han Chinese men wear their hair in a queue as Manchu men did, greatly irritated Chinese sensibilities.

Dorgon was a forceful direktur but his arrogance and autocratic style alienated many. He gave himself increasingly exalted titles, such as “Imperial Father Regent,” but was frustrated that he could not become emperor.

A showdown between Dorgon and his nephew never occurred because he died in 1650 during a hunting trip. Shunzi then took over personal control but continued the successful policies of his uncle. Thus while Nurhaci and Abahai prepared the way for the rise of the Manchus, it was Dorgon who seized the opportunity to realize it.

Dominicans in the Americas

Dominicans in the Americas

When the first wave of Spanish explorers and invaders came to the Americas, they were accompanied by a few clergy who served the sailors and military personnel as chaplains, but none of any note belonged to the Dominican order.

However it was a Dominican bishop, Diego de Deza, who first sponsored Christopher Columbus at the Spanish court and afterward took credit for Spain’s opportunity to claim the West Indies. In 1508, the master of the Order of Preachers, Thomas de Vio (also known to history as Cajetan), called for 15 Dominican friars to be sent from the University of Salamanca in Spain to the island of Hispaniola (modern Haiti and Dominican Republic).

The first four friars arrived in 1510 at Santo Domingo and quickly made that stronghold their base of operations. They learned the indigenous language and proceeded to minister to both Spaniards and the local people. It did not take them long to become critical of the treatment of the natives by the Europeans.


These early friars refused the comfortable accommodations that were offered to them by the colonizers and instead moved into a simple hut where they began to share in communal life and common prayer and give support to each other’s ministry of preaching. Dominican criticism of the Spanish who were forcing natives to labor in mines and on estates is recalled in a number of early sermons aimed at colonists, soldiers, and representatives of the Crown.

In 1512, Dominicans traveled back to Spain and brought their criticisms of the Caribbean encomendero system and its human rights violations directly to King Ferdinand V. Certain compromises with the Crown were put into effect in the form of modified laws that gave natives some protection, putting an end to child labor, as well as the exploitation of Native women.

The conversion to the Dominican order of a Spanish secular priest in the Caribbean, Bartolomé de Las Casas, proved to be instrumental in the struggles of the church against Native oppression. Bartolomé had come with the conquerors in 1502 and was given a huge portion of land to administrate, sharing in the fruits of Native exploitation and forced labor.

In 1524, he took on the Dominican habit and gave up his estates in Cuba. Through his writings (particularly Historia de las Indias) as well as his preaching and ministry, Bartolomé became an advocate for justice in the Spanish colonies.

Dominican professors of theology like Francisco de Vitoria (1485–1546) at Salamanca in Spain had argued against slavery using Thomistic principles to support the case for basic human dignity. Francisco was one of the first to condemn the conquest of Peru by Francisco Pizarro, promoting instead a pastoral evangelization of the region.

Francisco de Vitoria is best known for his treatises Relecciones de Indias and De jure belli. Julián Garcés, the Dominican bishop of Tlaxcala in New Spain, along with Las Casas and other friars sent petitions to Pope Paul III to become an advocate for the rights of natives in the Americas.

This resulted in the 1537 bull Sublimis Deus. In it Paul III wrote, “The Indians are truly men, and are not only capable of understanding the Catholic faith, but according to our information they desire exceedingly to receive it....” This opened the door for continued missionary activity in Central and South America as well as the islands.

Antonio de Montesinos was among the first party of Dominicans to land in North America, near Georgetown, South Carolina, in 1526. They build a small church, San Miguel de Gualdape, and a temporary settlement where the expedition’s leader, Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón, was to die a few months later. He was buried there.

The following year de Montessinos abandoned the settlement and returned to the Caribbean where he was assigned by the Crown as protector to the natives of Venezuela. After some 15 years of service to the community in Venezuela, Friar Antonio was murdered by a Spanish officer in 1540.

The Maya and North America

The Dominicans also sent missionaries to the Mayans. Luis Cancer, who served the community of Hispaniola as a young friar, was assigned in 1521 to the mission of San Juan in Puerto Rico. In 1542, he left San Juan to join Bartolomé de Las Casas among the Maya in Guatemala.

The two friars learned the Mayan language and attempted to cooperate with the natives, delivering the message of the Gospel in the land the Spanish referred to as La Tierra de la Guerra (the land of war). Struggles between the Maya and Spanish had been ongoing in the region since the arrival of the invaders. Las Casas and Cancer even succeeded in translating Bible passages into Mayan song.

Friar Luis traveled unescorted into their lands and was said to have been welcomed by the Mayan people. Cancer next traveled to Florida in 1548 accompanied by a native woman and translator from the island of Hispaniola named Magdalena. She had been converted to Christianity by the Dominicans.

The party landed on the west coast of Florida and Magdalena went ashore with Friar Diego de Tolosa and an oblate named Fuentes. Both of the Dominicans were killed and Magdalena was never found. The following year Luis Cancer was murdered near Tampa Bay during an effort by his landing party to make contact with the natives.

Earlier expeditions to North America by Hernando De Soto in 1539 had resulted in battles between natives and some 600 Spanish soldiers near Mobile. Three Dominican chaplains had accompanied the voyage that sailed out of Havana.

De Soto continued with his troops along the coast of Louisiana and ventured into parts of Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas. The excursion ended in 1543 with Juan Gallegos being the only friar to survive. Subsequent Dominican missions to Florida were attempted in 1559 and in the early 1560s.

The first attempt by Tristán de Luna y Arellano and a talented Mexican preacher named Domingo de Salazar was abandoned for lack of food and terrible weather conditions. They were followed by Gregorio de Beteta, a former companion of the martyred Luis Cancer. The mission met with mixed success.

Dominican foundations in Mexico had been highly successful as they were able to enlist both friars trained on the Continent as well as colonial Europeans born in the New World. They were reluctant however to accept Mesoamerican natives or even recruits of mixed blood. In 1526, they established a house in Mexico City.

By 1555, the province of St. James in Mexico counted some 210 friars residing in 40 houses. In the fall of 1528, Dominicans developing southern missions reached the town of Huaxyacac (modern Oaxaca). Among the friars making that journey were Father Gonzalo Lucero and Bernardino de Minaya.

A royal patent letter from Charles V bestowed upon Huaxyacac the rights of a city and it was given the name Antequera. They begin building the first Dominican priory there and dedicated it to St. Paul. By the 17th century, there were more than 70 priories functioning in the province of St. Hyppolitus in the Oaxaca area.

It took more than 50 years fully to complete construction of a magnificent new priory named after Santo Domingo. In 1623, Santo Domingo became a university offering degrees in theology and philosophy for both secular and religious clergy.

Peru

Missionary work in Peru was initiated by the Dominicans when Vincent Valverde arrived in 1531. The Dominicans were successful in ministering to the Indians of Peru decades before Franciscan evangelizers. By 1544, the Dominican province in Peru had 55 members. Two of the most famous saints of Peru were Dominicans.

Saint Rose of Lima (1586–1617) was a Creole and member of the third (lay) Order of St. Dominic. Rose spent most of her life as a contemplative, living at her parents’ home, wearing a coarse habit and living the vow of perpetual virginity. Her life was devoted to prayer, penance, and fasting. It has been recorded that she slept on broken glass, potsherds, and thorns. She also constructed a crown of metal spikes and wore an iron chain about her waist.

Later in life, Rose retired to a small cell in the garden of her home where she spent her simpulan days in prayer and mortification. Visions, revelations, and divine voices were visited upon her. Rose’s death was reputedly followed by numerous miracles and in 1670 she was canonized by Pope Clement X.

Martín de Porres (1569–1639) was another famous Dominican saint of Peru. He was a mulatto from Lima, son of a free black woman and a white noble father. As a young man he received training as an apothecary (druggist), surgeon, barber, and physician. His skills were used to serve the poor.

He became a lay associate of the Dominican monastery of the Holy Rosary and later joined the community as a lay brother. He spent his life healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and attending to abandoned children. Martin was also reputed to have the gifts of visions, mystical experiences, miraculous healing, and even bilocation.

Interestingly, Saint Toribio, the arch-bishop of Lima, and St. John Massias (also a Dominican lay brother) were contemporaries of both Saint Rose and Saint Martín in Peru. The Dominicans maintained both urban and rural Peruvian missions, monasteries, and schools throughout the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.

The conquest of Colombia by Spain in 1536 and its eventual unification with Venezuela in 1549 produced the Audiencia of New Granada. This quickly became the domain of Dominican missionary activity. However unlike their efforts in Mexico and Peru, the Dominicans began to develop small missions and schools rather than monastaries.

By 1569, there were 40 small missions (or doctrinas); some 18 priories were also established. One of the leading Dominican figures in New Granada was Saint Louis Beltran (1526–81), who converted thousands of Natives to Christianity.

The running of schools and universities was among the special talents of the Dominicans. At Lima and in Mexico City universities were founded in the 16th century. In Guatemala the Real y Pontificia Universidad de San Carlos was recognized in 1676.

Universities were also founded in Bogotá (1627), Quito (1688), and Santiago, Chile (first as a college in 1619 and then as a university in 1684). Faculties included studies in logic, history, physics, philosophy, mathematics, theology, and canon law.

Early on, the Jesuits had begun to compete with the Dominicans in Latin America for students and had founded rival universities and colleges in Bogotá, Quito, Bolivia, and Santiago. During the 18th century, the Dominicans succeeded in establishing a university at Havana (1728), which was raised to the title of Royal and Pontifical University in 1734.

The end of the 17th century saw a rise in the number of Dominican foundations for women. There were 22 houses in Mexico City, 10 in Puebla, and a male monastery outside Oaxaca that was turned into a convent for Dominican nuns. The education of Spanish, Creole, and Indian women was undertaken in a number of these convents.

There were also separate convents for the education of the daughters of native chiefs (caciques). Indian women were rarely denied admittance to the Dominican order. The creation of female houses followed throughout the 18th century with convents established at Corpus Christi in Mexico (1724), Cosamalupan (1737), and Oaxaca (1782).

Counter-Reformation (Catholic Reformation) in Europe

Counter-Reformation in Europe

Beginning in the late 15th century, calls for reform of the Catholic Church “in head and members”—that is, in respect to both the papal administration and the life of the faithful—had become commonplace in all ecclesiastical circles.

However, in the early 16th century, there were increasing calls from many sides for the calling of a General Council. The Fifth Lateran Council of 1512–17, called by Pope Julius II, undertook various reforms, but its pronouncements had little effect.

If reform “in the head” was stymied by political and bureaucratic inertia, reform “in the members” was proceeding ahead. The late 15th century saw reforms within the Franciscan, Augustinian, and Carmelite orders, leading, in the case of the Franciscans and Augustinians, to the founding of separate branches of the orders incorporating friars following a stricter version of their rule. It was indeed from the observant branch of the Augustinians that Martin Luther came.

There was also a revival of the study of the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose work had been neglected in most universities (outside his own Dominican order) in favor of the via moderna represented by William of Ockham and Gabriel Biel. Cardinal Tomasso de Vio (1469–1534), known as Cajetan, a leading Dominican scholar and superior general of the order, led the way with new works on Thomistic theology.


At the same time, scholars using humanistic methods called for new approaches to education and theology, most notably Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536), Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples (c. 1455–1536) in France, John Colet (1467–1519) and Sir Thomas More (1478–1535) in England.

In Spain Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisernos, an Observant Franciscan, carried out reforms of the church in Spain and opened the University of Alcalá in 1508, where many of the new methods of learning were cultivated. It was there that the Complutensian Polyglot Bible, incorporating Hebrew, Greek, and Latin texts, was completed in 1517 and published three years later.

During the 15th century, a movement of spiritual renewal known as the Modern Devotion (Devotio Moderna) had attracted followers among both clergy and laity, especially in Northern Europe. This movement stressed personal devotion and conversion, rather than theological speculation.

The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis (1418) was the most popular representative work of this period. By the end of the century, groups of reformers that focused on personal piety and charitable works had emerged in several cities in Italy.

The Oratory of Divine Love, founded in Genoa by a layman, Ettore Vernazza, in 1497, brought together both clergy and laity in pursuit of holiness and good works. Vernazza moved to Rome early in the 16th century and founded an Oratory there. Branches of the Oratory were founded in a number of Italian cities, where they were the seedbeds of many later reform initiatives.

The foundation of new religious orders was central to the reforming efforts of the period. Several of these orders were of a new type, “clerks regular”—that is, priests (and in some cases lay brothers) living according to a religious rule, but not bound to celebration of the Divine Office in community as were monastic or mendicant orders.

This mode of living suited their orientation to active life, including preaching, teaching, and the hearing of confessions. The first of these orders were the Theatines, founded by Gaetano Thiene (1480–1547) and Gian Pietro Carafa (1476–1559), then bishop of Chieti, both of whom had been members of the Oratory of Divine Love. Their order was approved by Pope Clement VII in 1524.

Other such orders included the Clerks Regular of St. Paul, also known as the Barnabites, founded in Milan by Anthony Maria Zaccaria in 1533, and the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), the best-known Counter-Reformation order. The Capuchins, officially approved in 1528 and active in spreading Catholic reform, were one of several offshoots of the Observant Franciscans, whose apostolate was nevertheless similar to that of the new orders.

The period also saw the foundation of the first orders of women oriented to the active life, including teaching and care of the sick. The best known of these were the Ursulines, founded in Brescia in 1535 by Angela Merici, a Franciscan associate who had also been a member of the Oratory of Divine Love.

For the first 20 years after Luther’s emergence onto the general European scene in 1517, it was by no means clear that his movement would provoke a split in the church. The doctrine of justification, which formed the basis of Luther’s teaching, had been much debated in the 15th century, especially within the schools of the via moderna from which Luther himself had emerged.

While his interpretation of this doctrine led Luther to reject the sacramental and hierarchical system of the Catholic Church, there were many who desired to preserve that system but at the same time adopt at least some of his theology. Likewise many of the attacks by Luther and his followers against corruption in the church echoed the concerns of both humanist and Observantine reformers.

Thus the writings of important bishops and thinkers were suspected of heresy in their teachings on grace and justification. The suspicions of the more traditional among the hierarchy were further confirmed when Bernardino Ochino, vicar-general of the Capuchins, and the popular preacher Pietro Martire Vermigli fled to Switzerland in 1542 and openly espoused Protestant doctrines.

Gaining Momentum for Reform

The aktivitas of institutional reform gained momentum in the 1530s. Paul III, pope from 1534 to 1549, made a number of the leading reformers cardinals, increasing their influence within the church. In 1536, he commissioned a group of these same men to study the problems confronting the church. Their report, the Consilium de emendanda ecclesiae, presented in 1537, advised reform of the papal curia, better discipline for bishops, and reform of the religious orders.

This was the aktivitas for a coming General Council, for which not only church reformers, but likewise many secular rulers, in particular the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, had been calling for some time. Convocation of a council, however, was impeded by the continuing war between the emperor and the king of France.

The council was finally convened at Trent in 1545. Protestants were invited to send observers, but none attended. The French likewise stayed away from the early sessions of the council, both because of its location in Imperial territory and because of suspicion that it would take measures that would interfere with the French king’s attempts to control the church in France.

The council’s doctrinal decrees reaffirmed traditional teaching in areas challenged by Protestants, such as the doctrine of free will and the sacraments. The disciplinary decrees of the council strengthened the authority of bishops over the clergy in their dioceses, at the same time demanding that bishops and other holders of pastoral responsibilities personally reside in their jurisdictions.

The council mandated the foundation of seminaries in every diocese for the training of priests, an innovation that was perhaps the most influential in the formation of the early modern Catholic Church.

The council also recognized the importance of the new medium of print by establishing the Index of Forbidden Books and providing that all works dealing with religious questions be approved beforehand by the local bishop.

The publication of the first index was the work of Pope Paul IV, whose reign was marked by an intensification of the efforts to stamp out heresy in Italy. While he himself was a reformer, he had suspected many Counter-Reformation figures of excessive sympathy with Protestantism, some of whom had to appear before Inquisition tribunals.

Council of Trent

Council of Trent

The institutional reforms mandated by the Council of Trent were put into action only gradually. Pius IV set up a Congregation for the Council in 1563 to supervise its implementation; this was the first of the Roman congregations that became the central administration of the Catholic Church.

His successor, Pius V (reigned 1566–72), issued the Roman Catechism, a summary of Catholic teaching, and a revision of the Roman Missal that imposed a uniform standard for the liturgy of the Roman Rite.

Beyond Rome, the application of the Council of Trent, which proceeded gradually, nation by nation and diocese by diocese, depended on both the local bishops and the cooperation of secular rulers.

The council was applied relatively quickly in Spain and in parts of Italy. Cardinal Charles Borromeo (1538–84), archbishop of Milan and nephew of Pope Pius IV, set the pattern for many of these reforms. He established a seminary and enacted other provisions of the council in the administration of the diocese.

He brought the Ursulines and other new orders to Milan, and encouraged the work of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, which had been founded in 1536 for the purpose of the religious education of children and included both clergy and laypersons. His efforts extended beyond his diocese throughout northern Italy and Switzerland.

By the end of the Council of Trent, the Jesuit order had gained numerous vocations and considerable influence. Several Jesuit theologians participated in the council. The Jesuits had begun the first overseas missionary work in America, Africa, and particularly East Asia; Saint Francis Xavier (1509–52), one of Ignatius Loyola’s original companions, traveled to Goa in 1542 and spent the rest of his life evangelizing in India, the East Indies, and Japan, dying as he was preparing to enter China.

The Jesuits were also active within Europe, establishing schools and preaching to the public. In their schools, they combined humanist and Scholastic methods, aiming at attracting the ablest boys and those from the most influential social groups.

In many areas where substantial portions of the population had been converted to Protestantism, such as Austria and Bohemia, Jesuit education was one of the means by which these areas were returned to Catholicism by the first part of the 17th century. Jesuit preachers like Peter Canisius (1521–97) began a revival of what had become, by the middle of the 16th century, an almost moribund Catholic Church in Germany.

In Spain, a country where Protestantism had attracted very few followers, the Counter-Reformation was marked by a revival of religious and mystical life. The most prominent figure in this revival was the Carmelite reformer and spiritual writer Teresa of Jesus (or Teresa of Ávila, 1515–82) and John of the Cross (1542–91).

The revival of religious life characterizing the Counter-Reformation went beyond, however, religious orders and the clergy. The application of the Council of Trent affected the religious experience of laypeople in all parts of Catholic Europe.

Circles of “the devout” or “friends of God” had grown up in many places even before the advent of institutional reform. Reforming orders like the Jesuits built on these groups to form organized lay confraternities and sodalities to pursue prayer, education, and charitable works.

Confraternities devoted to the Virgin Mary and especially to the Blessed Sacrament held public processions and reaffirmed Catholic doctrines under attack by Protestants. At the same time, reforming bishops and pastors attempted to suppress quasi-magical devotional practices unapproved by church authority, which in many cases had attracted the criticism of Protestant reformers.

The Counter-Reformation left the Catholic Church more organized and disciplined. In many ways, the changes in the Catholic Church paralleled those introduced by Protestants in the areas under their control. Both created a disciplined and educated clergy and clearer teaching on doctrinal matters and attempted to bring about effective conversion of the mass of the population. Both relied to a greater degree on the cooperation of secular governments.

While many scholars have recognized the contribution of the Counter-Reformation to the strengthening of the Catholic Church, others have suggested that by raising the standards of education of the clergy and attempting to impose a uniform discipline on the laity, the Counter-Reformation alienated many of the uneducated masses and prepared the way for the secularization that began in the 18th century.

Conquest and Colonization of Brazil

Conquest and Colonization of Brazil

The Portuguese conquest of Brazil was a complex, prolonged, and partial process that many scholars argue was never fully realized. Lacking large cities, a centralized political structure, and a common language, the estimated 2 to 3 million precontact indigenous inhabitants of the Brazilian coast and interior were divided into an intricate patchwork of ethnolinguistic groups and clan-based tribes.

The principal coastal groups were Tupi-speaking peoples who had migrated into the area in the preceding centuries, displacing and absorbing existing groups. Seminomadic hunter-gatherers with intimate knowledge of the local environment, Tupi speakers were divided into numerous major branches and hundreds of autonomous bands, often in conflict with each other and other groups, and possessing great skill in the arts of war.

Their principal weapon, often used with deadly effect, was the bow and arrow. Like other ethnolinguistic groups in the Americas, many Tupi-speaking peoples practiced ritual cannibalism in the most general terms, a cultural-religious practice acknowledging the spiritual power of slain enemies.


The Portuguese used reports of ritual cannibalism to justify their invasion, slave raiding, and other excesses of violence, much as the Spanish had used the practice of ritual human sacrifice to justify their subjugation of the Aztecs in the conquest of Mexico.

The first European explorer to sight the Brazilian coast was Portuguese noble Pedro Álvares Cabral, in command of 13 ships headed around the southern tip of Africa to India, on April 22, 1500. Following a brief excursion on the beach, the expedition’s chronicler, Pêro Vaz de Caminha, produced the first written report on the land and its people.

Cabral sent one ship back to Portugal loaded with brazilwood, a red dyewood from which the later colony derived its name, and left behind two convicts to begin the process of mixing with the natives. The following year Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci sailed along Brazil’s southern coast. A number of French and Spanish expeditions followed.

These initial contacts with the natives were largely peaceful, though here as elsewhere they resulted in the spread of European diseases against which native peoples had no biological immunity. These diseases led to rapid population declines in many areas long before Europeans arrived.

The years 1500–30 saw the growth of the brazil-wood trade between Europeans and Brazil’s coastal peoples. Relations between rival French and Portuguese traders soon degenerated into a series of violent clashes, with the French ignoring the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494, to which it was not a signatory.

In the early 1520s, the Portuguese established a garrisoned trading station at Pernambuco, where sugar cultivation was introduced in 1526. French-Portuguese hostilities along the coast intensified. In 1530, the Portuguese Crown responded by commissioning Martím Afonso de Sousa to begin the process of settlement and colonization, an expedition that in 1532 established the first permanent colony at São Vicente near modern São Paulo.

As conflicts with the French grew, in the mid-1530s King João III and his advisers devised the donatory system, which divided the coastland into 15 sections or donatories that extended along imaginary boundaries west into the interior, each to be ruled by a captain or hereditary lord.

Entrusting colonization to a handful of private individuals who would exercise full authority within their respective domains, the Crown hoped to secure its claims against its French rivals. Most donatories languished and failed, with São Vicente and Pernambuco seeing the greatest albeit limited success.

Important in this early phase of colonization were a small number of individuals who mixed with the natives and acted as cultural intermediaries between indigenous peoples and the Portuguese. Sailor Diogo Álvares ventured into the interior near Bahia in the early 1500s, married the daughter of the chief of the Tupinambá tribe, learned their language and culture, and changed his name to Caramurú.

By the 1530s, he had become a respected tribal chieftain and from this position of authority worked to facilitate the process of colonization. That the Bahia captaincy failed was due mainly to poor administration and the settlers’ failure to heed Caramurú’s counsel regarding their interactions with the natives.

Farther south, the settlement of São Paulo succeeded in large part by the efforts of Portuguese castaway João Ramalho, who had also married into a local tribe, the Goiana Tupinikin, and served as interpreter and intermediary.

Portuguese colonists generally mixed with the local inhabitants to a greater extent than was true of other European powers, thereby facilitating subsequent cultural and linguistic melding of different ethnic and racial groups.

Sugar Trade

As the brazilwood trade faded, sugar became the colony’s economic backbone. By the mid-1540s, two sugar-producing centers had emerged; one was around Pernambuco in the north, and the other was in São Vicente in the south.

By this time, competition with French, Spanish, and other rivals had sharpened, prompting the Portuguese Crown to intensify colonization efforts. Consequently, the Crown would play a major role in the colony’s economic development.

In 1549, Tomé de Sousa was appointed governor-general of Brazil at the head of a major expedition that included royal officials, artisans, soldiers, and Jesuit missionaries. Sousa established Salvador as the colony’s capital. To the south, the French colony at the Guanabara Bay threatened Portuguese control of the southern littoral.

In 1565–67, the Portuguese defeated and ousted the French colony and established the town São Sebastião de Rio de Janeiro. Sousa’s successor Mem de Sá (governor-general, 1558–74) consolidated royal control over these coastal population centers.

Indigenous resistance to colonization intensified, particularly in consequence of slave-raiding expeditions organized by planters in the rapidly growing sugar industry. Indian counterattacks nearly destroyed the settlements of Bahia, Espirito Santo, and Ilhéus, and killed Brazil’s first bishop, but could not stem the Portuguese tide.

The Jesuits played a key role in this early phase of colonization and in the centralization of royal authority. Though their numbers were never large (110 in all of Brazil in 1574), their economic, social, and cultural impact was huge.

Young and aggressive, the Jesuit order (founded in 1540) was instrumental in establishing the town of São Paulo in 1557, and in facilitating generally peaceful relations between Indians and colonists in the south.

Taking no vow of poverty, Jesuits made their missions (aldeas) self-supporting and profitable through farming, ranching, and related enterprises. They were also crucial to the colony’s educational life. For most of the colonial period, Jesuit colleges in all the major towns served as the colony’s principal schools.

By the mid-1500s, sugar planters considered that labor had become the colony’s principal economic bottleneck. Land was plentiful, but sugar production in their view required a steady and reliable supply of bound labor. Enslaving native peoples was their initial strategy for meeting these rising labor demands.

The period from 1540 to 1600 saw the most extensive use of Indian slave labor in Brazil’s burgeoning sugar industry. By the late 1500s, disease and native resistance combined to make Indian slavery unable to meet sugar growers’ labor demands, leading to conflicts among the Crown, sugar growers, and the Jesuits.

The Crown tended to advocate the integration of Indians into the economy as free wage laborers; sugar growers promoted slavery; and Jesuits worked toward the transformation of Indians into a kind of smallholding or peasant class. Whose vision predominated hinged on a host of local and regional variables.

The transition from Indian to African slave labor was gradual, though by the early 1600s African slave labor dominated the sugar industry. The first Africans came as servants and sailors, while the first large-scale importation of African slaves did not begin until the 1570s. By the 1580s, the labor force on the 66 sugar plantations of Pernambuco is estimated at two-thirds Indian and one-third African slaves.

In later decades, the proportion of African slaves grew, so that by 1600 Brazil’s slave labor force was predominantly African. Over the next 250 years, Brazil became the single largest recipient of African slaves in the Americas, especially the Northeast, the colony’s principal sugar zone.

Brazil’s European population remained overwhelmingly concentrated in coastal areas. All the major cities founded in the 1500s were ports, including Bahia, São Vicente, Olinda (1537), Santos (1545), Salvador (1549), Vitória (1551), and Rio de Janeiro (1565). The pattern continued well into the 1600s, especially in the north and along the lower reaches of the Amazon.

The Brazilian population remained heavily concentrated in coastal areas through the colonial period and after. As European coastal populations swelled, migrations of Indian peoples away from the coast intensified, producing a ripple effect throughout the interior.

In 1585, São Paulo colonists officially authorized slave-raiding expeditions, and for the next 150 years the bandeirantes hunted Indian slaves across much of Brazil in the service of Paulista sugar planters. From the 1550s on, a series of epidemics ravaged Indian populations, including those of 1552 around Bahia, 1554 around São Paulo, Espírito Santo in 1559, and continuing through the colonial period.

Further impelling the Portuguese Crown to consolidate its hold on the colony was the Dutch presence in the Northeast, from the 1620s until their expulsion in 1654. The discovery of gold in present-day Minas Gerais in the mid-1690s led to a gold rush in these regions from 1700 to 1760, while discovery of diamonds in the same region in the 1720s further propelled expansion into the interior.

Many escaped African slaves also escaped into the interior, sometimes forming Maroon societies of runaway slaves, called quilombos. The largest and most resilient, Palmares, endured through most of the 1600s. By 1700, the population of the colonized areas was an estimated 300,000, with 100,000 whites, 150,000 mostly African slaves, and 50,000 free blacks, Indians, and mixed-race groups.

Colonial Brazil’s first 250 years set in motion a series of patterns and processes that profoundly shaped the subsequent development of Brazilian society. Especially important in this regard were the formation of an export-oriented economy (most notably brazilwood, sugar, gold, and diamonds); stark divisions of race and class; highly unequal landownership; a substantial degree of racial and ethnic intermingling, particularly among the lower classes; the gradual movement of the frontier of settlement westward; the subordination of Indian and African peoples within a relatively rigid social hierarchy; and the existence of vast unconquered lands beyond the western and northern frontiers.

Bourbon Dynasty in Latin America

Bourbon Dynasty in Latin America

In 1700 Philip V became king of Spain and inaugurated the House of Bourbon, which was to rule Latin America until Napoleon deposed King Ferdinand VII in 1808 and put his (Napoleon’s) own brother, Joseph, on the Spanish throne. In the events that followed, all of Latin America gradually gained its independence.

When Philip V became king of Spain the Spanish dominions in the Americas were divided into two viceroyalties—the Viceroyalty of New Spain and the Viceroyalty of Peru. New Spain consisted of the Viceregal Audencia of Mexico (established in 1529) and the interlinked Audencias of Santo Domingo (1511), Panama (1538), Guatemala (1544, as Audencia de los Confines), Manila (1583), and Guadalajara (New Galaicia) (1549).

Thus it controlled Mexico, the Spanish Caribbean, Central America, and the Philippines. The Viceroyalty of Peru included the Viceregal Audencia of Lima (1542), the Audencias of Santa Fé de Bogotá (New Granada) (1549), Chile (1609), Buenos Aires (1661–71), Characas (1559), and Quito (1564). The audencias were further divided into provinces.


Strictly speaking the two viceroyalties held the same position as the kingdoms of Valencia, Catalonia, Aragon, León, and Castile. All colonial matters since 1524 had been decided by the Royal and Supreme Council of the Indies, and this process continued until 1714 when most functions were assumed by the Ministry of Marine and the Indies, although the council remained in existence until 1834.

The Bourbon rulers in Spain always felt that their American colonies could deliver more in tax revenue. Philip V (r. 1700/01–1724, 1724–46) started a campaign to reorganize the administration, assume greater control, and increase trade. One of the greatest handicaps to trade with South America was that goods from Spain to the Americas had to go through Lima. This led to emerging centers for contraband.

The most important of these was the town of Colonia, founded by the Portuguese in 1680 on the east bank of the Río de la Plata (River Plate), directly opposite Buenos Aires. From there Spanish, Portuguese, and British goods were smuggled across the river while the city authorities in Buenos Aires proclaimed themselves helpless to deal with the problem.

Sailing Regulations

In 1720, measures were introduced to regulate the sailing of ships to remove the need for people to buy smuggled goods. During the 1720s and 1730s, there was a rebellion in Paraguay with settlers attacking the Jesuit privileges. The religious order had established communes (known as reductions) in southern and eastern Paraguay and the low prices of their crops undercut many small farmers.

The Communero Revolt saw many farmers march on Asunción and the governor, José de Antiquera, refuse to accept a new governor sent from Lima. However the rebels were ousted by Indian levies from the Jesuit reductions.

A force from Buenos Aires arrived in 1724, and two years later Antiquera was captured. At the same time there was also a small rebellion among the Araucanian Indians in southern Chile. In 1736–37, there was also a small rebellion led by Juan Santos with Indians rebelling against harsh conditions in mines in central Peru. The rebels damaged the city of Oruro but then dispersed.

A more serious conflict broke out in 1735 when the Spanish took advantage of being on the opposite side to Portugal in the War of the Polish Succession. A small Spanish force from Buenos Aires captured Colonia, but two years later the British persuaded them to return it.

The task of reforming the colonial administration was left to Philip V’s successor, Ferdinand VI (reigned 1746–59). He established the Viceroyalty of New Granada in 1739 with a viceroy taking up the position in the following year.

However the Anglo-Spanish War of 1739–48 (known in England as the War of Jenkins’ Ear) initially hampered links between Spain and its colonies. Further attempts were made to reduce smuggling but too much was at stake, especially in Buenos Aires, where people still objected to goods’ having to be shipped through Lima.

In the Treaty of Madrid of 1750 the Portuguese finally agreed to hand over Colonia, in return for taking the region of the Upper Paraná. When some Jesuits refused to hand over the latter, Portugal sent in soldiers who easily drove back the lightly armed Indians in the Jesuit reductions.

As it felt that Spain had not honored its side of the treaty, the Portuguese held on to Colonia. This caused Charles III of Spain to annul the treaty in 1761 and send in soldiers, who finally captured Colonia in 1762. Smuggling, however, continued.

Seven Years’ War

The Seven Years’ War (1756–63) resulted in a humiliating defeat for Spain. It had stayed out of the war for the first three years, and when in 1760, it entered the conflict, the British attacked the Philippines and Cuba, taking both territories. Spain did manage to take most of the Banda Oriental (now Uruguay).

Both the Philippines and Cuba were returned at the Treaty of Paris at the conclusion of the war, but Spain conceded Florida to the British. The easy losses that Spain sustained at the hands of the British illustrated the military vulnerability of Spain’s American colonies. King Charles III (r. 1759–88) decided to push ahead with further administrative reforms.

One of the first measures was to increase taxes to help pay for the costly and futile involvement in the Seven Years’ War. In 1765, people in Quito rioted. The colonial administration held firm, and in 1776 Charles III created the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata, with a viceroy taking up the position in 1778.

It covered modern-day Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay and eroded further the power of the Viceroyalty of Peru. This move followed a delineation of the land boundary between Portuguese Brazil and the Spanish territories that confirmed the east bank of the River Plate, covering modern-day Uruguay, as Spanish.

Buenos Aires was made capital of the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata, and the important silver mines in Upper Peru (modern-day Bolivia) were given to the new viceroyalty. Trade was now allowed to come from Europe. In one stroke, smuggling was reduced and the revenue from tariffs increased.

Gálvez, fresh from his triumphs in Mexico, returned to Madrid and was appointed minister of the Indies in 1776. He sent officials who worked on increasing revenue, bolstering defenses, and helping increase agriculture and mining.

One of the first changes was the Law of Free Trade in 1778, which enabled one part of the Spanish Americas to trade with another more easily. This further reduced smuggling. Gálvez then introduced the position of intendant.

This person worked in the Americas but was directly responsible to the Spanish Crown, not the viceroy, so was able to give an independent report on events in the Americas. An intendant was introduced in the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in 1782, in Peru two years later, and finally, in 1786 in New Spain.

Although these moves followed the economic liberalization that was taking place in Europe, the government in Spain also introduced new laws that served to destroy much of their support in the Americas. New laws reduced the ability for governors to appoint officials. Massive dissent arose, some of it leading to talk of rebellion and even moves for independence.

This coincided with the Tupac Amaru rebellion; the great-grandson of Inca leader Tupac Amaru rallied his followers near Cuzco in modern-day Peru. He led the first major uprising against the Spanish in two centuries. At its height tens of thousands of Indians joined the rebellion with the Spanish having to send in large numbers of soldiers to restore colonial rule at the cost of thousands of lives. The rebellion was brutally crushed.

The Tupac Amaru rebellion also showed that there might not be enough Spanish soldiers in Latin America should another large rebellion or external invasion take place. Furthermore a brief stand-off with the British over the Falkland Islands in 1771 had ended when France indicated itself not willing to give military assistance to Spain.

In 1715, there were only 500 soldiers in Buenos Aires. These were largely for protection of the governor and in case Portuguese from Colonia caused trouble. In 1765, the numbers had been increased to 5,500 and 7,000 in 1774.

The same happened in Asunción, Santiago, Caracas, Quito, and Bogota. In 1776, the Spanish were sufficiently strong to take back Colonia; at the Treaty of San Ildefonso, Colonia, and the Banda Oriental was awarded to Spain forever.

Spain’s involvement in the American Revolution was expected to have brought greater wealth to the Spanish colonies. However, as with the French, it was a costly venture and although it broke up the British Empire in the Americas, it left both Spain and France with large bills to pay.

Furthermore exposure to the ideas of democracy affected soldiers like Francisco de Miranda (1750–1816), who, after time in the United States, served in the French Revolutionary Army before trying to free Venezuela from Spanish rule. When Spain sided with France against Britain in the first part of the Napoleonic Wars, 1796–1808, some people in the Americas saw it as their opportunity to use the British to gain independence.

Furthermore Britain at the time was unable to sell any of its goods to Europe because of Napoleon’s rigorously enforced “Continental System” and thus also had a commercial motive in South American independence. When Napoleon ousted the king of Spain and placed Joseph Bonaparte on the throne, the days of Bourbon rule in Spain were numbered.

Bandeirantes in Brazil

Bandeirantes in Brazil

Bandeirantes were members of bandeiras, or roving bands of explorers, prospectors, and Indian slavers originating principally in the frontier settlement of São Paulo in colonial Brazil, beginning around the 1580s and continuing for the next 150 years or so.

The original meaning of the term bandeira was “flag,” though in medieval Portugal it also came to mean a small autonomous militia. Their primary purpose was to acquire Indian slaves for their Paulista (São Paulo) patrons. Some bandeiras were gone years at a time and traveled thousands of kilometers through the back country.

In the process, the bandeirantes explored much of the vast Brazilian interior—its forests, grasslands, rivers, jungles, and backlands (sertão) to the west, south, and north—pushing back the colony’s known frontiers and opening up new paths for settlement and colonization.

In Brazilian historiography and national culture, bandeirantes occupy a very important and highly ambiguous position—praised for their endurance and discoveries, and condemned for their brutalities and cruelties that were integral to Indian slaving in the backcountry.


By 1600, most residents of São Paulo (which at the time was a small settlement of only about 120 houses and 2,000 people) were Portuguese, Indian, and racially mixed mamelucos (the Portuguese equivalent of the Spanish term mestizo).

The predominant language was Tupí. Their city and homesteads vulnerable to attack, Paulistas initially launched bandeiras as a defensive measure against hostile natives. By around 1600, bandeiras had transformed into offensive slave-raiding expeditions.

The indigenous inhabitants around São Paulo having all but disappeared by this time, victims to enslavement and diseases, the Paulistas found them-selves chronically short of servile labor. The bandeiras were their effort to remedy this chronic labor shortage.

Most bandeiras left no written record, though many others did, thanks in large part to Jesuit missionaries or foreigners who accompanied them through the backcountry and reported on their experiences. As one Jesuit priest marveled, “One is astounded by the boldness and impertinence with which, at such great cost, men allow themselves to enter that great sertão for two, three, four or more years.

They go without God, without food, naked as the savages, and subject to all the persecutions and miseries in the world. Men venture for two or three hundred leagues into the sertão, serving the devil with such amazing martyrdom, in order to trade or steal slaves.”

A classic account is by the Jesuit priest Pedro Domingues of 1613, which described a journey of several thousand kilometers lasting 19 months. Occasionally clashing with Spanish settlements emanating out from the Río de la Plata, the bandeirantes helped to define colonial Brazil’s southern boundaries.

Bandeirantes in Brazil

As time went on, they also clashed repeatedly with the Jesuits, who saw their slave raiding as antithetical to their own goal of converting the natives to Christianity and saving souls. This conflict between bandeirantes and Jesuits in colonial Brazil can be aptly compared to similar conflicts between encomenderos and religious missions in colonial Spanish America during this same period.

By around 1650, there occurred a broad shift among bandeiras from slave raiding to the search for precious metals. By this time, African slaves were fulfilling the colony’s servile labor requirements, while the Jesuit missions had fortified their defenses, making Indian slaving more difficult.

Greatly extending geographic knowledge of the vast Brazilian interior, the bandeirantes have come to occupy a position within Brazilian national culture akin to the cowboys of the United States or the gauchos of Argentina, symbolizing the spirit of adventure, independence, and, ironically, freedom. It is estimated that bandeirantes enslaved and caused the premature deaths of hundreds of thousands of Indians during the decades of their greatest activity.