Nueva Galicia or El Nuevo Reino de Galicia (The New Kingdom of Galicia)

Guzman had been removed from the Governorship of Pánuco in 1533 and in 1534 of that of Nueva Galicia.

The Spanish crown awards the followers of Hernán Cortés “encomiendas,” grants of native villages from which they can collect tribute.

These grants give the colonists control over native labor and produce.

Many of the clergy object to the “encomiendas.”

Bartolomé de Las Casas, former encomendero turned missionary, argues vociferously for their suppression.

Bishop Zumárraga, after another year in Spain working for favorable concessions for the Indians, had returned to Mexico in October 1534, accompanied by a number of mechanics and six female teachers for the native girls.

Although finally consecrated, he no longer holds the title of Protector of the Indians, as it is thought that the new auditors will refrain from the abuses of prior regimes.

Pope Adrian VI had on May 9, 1522, issued the bull Exponi nobis fecisti to Charles V, in which he had transferred his own Apostolic authority in all matters to the Franciscans and other mendicant orders when they judged it necessary for the conversion of the natives, except for acts as requiring episcopal consecration.

This provision affected regions where there was no bishop, or where it required two or more days of travel to reach one.

Pope Paul III had confirmed the bull on January 15, 1535.

The bishops had found their authority much limited, and a series of assemblies followed in which Zumárraga with his customary prudence tried to arrive at an understanding with the regulars without openly clashing with them.

Various modifications had been adopted with the consent of the regulars on condition that these "should not impair the privileges of the regulars".

The question therefore remained open.

In 1535, Bishop Zumárraga receives the title and powers of Apostolic Inquisitor of the diocese of Mexico from the Inquisitor General, Álvaro Manrique, Archbishop of Seville, including that of delivering criminals to the secular courts.

He never avails himself of the title and does not establish the tribunal, although he does indict and deliver to the secular courts a lord of Texcoco, known as Don Carlos Ometochtzin Chichimecatecuhtli, accused of having "reverted to idolatry" and of offering human sacrifices.

He also encourages the destruction of native manuscripts and artifacts.

On November 14, 1535, with the arrival of the first viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza, the rule of the new auditors ends.

Mendoza wields authority over every corner of Spain’s American empire, which now includes five provinces: The Islands, New Spain (central Mexico), the just-conquered New Galicia, the partially conquered Guatemala, and the not-even-nominally-pacified Yucatan.

Mendoza forbids future expeditions by the still-ambitious Cortés.

The number of baptized Indians in Mexico in 1536 was five million according to Fray Toribio de Benavente Motolinia.

The multitude of Indians who have asked for baptism, said to have greatly increased after the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe in 1531, had forced the missionaries to adopt a special form for administering this sacrament.

The catechumens are arranged in order, with children in front.

Prayers are recited in common over all, salt, saliva, etc., applied to a few, and then water is poured on the head of each without using the customary holy oils or chrism.

The practice faced no opposition while the Franciscans were in charge of the missions, but as soon as members of other religious orders and some secular ecclesiastics arrived, doubt began to be cast upon the validity of these baptisms.

To put an end to the dispute Bishop Zumárraga has submitted the case to Rome, and on June 1, 1537, Pope Paul III issues the bull Altitudo divini consilii, which declares that the friars had not sinned in administering baptism in this form, but decrees that in the future it should not be thus administered except in cases of urgent need.

Another difficulty had arisen regarding marriage.

The pre-Columbian religions had permitted polygamy and the taking of concubines, and when Natives were converted the question arose as to which were legitimate wives and which were concubines, and whether any of the marriages had been valid at all.

The Franciscans know that certain rites are observed for certain unions, and that in some cases where separation or divorce is desired, it is necessary to obtain the consent of the authorities, while in other cases the consent of the interested parties suffices.

These customs, they argue, mean that there are valid marriages among the Indians.

Others deny that this was the case.

Bishop Zumárraga had taken part in all these discussions until the case was submitted to the Holy See.

Pope Paul III decrees in the Altitudo that the converted Indians should keep the first woman wed as their wife.

Francisco Vázquez de Coronado was born into a noble family in Salamanca, Spain, in 1510 as the second son of Juan Vázquez de Coronado y Sosa de Ulloa and Isabel de Luján.

His father had held various positions in the administration of the recently captured Emirate of Granada under Iñigo López de Mendoza, its first Spanish governor.

Coronado had gone to New Spain in 1535 at about age twenty-five, in the entourage of its first Viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza, the son of his father's patron and Coronado's personal friend.

In New Spain, he has married Beatriz de Estrada, called "the Saint" (la Santa), sister of Leonor de Estrada, ancestor of the de Alvarado family and daughter of Treasurer and Governor Alonso de Estrada y Hidalgo, Lord of Picón, and wife Marina Flores Gutiérrez de la Caballería, from a converso Jewish family.

Coronado has inherited a large portion of a Mexican estate from Beatriz and will have eight children by her.

Coronado is from 1538 the Governor of the Kingdom of Nueva Galicia (New Galicia), a province of New Spain located northwest of Mexico and comprising the contemporary Mexican states of Jalisco, Sinaloa and Nayarit.

In 1539, he dispatches Friar Marcos de Niza and Estevanico (more properly known as Estevan), a survivor of the Narváez expedition, on an expedition north from Compostela, in present-day Nayarit, toward present-day New Mexico.

It takes time for Europeans and North American natives to learn the customs of the other side.

Europeans will often be offered fur, food or other items as gifts when they first encounter a tribe.

The Europeans do not understand they are supposed to take on an alliance with the natives, including helping them against their enemies.

Native tribes regularly practice gift giving as part of their social relations.

Because the Europeans (or most of them) do not, they are considered to be rude and crude.

After observing that Europeans want to trade goods for the skins and other items, natives enter into that commercial relationship.

As a consequence, both sides become involved in the conflicts of the other.

The Europeans in New France, Carolina, Virginia, New England, and New Netherland become drawn into the endemic warfare of their trading partners.

The Columbian Exchange and the Rise of Plantation Labor in the New World

The Columbian Exchange, which began in the 1520s, transformed global agriculture, trade, and labor systems. While Hernán Cortés is credited with introducing vanilla and chocolate to Europe, many New World crops were better suited for large-scale export rather than European cultivation. This shift created a demand for vast amounts of labor, particularly for plantation agriculture in the Americas.

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Challenges of Growing New World Crops in Europe

• Many tropical crops (such as sugar, tobacco, cacao, and vanilla) could not be profitably grown in Europe due to:

  • Climate limitations (e.g., cacao and vanilla require tropical conditions).
  • High labor costs in Europe compared to the New World.
  • Greater profitability in exporting finished goods rather than raw materials.

• As a result, plantations became the economic backbone of European colonial economies, especially in the Caribbean, Brazil, and the American South.

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The Constant Demand for Plantation Labor

The main challenge of New World plantations was the perpetual shortage of labor due to:

1. Abundance of Cheap Land

   • Unlike in Europe, where land was scarce and expensive, the New World had vast tracts of land available.
   • This made land ownership easier for free European immigrants, who often left plantation work to acquire their own farms.
   • As a result, landowners struggled to retain workers, increasing the need for alternative labor sources.

2. High Labor Intensity of Plantation Crops

   • Crops like sugar, tobacco, and cacao required:
     • Constant attention throughout the growing season.
     • Intensive manual labor for harvesting and processing.
   • This workload exceeded the available free labor force, necessitating coerced labor systems.

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Labor Solutions: From Enslaved Indigenous People to African Slavery

• Indigenous Enslavement (1520s–1550s)

  • Initially, European colonists enslaved Indigenous peoples, forcing them to work on Spanish encomiendas and Portuguese sugar plantations.
  • However, Indigenous populations declined drastically due to disease, warfare, and brutal treatment, leading to a labor crisis.

• The Transatlantic Slave Trade (16th–19th centuries)

  • To address labor shortages, European powers turned to the African slave trade.
  • By the 17th century, enslaved Africans became the dominant labor force in:
    • Portuguese Brazil (sugar plantations).
    • Spanish Caribbean and Mexico (silver mines and cacao farms).
    • French and British Caribbean (sugar and tobacco plantations).
  • The reliance on African slavery fueled the expansion of European colonial economies, with millions of Africans forcibly transported to the Americas.

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Conclusion: The Columbian Exchange and the Evolution of Global Labor

The Columbian Exchange reshaped the global economy, creating a demand for plantation labor that European free settlers could not satisfy. This labor vacuum led to the expansion of slavery, which became a defining feature of European colonial rule in the Americas.

By the late 17th century, the plantation economy—driven by African enslavement—was the foundation of European imperial wealth, ensuring that New World crops like sugar, tobacco, and cacao became global commodities.

The globalization of slavery begins as the Spanish and Portuguese begin to purchase and transport captive Africans in great numbers to their new empires in the depopulated Americas, enslaving them and their posterity to the European-owned plantations of sugarcane and mines of gold and silver.

Sub-Saharan Africans have replaced native Americans, for a variety of reasons, as the main population of enslaved people in the Americas.

In some cases, as on some of the Caribbean Islands, warfare and Old World diseases such as smallpox have eliminated the natives completely.

European colonists had initially practiced systems of both bonded labor and "Indian" slavery, enslaving many of the natives of the New World until a large number died from overwork and diseases.

Alternative sources of labor, such as indentured servitude, have failed to provide a sufficient workforce.

Under the encomienda, a labor system employed mainly by the Spanish crown during the colonization of the Americas (and, later, the Philippines), the crown grants a person a specified number of natives for whom they are to take responsibility.

The receiver of the grant is to protect the natives from warring tribes and to instruct them in the Spanish language and in the Catholic faith.

In return, they can exact tribute from the natives in the form of labor, gold or other products, such as maize.

This policy now begins to be challenged by Mexico's Spanish clergy and, following a rebellion in Jalisco, by the crown itself, which makes illegal the abuses of native people.

The vast colony of New Spain has replaced the suzerainty of the Aztecs and the Mayas.

The settlement of the Yucatan and western Mexico, begun by the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, continues, often with fierce and determined resistance by the native populations, with the establishment of the cities of Campeche, Morelia, Merida, Guadalajara, Acapulco, and Zacatecas, together with the first university in North America.

Spain has divided Central America into the five provinces of the Viceroyalty of New Spain: The Islands, Guatemala, New Spain proper (southern Mexico) and New Galicia (northwestern Mexico), where, in the 1540s, the Spanish discover silver in quantity.

These deposits, combined with appropriated native gold and even richer silver deposits in the Viceroyalty of Peru, begin to enrich the Spanish nation under Charles V of Habsburg, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire from 1519 and, as Carlos I of Spain, of the Spanish Empire from 1516.