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Spain and Its Early Empire in America
On the eve of Europeansâ first sustained contact with the Americas, Castile was the largest, most prosperous, and most populous kingdom of the Iberian Peninsula. Victory over the Muslims in Granada in 1492 confirmed Castiliansâ belief that they enjoyed their Godâs favor. Simultaneously it demonstrated that military success led grateful monarchs to reward service on their behalf by enriching aristocrats, elevating commoners into the nobility, and providing poor soldiers with land.
Conquistadors, settlers, officials, merchants, clerics, and a growing stream of Spanish women followed Columbus and other explorers, founded municipalities, expanded royal dominion, and sought corresponding recompense. As settlement followed conquest, the immigrants replicated insofar as possible the social organization they had left behind, with the important difference that many assumed more elevated social status. Their leaders awarded the most fortunate grants of native labor and tribute (encomiendas). These encomenderos became a new but insecure nobility, for the Crown initially recognized the grants for only one lifetime rather than making them hereditary. Thus, it denied recipients a key attribute in the perpetuation of aristocratic families in Spain while making them dependent on royal favor. Charles I (1516â1556) introduced royal officials to oversee the tribute and labor that reverted to the Crown as the original recipients died. At the same time, he indicated that he would name unrewarded conquistadors and their heirs to these new positions. The installation of government offices, the erection of bishoprics, an increase in missionaries, and the foundation of nunneries accompanied the continued arrival of peninsular immigrants and the growing number of their predecessorsâ native son and other creole descendants. By 1580, the institutions of Church and state as well as a transatlantic trading system were in place, and rising silver production was enriching the treasury of Philip II. By this date as well, descendants of the conquistadors and early settlers recognized that the prosperity based on encomiendas had largely disappeared and their pursuit of positions in the Church and state intensified.
Spain on the Eve of Empire
Marked by mountains, few navigable rivers, and an extensive coastline, the Iberian Peninsula in 1492 contained five kingdoms. Castile, Aragon, Granada, and Navarre would later comprise the country known as Spain; Portugal was joined to the Crown of Castile from 1580 to 1640. Conquered by Muslim invaders that first arrived from North Africa in 711, Iberia was the site of intermittent warfare for centuries as Christians emerged from modest mountain bases in the north and commenced what became known as the Reconquest. Toledo fell to the Christians in 1085 and in the thirteenth century Ferdinand III of Castile and LeĂłn conquered CĂłrdoba, Murcia, Seville, and CĂĄdiz. The advance southward brought booty, land, and upward social mobility, especially for mounted warriors. As a legendary hero in a thirteenth-century epic declared, âI gain more in war than I do in peace, for the poor knight lives better in times of war than in times of peace.â1 By the mid-eleventh century, the expanding nobility sought to limit this status to their children, but intermittent warfare on the moving frontier impelled monarchs to reward the military contributions of particularly valorous commoners with ennoblement.
As the frontier advanced, the Crown encouraged repopulation through the creation of chartered Christian municipalities and land grants. Settlers in new and refounded towns received urban and rural plots and access to the communityâs land. Nobles gained and later expanded large estates, as did the military orders of AlcĂĄntara, Calatrava, and Santiago. The fall in 1492 of Granada, the last independent Muslim kingdom, reinforced the booty mentality of the Reconquest and reaffirmed commonersâ awareness that conquest on behalf of the Castilian Crown could yield noble rank among other rewards. Some 35 000â40 000 Christian colonists arrived to repopulate the kingdom between 1485 and 1499, and by 1530, about 100 000 were present. Leaving oneâs home for an anticipated better life remained attractive.
Inheritance shaped ruling families and their patrimony as well as those of nobles and commoners. The Spanish monarch Charles I (1516â1556) inherited through his Castilian mother the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and Navarre, the Basque Provinces, Sicily and Naples, and the Indies; from his Habsburg father he received the provinces of the Netherlands, Franche ComtĂ©, and Austrian and German lands. He ruled each of these territorial units as if it were his only realm, confirming its laws and privileges or fueros as the latter were known in Spain. As sovereign of a vast composite monarchy, Charles united his extensive inheritance through his person rather than by common laws, customs, taxes, institutions, or languages.
Nearly all Iberians in the late fifteenth century were commoners. In cities and towns they included merchants and international traders, professionals in law and medicine, officials, clerics, retailers, artisans, tradesmen, and domestics. Most commoners â over 80% of them â lived in villages, farmed, raised livestock, and worked as artisans, tradesmen, and weavers. They walked to their fields, grazed animals, and gathered wood from their townâs municipal lands.
Villages provided residents with a sense of identity, a focus of loyalty, and kinship ties. Villagers were citizens and local office holders. Prejudiced regarding outsiders, they would occasionally resort to violence against men from other villages over such things as boundary disputes and use of municipal woodlands and pastures. Nevertheless, they needed those outsiders. Itinerant peddlers often sold the items not available in local shops. Rural craftsmen and artisans including shoemakers, blacksmiths, and carpenters similarly took to the road to expand their market. Migration and mobility were frequent and not simply a response to economic woes or other problems.
At the base of Iberian society were slaves. Slavery was common during the Reconquest as victors enslaved prisoners of war; the conquest of Granada (1482â1492) yielded thousands. African slaves entered Iberia from trans-Saharan trade by at least the fourteenth century, and starting in 1479, the Portuguese became major suppliers of sub-Saharan slaves.
Everywhere in Iberia, the Church with its clerics, saints, relics, and bells affected inhabitantsâ lives. Like the nobility and municipalities, the Church as a corporate body had its own fuero. Numerous clerics ministered in urban churches and monasteries, but every village had a parish church, celebrated a patron saint, and enjoyed religious festivals. The presence of a cleric on even an occasional basis emphasized the centrality of religion in village life. So, too, did the requirement to pay the tithe, a tax on agricultural production, and the increase in livestock that went to the Church.
Place of Birth and Identity
Iberiansâ greatest loyalty was to their family and the municipality within which they were born and lived. This allegiance diminished as the municipality was included in a larger jurisdiction. Thus, a man born in Seville would identify himself first by his family, then as a sevillano (native or natural de Seville), next as an Andalusian, and finally as a Castilian or Spaniard. Each Castilian was a subject or vassal of the monarch as well as a citizen of a municipality, the foundational building block of the kingdomâs territorial organization. Although cities were self-governing and initially exempt from royal jurisdiction in their internal affairs, in the many towns and their villages under the jurisdiction of an ecclesiastical or noble lord or a military order, citizens were also vassals of their lord. Castiliansâ identity thus expanded from family to municipality to lord to Crown.
By birthright free individuals in Castile became citizens (vecinos) of their home village, town, or city. This status typically began when marriage transformed a new husband into a family head. As a citizen he fell under his municipalityâs judicial system, normally paid its taxes, and could be counted on to display solidarity with neighbors against outsiders from another village. Outsiders were initially suspect even (or perhaps especially) when born in an adjacent town. After taking up residency in a new locale, it required time for them to become citizens themselves, a status that often followed marriage to a local woman and the payment of local taxes.
Monarchs of Castile in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries confirmed villagesâ right of self-government, generally acknowledged that local citizens should hold local offices, and accepted that those born in them enjoyed preference. Accordingly, a native (natural de) and citizen (vecino) of a village enjoyed specific privileges that originated in charters granted during the Reconquest. Place of birth also restricted royal appointments and ecclesiastical positions. Within Castile and Aragon, men native to each kingdom filled its posts. When the Crown of Castile annexed the southern portion of Navarre in 1513, the terms of its incorporation limited to a handful the number of Castilian officials in the kingdom. Clerics similarly benefited by appointments to ecclesiastical positions in the diocese of their birth.
Opposition to outsiders could be intense. The Comunerosâ Rebellion of municipalities and some lower nobles against Charles I in 1520 occurred in part because the monarch, an outsider born in the Flemish city of Ghent and initially unable to speak Castilian, arrived with numerous Flemish advisors. These quickly acquired prominent positions and devoted themselves to self-enrichment. Although the rebellion failed, Castilians long remembered its defense of native sonsâ right to offices.
The Model of the Castilian Nobility
Legislation divided Castilian society into distinct estates (noble, clerical, and commoner) and corporate bodies based on function, for example, merchantsâ and artisansâ guilds, each with its own judicial status. Villages frequently included nobles as well as commoners who were peasant-farmers (labradores). Their offices might be divided between the two estates or selected without distinction. In general, the percentage of nobles in Castile declined from north to south. Most Andalusian aristocrats made Seville their urban residence. Although only 15 of its nobles held the titles of count, marquis, or duke at the end of the sixteenth century, they included several of great opulence, enormous rural properties, and jurisdiction over numerous villages. Their princely and ornately decorated palaces, abundant retainers and servants, costly clothing, horses, and other signs of riches and status provided a model observed by the thousands of emigrants who left for the Indies via this port city on the Guadalquivir River. Of course all emigrants recognized the affluence, power, and privileges of members of aristocratic families located closest to their homes, but most nobles were of lower rank. These hidalgos tenaciously claimed the benefits of their estate, but typically lacked the wealth of the urban and titled nobility.
Nobility initially rested on leadership and notably valorous military deeds, but lineage was its usual source in the fifteenth century. Nonetheless, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile distributed hundreds of grants of nobility (hidalguĂa) as compensation for personal and military contributions, especially in the years before, during, and immediately after the fall of Granada. By explicitly identifying the reciprocity between service and tangible rewards on the eve of empire, the Crown ensured that the conquistadors in America would expect royal remuneration proportional to their achievements.
Nobility conveyed legal benefits that included exemptions from imprisÂonment for debt; seizure of oneâs house, horse, or weaponry for debt; torture; and certain types of punishment. Of particular symbolic importance was exemption from the direct taxation (pecho) paid by commoners. Indeed, documenting if one owned arms and horses, lived a military lifestyle, and was a descendant of a family that had not paid the direct tax for three years or more was often sufficient to demonstrate hidalgo status. In addition, noblemen alone were eligible for knighthoods in the military orders.
The number of nobles created by Ferdinand and Isabel and their successors paled in comparison to nobles by heredity. Nobility was a family rather than an individual quality, and noble lineage, especially through the male line, was its most important qualification. The titled nobility of dukes, marquises, and counts numbered fewer than a dozen in 1400, and Castile had but 62 in 1520 and about 120 as late as 1600. As a sign of their rank, titled nobles and their legitimate offspring were addressed as âdonâ (âlordâ) or âdoñaâ (âladyâ), honorifics whose usage spread to the lower nobility starting in the early sixteenth century. In the late sixteenth century, some 10% of the population of Castile claimed nobility, the highest percentage in a western European country.
Early in his reign, Charles I, established grandees as the highest nobility of Castile. This additional honor confirmed the preeminence of a small number of families, most with titles of nobility awarded after 1450, that owned enormous, entailed estates (mayorazgos) over whose residents they exercised jurisdiction and collected fees (señorĂo). The privileges of the nobility in general and the ability of grandees and other nobles to transfer wealth and seigneurial rights to their heirs constituted a model that conquistadors and first settlers in America soon sought to emulate.
Religion
For centuries religion divided the Castilian population into Christians, Jews, and Muslims. The substantial majority was composed of âOld Christians,â those whose families were Christian before the forced conversion of many Jews in 1391 created âNew Christiansâ or conversos. Spainâs religious diversity ended when Ferdinand and Isabel expelled the Jews in 1492 and the Muslims in 1502. Their actions simultaneously increased the number of conversos and made emigration attractive. Despite legislative prohibitions, some New Christians would sail to the Indies and settle there.
In the mid-fifteenth century, statutes began to require proof of limpieza de sangre (âpurity of bloodâ). Designed to exclude New Christians from civil and ecclesiastical positions, entry into a knighthood, and even some educational opportunities, they forced aspirants to prove their eligibility through documenting a lineage without Jewish or Muslim ancestors. The military orders became renowned for their detailed reviews of ancestry; obtaining a knighthood âprovedâ limpieza de sangre and frequently noble ancestry as well.
With few exceptions, early Castilian emigrants to America took with them a shared belief in Christianity as well as loyalty to their monarch, extended family, and others from their hometown. They left a social environment marked by hierarchy and corporate bodies as well as widespread prejudice against outsiders and newcomers. They also carried an understanding of the characteristics and significance of nobility in Castilian society and a conviction that conquest and the establishment of permanent municipalities would bring royal recompense that could include noble status and income. Immigrants in the Indies drew upon these values as they sought the upward social mobility and economic status beyond their reach in Iberia. Thus, they worked to create a living environment complete with the Iberian food, drink, and amenities they enjoyed. Of particular importance, they believed, like nobles in Castile, that they would be able to bequeath rewards they had earned to their descendants.
Peninsulars Create Their New World
Iberians first arrived in the western hemisphere or âthe Indies,â as Christopher Columbus christened it, in 1492. Soon, Spanish ships were annually depositing European Spaniards, almost exclusively Castilians, in America. African slaves brought from Seville first reached the New World in 1501, and their regular importation from Africa began in 1518, the eve of Fernando CortĂ©sâ expedition to the mainland that includes todayâs Mexico. By 1580, the institutional and geographical frameworks of both state and Church extended from New Spain in the n...
