History Discussion

Lecture 6

Hello everyone. Welcome back to LH 4430, history of Mexico. This week we'll be moving into the late colonial era. Will be talking a little bit in this lecture about slavery and Mexico that for descendants. And we'll also be talking a little bit about some of the broader political context for what's going on in the late colonial, colonial era. We've been talking about the colonial era as though it were by we, I mean me, as though it was kind of a single thing, but sort of following some of the trends I've talked about in the takeaways for the previous modules.It's important to remember that the colonial era did last 300 years. Things, things did not stay the same. And New Spain over the course of those 300 years, right?The New Spain came about in 1530. And the first generations after the invasion was very different from the society that would eventually declare independence towards 1810. And so in this lecture we'll get into a little bit of change over time. And we're going to start with the question of slavery. Now, I'm not sure what ideas you have about slavery, but I would imagine they're conditioned by what you've learned about slavery here in the United States. This would be an interesting place to, to, to chime in and the discussion for this lecture. For instance, whether you've had the opportunity to learn about slavery or enslavement and Latin America elsewhere, Brazil, the Caribbean, et cetera. But I would, I would imagine that at least here in the American context when we think about slavery in the labor of enslaved Africans, above all else, often we think of life in the rural south. We think of specific crops, we think about plantations and elite planter class. I want you to think about those things because those are not true of all times and all places, right? So we'll be talking about slavery and Mexico, which had certain commonalities with slavery that existed elsewhere. Because of course, slavery Involves unfree labor, right? So that's one thing that all systems of slavery are gonna have in common.But in Mexico, we won't generally be talking too much about rural life. We won't be talking too much about plantations because there were not that many of them.And they did, and they did not result in the formation of a, of a big planter class, for instance, like existed in the American South or in sand among part of the Haitian Revolution. So it's useful to sort of think about trying to unpack some of our assumptions about slavery. Because as we'll see with a motor, with a book or reading from Ben Vinson this week. And slave labor and then later,free block or free effort to send that labor. Looks a little bit different in the colonial Mexican context. But first, what does that context? So first off, I think there's a pretty useful reminder here. It actually comes to us from, from tray proctor that slavery in New Spain puts it followed a fairly novel historical trajectory. When compared with much of the Atlantic world. Demand for enslaved labor spike between 15801640 around due to-the expansion of the mining and sugar industries. As a result, New Spain was by the end of the regular slave trade in 1640, home to the second largest population of enslaved people in the new world, surpassed only by Brazil. I've substituted some of the terminology he uses here. So first off, the population of enslaved Africans inNew Spain was significant, right? They are. Increasingly scholars have talked about these, these populations though the labor of enslaved Africans and in New Spain.But perhaps not as much as indigenous people, Spaniards or others. But it's important to remember that during this period, 15901640, enslaved Africans did account for about 2% of the population of the Vice royalty of New Spain. Between twenty thousand and forty five thousand, depending on when you're measuring it. And that is substantial in relative terms.Eventually this would decrease, right? So if we compare it with the Vice royalty of Peru, for instance, in South America, there, the population was between 1015, between 10, 15% of the population was enslaved Africans during the same period. So in absolute terms, yes, there will be a lot of enslaved Africans, but relative terms, maybe not quite so much as other places.However, one way, one place that New Spain, those sort of distinguishes itself is the prevalence and the importance of free black labor or the labor free Afro descendants, descendants of those slaves, enslaved Africans. So if we skip ahead to 1800, on the eve of Independence, we get a, we still get people enslaved, about 6 thousand of them. But we have 110 times as many. Free effortless and that people living in the Vice royalty, right? About 10% of the population is as afro descendent and nominally free. And this, this is actually pretty consistent across New Spain, scholars have done sort of specific regional studies to what you get on to look at North America is to look at Mexico City will be reading about this one, this one this week. And that number is, is pretty consistently true, if not higher, as was Herman Bennett, another scholar who has studied enslaved African labor in New Spain tells us, quote, free black labor surely surpassed slave, enslaved people and possibly indigenous labor in terms of importance in the urban and certain regional economies, right? You remember what I just said about the questions of slavery in the United States? Here, in Mexico, now orNew Spain, were not talking. We're talking about urban areas and certain, in certain regional economies, right?So if you're, if you're imagining plantations and the like,hopefully this week we will try and shift your perspective a little bit, at least for slavery in New Spain.Slave voyages.org is a really useful Memorial and database for some of the, the trade in enslaved people.And this gives us, this map gives us a sense of how this looks in regional terms. So certainly the bulk of it, it's like paper were kidnapped, forcibly transported to, to Brazil, to certain parts of the Caribbean. And in relative terms, not quite as many to Mexico. That is of course notto say that they were not important over the course of the colonial period. This is just to sort of put things in perspective now into what kind of environment that these, did this population of, of Afro descendants develop over the course of the colonial period? As you'll remember from our last Canvas discussion, I asked you all to talk about some of the anxieties that resulted inthe creation and the diffusion of the cost of paintings were like that. B's. And indeed the sort of the, the marriages across different casts. The demographic growth of New Spain where some of the things that influenced this, this, this anxiety about who should, who should be doing what, broadly speaking, in New Spain.And we will read from for Martinez again, sort of more specifically about the sources of this, of this anxiety.However, one of the factors that have Martinez will will talk about briefly, but she doesn't go into too much detail, probably because she assumes that the reader already knows what they are, is about something calledthe Bourbon reforms and this being history Mexico. I don't assume you know what these are. So you'll see references to this, but basically for a little bit of background. So when Spain first colonized what became New Spain, the ruling dynasty back in Spain, where the Habsburg Charles the fifth, if I remember correctly, it's King at the time. And over the course of the next 200 years was the house of Habsburg that would rule Spain,and by extension, New Spain. Now if you've heard of the Hapsburgs, if they ring any bells? Probably not good ones. The Hapsburgs were, were known, especially towards the, towards the 17 hundreds. For the kind of perspective that we get in the medium presented here, right? There were certain stereotypes associated with Royal in breeding and all sorts of propaganda. Perhaps it's the best way to put it about what generations of supposed inbreeding had done to the Hapsburgs. Now, was this actually literally the case? There's some there'ssome good reasons to doubt that. But what is true isthat the last Hapsburg to rule Spain, Charles the second was, was not a great king, had some problems. And especially bug without an EHR. And that's the key thing for the bourbon. For the bourbon and forums here,Charles dies without an EHR. That causes a problem. So if there's no air, then who is going to be king of Spain?We've been, we've been reading a lot about blood descendants, et cetera, here. And in New Spain and early modern Spain during this period was also concerned with these questions of succession. And in fact, after the death of Charles the second, without an error, we get the war of Spanish succession. What's basically different European countries and dynasties are going to war with one another to figure out who was going to rule Spain. Suffice it to say that the result of this war was the ascendance of the house of bourbon, who were, who had been known as the, the dynasty that was ruling France. Philip the fifth is the first of the Bourbon kings or Spain. Or it's someone who's coming from a different dynasty, from a different national and cultural context and will come with a lot of different ideas about how Spain and by extension, it's Empire should be run.So Philip the fifth will be the first. And the, so for the rest of the century, it will be folks from the house ofBurbn that will rule Spain, an empire. And they will begin a series of reforms to Spain and to its empire.Over the course of the past 200 years. You know, like how we've been focusing on the, really the kind of the nuts and bolts of social structure and the colonies. But what's also true is during this time, the colonies had developed a kind of certain, not independence politically, certainly, but certain kinds of autonomy, right? So the Crown has, as we've talked about, actually couldn't effectively control some of the aspects of life in the colonies, even did one or two. So towards the 17 hundreds, certain kinds of informal commerce as we might call it, or contraband. As the Crown side, were very common in the colonies. Different kinds of what we would now call corruption also exist at, basically the colonies had gotten independent in ways that the Bourbon, especially whatnot like. Why? Because they were losing out on, on revenues but should rightly be theirs in their eyes. So they began a series of reforms over the course of the 17th century whose goals where as one review here puts it, attempted to curb contraband commerce. Regain control over Transatlantic Trade. Bureau pirates curtail the churches power. This will become important in a second and generally established, tighter political and administrative control, right? This is also, if you sort of remember broadly, what's going on in the 17 hundreds elsewhere in the world. We got other empires now, English, Dutch, French, and the Bourbon will very much be involved in that. So they will also be competing with other empires that are also expanding into the new world at this point as well. The Bourbon are going to be very concerned about things like British incursions in the, in the Caribbean, right? Piracy and the like. So what do they actually do? These were sort of a broad goals,but what do the burdens actually do to cause some of the effects that Martinez will be telling us about. A couple things. So first off, there are a series of economic reforms. So the Bourbon King, Charles the third, You don't have to remember the names of these kings, by the way, notice in this class, great. He, he, he put it this way his, his priority for the colony. The goal of there being a New Spain in the first place was to quote, bring my royal revenues to their proper level. But probably come backto this later in the semester. This is, this is not, you know, develop a colony that can run itself. This is, this is not improve the livelihoods of everyone living in the colonies, right? This is how do I most effectively extract wealth from this colony to enrich myself? That was sort of the logic of extraction going on here. So those are due, take some efforts towards free trade. Alright, so allowing limited kinds of trade with other ports.Previously the economic policies that restricted colonial trade to Spain. And so it's also third, will make efforts to, to free trade. Again with the idea of generating more revenue for, for Spain and especially the house of Burbank. By the same token, you want to implement a series of very controversial monopolies over production, right? So the crown will, will legally monopolize things like the cultivation of tobacco,alcohol, production of olive oil, salt. The effectively visit the crown saying that no one else can produce these things in the colonies, except unless we grant them like a royal license. There'll be very few of these, but what that meant was that sort of all the money from the licenses,all the money from the production of these, these goods went straight to the Crown, right, rather than staying in the colonies. Now, as you might imagine, this is, this is going to provoke some books write because remember over the past 200 years, certain kinds of trade to certain kinds of production and the colonies have gotten. I'm not quite independent, but a little bit more autonomous than this, right? And now suddenly you have these, you have these new king's coming in saying that you can't,you can't plant tobacco, you can't farm tobacco. You certainly can't sell tobacco. And if we do find it, will, will,will destroy the tobacco crops, will confiscate them, et cetera. So that we're going to be a lot of merchants, colonial merchants, for instance, who are going to lose out as a result of these economic reforms. The money that would have been going to them is now going to the crown. They're not going to be happy about that. By the same token, reformers, the Bourbon reformers will seek to improve production of certain goods in New Spain.We can see this pretty clearly in the case of silver, this is something that Martinez will lead to periodically. But silver production in the new world, especially in Mexico, is going to spike. And the 17 hundreds, right? We see the between 15-20, 11701. And we see a big spike here over the course of the 17 hundreds. Thanks often to the results of these bourbon reformers on there and there efforts to improve production through various kinds of new technical processes, right? This sort of at the, at the time the idea was that the burdens are so bringing in allow these new enlightenment ideals of reason and science to improve, to improve the colonies. Of course, in the service of their own prophet. And of course, as you might expect, if the goal is to get as much wealth out of the colonies as possible. But you're going to raise taxes and Suburbans do this. This is another cause for general discontent, especially as we get towards the wars for, for independence. So who's going to lose out on taxes, right? Those, those wealthy merchants and a lot of the,what would be the middle classes as well. At the same time, the bargains will undertake a series of administrative and military reforms to try and improve the defensibility of the colonies against British pirates and the like. So recall it. During this period, the Vice royalty of New Spain goes all the way up to what's now California, and includes Texas, right? Talking about a very large area. With so much area. The Hapsburgs had developed a series of administrative positions,processes to manage it. So there were different levels of governance equivalent today to perhaps our states,counties, townships, burrows, parishes, et cetera, as sort of second, third, fourth, wobble administrated with divisions. Although Bourbon are going to try and do away with all that and create a new series of reforms that are really designed to centralize authority. Don't think Martina's unit uses the term, but you may run across the tendency system to describe this. So if you actually look at this map, you'll see that it is broken. The Vice Royalty is now broken up into different tendencies or, or governments that we'll have. Attendance. This is modeled after the French system, appointed directly by the king. That was important to remember too. Because if you remember from our discussion of the caste system, the Sistema de costless last time. Who were the folks who were sort of considered most equipped to hold high administrative positions in the colonies. Well, first the Peninsula, right? Spaniards born in Spain. But second, the Creoles, right? People born in the new worlds Spanish parents, right? These were folks who, who often occupied sort of these mid-level administrative positions similar to like or mayors, county commissioners, town council's, that sort of thing. And the burdens are going to just do away with a lot of their positions, right? So suddenly they're seeing themselves squeezed out of the political positions that they had held just a generation or two ago. Apartments lists makes sense, right? They were trying to centralize authority. It makes a lot easier to collect taxes, for instance, if you appointing the guy in charge. But in the colonies, this different kinds of folks on the colonies,Creoles, Afro descendants, indigenous people too, as we'll talk about, are finding themselves with fewer opportunities perhaps than they had before. Of course that's not the case for everyone. So for instance, in the,one of the things that Americans would also do is form colonial militias try and create something like a standing army. Then the literature, I think, I think Vinson mentions it. And so in this clip I will get my product right.Vinson Will mentioned this. I think briefly, the formation of particle, one of those customer categories or afro descendent, malicious, sorry, typo on the slide. Um, so effectively, Afro descendants will be, will actually have access to a kind of social mobility thanks to the possibility of being members of these, of these militias that they perhaps would not otherwise have had. So the Bourbon reforms will sort of Hippo will hit different kinds of folks hard. But in so doing, it will also create different kinds of opportunities through the formation of institutions like these, like these parallel militias. And if you're interested in studying thus, for instance, for like a final paper, there's been some really good research done on the stokes recently. If I were already assigning you more than enough reading, I think for most folks taste every week, I assign some literature on this very interesting stuff. But about tangent there, but back tothe other effects of the burdens, Administrative Reforms. One of the things they will try to do is reform church and state relations. The sometimes go by the name of realism. Regionalism, in this case, regal referring to the crown. Realism effectively asserts the crowds ability to control the church. Alright, so, so the church should not be. It should not be above the ground,certainly not parallel with it, but under the Crown, right?So, so to this point, as perhaps a reminder of some of the themes that we've seen over the course of the past couple of modules. The church actually did things like administer marriages, right? Which Arts did things like Sponsor educational institutions, right? The, the Jesuits were known for their, Especially there was, there was a lot, what we would now call administrative or state functions that were actually in the hands of a church. In the hands of the church, including even things like a cemeteries were in the hands of the church. What the Bourbon would seek to do is sort of consistent with the brother. Centralizing policies would try and take some of that power away from the church and concentrate it-in the crowds hands. And will actually, will actually read a little bit about how this came down on marriage regulations, right? Something that had very about special domain of the Church before. The organs are going to have some very specific things to say about who should be able to marry who. During this period. We will also see sort of the famous episode during the spirit and the expulsion of the Jesuits, right? So throughout New Spain, the church will actually, or the crown, because the crown will actually kick out the Jesuit orders with the Catholic Church. And the folks who had been responsible for a much sort of founding educational institutions and doing a lot of what we would now call scholarly research in the colonies, right? Some of the earliest people to look at the pre-Hispanic past in Mexico, for instance, to try and hypothesize about the origins of the Michigan, for instance, were Jesuits. But they were getting maybe a little bit too powerful, a little bit too independent for the crimes control. And actually across the column is I hope they will just kick out the Jesuits. So the Bourbon took these, these legalist reforms here very seriously. So to summarize a couple of things that I think will be useful to think about as you do your reading this week. So generally speaking, I'm sort of, I'm trying to set up some of the key tensions, some of the key disputes that would eventually lead to the outbreaks of wars for independence. Now once we get to the wars for independence, we're going to be reading different books, right? But so it's helpful to have the stuff going on in the background. We will continue in this module to talk about how the System they cost us developed into really almost full-fledged system of discrimination based on what we would now call race.And we will talk about how that worked often to the disadvantage, especially of Afro descendants, right?Martinez will talk about how the how indigenous blood-was considered redeemable are sort of could reincorporated into the Spanish idea of limpieza de assign grey and in ways that the blood of enslaved Africans and-their descendants could not. So we're starting to see the emergence of life. Secondly, have a system of a race, a system more or less, that's what we would call it nowadays. Now of course, the skipping ahead. The wars for independence and forums that happened in the immediate aftermath of Mexico's independence, which seek to do away with this Sistema. They cost us, but I've spent more time than you all would like going through it.Because it's worth considering the extent to what some of these ideas may still influence. Contemporary Mexico misses something we'll come back to you, but it's important, as elsewhere to have sort of a baseline for what's going on in this period. All right, I'm about out of time for this lecture are slightly shorter day at least. But do let me know if you have any questions or concerns about this, this content. And I will look forward to reading your discussion posts here this week. So I started on and we could say, but my cat has got to say, hi, I syllabus. Can stop recording. Alright, have a good rest of your week and do let me know if you have any questions or concerns.