Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 by John H. Elliott Page B
Authors: John H. Elliott
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want to he virtuous, hard-working and well-respected', wrote a settler in Mexico in 1586 about the prospects that awaited a young man thinking of emigrating from Spain.54 But the presence in Spanish-occupied lands of precious metals and a docile labour force served to perpetuate in the Hispanic world conceptions of wealth in terms of booty and lordship that were instinctive to those nurtured in the traditions created by the prolonged medieval movement of the Reconquista against Islamic Spain.-51 For new arrivals in the Spanish Indies, the ever-present possibility of a sudden bonanza served as a continuing inducement to move on.
The corollary of this was that Spanish settlers, or at least first-generation Spanish settlers, would set much less value on land as a desirable commodity in itself than the settlers of seventeenth-century English America. It was vassals, rather than land, that they wanted, and it would have been neither desirable nor practicable to clear of their indigenous inhabitants such densely settled lands as those of central Mexico.56 Those Spaniards who commanded the services of tribute-paying Indians could look forward to enjoying a seigneurial income and life-style without the trouble of developing large estates, for which in any event there were few market outlets until the immigrant population became large enough to generate new wants. Consequently, the subjugation of those regions most densely settled by the indigenous population was the immediate priority for the conquistadores and first settlers from Spain, since these were the regions that offered the best hope of lordship over vassals, and hence the easy route to riches.
The Spanish settlement of America was therefore based on the domination of peoples, and this involved taking possession of vast areas of territory. In the nature of things, such areas could only be thinly settled by the colonists, and it was natural that, if only for purposes of self-protection, they should band together in towns. But the early predisposition of Spanish colonial society in the Indies to assume an urban form can also be traced back to established practice and collective attitudes. When Ferdinand and Isabella despatched Nicolas de Ovando to Hispaniola in 1501 to restore order to a colony that had descended into anarchy, they instructed him to establish cities at appropriate locations on the islands? This would help to provide rootless colonists with a fixed point and focus. A policy of urbanization in the Indies was consonant, too, with the practices developed during the Reconquista in medieval Spain, where the southward movement of the Castilians was based on cities and towns which were granted jurisdiction by the crown over large areas of hinterland.
Spaniards in any event shared the Mediterranean predisposition towards urban life, and it was not by accident that Cortes's compact for civil government when landing in Mexico, unlike the civil compact of the Mayflower Pilgrims, assumed from the outset an urban form. The ideal of the city as a perfect community was deeply rooted in the Hispanic tradition, and for human beings to live far away from society was regarded as contrary to nature. Following the Roman tradition, too, cities were seen as visible evidence of imperium, and memories of the Roman Empire were never far away from the minds of Spanish captains and bureaucrats.
In the Antilles, to their amazement, the Spaniards encountered for the first time peoples who did not live in cities," but as soon as they reached mainland America they found themselves on more familiar ground. Here once more was an urban world with some resemblances to their own. The great pre-Columbian cities - Tlaxcala, Tenochtitlan, Cuzco - reminded them initially of Spanish and European cities, like Venice or Granada, and provided further evidence that they were now in a world that boasted a higher level of civilization than that of the Antilles. Cortes wrote of Tenochtitlan: `The city is
The corollary of this was that Spanish settlers, or at least first-generation Spanish settlers, would set much less value on land as a desirable commodity in itself than the settlers of seventeenth-century English America. It was vassals, rather than land, that they wanted, and it would have been neither desirable nor practicable to clear of their indigenous inhabitants such densely settled lands as those of central Mexico.56 Those Spaniards who commanded the services of tribute-paying Indians could look forward to enjoying a seigneurial income and life-style without the trouble of developing large estates, for which in any event there were few market outlets until the immigrant population became large enough to generate new wants. Consequently, the subjugation of those regions most densely settled by the indigenous population was the immediate priority for the conquistadores and first settlers from Spain, since these were the regions that offered the best hope of lordship over vassals, and hence the easy route to riches.
The Spanish settlement of America was therefore based on the domination of peoples, and this involved taking possession of vast areas of territory. In the nature of things, such areas could only be thinly settled by the colonists, and it was natural that, if only for purposes of self-protection, they should band together in towns. But the early predisposition of Spanish colonial society in the Indies to assume an urban form can also be traced back to established practice and collective attitudes. When Ferdinand and Isabella despatched Nicolas de Ovando to Hispaniola in 1501 to restore order to a colony that had descended into anarchy, they instructed him to establish cities at appropriate locations on the islands? This would help to provide rootless colonists with a fixed point and focus. A policy of urbanization in the Indies was consonant, too, with the practices developed during the Reconquista in medieval Spain, where the southward movement of the Castilians was based on cities and towns which were granted jurisdiction by the crown over large areas of hinterland.
Spaniards in any event shared the Mediterranean predisposition towards urban life, and it was not by accident that Cortes's compact for civil government when landing in Mexico, unlike the civil compact of the Mayflower Pilgrims, assumed from the outset an urban form. The ideal of the city as a perfect community was deeply rooted in the Hispanic tradition, and for human beings to live far away from society was regarded as contrary to nature. Following the Roman tradition, too, cities were seen as visible evidence of imperium, and memories of the Roman Empire were never far away from the minds of Spanish captains and bureaucrats.
In the Antilles, to their amazement, the Spaniards encountered for the first time peoples who did not live in cities," but as soon as they reached mainland America they found themselves on more familiar ground. Here once more was an urban world with some resemblances to their own. The great pre-Columbian cities - Tlaxcala, Tenochtitlan, Cuzco - reminded them initially of Spanish and European cities, like Venice or Granada, and provided further evidence that they were now in a world that boasted a higher level of civilization than that of the Antilles. Cortes wrote of Tenochtitlan: `The city is
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