Spanish colony

“ It is hardly to be believed that either Great Britain or the Indian proprietors have so disinterested a regard for us, as to be willing to relieve us, by receiving such a colony themselves.... On our western and southern frontiers, Spain holds an immense country, the occupancy of which, however, is in the Indian natives, except a few insulated spots possessed by Spanish subjects. It is very questionable, indeed, whether the Indians would sell? ”

“ Domestic discouragements.Scarcely will it be believed, in the greater part of civilized Europe, that a Spanish colony exists between Asia and America, whose merchants are forbidden to avail themselves of their advantageous situation, and that, as a special favor only are they allowed to send their effects to Mexico, once a year, but under the following restrictions. ”

“ This money they would expend according to the orders of the colonists, who would thus be able to obtain such goods as they might stand in need of. It was upon the same occasion of writing home to Spain that the admiral strongly urged upon the Catholic Sovereigns that the Spanish colonists should be allowed to make use of the services of the Indians for a year or two until the colony should be in a settled state, a proposal which he did not wait for their highnesses' authority to carry out, and which led to a new form of the repartimiento. ”

“ Even after all that we have seen of the perverse imbecility of the directors of the Company, it must be thought strange that they should have sent a colony to a remote part of the world, where it was certain that there must be constant intercourse, peaceable or hostile, with Spaniards, and yet should not have taken care that there should be in the whole colony a single person who knew a little Spanish. ”

“ In this survey certain things stand out in contrast to the conventional judgment of the Spanish colonial system. The conquest was humane, and was effected by missionaries more than by warriors. The sway of Spain was benevolent, although the administration was not free from the taint of financial corruption. Neither the islands nor their inhabitants were exploited. The colony in fact was a constant charge upon the treasury of New Spain. The success of the enterprise was not measured by the exports and imports, but by the number of souls put in the way of salvation. ”

“ From the standpoint of the agrarian reformer, the land problem was at the bottom of all the evils that retarded the development of the colony, so richly endowed by nature that it should have been a paradise for those who came there to settle. The noble Spanish adventurers of Castilian blood, who had accompanied the early explorers and in a spirit of romance followed in their wake, were the first to obtain grants of land. They returned to Spain, brought with them their families and servants and settled upon the land, which became their new home. ”

“ A feeling of proprietorship soon sprang from uninterrupted user, and signs of jealousy appeared of any attempt at permanent settlement. This local feeling, combining with interested influence at home, did much to stunt the growth of the colony; the old colonization theory inherited from Spain was still powerful, for the American Revolution had not yet revealed the handwriting on the wall.
In 1585 English vessels and sailors were seized in Spanish waters under the pretext of a general arrest. ”

“ WHEN I published my article on the History of Separatism in the Spanish colonies, in the Deutsche Rundschau for July, 1898, I said that the colored peoples of a colony would always be inclined to struggle for the independence of their native country, because the rule of the mother country of the colony makes their access to the highest positions in the state impossible. ”

“ Till the end of the seventeenth century the safety of trade and commerce, the means of defence against Spanish or French invasion, the encouragement of immigration, government, and legislation, formed the subjects of discussion with the home government, and the comparatively newly formed colony was too unsettled to think of imparting knowledge to the rising generation. ”

“ French adventure and enterprise had precedence in the actual colonization of the northern half of this continent. Spain was long content with conquest without colonization. She has in Mexico and in South America all that can be said to be rightfully hers in the perpetuation of her language, in exclusive privileges of commerce, in the mixture of Spanish with native blood, and in the still effective, though strained and fretting, ties of traditional loyalty recognized by her transatlantic subjects on main and island. ”

“ Mexico and Peru had proved to be inexhaustible sources of wealth, and when the gold and silver diminished, the Viceroys in these and the other colonies could compel the people to wring rich products out of the soil, enough to supply Spain's necessities. The inhabitants of these colonies, composed of the aboriginal races with an admixture of Spanish, had [pg 138] been treated as slaves and drudges for so many centuries that they never dreamed of resistance, nor questioned the justice of a fate which condemned them always to toil for Spain. ”

“ Modern colonization began with Spain in South America, Mexico and the Philippines. Spain has nothing over which to boast in that record. The Dutch in Java, the record of Belgium in the Congo; that of the Portuguese in the Far East; the French in Africa; the English in India; Germany in China and Africa, and Japan in Korea, have not been entirely for the service of the subjected people, for all of these Governments [199] have gone on the fundamental theory that the colony exists for the Mother States. ”

“ Colonies, from being primarily fields for the propagation of Christianity and incidentally for the production of wealth, became the field primarily for industrial and commercial development and incidentally for Christian work. The change no doubt has contributed vastly to the wealth of the world and to progress, but it has been fatal to the native populations. The Spanish policy aimed to preserve and civilize the native races, not to establish a new home for Spaniards, and the colonial legislation provided elaborate safeguards for the protection of the Indians. ”

“ Historical facts lead one to inquire: How far was Spain ever a moral potential factor in the worldʼs progress? Spanish colonization [7] seems to have been only a colonizing mission preparatory to the attainment, by her colonists, of more congenial conditions under other régimes; for the repeated struggles for liberty, generation after generation, in all her colonies, tend to show that Spainʼs sovereignty was maintained through the inspiration of fear rather than love and sympathy, and that she entirely failed to render her colonial subjects happier than they were before. ”

“ Consequently from the middle of the seventeenth century at the period of the rapid rise of colonial powers of France, Holland, and England, the Spanish colonies find themselves under a commercial regime which increasingly hampers their prosperity and effectually blocks their advancement. ”

“ It is difficult to compare Spain and Great Britain as regards their respective colonial policies in America, for their possessions differed in kind. Spain owned dependencies rather than colonies, Great Britain owned colonies rather than dependencies. Spanish America was the result of conquest: English America, not including Canada, was the result of settlement. But, so far as a comparison can be instituted, it will probably not be seriously contended that the British colonies suffered more grievously at the hands of the mother country than did the colonial possessions of Spain. ”

“ But in the case of the most prosperous instances of colonization by the British, the native races have either wholly disappeared or are in progress of extinction, while the infusion of Spanish and foreign blood into the colonies of Spain has not only allowed the increase of the indigenous population, but has been insufficient to change or do more than slightly modify their national characters. ”

“ Population and industries.—The heroic age of Spanish colonization had now passed. The surprising results achieved in the New World during the first eighty years, not counting the work of exploration, are set forth in a description of the colonies in 1574 written by López de Velasco, official geographer. At that time there were in North and South America about two hundred Spanish towns and cities, besides numerous mining camps, haciendas, and stock ranches. The Spanish population was 32,000 families, or perhaps from 160,000 to 200,000 persons. ”

“ With the Spanish, French, and Dutch voyagers it is not proposed to deal; their stories are well known, and affected but little the establishment of our early settlements in the West. Like the British nation, these three peoples also strove to create lasting empires in America; but unlike their rival, they failed. The Spaniards made the fatal error of attempting to settle during the period of exploration. They based their colonies upon slavery, and a mistaken commercial policy; and the sparseness of their colonists made them incapable of contending against the pressure of surrounding savagery. ”

“ The Spanish-American empire was therefore much longer-lived than the first colonial dominion of Great Britain in North America, and the natural inference is, either that the Spaniards treated their colonies or dependencies better than the English treated theirs, or that the English colonies were in a better position than the Spanish dependencies to assert their independence, or that both causes operated simultaneously. ”

“ The troops of Cortes, and the gallant adventurers who followed them as settlers in the Spanish colonies, had descendants who soon began to form a powerful population. Among those, a government possessed of common sense would have found the natural support of the parent state. But the man of Spain scorned to acknowledge the equality even of the Spanish blood, when born in the colonies; and no office of trust, and no commission in the colonial troops, could be given to a Creole. ”

“ A group of documents on commerce (ca. 1602) , although somewhat fragmentary, contain much interesting information regarding the trade between Spain and her colonies. Fray Martin Ignacio de Loyola, bishop of Rio de la Plata, writes his opinion regarding colonial administration in the Spanish empire. The colonies should be kept in a dependent and subordinate position, and their high officials should be sent from Spain. ”

“ This dire contest in America destroyed almost every person of any note who came within its influence, desolated the country where it originated, prevented the growth of colonization, and changed for the worse the whole course of legislation for the Spanish colonies. ”

“ The friendly Indians brought stone, lime, wood, and bricks, and in a few weeks a town rose up, which served as a good starting-point for future operations, a retreat for the disabled, a place for the reception of stores, or whatever might be sent to or from the mother-country, and was, moreover, strong enough to overawe the surrounding country. This was the first colony in New Spain, and was hailed with satisfaction by the simple natives, who could not foresee that their doom was sealed when a white man set his foot upon their soil. ”

“ The third class in the Spanish colonists arose from the offspring, either of Europeans with negroes, or of Europeans with original natives of America. These were called, respectively, Mulattoes and Mestizas, and they multiplied so greatly as to constitute a very considerable portion of the population throughout the transatlantic{134} dominions of Spain. ”

“ In treating Spain's part in the New World it has been customary, after recounting the discovery of America, to proceed at once to territory now within the United States—Florida, New Mexico, Texas—forgetting that these regions were to Spain only northern outposts, and omitting the wonderful story of Spanish achievement farther south. This book being a history of the colonization of North America, Spain's great colonies in South America, now powerful nations, fall beyond our geographical limits. ”

“ The Spanish colonies were founded and developed in the midst of a mass of people, who, because of their enormous superiority in point of numbers, necessarily reacted in turn upon the small number of the invaders, either by interbreeding with the latter, or by the contact of daily life, or by their superior adaptability to their natural environment. The conquerors themselves presented different traits, according to the region of Spain from which they came, and naturally they sought to group and to settle themselves in obedience to the ethnic affinities of their origin. ”

“ The deadly rivalries of Catholic and Protestant, of Englishman and Spaniard, have left indelible traces upon their descendants which intensify race prejudice and misunderstanding. The Englishman or American looks with a contempt upon the economic blindness or incapacity of the Spaniard that veils his eyes to their real aims and achievements.
The tragedies and blunders of English colonization in America are often forgotten and only the tragedies and blunders of Spanish colonization are remembered. ”

“ It has often been observed that whereas the men who went to the northern English colonies were mostly small farmers or townsfolk of the trading or artisan classes, the Spanish emigrants were mainly adventurers, making gold and silver their first object, the acquisition of plantations or mines to be worked by natives the second. ”

“ If, on the one hand, the early conquistadores treated the natives with hideous cruelty, the Spanish government legislated more systematically and benevolently to protect them than any other colonizing power. In the time of the first conquests things moved too rapidly for the home government in those days of slow communication, and the horrors of the clash between ruthless gold-seekers and the simple children of nature, as depicted by the impassioned pen of Las Casas and spread broadcast over Europe, came to be the traditional and accepted characteristic of Spanish rule. ”