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00:00In the five long decades since Columbus's arrival, the Americas had been ravaged by
00:12the conquistadors, the crown seeking new treasures to build up and control its growing armies.
00:21Many had taken root, the conquistadors and their offspring building lives in the colonies,
00:28their cities sprouting from the ashes of Aztec and Inca settlements.
00:35Their leaders, Spaniards from modest backgrounds, striving to create a new American nobility,
00:43ruling as they saw fit.
00:46They were untouchable, or so they thought.
00:51Battles imbued with their brutality spread across Europe, souring popular perception
00:58of the empire's colonists, forcing King Philip of Spain to push new laws designed
01:04to control his itinerant soldiers.
01:09And yet, one glittering scientific discovery would transform the settlers' fortunes
01:15and alter the global economy forever.
01:20Spanish silver eventually crossing palms in all four corners of the globe.
01:26But not everyone was satisfied, some still venturing out on a desperate search for the
01:34mystical kingdom of El Dorado.
01:38History books may paint Spain's conquest of the remaining terrain as an agile land
01:43grab, but modern reassessment reveals the far more complex, messy reality of this period
01:52of change for the conquistadors, as they faced difficult terrain and staunch indigenous resistance.
02:08The reality of the conquest of the New World was far from the swift clinical operation
02:14boasted of in historic texts, written to promote the mission of the conquistadors.
02:20Whilst Cortes and Pizarro had conquered and destroyed the Aztec and Inca empires, large
02:26parts of the Americas remained free of Spanish dominion for many years to come.
02:34Flamboyant Spanish literature may have claimed that the mystical golden city of El Dorado
02:39still lay in wait, but in truth, the era of exploration was coming to an end.
02:48The textbook maps that we see from our school days showing the extent of the Spanish empire
02:55tend to suggest that these empires had vast continued swaths of space and peoples that
03:02they ruled, when in fact, there were vast stretches of North and South America that
03:08were only weakly, if at all, governed by the new empire.
03:15We think about conquistadors and we think about a complete victory over indigenous people,
03:21but the acts of conquistadors can be quite incomplete in many ways sometimes.
03:28In the southern half of Chile, the Mapuche successfully prevented the Inca from colonizing
03:35their territory.
03:37And then when the Spanish conquistadors arrived, were just as successful in keeping them out
03:41and remained in control of their lands for centuries, actually all the way until the
03:4619th century in the national period.
03:49The Mapuche became very skillful at fighting the Spaniards.
03:54Actually they adopted very quickly on the horse that ironically was brought to the new
03:59world by the Spaniards.
04:01The same thing will happen, for example, with the Apache and the Comanche in northern Mexico
04:06and south U.S.
04:09Other examples of regions that weren't effectively colonized or ruled are the Gran Chaco and
04:14Mucha Paraguay in the center of the South American continent.
04:18The Orinoco as well, this vast region of savannas and rainforest that's even now today, amazingly
04:24intact was not really ruled in an effective way at all.
04:31The Maya area, which is, if you look geographically, the Americas is right slap bang in the middle,
04:36you'd think that would have been completely absorbed into the Spanish empire.
04:40Not at all.
04:42Most of it remains unconquered and inhabited by free Maya peoples for most of the colonial
04:48period.
04:49So there are enormous swaths of land and places and indigenous communities who were never
04:54fully under control of the Spaniards.
04:56That should be mapped on these textbook maps, but it's just treated as if Spain rules these
05:02vast stretches.
05:04These geographical inaccuracies also serve to omit from the history books those conquests
05:10which ended in embarrassing failure or even death for the conquistadors.
05:16I would argue that we miss the absolute messiness of what was going on in the moment.
05:21There were challenges of communication.
05:23There were long distances that had to be traversed.
05:27We might see some kind of progress of conquest from one place to another.
05:32But I think that in the moment and in the making of it, it didn't feel that way at all.
05:36And it felt much more like a kind of fragmented chipping away of things piece by piece.
05:44These kinds of expeditions don't get a lot of attention.
05:47There's not much glory there.
05:48They're kind of a grim, sad manifestation of this phenomenon as it continues and continues.
05:58One such ill-fated and often overlooked expedition was joined by a battle-scarred veteran of
06:05the Italian Wars, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca.
06:11This story has come to play against the centuries-old narrative of the conquistadors and their
06:17New World heroics.
06:20Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca is perhaps less storied than some of the other conquistadors
06:27because his story is a failure rather than a supposed success story.
06:32Nevertheless, I think his story is one of the most fascinating that we have from this period.
06:37To my view, it's a much more typical story of so-called conquest.
06:43Cabeza de Vaca was one of many men on an expedition led by Panfilo de Narváez in 1527, attempting
06:52to kind of duplicate some of the fabulous successes that had occurred in Tenochtitlan.
06:57Panfilo de Narváez set sail from what is today Cuba and tried to reach the coast of
07:05Mexico.
07:06However, in another sort of stunning display of how little Spaniards knew about the geography,
07:12they did not understand the currents of the Gulf of Mexico, the wind currents, and ended
07:16up landing on the western coast of what is today Florida.
07:20They had no idea where they were and soon began to encounter one stunning setback after
07:27another.
07:28They engaged militarily with Amerindians from that region.
07:33They were trounced again and again.
07:37Cabeza de Vaca describes in his narrative the awe that he felt in watching an arrow
07:44go through a trunk of a tree that was as thick as a person's body.
07:49This was the strength with which these arrows were launched.
07:52And it really does become every man for himself.
07:56Out of this entire expedition, there are only four survivors in the end.
08:01Cabeza de Vaca is one of them.
08:07The Native Americans enslaved these four individuals and so they remained there for a period of
08:12six years until they figure out a way to extricate themselves from the circumstance by turning
08:19themselves into healers.
08:23Native Americans basically forced these four individuals to perform healings.
08:29At least from the accounts that we have from the surviving Europeans, it worked.
08:35They went from slaves to really prized possessions that were passed along from one group to another.
08:43Cabeza de Vaca starts to take on this role as a healer with more enthusiasm so that after
08:48several years he's kind of adopted this role as a shaman maybe or a healer who travels
08:56with this body of people who protect him to some degree but also use him for healing.
09:05In the company of hundreds and sometimes even thousands of natives, they were able to cross
09:11from the Atlantic Ocean, from the coast of Texas as I was saying, south into what is
09:16now northern Mexico and all the way to the Pacific coast through mountains and rivers,
09:20etc.
09:21And that's how we get the first true glimpse of the interior of North America through these
09:27accounts by these four remarkable survivors.
09:33So perhaps we can think of this as a story of assimilation but I think it's also a story
09:40of conquest in a different way.
09:42Who is really conquered in this story?
09:44Well you might say that he has conquered the people he travels with in the sense that he's
09:49won them over.
09:50They've become his great supporters and allies but he has also been conquered himself.
09:56He has been won over to their way of life.
10:00He's become a shaman.
10:04Most of North America remained outside of effective Spanish rule.
10:09One major exception to this was the Spanish-established forts, famously the Fort of St. Augustine
10:16on the coast of Florida.
10:18But also some forts up in the Carolinas, hoping to find mines of gold and silver.
10:33Fantasies of luxurious new lives built upon piles of gold were not the only reason expeditions
10:39ventured into uncharted territory.
10:42Other explorers had this vague sense that the Garden of Eden might still be present
10:48on the face of the earth.
10:50So one of the things that drove voyages of exploration and conquest down rivers from
10:55Ecuador or from northern Peru to Amazonia was this possibility that they might find
11:01paradise.
11:04The first ever European to explore this region and traverse the length of the mighty Amazon
11:10River on another calamitous Spanish mission was Francisco de Oriana.
11:18Oriana's journey would begin in Quito, Ecuador and take him deep into the forests below the
11:24Andes, where his supplies would run low, leaving him to traverse the river in desperate search
11:30of food.
11:33Eventually he and his men would emerge from its mouth torn and tattered into the Atlantic
11:39before sailing on to Spain, loaded with heavily embellished tales of hordes of gold, exotic
11:46spice and dangerous encounters with a tribe of enormous powerful women, their physical
11:53dominance reminding him of the Amazons spoken of in Greek mythology.
12:02Their control over the Americas may have been tenuous in places non-existent, but the Spanish
12:08were absorbing invaluable knowledge of the land, its wildlife and its people.
12:15They were also resigned to the disappointing reality that another great golden civilization
12:21akin to the Aztec or the Inca was little more than a myth.
12:27The phase of exploration had reached its natural end, the Spanish now intent on finding a way
12:33to govern the new world they had discovered.
12:37The thing they are most interested in is very large indigenous populations to serve
12:41as a workforce. They're also of course interested in precious metals, but they rapidly face
12:48a law of diminishing returns.
12:52There is no other great Native American empire like the Inca Empire, and so essentially they
12:59have discovered and conquered the parts of the Americas they are most interested in.
13:05It is one of those things that just dies away, because there are no longer any of these
13:12large state-sized organized native polities to confront.
13:21Over six decades of brutal conquests, having committed countless atrocities across the
13:27new world, Spain had absorbed the largest empires of the Americas, making it unmatched
13:34in its might.
13:37Considering that Spain is only just coming into existence around the time of Columbus
13:43and the early explorations in the Caribbean, its expansion and global rise as an imperial
13:51power is incredibly rapid in the early 16th century. So in the 1520s, 30s and 40s, the
13:57success of Spanish imperial expansion is really extraordinary. Spain is by far the most powerful
14:04empire. It's actually the first empire upon which the sun never sets, although the British
14:09claim that that was their idea.
14:18Europe was abuzz with resentment for the conquistadors. Conversations about ethics focused on the
14:24bleak methods used to secure their colonial power. Feeling the pressure to pull back control
14:31from those who had now been abusing their governmental roles for decades, the Spanish
14:37crown decided to pass a number of new laws, the first since the Laws of Burgos in 1512.
14:45They were designed to protect the rights of their indigenous subjects, whilst tightening
14:50the leash on the rampageous soldiers who had torn through the Americas on their king's
14:55behalf.
14:57The new laws of the Indies that were passed in 1542 are the most important example of
15:05an event in which the Spanish crown and administrators of the new empire from Spain decreed a new
15:11way of doing things in an attempt to limit the violence and the wrongs and the exploitation
15:17that were being done by the first generations of conquistadors and colonizers.
15:24These laws were much more expansive and much more designed to protect the native people
15:32from the abuses of exploitation and brutality. The crown saw their responsibility as being
15:41protectors, not only of their new holdings, but of the people who populated them. And
15:46one of the things that they wanted to make sure was that these people, these native people,
15:51were Christianized and educated as subjects of the crown.
15:58One thing that they did was actually attempt to end one of the most important institutions
16:03of the conquest, encomienda, the right to receive tribute, also labor service, from
16:09indigenous societies. This was a source of enormous abuse.
16:14And essentially what the new laws do is that they end the heritable nature of the encomendero
16:19system. So these huge landed estates that these kind of men had established for themselves
16:24in the Americas is no longer one which will be passed down from father to son, essentially
16:31creating a kind of noble dynasty.
16:35The conquistadors didn't like what this happened. And actually one of the most important stimulus
16:40for rebellion and for civil war in Peru in the 1540s was these new laws limiting the
16:47exploitation and also the ability to gain wealth and power that the first conquistadors,
16:53such as the Pizarro brothers, had acquired.
16:56The Spanish crown actually had to send high-ranking European officials in order to enforce the
17:05new laws. The individual who was sent to Peru was killed. He was decapitated and his head
17:12was paraded. But there was such a pushback. So what happened, for example, with the statute
17:19about the encomiendas is that they were kind of phased out. So the encomiendas would not
17:24be eliminated once and for all immediately, but they would be preserved for three lives.
17:30So in other words, during three generations. So basically, if you had an encomienda, you
17:34could pass it on to your children and your children could pass it on to their children
17:39and then the encomiendas would disappear.
17:43But many in the old country felt the new laws were too lenient. And as the 16th century
17:50reached its fifth decade, a series of heated public debates would take place. One familiar
17:57voice joined the melee. The outspoken Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas was back. Having
18:05prominently relinquished his encomienda years earlier, lobbying for the original laws of
18:11Burgos and in the meantime fighting the crown over their policy of enslaving and stealing
18:17from native people.
18:19He is involved in a famous disputation with Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda in Valladolid in
18:24which they argue whether the conquest of the Americas was licit or not. Juan Ginés de
18:32Sepúlveda outlines a series of arguments that the indigenous peoples were basically
18:36subhuman, that they did not possess the use of reason and therefore through this kind
18:42of idea from Aristotle of natural slavery that the inferior should yield to the superior.
18:48That becomes one of the great arguments and justifications for the Spanish presence in
18:52the Americas.
19:00Bartolomé de las Casas advocates for the rights of the Indians, the rights for them
19:04to be considered fully as Spanish subjects and therefore to enjoy all the privileges
19:09and freedoms of the law and he denounces the enslavement of indigenous people.
19:17I call the debates of 1550 perhaps a turning point or a key defining moment of early modern
19:25humanism because this is the very first moment that a committee of theologos and juristas
19:33of theologians and jurists are put together to reflect and to come up with the solution
19:41to all these claims about the injustice of the war. And this is why las Casas is such
19:46an incredible figure because he brings topics that have transcended through history, particularly
19:54today when we think about war and how people are still healing.
20:00The dispute is inconclusive but immediately Bartolomé de las Casas publishes this short
20:06history of the destruction of the Indies. It's a vast exaggeration of the kinds of
20:11excesses and outrages and cruelty that was committed in the New World but nevertheless
20:16it is founded on a kind of an element of truth that there were some really iniquitous and
20:21barbaric, savage behavior by the conquistadors in establishing themselves in the Americas.
20:29He goes island by island, region by region beginning in Hispaniola about the atrocities
20:36committed by the Spanish. That bestseller that was translated into Dutch, German, Italian,
20:43Latin, French, that was the text that really marks the fall of the conquistadores publicly.
20:58Times were changing and Europe was watching. As the conquistadors began to emulate the
21:05Castilian life they had left behind, those who once wielded swords and armor were transforming
21:12into businessmen and politicians, changing the face of the New World forever.
21:20Even though they still don't have a really precise comprehension of this vast expanse,
21:27they do have a sense of the opportunity that this space offers and they also critically
21:35I think have managed to create some administrative nodes.
21:42These institutions in the form of city councils, of judicial bodies, start to impose Spanish
21:51ideas about legal structures, about how processes work, about how communication is going to
21:58function into the operation of some of these American spaces.
22:05Those nodes can be really important in a landscape devastated by disease where not just the population
22:11but the indigenous structures supported by that population have crumbled. And having
22:18a kind of rigid Spanish structure, that ends up really starting to lead to different social
22:26structures, different landscapes as they change the landscape physically with Spanish farming,
22:34new institutions that start taking root. All of that stuff really I think begins to alter
22:39the way that the Americas look and how they operate from within.
22:46Colonists borrowed from the culture of their former home, implementing political hierarchies,
22:53restrictions, and robust legal structures built on a foundation of marginalization.
23:01This shift would provide the Crown with an opportunity, a way to finally take back control.
23:08The attempt by the Spaniards was always to replicate Spanish life in the New World, creating
23:12cities, creating churches, cathedrals, and an entire apparatus of civil and religious
23:20government. And at the same time, they tried to force all those people around them to assimilate,
23:30let's say, into the Spanish way of life. And that meant evangelization, that meant
23:35dress codes, to become like a close copy of the Spaniards without ever granting them equality.
23:43The Crown worked to establish a judicial system on the mainland known as the Audiencia, high
23:50courts which sought to administer justice and put an end to abuses of power, which also
23:55acted as an advisory board to the royal viceroys.
24:00The first generation of conquistadors, if you will, from Columbus himself through to
24:06Pizarro and the conquest of the Inca Empire, that time, that period where these men are
24:13acting with a great deal of autonomy and independence begins to come to an end with the establishments
24:19of these Audiencias, which allow both Spanish subjects living there but also indigenous
24:24people to appeal to law and to use the law to protect their own interests as against
24:30the kind of rapacity of certain unscrupulous individuals.
24:37With only a few exceptions, the decision of the Audiencia was final.
24:43By 1550, six had been established across the Americas, including in Mexico, Lima and Guatemala.
24:53In areas where there is no settled kind of state, there is no political structure for
24:58the Spanish to kind of insert themselves into, they essentially, in the end,
25:05they essentially have to build fortresses.
25:08They build fortresses in order to try to control the territory, these presidios.
25:12And basically they are military garrisons so that to keep lines of communication and
25:16trade open so that they can, you know, move goods through those areas.
25:21Areas where there are often hostile, you know, indigenous tribal groups who might attack
25:27or kill those people.
25:30As the cultural practices of continental Spain flooded the colonies,
25:35a vile racial hierarchy emerged.
25:39So it's really very much about transplanting, in a way, the class structure of Spain,
25:45the kind of grandees, the upper nobility into the context of the New World.
25:51The Spanish encouraged intermarriage between the people who were higher up in the military
25:57hierarchy and the daughters, particularly, of the local cateches,
26:02the indigenous chieftains and tribal leaders.
26:06By the middle of the 16th century, the Spanish colonial society had begun to develop
26:13its own complex social racial hierarchy.
26:17The important thing here to put you at the top of the social hierarchy was lineage.
26:25In other words, that you were Spanish or you have a big amount of Spanish blood.
26:32The most common categories of the system included Spaniards at the top, Espanoles.
26:37At the very bottom would be Africans.
26:40And then above them, Indios.
26:43But there are also included a number of categories to designate the individuals
26:48who are born of mixed ancestry between those founding populations of Europeans,
26:53Africans and Native Americans.
26:56The two most common ones were Mestizos, those born of Spanish and indigenous relationships,
27:02and Mulatos, which could be born of either relationships between Spaniards and Africans
27:08or between Africans and indigenous peoples.
27:12The legal system applied different privileges and obligations to each of the different racial groups
27:21in colonial society.
27:23Africans and indigenous peoples tended to have the most obligations or restrictions placed upon them
27:29by virtue of their racial category, whereas Spaniards and to a lesser extent Mestizos
27:34had fewer restrictions or obligations placed upon them
27:38and had more privileges that they could benefit from.
27:41I think that for us, in retrospect, the intolerance of Spaniards is very visible.
27:49I am not sure that it was always racial contempt in the way we understand it.
27:55I think it became racial contempt.
27:57I think a lot of the early contempt was really about religion.
28:02The contempt that Spaniards felt for people who practiced human sacrifice
28:08or who practiced idolatry in their views, that would go on to create really strong barriers,
28:16sort of interpersonal barriers, the sense of you are not like me, I think.
28:25The colonial industries had grown vital for Europe's continued prosperity.
28:31And those industries had come to rely almost entirely on one of humanity's bleakest creations, slavery.
28:41At least 200,000, maybe even half a million enslaved Nicaraguans
28:47ended up working in the gold fields or on plantations in the Antilles on the Caribbean islands.
28:53Even larger numbers sailed with conquistadors to the Isthmus of Panama
28:59where they were used as beasts of burden, so to speak,
29:02carrying things back and forth from the Caribbean to the Pacific coast.
29:06Peoples from what is now southern Chile are being shipped all the way to Peru, for example.
29:13Very early on, the greatest demand for African slavery was in Mexico and Peru, what are today Mexico and Peru.
29:23There are millions of people who are transported over time
29:27and we know that the loss of life is tremendous across these voyages.
29:33In many contexts, Africans and Native Americans worked side-by-side.
29:39They worked side-by-side in Spanish homes if they were living in the city.
29:43They worked side-by-side on rural estates, whether it's sugar plantation or livestock ranches or farms.
29:53As a result, Africans and Native Americans very frequently formed common cause
30:00and even formed multi-ethnic families.
30:04In fact, many descendants of enslaved Africans learn indigenous languages
30:10and form families with indigenous people in Spanish America.
30:23Popular literature has, for centuries, pushed a particular vision of the legend of the conquistadors.
30:31One of white European bravery and cunning in the face of a savage, undeveloped new world.
30:38But these embellished accounts often fail to mention the other characters who played a role in Spain's empire.
30:46Evidence of their involvement offering a fresh perspective on the conquest and colonization of the Americas.
30:54In terms of where conquistadors came from, in terms of their national identity, most obviously they were Spaniards.
31:01As Spain came into being and created an empire, conquistadors also could be Portuguese, they could be Italian.
31:08And once we get to the new world, conquistadors are also of African descent.
31:15They could be free, they could be African slaves that fight and then win their freedom as a result of fighting.
31:22Someone who defies our idea or expectation of what a conquistador looks like would be, for example, Juan Garrido.
31:31Juan Garrido was an African man born in the Kingdom of Congo.
31:35He was a free man and he arrived in Hispaniola around 1502 approximately.
31:41And he participated in expeditions in Puerto Rico and Cuba as a conquistador.
31:47He joined the forces of Cortes and participated in the conquest of Mexico in 1519.
31:54In the wake of the conquest, he acts like many other Spanish conquistadors.
31:59He's active in trying to secure special rights and privileges for having served in the conquest.
32:06Juan Garrido is far from the stereotypical conquistador that the average person actually has in mind,
32:11but it represents the diversity that we encounter sometimes in these expeditions, in these groups.
32:19We don't know how many conquistadors of African descent there were,
32:23because the Spaniards were generally reluctant to give credit to other people.
32:29I suspect that because we know why they weren't generally given as much credit as non-Africans were,
32:36and because we have examples of specific individuals and their names,
32:39I suspect that there were many more than we realized.
32:45Thinking about conquistadors that probably defy our expectations,
32:49I think possibly Catalina de Auzo is one of the most interesting characters in the entire colonial period.
32:56She doesn't fight as a woman.
32:59She dresses up as a man in Spain and takes passage to the Americas,
33:04and lives in the Americas for many years as a man.
33:08She adopts her brother's name.
33:10She became a soldier.
33:12She fought in the Chilean frontier.
33:14It came to a point in which she was discovered,
33:17even though she was dressed as a man and breaking the laws,
33:20thanks to the fact that she was still a virgin.
33:23Catholics put a lot of stock into this at the time.
33:26Therefore, she had preserved the most important aspect of her womanhood.
33:30So she was actually taken to Spain,
33:33where the king gave her permission to actually dress like a man for the rest of her life.
33:39It's a wonderful and complicated story, I think,
33:42because she's a conquistador that confounds all our expectations of what a conquistador should be,
33:47but at the same time helps us to see how there are certain kinds of roles.
33:51And this sort of stereotype of just who these Spanish men were
33:55and what they had achieved in the Americas.
34:04The conquistadors were about to unlock the full potential of the precious metal
34:09held in the depths of the Cerro Rico in PotosÃ, Bolivia.
34:15By 1554, an efficient method of extracting silver had been developed.
34:20Allowing production across Spanish mines to increase relentlessly year on year.
34:26And Cerro Rico held more silver than anywhere else across the New World.
34:32The irony is that in the end, finally the Spanish found the precious metal,
34:37but it wasn't gold.
34:39The real gold of the New World was silver.
34:43The Spaniards discovered this mountain in the middle of the Andes called PotosÃ.
34:48The city of Potosà became possibly one of the most important places in global history.
34:55And it's hard to overemphasize this point.
35:00Potosà became, during the late 16th century,
35:04possibly the main producer of silver in the world.
35:08Potosà was the main mine, but it was not the only one.
35:11There were many other mines in the Andes.
35:13And it was actually extracted through indigenous labor, forced indigenous labor.
35:19It's understood that perhaps some 8 million people died in the mining of silver.
35:23People were compelled to work in the mines for essentially forever.
35:30It was in large part this silver that was used to finance the slave trade.
35:34To me, it's devastating.
35:36It's devastating to think about.
35:38It was in large part this silver that was used to finance the slave trade.
35:42To me, it's devastating to think about the ways in which the exploitation of one group
35:46was used to finance the exploitation of another.
35:50And yet these two twin engines of silver and slavery
35:55were really what allowed the Spanish economy to boom in this time period.
36:01At its peak, the mining city established in PotosÃ
36:06was home to up to 160,000 people,
36:10a jumble of Spaniards, indigenous Americans, and African slaves.
36:16The city ran off their backs,
36:19workers each expected to shift ore
36:22through the dark, cramped mine shafts to the surface.
36:26Every back-breaking day, death hung over the miners,
36:30never waiting long to claim its next victim.
36:35The work never ceased.
36:38PotosÃ's 22 dams powered 140 mills,
36:43which ground down the extracted ore
36:46before it was chemically converted into the precious silver.
36:51The coins extracted in mines like PotosÃ
36:54and other mines both in Mexico and Peru,
36:58that silver and those silver pesos
37:01became the main currency in many places in the world,
37:05and even the English and the French used it because it was a trusted currency,
37:09and therefore it became a very important vehicle for global exchange.
37:14The priority of the Spanish economy was to protect the gold,
37:19The priority of the Spanish crown during this time
37:23was to organize the entire Spanish system
37:26around the protection of the silver fleets.
37:32In the 16th century you have a massive need for silver and gold,
37:37particularly in order to keep armies in the field.
37:40Soldiers are very problematic when they don't get paid,
37:43and when they don't eat,
37:45and the Spanish are a predominant military power in Western Europe.
37:50Spanish galleons were loaded with silver
37:53and other luxuries of the New World,
37:56invigorating the empire's economy
37:59and keeping Spanish soldiers marching forward.
38:03The Spanish articulated their transatlantic trade
38:07with their colonies in the form of a monopoly.
38:10The colonies were only authorized to trade with Spain
38:14Two fleets were sent annually to the Americas
38:18with manufactured goods,
38:21and those were to be exchanged by products in the Americas.
38:26This obviously did not satisfy colonists
38:30because the prices were extraordinarily inflated.
38:34The other kind of crucial thing is,
38:36in territories as vast as Latin America,
38:40it's almost impossible in the age of sale
38:43to impose any kind of effective control on trade.
38:46So increasingly, piracy, contraband, illegal trading
38:52are completely ubiquitous in this time.
38:55It poses a growing problem because it's only through official trade
38:59that the royal authorities get the royal fifth,
39:01and that's where a lot of the income and wealth
39:03that the crown derives from the New World comes from.
39:07Decades on from Queen Isabella's death,
39:10King Philip still wished to fulfill his great-grandmother's dream
39:14of finding a swift trade route to Asia.
39:19By order of the crown,
39:21five ships, captained by local magistrate
39:24Miguel López de Legazpi, set off from Mexico.
39:28Their task, locate and acquire
39:31a significant share of the lucrative eastern spice trade.
39:36The Spanish would establish a colony in Cebu,
39:40with Legazpi naming the islands
39:43in honor of his king, Philip II.
39:47It had taken them over 70 years,
39:50but the Philippines were now yet another arm of the empire
39:54and an important new capital.
39:57Manila, the city founded by the Spanish,
40:01which became the capital,
40:03emerged very rapidly as one of the most important ports of trade,
40:07linking not only Mexico and the Americas to Asia directly
40:12via galleons that would sail back and forth,
40:16but also became an important port of trade
40:19for overseas trade in Southeast Asia,
40:22in the South China Sea, in the Indian Ocean itself.
40:29This bullion also provided the opportunity
40:32to establish connections
40:34with the most lucrative trade in the world,
40:37that with China itself.
40:41China could not get enough silver.
40:44It became like a silver stock market.
40:48China could not get enough silver.
40:51It became like a silver sink,
40:53either directly across the Pacific,
40:55through these Manila galleons,
40:57or indirectly through Europe.
40:59China, with its silks,
41:01with its exotic woods,
41:03furniture, art pieces, clothing, etc.,
41:08which were extraordinarily lucrative
41:11when they were sold again in Europe,
41:14in parts of the Indian Ocean world,
41:16just as much in Acapulco
41:18and other cities of Mexico
41:21and the Spanish governed new world.
41:23In fact, most of the silver that was produced during this era
41:27actually ended up on not the European side of the world,
41:30but the Asian side of the world.
41:32And this is important to the development of China and India
41:37as societies, as economies, as polities,
41:41turning them into economic powerhouses
41:44or strengthening them beyond what they already were.
41:47One should think of these conquests
41:50as creating the world's first genuinely global economy
41:56and the world's first genuinely global economic superpowers,
42:02besides their political importance,
42:05their social importance and their cultural importance.
42:08The conquest and colonization proper
42:12for the archipelago of islands known today as the Philippines,
42:16in many ways, marks the ending of the period of conquest
42:20from the perspective of the Spanish Empire.
42:27Nearly a century had passed since Columbus claimed Hispaniola,
42:32the empire whose expansion he had mistakenly initiated,
42:37now reaching the peak of its power.
42:41But with success came criticism.
42:45Spain's enemies flooding Europe with hyperbolic nightmares,
42:50propaganda designed to foster fear,
42:53vilifying its people and its culture.
42:57Meanwhile, a rift was growing
43:00between the crown and its new world colonies,
43:04the conquistadors' descendants rising to power,
43:07ready and willing to fight for their autonomy,
43:10finally freeing themselves from the shackles of an archaic monarchy.
43:15The king didn't know it yet,
43:17but the fortunes of his mighty Spanish Empire
43:20were teetering in the balance.