Spanish colonization of America

The Spanish colonization of America was the process by which an administration was implanted in the New World that pretended to be an imitation or duplicate of the contemporary peninsular administration. This period extended from October 12, 1492, the day of the discovery of America, until July 13, 1898, when a formal act of lowering the Spanish flag was held in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in compliance with the Washington Peace Protocol signed the day before with the United States. The main motivations for colonial expansion were profit through resource extraction and the spread of Catholicism through conversions of indigenous populations.

The colonization of America was substantially carried out by the Crown of Castile (dynastically linked to the Indian kingdoms) and is the continuation of a first expansion and colonizing experience of the Kingdom of Castile in the Canary Islands, in which it tried for the first time on a certain scale. the experience of conquering, populating and administering a new territory, inhabited by unknown peoples, assimilating and Christianizing them in the process. Thus, the last three large Canary Islands were completely subjugated in the years 1478-1483 (Gran Canaria), 1492-1493 (La Palma) and 1494-1496 (Tenerife), although the colonizing impulse started much earlier, in the other islands of the archipelago. This experience and the existence of formulas developed to solve the problems of founding new cities,

It is estimated that during the colonial period (1492-1832), a total of 1.86 million Spaniards settled in the Americas and another 3.5 million immigrated during the post-colonial period (1850-1950); the estimate is 250,000 in the 16th century, and the majority during the 18th century, since immigration was encouraged by the new Bourbon dynasty. On the contrary, it is estimated that the indigenous population was reduced by 80% in the century and a half after the voyages of Columbus, mainly due to the spread of diseases, forced labor and slavery for the extraction of resources, in addition to missionization. It has been said that this was the first act of genocide on a large scale. scale of the modern era by various scholars, including the originator of the term Raphael Lemkin.Some scholars and authors have denied this classification.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the Spanish-American wars of independence led to the secession and subsequent division of most of the Spanish territories in America, except for Cuba and Puerto Rico, which were lost to the United States in 1898, after the Spanish War. -American.

Extension of the Spanish Empire in America

• Viceroyalty of New Spain: was the current country of Mexico, the states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Nevada, Florida, Utah and part of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma in the United States, which until 1848 belonged to Mexico and they were taken from this country in the war known as the American intervention in Mexico (Florida was ceded by Spain to the United States through the Adams-Onís treaty during the Mexican War of Independence). Spain kept these territories under its control from 1519 to 1821. However, it is necessary to remember that the independence of New Spain began in 1810 and was formally and legally declared by the Congress of Chilpancingo in 1813 under the name of North America. The period between that year and the date of consummation of the independence of Mexico (1821) was conceived by Congress as a struggle against the metropolis and for the international recognition of the new nation. It is necessary to clarify that significant territories that formed part of the Spanish Empire, and located in North America, were inhabited by original peoples that did not form part of the European colonial system, until they were incorporated in the nineteenth century. xix by the nascent American states after undergoing processes of ethnic cleansing.
• General Captaincy of Guatemala: included the territories of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica and the Mexican state of Chiapas. The independence of Central America was declared in 1821 and, after being part of the First Mexican Empire (except Chiapas), it proclaimed its absolute independence on July 1, 1823.
• Spanish Louisiana: ceded by France, Spain held it for a short time, from 1762 to 1801. It incorporated territories of the current states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Minnesota, Missouri and Iowa. Most of these territories were never effectively controlled by Spain and remained in the hands of the original peoples until the 19th century.
• Captaincy General of Venezuela: also called the Kingdom of Venezuela, it included the territories of present-day Venezuela, Guyana, Trinidad and part of Colombia.
• Viceroyalty of New Granada: the current countries of: Panama, Colombia and Ecuador.
• Viceroyalty of Peru: the current Peru, part of Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile and Brazil.
• Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata: the current countries of Argentina (eastern Patagonia is considered by some sources as part of the viceroyalty and by others as belonging to the Captaincy General of Chile), Paraguay, Uruguay and part of Bolivia. Spain never controlled the entirety of the pampas, the Chaco, or Patagonia, which remained under the control of the native peoples until the 19th century.
• Captaincy General of Chile: also called the Kingdom of Chile, and initially Nueva Extremadura, the core of today's Chile (for some sources also eastern Patagonia). Spain never largely controlled the southern half of Chile or Patagonia, which remained under the rule of the Mapuche and other native peoples until the early 19th century.
• Island Territories: the current countries of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Bahamas (until 1670), Jamaica and the Cayman Islands (both until 1655), Saint Kitts and Nevis (Saint Kitts and Nevis), Antigua and Barbuda ( from 1493 to 1632), Barbados (from 1518 to 1624), Dominica, Saint Lucia (from 1504 to 1654), Grenada (from 1498 to 1674), and Trinidad and Tobago.

Causes

• Economic: the rise of mercantilism, as well as the need to find an alternative route for the trade of spices and silk, coming from the "spice islands", the Moluccas, which had been blocked by the Turks with the seizure of of Constantinople in 1453, fully controlling the silk route, both inland and the sea route.
• Cultural: with the Renaissance, in European society some suggested the sphericity of the Earth, and the proliferation of merchants caused the proliferation of exaggerated legends and chronicles (Marco Polo's voyages, the legend of Prester John), which caused great interest in what unknown in Europe at the time, along with the adventurous spirit towards the Far East.
• Technological: the appearance of new ships, such as caravels or galleons that allowed transatlantic penetration, thanks to Alfonso V and Juan II of Portugal ("The Perfect One" or "The Navigator"), and due to the process of naval improvement and exploration, these ships included square and triangular sails, together with a reinforced hull, an evolution of the Flemish trade ships. These were the first ships that were able to hunt, navigate against the wind and alongside it, with which the discovery of the Canary Islands was achieved, going up the African coast and conquering America. New navigational instruments, such as the astrolabe or the compass, which made it possible to orient oneself at sea together with the tracking of the stars, as well as advances in cartography, were fundamental in allowing the European arrival in America.

The capitulations of Santa Fe

Christopher Columbus presented his plan to John II of Portugal, but, based on miscalculations about the size of the Earth and the distance between Europe and India, it was not taken into account. He then went to Castile, then involved in the conquest of Granada, and exposed his plan to the Catholic Monarchs, aided by the friars of La Rábida. Despite the technical errors, it was done with the support of Queen Isabella and Cardinal Cisneros and thus, after the capture of Granada, agreements began to be drawn up, called Capitulations of Santa Fe, by which the kings granted Columbus the title of admiral, viceroy and governor of the lands to be discovered and a tenth of the benefits obtained by the new route.

Conquest

First settlements and distribution

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived in America, on the island of San Salvador, located in the Lucayas archipelago, actually believing that he had reached India.

On December 5, 1492, Columbus arrived on the island of Hispaniola, currently divided into two countries (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and formed the first European colony in the new world there.

The Castilian expansion towards the west produced tensions with Portugal, both kingdoms requesting the mediation of the pope. Through the Inter Caetera bull of 1493, Pope Alexander VI delimited the area of ​​influence that each kingdom could claim from the other, with a pole-to-pole line located 100 leagues west of the Azores. Shortly thereafter, the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas moved the frontier line 370 leagues west of Cape Verde, thus opening up a vast area to the east of South America for Portuguese expansion, later to be known as Brazil.

The conquest of the continent

From the settlements of the island areas of the Caribbean Sea such as Cuba and Hispaniola, the Crown of Castile undertook the colonization of the American continent, establishing commercial contacts with some indigenous peoples of the coast of present-day Venezuela that allowed the foundation of the city of Nueva Cádiz in 1500 on the island of Cubagua. This kingdom was granted the royal monopoly for the exploration and economic exploitation of the Americas, to the detriment of the rest of the Hispanic kingdoms.

In 1518 an expedition led by Hernán Cortés arrived at the island of Cozumel, later passing through the coasts of the Yucatan peninsula until reaching the Grijalva River, where a fight took place. On Holy Thursday of 1519 the entire army arrived in San Juan de Ulúa, from where it headed towards the coast of the current city of Veracruz. In that place Cortés received the first embassy of Moctezuma Xocoyotzin, ruler of the lordship of Tenochtitlán, founding the Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz there.

Once Veracruz was founded, Moctezuma asked him, by sending ambassadors, to stop his march, but Cortés continued inland, on August 16, 1519, towards the heart of the Aztec Empire. This expedition consisted of 400 Castilian soldiers, 15 horses and 1,400 Totonac warriors. Arriving in Tlaxcala, Cortés defeated Xicotencatl and established an important alliance with the Tlaxcalans, thus adding more warriors to his army.

On his way to Tenochtitlan, the massacre of Cholula took place. A little later he headed towards the Valley of Mexico crossing between two volcanoes: Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl. On the other side, he sighted Lake Texcoco and Mexico-Tenochtitlan for the first time. Cortés's forces entered through the Iztapalapa causeway, being received by Moctezuma Xocoyotzin. Once lodged in the city, the huey tlatoani chose to submit to the Crown in a private interview. In exchange, Cortés demanded to see the tribute books and maps of the land. Meanwhile, Cortés's enterprise had not gone unnoticed by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, who sent an expedition led by Pánfilo Narváez with express orders to apprehend him and take him back to Cuba. For this reason, Cortés traveled to Veracruz to fight against Velázquez's men. During his absence, the Great Temple Massacre occurred, which would light the fuse of an indigenous rebellion. Moctezuma tried to calm the angry crowd, but they repudiated him as ruler and began stoning him. The huey tlatoani was seriously wounded and died, Cuitláhuac being named his successor. Immediately, he organized an army to attack the conquerors.

Cortés organized an escape plan, since the Aztecs had besieged him in the palace of Axayácatl. On the night of June 30, 1520, they fled, but were detected. During the escape eight hundred conquerors and an indeterminate but greater number of indigenous allies died. This episode is known as the Sad Night. A year later, and after the decisive battle of Otumba, Cortés returned with more troops and more allies; the towns that had once been subjugated by the Aztec empire, allied themselves with the Spanish conquerors and began to surround the capital. The city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan was besieged for three months and, after innumerable battles by land and sea, was finally subdued on August 13, 1521. In the battle, the Castilians, Tlaxcaltecas, Texcocanos, Huejotzincas, Chalcas, Cholultecas and other coalitions They caused casualties to the Mexica army in a number close to 40,000, according to Cortés's own estimates, and referred to in his third relationship letter.

Foundation of cities

The miscegenation

Unlike other colonizers such as the English, who did not admit miscegenation because they considered other races other than their own to be impure, mixed marriages were carried out in the Spanish colonies from 1514 under the legal cover of the Royal Certificate of Fernando el Católico:It is our will that the Indians have, as they should, complete freedom to marry whoever they want, both with Indians and with natives of these kingdoms of ours, or Spaniards born in the Latin Indies, and that no impediment be placed on them. And we command that no order of ours that has been given or by us may prevent or impede the marriage between the Indians and Indians with Spaniards or Spaniards. and that everyone have complete freedom to marry whoever they want, and our audiences try to keep it that way and comply

.(Collected in the Compilation of Laws of the Indies of 1680, Law 2º Tit. 1º Book VI). In 1556 Felipe II reiterated this Royal Certificate of his grandfather.

One of the most emblematic marriages of the 16th century was carried out by Isabel Moctezuma (Tecuichpo Ixcazochtzin, before being baptized, daughter of Moctezuma II and last empress of the Aztecs) with the Extremaduran Juan Cano, with whom she had five children who would begin the genealogy of the Aztecs. Dukes of Miravista, a title that still lasts today. The Toledo-Moctezuma palace in Cáceres is today the seat of the Provincial Historical Archive and the Moctezuma family's coat of arms is preserved on its façade. Some of the descendants of that marriage live in Spain and others in Mexico.

The German historian Enrique Otte collects on page 61 of his book Cartas Privadas de emigrantes a Indias: 1540-1616 (FCE 1993) a letter from a colonizer named Andrés García, dated February 10, 1571, addressed to his nephew Pedro Guiñón, in Colmenar Viejo, in which he informs her of his marriage to an American Indian:I got married on this earth with a woman very much to my will. And although there you will find it hard to be married to a Hindu, here no honor is lost, because the Hindus are a nation held in high esteem.

Apart from marriages, there were, above all, extramarital sexual unions with indigenous women. This was also due to the fact that Castilian women were always scarce in America. The classic example is that of Malinche, lover of Hernán Cortés, with whom she even had a son, Martín Cortés (whom she recognized in 1529 through a papal bull of Clement VII), who should not be confused with her legitimate son of the same name.. But the extramarital miscegenation had other sociological expressions: the barraganería, the prostitution and, also, the violations. Polygamy, existing in pre-Columbian peoples, was prohibited because it was contrary to Catholic doctrine.​​

The variety of miscegenation combinations that coexisted in America during the colony can be observed in caste painting. The lexicon of castes also testifies to the rigidity of this system. Today, thanks to miscegenation, the population of Hispanic American countries shares indigenous, European, and African ancestors, to varying degrees.

Consolidation of colonization

Northern extension of Spanish influence

Under the pretext of the French Wars of Religion, the Spanish Crown issued the order for the landing of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés with a Hispanic force allied to the Timucuas that led to the end, on September 2, 1565,From the French pirates' settlement at Fort Caroline—their graves continue there—renamed the fortress "San Mateo". Almost a week later Avilés would found the fort, and then the city, of San Agustín de La Florida, on September 8 of that year, forty-two years before the English founded the establishment of Jamestown (May 14, 1607), in territory of the future colony of Virginia, and fifty-five years before the Pilgrim Fathers landed (November 26, 1620) in the so-called New England to found, on December 21, the city of "New Plymouth", capital of the future homonymous colony.

In 1720, Villasur's expedition from Santa Fe met and attempted to parley with the Pawni, allied with the French in what is now Nebraska. Negotiations were unsuccessful, and a battle ensued; the Spanish were seriously defeated, with only 13 able to return to New Mexico. Although this was a small engagement, it marked the deepest penetration of the Spanish in the Great Plains, establishing there the limit for Spanish expansion and influence.

In an effort to exclude Great Britain and Russia from the Eastern Pacific Ocean, the Spanish Crown sent Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra north from Mexico in 1775 to find and control the fabled Northwest Passage. In 1781, a Spanish expedition during the American Revolutionary War left St. Louis, Missouri (then under Spanish control) and went as far as St. Joseph in Niles, Michigan, where they captured the fort. Spanish territorial claims based on this penetration to the north were not supported in the treaty negotiations.

The Nootka Convention (1791) resolved the dispute between Spain and Great Britain over British settlements in Oregon and British Columbia. In 1791 the King of Spain gave Alejandro Malaspina command of a scientific expedition around the world, with orders to locate the Northwest Passage and search for gold, precious stones, and any American, British, or Russian settlements along the northwest coast.

In 1819 and by virtue of the Adams-Onís Treaty, Spain withdrew from the region, leaving numerous Spanish place names in the area.

Spain's independence

In 1776 the thirteen English colonies in North America began an unprecedented political process, declaring their independence from the European monarchical metropolis and creating a republic governed by a written constitution, with the name of the United States of America.

Starting in 1808, during the Spanish War of Independence due to the Napoleonic invasion, the Creoles, like the peninsulars in Spain, established boards to govern the lands in the name of King Ferdinand VII of Spain. This experience of self-government, together with the antecedents of the Independence of the United States, and the influence of liberalism and the ideas of the French Revolution greatly influenced the course of the Spanish-American War of Independence (1808-1824), from which the majority emerged. of the Hispanic American republics today.

In South America, the first creole boards, such as those established in La Paz, Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata (1809), Venezuela (1810), Chile (1810), Nueva Granada (1810) and Quito (1809), were repressed by the Spanish metropolitan authorities, causing the defeat of all of them. The First Junta of Buenos Aires (1810) was the only national government that could remain, establishing a historical continuity with the subsequent governments of Argentina. From Buenos Aires began the secession campaign in the south of the continent. Two large independence armies were formed and attacked the royalist troops from the south and north, led by José de San Martín and Simón Bolívar, to converge in Guayaquil, where the general command of the South American independence troops remained in the hands of Bolívar. The war for the independence of South America (South America) lasted between 1810 and 1824. In this last year, the royalists, cornered in Upper Peru, were finally defeated in Ayacucho by a South American army under the command of Marshal Antonio José de Sucre. Once the peoples of South America became independent from Spain, and after complex processes, they ended up creating the following independent nations today: Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

The peoples of the Viceroyalty of New Spain began in 1810 with the Grito de Dolores and also after complex political processes ended up creating the following independent nations today: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua. Later the Dominican Republic would become independent.

In 1898, the United States won the Spanish-American War and occupied the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, ending the Spanish presence in America. Cuba became independent in 1902, although it would remain under US tutelage until 1934, while Puerto Rico was annexed as an associated state to the United States. Other territories of Hispanic origin, such as California, Texas and Florida, were annexed and became states of the United States.

Currently, the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries of America and Europe have organized themselves into the Ibero-American Community of Nations, which has its highest cohesion body in the Ibero-American Summit.

Consequences of colonization

Demography

Thanks to the bull of Pope Paul III Sublimis Deus of 1537, which declared the indigenous men with all the effects and abilities of Christians, the Spanish made an effort to incorporate the indigenous people into their civilization and their church, even at the cost of annulment of their cultural identity.

The displacement of Spaniards towards America during the 16th century hardly affected the demographic growth of Castile. On the other hand, the so-called microbial shock, above all, had negative effects on the American indigenous population. With the arrival of the Castilian settlers, diseases unknown in the New World arose in America, such as smallpox, influenza, measles and typhus, against which the native populations had no resistance. Europeans came into contact with other diseases of their own. of America, such as syphilis, which decimated the European population when it spread in 1494 from southern Italy (possession belonging to the crown of Aragon).

Among the linguistic legacy of the original population, two Amerindian languages ​​can be counted: Quechua and Guaraní, which have reached the rank of co-official languages ​​in some Latin American countries, and whose permanence is due in part to their use as a lingua franca during the work. colonial evangelist. During the Viceroyalty of Peru, Quechua was one of the languages ​​that Catholic missionaries used to evangelize the indigenous people; Several manuals (called "arts") and lexicons of this and other important languages, such as Aymara, Mochica or Guaraní, as well as catechisms, were written. This allowed it to increase its influence over the Andean peoples and even Amazonian peoples who did not speak it before. An example is the current wide diffusion of the dialect called Quichua from Santiago,

Fray Domingo de Santo Tomás published in Valladolid (Spain) the first two works in Quechua: the Grammatica or Arte de la Lengua General de los Indios de los Reinos del Perú, and the Lexicon or Vocabulario de la Lengua General del PERV, called «Quichua ».

Encomienda and slavery

With the arrival of Christian Europeans in America, an intense theological and legal debate arose about the nature of its inhabitants for their incorporation, expulsion or destruction of the territories that would be dominated by the Spanish Empire. This controversy ended with the opposition of the Hispanic monarchy to their slavery and the incorporation of the Native Americans as subjects of the Crown with all their rights. Other European powers such as England and Portugal did not consider them as equals and in the territories dominated by them the deal would be slavery.

Thus, since the beginning of the 16th century, theologians and philosophers such as Juan López de Palacios Rubios or Matías de la Paz from the University of Salamanca and Martín Fernández de Enciso or Bartolomé de las Casas from the American territories themselves, face the problem of the nature of the new settlers from different visions. Finally, in 1537 Pope Paul III's bull Sublimus Dei was promulgated, in which the indigenous people were declared to be men in all their capacities.

From this moment on, the laws of the Spanish Crown established that the American Indians (Amerindians) would not be subjected to slavery, but to a regime of servitude called encomienda, through which they were given to Spanish encomenderos. The encomienda regime established that the indigenous people had to work compulsorily for the encomendero, at the same time that he was obliged to the Crown of the care and evangelization of the indigenous people. One of the most famous critics of the encomienda system was Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, whose most representative work is the Very Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies.

However, that was not completely fulfilled, since the Spanish even carried out in some areas of the American territory a type of armed expedition called "maloca", whose objective was to capture indigenous people to take them into slavery.

The decline in the Native American population could explain a lack of indigenous labor that Spain tried to replace with slaves from sub-Saharan Africa, bought from companies of other European powers that traded slaves in the Americas. Note that the treatment of person was granted to the Native Americans, but not to the blacks, being a clear exponent of this thought Fray Bartolomé himself. The exact number of enslaved people from Africa is controversial and difficult to determine; According to different estimates, this can range between 9 and 12 million people, of which it is estimated that 1,552,100 entered the territories colonized by Spain.

Religion

In contrast to other colonizers throughout history, such as the English, Portuguese or Dutch, the Spanish colonizers from the outset accepted the indigenous people as people endowed with a soul, and therefore focused part of their effort on indoctrinating them and converting them to their religion.

Pope Alexander VI, in his Inter Caetera bulls, established the obligation of the Crown of Castile to convert all its subjects, including Amerindians and Afro-Americans, to Christianity, in its Catholic aspect. The tasks to achieve the conversion were carried out through a great variety of procedures and a considerable number of missionaries of different orders left the Iberian Peninsula for America for this purpose, within the framework of a renewal movement of the Spanish Church initiated by Cisneros,​and in which mystics such as Saint Teresa of Jesus or Saint John of the Cross, ascetics such as Saint Pedro de Alcántara (1499-1562), preachers such as Saint Alonso de Orozco (1500-1591) and religious such as Saint Ignatius of Loyola, stood out. founder of the Society of Jesus.

The methods adopted to obtain the conversion were very diverse. One of the formulas used was known as doctrine. It was about the commitment acquired by the conqueror so that all the indigenous people who had corresponded to him in his repartimientos would be evangelized; children were to receive religious instruction every day and adults three days a week. The convent was the nerve center of evangelization and numerous towns were configured around it. In it the religious took care of the spiritual needs of the new Christians at the same time as the material ones, since together with the rooms for worship and the friars' room, they had infirmaries, schools and workshops. The same missionaries played an important role in the transculturation of the indigenous, by putting a special effort in their incorporation to the artisanal activities of European tradition as an outstanding part of their education. The school of San José de los Naturales, created by the Franciscans in Mexico, those organized by Bishop Vasco de Quiroga in Pátzcuaro (Michoacán), or the Jesuit Missions in present-day Argentina, Paraguay, etc., are a reference for understanding different life projects for the indigenous from their incorporation to Christianity. In them are present many of the ideas from the utopian movements of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which found in America a propitious ground for their implementation. created by the Franciscans in Mexico, those organized by Bishop Vasco de Quiroga in Pátzcuaro (Michoacán), or the Jesuit Missions in present-day Argentina, Paraguay, etc., are a reference to understand different life projects for the indigenous from their incorporation into Christianity. In them are present many of the ideas from the utopian movements of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which found in America a propitious ground for their implementation. created by the Franciscans in Mexico, those organized by Bishop Vasco de Quiroga in Pátzcuaro (Michoacán), or the Jesuit Missions in present-day Argentina, Paraguay, etc., are a reference to understand different life projects for the indigenous from their incorporation into Christianity. In them are present many of the ideas from the utopian movements of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which found in America a propitious ground for their implementation.

On some occasions the religious Catholics were closely related to the native settlers, getting involved in their problems and in the abuses they suffered from some conquerors and encomenderos, transmitting the injustices to the authorities of the peninsula. In many cases, the Catholic missionaries used American languages, such as Quechua, Nahuatl or Guarani, helping to preserve them by being endowed with writing systems.

The conversion to Catholicism of the American population was largely successful. In 2004, about half of the world's Catholics were in Latin America, although the trend is decreasing.

On the other hand, Latin American Catholicism took peculiar forms derived from the phenomenon known as religious syncretism, through which ancient pre-Columbian and African religions and beliefs were integrated into Christianity.

Technical and scientific exchanges

It is called the Columbian Exchange (from the English, Columbian Exchange ) to the process that occurred between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in which agricultural products and other foods were transferred from the Old World (Europe, Africa and Asia) to the New World (the American continent) and vice versa at the end of the 15th century and in the following centuries. This process is named after the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus and is related to the European colonization and world trade that followed his 1492 voyage.Some of the exchanges were intentional; others, accidental. Contagious diseases of Old World origin caused an 80 to 95 percent reduction in the number of indigenous peoples in the Americas beginning in the 15th century, with the Caribbean being the most affected area. The cultures of both hemispheres were greatly affected by the migration of people (both free and enslaved) from the Old World to the New. African slaves and European settlers replaced indigenous populations throughout the Americas. The number of African slaves who arrived in the New World was much greater than the number of Europeans who arrived in the New World in the first three centuries after Columbus.

Economy

The Spanish colonization of America and the regular contact between the markets of Europe, Asia and America, through the Fleets of the Indies and the Manila Galleon, meant the globalization of the world economy, which laid the foundations for the capitalism, as Marx would point out in "Capital": "The modern biography of capital begins in the sixteenth century, with world trade and the world market" (Beginning of Chapter IV of Section Two, Book One). The exchange of agricultural products revolutionized crops on all continents, increased the productivity of the land and enriched the diet of large sectors of the population. All this entailed transcendental alterations in the human geography of all the continents.

The effects produced in the European and Asian economies by the putting into circulation, by the Spaniards, of the gold and silver that they extracted from America in the 16th century, are still being studied today, without there being an agreement among historians. Economics: While John Lynch or David Christian support the validity of E. Hamilton's studies, others, such as Jordi Nadal or Michel Morineau, criticize his analyses.