Spanish settlement

“ Spain has become a receding unity, under a single monarch. Her American possessions wait only the full tide of growth in order to set loose. Castile’s will has leveled Spain. Her huertas give wine and fruit just in the amount to balance the desert dearth about them. Her high towns are fossils of recalcitrance, or backfires smoldering against each other. Although the diapason of will has its home in every Spanish soul, no one city is its symbol. Toledo, Avila, Seville, Barcelona, Jaca, Murcia, Mérida, Oviedo ... they bespeak their pasts, their individual dynamisms, whose sum is zero. ”

“ When at length the centre accepted the civilization of the east and south, and by reason of its virility was able to dominate them, it imposed its law, its customs, and its conservatism upon them, and reached across the seas to the Americas, where a handful of men were able to leave an imperishable legacy of Spanish civilization to a great part of two continents. ”

“ No one durst stir out of the town to visit the townships which had been bestowed upon him as a commendary; for the inhabitants had already put four Spaniards to death who had attempted to collect their rents.
In all the provinces where Spanish settlements are formed, the chief colonists are presented with commendaries, and it is when these persons travel to the different townships to demand their tribute, that the inhabitants generally rise up in arms and murder every Spaniard they can seize. ”

“ 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. ”

“ THE CAUSES OF SPAIN'S DECADENCE. The golden age of Spain began in 1492, in which year the conquest of Granada extinguished the Arab dominion, and the discovery of America by Columbus opened a new world to the enterprise of the Spanish cavaliers. It continued during the reigns of Charles I. and Philip II., extending over a period of about a century, during which Spain was the leading power in Europe, and occupied the foremost position in the civilized world. ”

“ One reason why we feel so deep an interest in the fate of the Castilian power, is that the history of Spain is so closely interwoven with that of our own country,—discovered and colonized as it was under the auspices of the Spanish government. We owe our very existence to Spain, and from the close of the fifteenth century our histories have run on in parallel lines. ”

“ With the exception of those officials whose stay is limited by the rules of the service, or by the place-hunting that ensues at every change in the Spanish ministry, few Spaniards who have once settled in the colony ever return home. ”

“ In their place remain the negroes, who are the descendants of the slaves from Africa, and the white Cubans, who are descended from the Spanish settlers. But owing to the climate, the fertility of the soil and other conditions which surround them, they have grown up to be different men from their Spanish grandfathers.
Now Spain is a land ruled over by a King, and its lands are in the hands of a few fortunate men called counts and marquises, so that the poor people have no land of their own which they may cultivate, and thus earn their living as our country farmers do. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Spaniards have been so busy keeping the East out of the West, fighting the battles of other nations, keeping those wretched Bourbons on the thrones of Italy where they were not wanted, opening up the New World and making Spanish America, that they have neglected Spain. ”

“ Recent events have called an unusual amount of attention to the Spanish peninsula; and this unhappy country has long been in so uneasy a state that a revolution surprises very few. Spain has had its full share, both of the smiles and the frowns of fortune. It was as widely known in early ages for its wealth, as it has been in modern times for its beggars.
“Nearly three thousand years ago, the Phœnicians began to plant colonies in the South of Spain. They found the country abounding with silver. ”

“ How strangely Spain had fallen from its high estate in Europe the wars of Lewis had abundantly shown, but so vast was the extent of its empire, so enormous the resources which still remained to it, that under a vigorous ruler men believed its old power would at once return. Its sovereign was still master of some of the noblest provinces of the Old World and the New, of Spain itself, of the Milanese, of Naples and Sicily, of the Netherlands, of Southern America, of the noble islands of the Spanish Main. ”

“ NO modern European nation has endured such vicissitudes of good and evil fortune as the Spanish. From the virtual anarchy of the Castilian kingdoms under Juan II and Enrique IV, the resolute wills of Ferdinand and Isabella evoked order and, by the union with Aragon, the conquest of Granada, Naples and Navarre and the acquisition of the New World, they left Spain in a most commanding position. ”

“ The history of Spanish colonial legislation is the history of the impotent struggles of the government in behalf of the natives, against the avarice and cruelty of its subjects. It proves that an empire powerful at home—and Spain then was so—may be so widely extended that its authority shall scarcely be felt in its extremities. ”

“ In so extensive and thinly peopled a land as Spain, and which has been so long a prey to civil war and insurrection, security of travelling in rural districts, and on cross roads, is only to be obtained by increased cultivation of the soil, and by improving the condition of the peasantry. But in the capital, and on the roads leading to it, and in the towns and villages, some degree of law and order might be expected to prevail. A glance at the Spanish papers, any time for the last six months, proves the contrary to be the case. ”

“ Roman empire a province where the people were more industrious or more prosperous. How strongly this account contrasts with the history of modern Spain! When the Spanish monarchs were aspiring to rule the world, in the sixteenth century, the streets of their cities were overrun with beggars. Only a century ago, the number of people in Spain who were without shirts, because they were too poor to buy such a luxury, was estimated at three millions, or one-third of the population of the kingdom. ”

“ The Spanish infusion brought to the native population no qualities of energy, of well-directed effort, of the laborious determination to build up a new and thriving commonwealth. Spanish ideals run directly counter to those involved in empire building. ”

“ As a geographical and political fact, Spain dates from the earliest times, and the Spanish people gather within themselves the blood and the traditions of the three great continents of the Old World—Europe, Asia and Africa—united to produce the mighty Spaniard of the 15th and 16th centuries. ”

“ The peasant in more fertile parts does not necessarily fare better, but he labours magnificently less. The deliberate method of prosperity and success is held in small esteem. The mighty Empire of Spain was in fact the affair of a generation only. From the time of Philip II. onwards the Spanish Empire might aptly be compared with the Cid’s corpse, for, though by its prestige and the favour of heaven it might continue to reap fresh victories, it was nevertheless irrevocably dead and awaiting dissolution. And it is the improvidence of Spain that has charmed the foreigner. ”

“ For this reason the crown and scepter of España have extended themselves wherever the sun sheds its light, from its rising to its setting, with the glory and splendor of their power and majesty, and the Spanish monarchs have excelled the other princes of the earth by having gained innumerable souls for heaven, which has been España's principal intention and its wealth. ”

“ Isabella in the domestic administration, Ferdinand in war and diplomacy, which was to unite Spain and expel the hated infidel.
We will not now pause to inquire their motives, but note only the vastness of the [85] undertaking. More than any other nation, perhaps, the Spanish were divided, one section speaking a French dialect, another the Basque; one province might be aristocratic, another monarchical, and yet another democratic, while every one had its own peculiar laws and rights, called “fueros.” ”

“ The spanish domination during the colony was overwhelming and absolute, reaching so inhumane extremes, which only demonstrate the spiritual poverty of the spanish who carried out the invasion. By the end of the colonial period, it is estimated that the New Spain approximately had six million people, of these, according to the 1793 census there were eight thousand peninsular Spanish, who controlled the political, economic and social power of the entire population. ”

“ As the Hidalguia branches out through every [Pg 34] male whose father enjoys that privilege, Spain is overrun with gentry, who earn their living in the meanest employments. The province of Asturias having afforded shelter to that small portion of the nation which preserved the Spanish name and throne against the efforts of the conquering Arabs ”

“ After the flag of Castile had ceased to fly anywhere on the continent, and the last Spanish officials had departed, there were few occasions for communication of any kind. Spain herself was in a depressed and distracted state for many years after 1825. There is to-day little trade between her and the New World, nor is there, except to Mexico and Argentina, any large Spanish immigration. Where it does exist, it is valued, for the men who come from northern Spain (as most settlers do) are of excellent quality. ”

“ The pure and uncorrupted Spain, the Spanish Spain without foreign admixture, is that of the Arabs, Moors and Jews, that of religious tolerance, that of industrial and agricultural wealth, and of free municipalities ”

“ While it is not generally realized, Spain was, as we have pointed out, the province of the Roman Empire in the West that advanced most in culture before the breaking up of the Empire. The Silver Age of Latin literature owes all of its geniuses to Spain. Lucan, the Senecas, Martial, Quintilian, are all Spaniards. Spain itself was a most flourishing province, and under the Spanish Cæsars, from the end of the first to about the end of the second century, increased rapidly in population. Spain was the leader in these prosperous times, and the tradition of culture maintained itself. ”

“ As concerned Spain the most noteworthy provisions were: Philip V’s renunciation for himself and his heirs of any claim to the French throne; the cession of Gibraltar and Minorca to England; the grant of the negro slave-trade asiento in the Americas to the English, together with accompanying rights which made this phase of the treaties a veritable entering wedge for English commerce in the Spanish colonies; and the surrender of the Catholic Netherlands, Milan, Naples, and Sardinia to Austria, and of Sicily to Savoy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The history of Spain as a united state dates from the union of Castile and Aragon by the marriage of Isabella and Ferdinand, the respective rulers of those kingdoms, in 1469. Grenada, the last remaining possession of the Moors, fell before the Spanish forces in 1492, and Navarre was acquired in 1512. ”

“ It confines itself to the story of the growth of Spanish civilization in Spain, but its ultimate transfer to the Americas has been constantly in the writer’s mind in the choice of his material, as will appear from the frequent allusions in the text. An attempt is made to treat Spanish institutions not as static (which they never were) but in process of evolution, from period to period. The development of Spanish institutions in the colonies and the later independent states, it is hoped, will be the subject of another volume. ”

“ He must create Spain within himself. The first stage of his endeavor was that of the intense crystallizations which made Spain’s siglos de oro. These saints and sinners are not fragments: they are entire forms of Spanish energy. And the elements which they personify exist in every Spanish soul. If, therefore, Spain was to be unified within each Spaniard, La Celestina must be equated with Saint Teresa, Quixote and Amadis with Lazarillo and the Cid.... Although the energic sum of all these forces might in each individual soul add up to zero! ”