New Spain

New Spain was a Spanish-controlled kingdom that included California, much of the American Southwest, Mexico, Central America, several Caribbean islands, parts of northern South America, and the Philippines. Officially named the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the territory came under Spanish control with the fall of the Aztec Empire in 1521. It remained a key part of the Spanish Empire until political instability in Europe weakened Spain’s control over its foreign territories in the early nineteenth century. The Viceroyalty of New Spain was dissolved in 1821 after the Mexican War of Independence. New Spain was one of four Spanish viceroyalties in the New World, the others being the Viceroyalty of Peru, the Viceroyalty of New Granada, and the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. The territory was administered from Mexico City by a viceroy, a leader who acted as a proxy ruler for the King of Spain.

Background

For hundreds of years, Western European kingdoms engaged in a lucrative system of trade with China and India via a network of routes known as the Silk Road. In 1453, the Ottoman Empire captured the city of Constantinople in modern-day Turkey. The city, which had been the capital of the Byzantine Empire, was a key port along the Silk Road and a vital hub for trade between the West and the Far East. The Ottomans immediately closed off the Silk Road and forbid European access to its lands.

European explorers scrambled to find new routes to the Far East that bypassed the Ottoman Empire. Portuguese explorers began sailing along the coast of Africa and eventually rounded the southern tip of the continent in 1488. A decade later, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama became the first European to reach India by sea.

Italian navigator Christopher Columbus believed that he could find a more-direct route to the Far East by sailing west across the Atlantic Ocean. At that time, explorers were unaware of the existence of North and South America. Columbus attempted to interest Portugal in bankrolling his expedition, but the Portuguese king declined. He eventually found funding from the king and queen of Spain and sailed west in 1492 under the Spanish flag.

In October 1942, Columbus landed on a Caribbean island in what is today the Bahamas. He also landed on the island of Hispaniola, which is home to modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Columbus believed that he had accomplished his goal and actually reached Asia. During the next decade, Columbus would make three more journeys west, exploring parts of Central America, northern South America, Cuba, and other Caribbean islands. At each landing, he claimed the lands he “discovered” for Spain.

With Portugal and Spain vying for control of new territories across the globe, the two sides hoped to avoid conflict by signing the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. The treaty basically divided the New World into two hemispheres, with Portugal given control over the eastern half and Spain the western half. Portugal’s half included most of modern-day Brazil and the islands off the coast of Africa. Spain was given the rights to colonize almost all of the New World apart from Brazil.

In the first decades of the sixteenth century, Spanish explorers set out to expand their colonies in the New World. Many were inspired by rumors of supposed great wealth and cities of gold hidden in the new lands. In 1509, Ponce de León established a settlement on Puerto Rico and later claimed Florida for Spain. In 1513, Vasco Núñez de Balboa marched across the narrow isthmus of Panama and became the first European to see the Pacific Ocean.

Overview

In 1519, Hernándo Cortés, a Spanish settler living in Cuba, set out on an expedition to explore the coast of Mexico. Cortés was emboldened to undertake the mission by the rumored wealth of the region. He landed in Mexico with a contingent of one hundred sailors and more than five hundred soldiers, or conquistadors. Cortés and his men eventually arrived at the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán where they were initially welcomed by King Moctezuma II. However, the Aztecs soon grew wary of the Spaniards, prompting Cortés to kidnap Moctezuma and hold him as hostage. In 1520, the Aztecs drove Cortés and his men from Tenochtitlán, but Moctezuma was killed in the skirmish. Some reports say he was killed by his own people, while others say he was killed by the Spanish.

In 1521, Cortés returned to Tenochtitlán and surrounded the city with an army bolstered by about 200,000 indigenous allies who were enemies of the Aztecs. With the Aztec forces weakened by an outbreak of smallpox—a disease unknowingly brought to the New World by the Spanish—Cortés besieged the city for three months before taking the capital on August 13, 1521. The Spanish forces destroyed Tenochtitlán, bringing an end of the Aztec Empire.

Cortés built a new capital—Mexico City—on the ruins of Tenochtitlán and established a Spanish kingdom called New Spain. Cortés was named governor of New Spain in 1523 and began an effort to subjugate the region under his control. However, the Spanish Crown began to fear that Cortés was becoming too powerful and ordered him to return to Spain in 1528. Two years later, Cortés returned to New Spain as a military leader but without the title of governor. He continued to explore and conquer new territory, adding to Spanish holdings in the New World. In 1535, he set out to find an island rumored to be rich in gold and pearls but instead landed on the coast of what is today Baja, California.

In 1535, Spanish King Charles I decreed that the Kingdom of New Spain would become a viceroyalty, a territory ruled by a viceroy who acts as the official representative of the king. The official flag of the Viceroyalty of New Spain was the same as that of the Spanish Empire—a barbed red cross set against a white field. The flag was known as the Flag of St. Andrew—the patron saint of the Spanish infantry—and the cross was known as the Burgundy Cross with its red “barbs” signifying pruned tree branches.

Expansion

The first viceroy of New Spain was Antonio de Mendoza who enthusiastically supported exploration to expand the territory. During his tenure, the Spanish discovered several productive silver mines in Mexico, leading to a silver boom that powered New Spain’s economy. In 1540, Mendoza supported an expedition led by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, who explored much of today’s American Southwest. Coronado was the first Spaniard to see the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River and claimed parts of the modern-day states of Arizona, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas for New Spain. Mendoza also supported a 1542 expedition by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo who sailed up the coast of modern-day California.

The Spanish continued to explore and conquer new regions throughout the Americas in the sixteenth century. At times, they encountered local resistance, such as an indigenous uprising in north-central Mexico that was suppressed by the Spanish in 1542. New Spain expanded southward into the modern Central American nations of Guatemala, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. The modern nations of Panama, Ecuador, Costa Rico, most of Colombia, and parts of Venezuela were also included in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, although this area was administered separately under the title of the New Kingdom of Granada. In the 1530s, Spanish forces began to subjugate the Incan Empire in Peru, achieving enough success by 1542 to establish the Viceroyalty of Peru. This region encompassed Peru and most of South America apart from the New Kingdom of Granada and Portuguese-held Brazil.

In 1519, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, sailing in the service of the King of Spain, began a journey to reach Asia by sailing west, around the tip of South America, and eventually completing a circumnavigation of the globe. In 1521, Magellan landed on the Philippine archipelago and claimed the islands for Spain. However, Magellan never left the Philippines as he was killed in battle with the island’s indigenous peoples. A year later, one of his ships returned to Spain, completing the journey around the world.

Several additional Spanish expeditions were sent to the Philippines, but it was not until 1565 that the islands were finally brought under the control of Spain. That year, explorer Miguel López de Legazpi established the first Spanish settlement in the Philippines and opened a valuable Pacific trading route with Mexico. At this point, the Philippines became part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. In 1571, Spain gained control of the city of Manilla and established it as the capital of Spanish-held territory in the Pacific. The trade route from Manilla to the Mexican port of Acapulco provided lucrative shipments of silk, spice, and precious metals from Asia to the Americas.

At its height, New Spain consisted of Mexico, California, much of the American Southwest, parts of the Midwest, Florida, Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerta Rico, Central America, parts of modern-day Colombia and Venezuela, and the Philippines. In 1717, the New Kingdom of Granada—Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela—was separated from New Spain and granted the status of Viceroyalty of New Granada. New Spain was further separated into provinces, with each province run by a governor.

In 1762, Spain acquired the Louisiana Territory from France as part of a deal to aid the French in the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). The region was returned to France in 1800 before being sold to the United States in 1803. The final Spanish viceroyalty in the New World—the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata—was split off from the Viceroyalty of Peru in 1776. It consisted of the modern-day nations of Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

Life in New Spain

The economy of New Spain was primarily built on farming, ranching, and the exportation of copper, gold, and silver to Spain. Silver deposits were especially abundant in New Spain and by the start of the seventeenth century, Mexico was producing a fifth of the world’s silver supply. The first mint in the Western Hemisphere was established in Mexico City in the mid-sixteenth century. Silver coins minted in Mexico were even used as currency in Europe and the Far East. The transportation of such great wealth back to Spain proved dangerous, as Spanish ships soon became the targets of Dutch, English, and French pirates who roamed the Caribbean.

While mining helped make New Spain the richest Spanish overseas territory, farming and ranching provided the backbone of the region’s economy. Livestock such as cattle and sheep were initially brought over to the New World from Spain. Local ranchers took advantage of the territory’s wide-open grazing ranges to establish large ranches in northern Mexico and the American Southwest. Farmers grew wheat, sugar cane, and citrus fruits for both local consumption and export overseas. Indigo dyes, vanilla, cotton, and tobacco were also among the more profitable exports from New Spain. During the sixteenth century, an Aztec drink known as xocoatl, or “chocolate,” was introduced to Europe and sparked an immediate craze among the continent’s elite. This created a high demand for cacao beans, which were exported from New Spain and used to make the delicacy.

The Spanish typically built new cities on or near sites of existing indigenous communities. To help rule the new lands, the Spanish appointed indigenous representatives to oversee local governments. While slavery was legal in New Spain, enslaved people could purchase their own freedom, leading to a large community of free Black individuals in the territory. However, the Spanish did impose a system of labor and tribute known as the encomienda, which was a holdover from the medieval feudal era. Under the system, settlers, priests, or colonial officials were granted large areas of land. Any indigenous inhabitant of that land was expected to give tribute in the form of crops, gold, silver, cattle, or other goods. The local people could also be forced to provide labor in the land’s fields or mines.

As the first wave of Spanish conquistadors arrived in the New World in the sixteenth century, they were accompanied by Catholic missionaries who immediately began converting the local populations. The Catholic Church became increasingly more powerful in New Spain throughout the following centuries. As new territory was added to New Spain, the Church established missions in those regions to convert new followers. The Church was also a prime beneficiary of the encomienda system, using it to acquire land and great wealth. By the end of the eighteenth century, more than half the land of New Spain was under Church control.

The End of New Spain

When Portugal and Spain signed the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, they were the only nations making a significant push to explore the New World. However, by the start of the seventeenth century, the British, French, and Dutch began arriving on American shores and claiming land for their respective monarchs. These nations were not part of the treaty and paid no attention to its provisions.

At the turn of the eighteenth century, Spain’s King Charles II died without an heir, sparking a thirteen-year war across Europe. As the war neared an end, Spain signed the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 in which it gave up its territories in Italy and the Netherlands to other European powers and part of Uruguay to the Portuguese.

While Spain’s American colonies continued to thrive, the empire began losing more and more power in Europe. Spain had faced several rebellions in its American viceroyalties but had always suppressed the uprisings. By the start of the nineteenth century, New Spain was a self-sufficient territory, and its people were inspired by the revolutionary ideas that had created new governments in the United States and France. Spain had also incurred heavy debts fighting in the Napoleonic Wars and tried to make up for the revenue shortfall by confiscating Church assets in Mexico.

In 1808, Napoleon invaded Spain and deposed King Ferdinand VII, replacing him with his brother, Joseph-Napoléon Bonaparte. The unrest at home threw Spain’s overseas territories into chaos. In 1810, a Catholic priest named Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla issued a call for war against the Spanish and touched off the Mexican War of Independence. The war continued for more than a decade until 1821 when Mexico’s revolutionary leaders agreed to a plan for independence. Chief among the treaty provisions was a promise that the Catholic Church would keep its privileged status and that Mexicans of Spanish descent would be entitled to the same rights as Spaniards. On August 24, 1821, the last viceroy of New Spain, Juan O’Donoju, agreed to the terms establishing Mexico as an independent constitutional monarchy.

Mexico’s independence officially marked the end of New Spain, although Spain maintained control over the territories of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines until 1898. These territories were lost to the United States after the Spanish-American War. Both Cuba and the Philippines would go on to become independent countries, while Puerto Rico became a US territory.

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