South America (1684–1827 CE)

Imperial Reforms, Indigenous Resistance, and the Wars of Independence

Geographic Definition of South America
The region of South America encompasses all lands south of the Isthmus of Panama, including South America Major—stretching from Colombia and Venezuela through Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, northern Argentina, and northern Chile—and Peninsular South America, embracing southern Chile and Argentina, Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), and the Juan Fernández Islands.

Anchors include the Andes cordillera and Altiplano, the Amazon, Orinoco, and Magdalena river systems, the Venezuelan Llanos, Gran Chaco, Pampas, and Patagonian steppe, extending southward to the Strait of Magellan and the storm-lashed sub-Antarctic islands.
Bounded by Isthmian America to the north and Subcontinental South America beyond the Río Negro, this region entered the modern age as a vast, fragmented world of empires, Indigenous sovereignties, and the first stirrings of republican independence.

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Geography and Imperial Frontiers

Between 1684 and 1827, South America stood at the hinge of early modern empire and emerging nationhood. The Andes anchored Spanish dominion, while the Amazon, Guianas, and southern plains remained zones of relative autonomy.
Spain’s empire centered on Lima, Potosí, and Bogotá, but new routes and rival powers eroded its control. Portuguese settlers pushed westward beyond the Treaty of Tordesillas, carving the future Brazil from mining frontiers and sugar coasts. The Guianas hosted Dutch, French, and British enclaves; the Llanos, Chaco, and Patagonia remained largely Indigenous.
From the Bio-Bío frontier in Chile to the Missions of Paraguay and the Upper Amazon, Indigenous confederations, Jesuit enclaves, and frontier forts coexisted in uneasy equilibrium until the revolutions of the early nineteenth century broke the imperial map apart.

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Climate and Environmental Shifts

The late Little Ice Age lingered into the eighteenth century:

• Andean highlands: Frosts shortened growing seasons; glacial advance cut water supply to terraces.

• Amazon basin: Rainfall fluctuated with El Niño and La Niña, alternately flooding and parching river villages.

• Coastal Peru and Chile: El Niño upsets brought famine and fishery collapse.

• Southern pampas and Patagonia: Droughts and winds intensified; cold decades preserved glaciers in Tierra del Fuego.
  Despite these oscillations, Indigenous and colonial agrarian systems—terraces, irrigation, and mixed cropping—sustained resilience across climates.

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Subsistence and Settlement

Colonial economies deepened even as empires strained to contain their frontiers:

• Andean viceroyalties (Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador): Silver and mercury mining at Potosí, Oruro, and Huancavelica remained imperial lifelines; Indigenous mita labor persisted under new guises. Highland farmers supplied maize, potatoes, and quinoa to mining centers.

• Brazil: Gold and diamond booms in Minas Gerais and Goiás (1690s onward) drew settlers inland. Sugar, cattle, and later coffee expanded in Bahia, Pernambuco, and the Recôncavo.

• Paraguay and Uruguay: Yerba mate, hides, and cattle exports linked Jesuit missions and ranches to Atlantic trade.

• Venezuela and Colombia: The Llanos produced cattle and cocoa; Caracas, Cartagena, and Bogotá tied the interior to Europe via Caribbean ports.

• Chile and the Río de la Plata: Wheat and wine sustained the Pacific colonies; Buenos Aires rose as a smuggling and trade hub after its 1776 elevation to viceroyal capital.

• Southern frontiers: Beyond the Bio-Bío, the Mapuche retained independence; Tehuelche horsemen roamed Patagonia; Fuegian canoe peoples survived at the edge of the sub-Antarctic seas.

Urban centers—Lima, Quito, La Paz, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Caracas, Bogotá, and Santiago—flourished as administrative, mercantile, and religious capitals binding the continent’s diverse ecologies into imperial networks.

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Technology and Material Culture

Colonial material life fused Indigenous skill and European design.
Roads and mule trails replaced Inca highways; stone and adobe churches rose over older shrines. Mining technologies—waterwheels, furnaces, mercury amalgamation—refined Andean ores. Jesuit reductions in Paraguay and Boliviaproduced Baroque churches, carved imagery, and polyphonic music blending European instruments with Guaraní voices.
In southern Chile and Patagonia, horse and iron tools transformed Indigenous mobility and warfare, while Spanish ports outfitted galleons and whalers bound for the Strait of Magellan.

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Movement and Interaction Corridors

The continent’s arteries of exchange intertwined:

• Silver highways: Carried bullion from Potosí to Lima and Buenos Aires, then to Seville.

• Amazonian rivers: Sustained mission networks and trade in cacao, dyes, and forest goods.

• Jesuit routes: Linked the Guaraní reductions to coastal Brazil and Peru until their 1767 suppression.

• Slave routes: Africans entered through Cartagena, Bahia, and Rio de Janeiro, infusing the Atlantic littoral with Afro-American cultures.

• Frontier circuits: Horses, cattle, and textiles moved between the Llanos, Chaco, Araucanía, and Pampas, blurring boundaries between empire and autonomy.

• Southern seas: The Falklands and Juan Fernández Islands became whaling and provisioning hubs; the Strait of Magellan gained strategic significance for global shipping.

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Cultural and Symbolic Expressions

Baroque Catholicism shaped public life—cathedrals, processions, and festivals dominated cities—yet beneath its veneer Indigenous and African traditions thrived.
In the Andes, saints merged with huacas and mountain spirits; in Brazil, candomblé and capoeira fused faith and resistance; in the missions, music and sculpture translated theology into local idioms.
Creole intellectuals absorbed Enlightenment ideas: scholars such as Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán, Francisco de Miranda, and Simón Rodríguez envisioned liberty and reform. Across the south, Mapuche ngillatun and Tehuelche rituals reaffirmed identity against colonial advance, while sailors and exiles endowed remote islands with myths of endurance—from the Jesuit martyrdoms of Chiloé to Selkirk’s solitude on Juan Fernández.

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Environmental Adaptation and Resilience

Agricultural and ecological ingenuity persisted:
terraced farming, irrigation canals, and crop diversity buffered Andean villages; shifting cultivation and forest gardens stabilized Amazonian societies.
Pastoralism spread—cattle on the Pampas, sheep on Patagonian plains—reshaping grasslands and displacing wildlife.
Indigenous nations south of the Andes adapted the horse, expanding mobility and defense. Coastal communities recovered from earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, rebuilding cities with brick, tile, and lime.

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Technology and Power Shifts (Conflict Dynamics)

By the eighteenth century, reform and resistance accelerated collapse of the old order:

• Bourbon Reforms (Spain) and Pombaline Reforms (Portugal) sought efficiency and revenue, tightening imperial control but provoking resentment.

• Jesuit Expulsion (1759–1767): Dismantled mission economies and destabilized Indigenous frontiers.

• Indigenous revolts: The Comunero uprisings (New Granada, 1781) and Túpac Amaru II’s Rebellion (Peru, 1780–81) fused anti-tax protest with ancestral revival.

• Slave and maroon resistance: Palmares in Brazil and quilombos across the Guianas and Venezuela embodied enduring defiance.

• Wars of Independence (1810–1824): From the Caracas junta to the crossing of the Andes, revolution swept the continent. Leaders—Simón Bolívar, José de San Martín, Bernardo O’Higgins, and José Artigas—toppled viceroyalties and declared new republics.

In the south, Chile’s patriots triumphed after Chacabuco (1817) and Maipú (1818); Argentina secured independence under the United Provinces; Brazil separated peacefully from Portugal in 1822 under Dom Pedro I. Yet Indigenous nations in Patagonia and Araucanía, though weakened, remained outside firm national control until late in the following century.

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Transition (to 1827 CE)

By 1827 CE, the map of South America was redrawn. The viceroyalties of Spain and the captaincy of Portugal had dissolved into a dozen republics and one empire.
Lima, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Caracas, and Rio de Janeiro emerged as capitals of sovereign states.
The Mapuche, Tehuelche, and Fuegians still held the far south; the Falklands and Juan Fernández Islands became contested imperial outposts.
Mining and plantation economies endured but shifted under new flags, while slavery, tribute, and caste hierarchies began to crumble.
The colonial age had ended: South America entered the modern era forged in rebellion, grounded in geography, and alive with the intertwined legacies of empire, Indigenous endurance, and creole revolution.

South America Major (1684–1827 CE)

Revolts, Reforms, and the Birth of Independence

Geographic Definition of South America Major
The subregion of South America Major encompasses all lands north of the Río Negro, extending across the full continental span of Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, northern Argentina and northern Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador(excluding the Cape lands at the Isthmian boundary), Colombia (excluding the Darién region, which belongs to Isthmian America), Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana.

Anchors include the Andes cordillera and Altiplano, the Amazon basin, the Orinoco and Magdalena river systems, the Venezuelan Llanos, the Gran Chaco, the Uruguayan Pampas, and the Guiana Shield.
Bounded by Isthmian America to the north and Subcontinental South America to the south, this subregion forms the continental heartland of South America—linking the Pacific and Atlantic worlds through its intertwined highlands, forests, plains, and river systems.

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Geography and Imperial Frontiers

Between 1684 and 1827, South America Major transformed from a colonial realm into a constellation of independent nations. The Andes still anchored Spanish power, while the Amazon basin, the Guiana forests, and the southern plains remained vast, contested frontiers. The Portuguese advanced deep into Brazil’s interior, expanding beyond the Tordesillas meridian through mining and ranching; Spain struggled to govern its mountainous viceroyalties from distant Lima and Bogotá. The region’s geography—its cordilleras, rivers, and forests—both connected and divided peoples, shaping the uneven course of empire and revolution.

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Climate and Environmental Shifts

The late Little Ice Age brought alternating droughts and floods, influencing agriculture and settlement.
In the Andes, glaciers advanced slightly, shortening growing seasons and threatening terraced crops.
Across Brazil’s cerrado and the Guiana forests, rainfall swings altered river regimes and harvests, while El Niño events disrupted Pacific fisheries and Peruvian coastal farming.
The Llanos and Pampas alternated between lush pastures and parched plains.
Environmental volatility spurred adaptation—new crops, irrigation, and migration—within both colonial estates and Indigenous territories.

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Subsistence and Settlement

By the 18th century, the subregion was a patchwork of imperial economies and Indigenous persistence:

• Andean highlands: Mining towns like Potosí, Oruro, and Huancavelica remained economic cores. Encomienda and mita labor systems evolved into wage and debt peonage, sustaining silver and mercury production. Highland farmers grew maize, potatoes, and quinoa; imported wheat spread in valleys.

• Coastal Peru and Ecuador: Plantation agriculture expanded around sugar, cotton, and vineyards; coastal ports like Lima, Guayaquil, and Callao handled global trade.

• Brazilian interior: Gold and diamond booms in Minas Gerais (1690s onward) transformed Brazil’s economy, drawing settlers inland. Cattle ranching and sugar plantations flourished in Bahia, Pernambuco, and the Recôncavo, while the Amazon sustained missions and extractive trade in cacao, dyes, and forest goods.

• Paraguay and Uruguay: Yerba mate, hides, and cattle became major exports; Jesuit reductions integrated Guaraní communities into mission economies until their expulsion in 1767.

• Venezuela and Colombia: The Llanos supported cattle ranching and cocoa cultivation; the Magdalena and Orinoco rivers formed transport arteries between highlands and coasts.

• Guianas: French, Dutch, and British outposts extracted sugar and timber, relying heavily on enslaved African labor.

Despite growing European control, Indigenous and Afro-descended communities remained central to labor, knowledge, and resistance across every ecological zone.

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Technology and Material Culture

Mining innovations—mercury amalgamation and mule-driven mills—deepened dependence on Indigenous and enslaved workers.
In Brazil, smelting, waterwheels, and canalized sluices spread through mining districts; in Andean Peru, silver-processing patios reshaped entire valleys.
Agricultural technologies mixed Iberian plows and presses with Indigenous irrigation and terracing.
Architecture fused baroque cathedrals and mission churches with local materials—adobe, stone, and timber.
Textiles, pottery, and metalwork blended European and Indigenous forms: the Cusco School of painting, Jesuit mission music, and Afro-Brazilian festivals reflected a growing creole aesthetic.

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Movement and Interaction Corridors

Continental networks intensified:

• Silver highways: From Potosí to Lima, mule trains and caravans linked mines, ports, and European markets.

• Brazilian gold routes: Trails from Minas Gerais and Goiás led to Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, shifting Brazil’s economic center southward.

• Amazon and Orinoco rivers: Served both Indigenous canoe trade and Portuguese mission expansion.

• Atlantic slave routes: Enslaved Africans arrived at Bahia, Cartagena, and the Guianas, embedding African culture into creole societies.

• Mission networks: Jesuit and Franciscan roads connected Paraguay’s reductions, Amazon missions, and Andean highlands.

• Trade corridors: Buenos Aires rose as a smuggling hub, connecting the Rio de la Plata with Potosí’s silver traffic, despite royal prohibitions.

By the 18th century, contraband trade and overland communication tied the continent together as never before.

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Cultural and Symbolic Expressions

Baroque Catholicism dominated urban and rural life. Churches, processions, and festivals blended European theology with Indigenous ritual and African devotion. Saints’ cults and pilgrimages mapped sacred geography across the Andes and coasts.
In the Amazon and Paraguay, missions combined Gregorian chant and local music.
Creole intellectuals and clergy began articulating local pride—Garcilaso de la Vega, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Jesuit scholars in Lima and Quito bridged colonial scholasticism and early Enlightenment.
Indigenous and Afro-descended populations kept older spiritual systems alive beneath Catholic veneers: Andean huaca worship, Guaraní dances, and Afro-Brazilian congado and candomblé merged cosmologies into living syncretism.

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Environmental Adaptation and Resilience

Agricultural and ecological ingenuity persisted across regions:

• Terracing and crop rotation sustained Andean villages under frost and drought.

• Irrigation canals and sugar mills stabilized coastal economies.

• Amazonian peoples used shifting cultivation and forest-garden mosaics to preserve fertility.

• Cattle and sheep grazing expanded across the Llanos, Chaco, and Pampas, reshaping ecosystems into ranching frontiers.

• Urban centers managed periodic famine with granaries, trade, and church relief.

Even under imperial extraction, local adaptation ensured survival and continuity.

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Technology and Power Shifts (Conflict Dynamics)

By the 18th century, reform and resistance redefined empire:

• Spanish Bourbon Reforms (from 1700): Centralized administration, curbed local autonomy, and taxed trade and mining; these policies fueled unrest among criollo elites.

• Brazil under Pombal (1750s–1770s): The Marquis of Pombal reorganized administration, expelled Jesuits (1759), and encouraged secular colonization in Amazon and frontier zones.

• Indigenous and popular uprisings: The Comunero Revolts in New Granada (1781) and Túpac Amaru II’s Rebellion in Peru (1780–81) blended anti-tax grievances with calls for justice and autonomy.

• Slave resistance: Palmares in Brazil’s northeast and smaller maroon communities across Suriname, the Guianas, and Venezuela embodied defiance and survival.

• Foreign wars: Spain’s and Portugal’s European conflicts—War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) and Napoleonic invasions (1807–1808)—weakened colonial control.

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Transition (to 1827 CE)

By 1827, South America Major was no longer colonial. Revolutions ignited by Simón Bolívar, José de San Martín, José Artigas, and others swept through Andes and plains.
From Caracas to Buenos Aires, new republics—Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Brazil’s empire—emerged from the ruins of Iberian dominion.
Mines and missions, ranches and plantations, cities and forests—each bore the marks of both conquest and continuity.
The subregion entered the modern age through conflict and transformation: Indigenous persistence, African cultural legacies, and creole aspirations forged a South America no longer imperial, but still profoundly shaped by its colonial past.

Enormous profits obtained from the triangular trade of African slaves for Venezuelan cocoa, which is then shipped across the Caribbean and sold in Veracruz for consumption in New Spain (Mexico), make the Venezuelan coast a regular port of call for Dutch and British merchants.

In an effort to eliminate this illegal intercolonial trade and capture these profits for itself, the Spanish crown in 1728 grants exclusive trading rights in Venezuela to a Basque corporation called the Real Compama Guipuzcoana de Caracas, or simply the Caracas Company.

The Caracas Company proves quite successful, initially at least, in achieving the crown's goal of ending the contraband trade.

Venezuela's cocoa growers, however, become increasingly dissatisfied.

The Basque monopoly not only pays them significantly lower prices but also receives favored treatment from the province's Basque governors.

This discontent is evidenced in the growing number of disputes between the company and the growers and other Venezuelans of more humble status.

In 1749 the discontent erupts into a first insurrectionary effort, a rebellion led by a poor immigrant cocoa grower from the Canary Islands named Juan Francisco de León.

The rebellion is openly joined by the Venezuelan lower classes and quietly encouraged by the elite in Caracas.

Troops from Santo Domingo and from Spain quickly crush the revolt, and its leadership is severely repressed by forces headed by Brigadier General Felipe Ricardos, who is named governor of Caracas in 1751.

The growth of the cocoa trade, the success of the Caracas Company, and the assertion of the royal will manifested by the suppression of the 1749 revolt all help to centralize the Venezuelan economy around the city of Caracas.

In recognition of this growth, Caracas is given political-military authority as the seat of the Captaincy General of Venezuela in 1777, marking the first instance of recognition of Venezuela as a political entity.

Nine years later, its designation is changed to the Audiencia de Venezuela, thus granting Venezuela judicial-administrative authority as well.

Barely three decades later, however, Venezuela will suddenly—after almost three centuries on the periphery of the Spanish American empire—find itself at the hub of the independence movement sweeping Latin America.

The highest officials in Spanish America are known as peninsulares because they mostly come from the Iberian Peninsula.

Spaniards also play a major role in commerce, especially at the wholesale level and in trade with Spain itself, whose government seeks to keep all overseas trade a Spanish monopoly, but after one or two generations of European settlement, the principal owners of the means of production—landed estates, or haciendas, and mining concessions—are mostly criollos (Creoles), that is, persons of Spanish descent born in the New World.

Even while recognizing the right of the natives to keep land of their own, the Spanish monarchy claims ultimate control over property in the conquered territory, and it rewards many of the original conquerors with lavish land grants, which eventually pass to their children.

In other cases, the early settlers and their descendants had been allowed to buy land on favorable terms or simply help themselves to what they had found, assuming that through payment of the necessary fees they could later regularize their title.

Land in itself is of little use without people to work it, but there are a number of ways to obtain the needed labor.

As in the other colonies, one device is the institution of the encomienda, whereby a specific group of natives is "entrusted" to a Spanish colonist to protect them and convert them to Christianity in return for payment of tribute.

This tribute often is paid in the form of labor, although that practice is generally against Spanish policy.

Even when the natives pay their tribute in money, the result is much the same, as they need to work for the newcomers to obtain it.

Although the encomienda never legally entails a grant of land, in practice the Spanish encomendero might well find a way to usurp the property of natives entrusted to him.

Spanish authorities gradually phase out the encomienda system, but natives now pay tribute directly to the state, and they still have to work to earn the money.

Other systems of quasi-voluntary labor develop, too, while in early years some natives had been subjected to outright enslavement.

Enslavement of natives is exceptional in New Granada and never takes root here, but enslaved Africans had soon been introduced, and, although never as important to the overall economy as in Brazil or the West Indies, they have become an appreciable part of the labor force in at least some parts of the colony.

New Granada's dominant criollos pride themselves on their Spanish descent, but bloodlines in practice are often less pure than they might appear.

In order to gain access to higher education, for example, it is technically necessary to prove one's limpieza de sangre, or "cleanness of blood," which means not just European pedigree but freedom from any trace of Jews, Muslims, or heretics in the family tree.

However, both formal marriage and informal unions with the native population produce an ever-larger mestizo, or mixed European and native, population; by the end of the colonial period, this is the largest single demographic group.

For most purposes, the population of mestizos is not clearly differentiated from that of criollos.

Nevertheless, for a mestizo to enter the higher social strata and possibly marry the descendant of some conquistador, it does help to have a light complexion and some respectable economic assets, because upward mobility in colonial society is not easy to achieve.

It is even harder for someone of African or part-African descent to rise in society.

The first enslaved Africans to reach New Granada had arrived with the conquistadors themselves because African slavery existed on a small scale in Spain.

Greater numbers had come later directly from Africa, to work in the placer gold deposits of the western Andes and Pacific slopes, landed estates of the Caribbean coastal plain, and assorted urban occupations.

Few are to be found in the Andean highlands, and roughly the same relative distribution of Afro-Colombian people as in the eighteenth century continues to this day.

Although at first all were slaves, the processes of voluntary manumission, self-purchase (with money slaves could earn by working on their own account), and successful escape into the backcountry has produced a growing population of free blacks.

Free and slave alike mix with other ethnic groups, and some of the free—mainly pardos ("browns") of part-European ancestry—become small landowners, independent artisans, or lower-ranking professionals, but unlike mestizos, anyone with a discernible trace of African ancestry faces not just social prejudice but also legal prohibitions very roughly comparable to the Jim Crow laws that mandate segregation in the United States between 1876 and 1965.

These laws are not always enforced, but they place a limit on the advancement even of free pardos.

A guiding motive and justification for Spain's conquests in America is cited at this time as the conversion of the indigenous population to Christianity; it is cited still today by traditionalists who reject the pervasive Black Legend of Spanish cruelty to the native inhabitants.

Proselytism in New Granads had at least superficially been a great success, with most of the native population quickly adopting the new religion.

As elsewhere in America, the native converts had not necessarily abandoned all previous beliefs or ascribe the same meaning to Roman Catholic rituals as did Hispanic Christians, but they had conformed outwardly to those rituals, helped build churches and chapels, and showed the Roman Catholic clergy due respect.

Spanish colonizers are sometimes annoyed when a priest or friar protests against mistreatment of the native population or of enslaved blacks, but they are eager to see the church established on a solid footing in the new lands and give generously of their often ill-gotten gains to that effect.

Likewise, the Spanish state, both from sincere conviction and from a realization of the church's value as an instrument of social control, helps endow the church with property, support its missionary activity, and, to the extent possible, suppress religious dissent.

Extirpation of heresy and heretics, by burning as a last resort, is the special responsibility of the Spanish Inquisition, which has one of its three American headquarters (the least active of the three) at Cartagena.

In the late colonial period, both state support and the missionary enthusiasm of the clergy tend to diminish, but by this time the Roman Catholic Church is firmly entrenched as an institution, with roughly one priest or friar per seven hundred and fifty inhabitants, extensive property holdings, and additional wealth from investments, fees, and the compulsory payment of tithes by the faithful.

This strong position will inevitably influence the course of Colombian history after independence.

Saints' portraits and other religious themes dominate colonial painting, including much popular art of the period, and religious festivals are regular occasions for public entertainment (commonly marked by drunkenness and rowdy behavior that the clergy disapproved).

Formal education is largely in the hands of the clergy, who control the only university-level institutions and are active at other levels too.

The great majority of the population remains illiterate.

For most of the colonial period, the literate are dependent on imported reading matter because the first press is set up in Santa Fe only in 1738, and the first real newspaper does not appear until 1791.

However, the latter development coincides with a wider intellectual awakening to new currents in science and philosophy emanating from the European Enlightenment.

A leader in this movement is José Celestino Mutis, a Spanish-born priest who settled in Santa Fe and won acclaim from European scientists for his work in studying botanical species of the viceroyalty.

Several criollo disciples of Mutis will be active participants in the early nineteenth-century movement for independence.

Natives account for less than a quarter of New Granada's total of roughly one million four hundred thousand inhabitants by the close of the colonial period,

This change naturally reflects both the expansion of other demographic groups and the drastic fall in native numbers as a result of European diseases, mistreatment, and the widespread disruption of traditional lifestyles.

In some peripheral areas, such as the Colombian portion of the Amazon basin, the Spanish have no incentive to establish effective control, and the ancestral modes of political and social organization remain in effect.

In the central highlands and other areas of permanent Spanish settlement, however, the situation of the indigenous peoples is different.

Imperial policy aims to group them into villages where they will have their own local magistrates and will continue to own lands in common (resguardos) just as before the conquest, although under ultimate control of the Spanish and owing tribute to the crown itself or, especially in the first century of colonial rule, to individual Spanish encomenderos.

In practice, the natives are often irregularly stripped of their lands and compelled to labor for the newcomers.

Willingly or not, they also adopt many aspects of European civilization, from chickens and iron tools to the Roman Catholic faith.

In the Muisca heartland, all have become monolingual Spanish speakers by the end of the colonial period (in return contributing place-names and other terms to the speech of their conquerors).

Agriculture remains the principal activity of indigenous villages, the small farms of many mestizos or poor whites, and the large estates of the socially prominent.

Products are the same as before the Europeans' arrival but with the addition of such novelties as wheat, which is consumed mainly by Spaniards and criollos.

The hacienda owners also take particular interest in raising livestock.

Whether cattle or crops, almost all of this production is for domestic consumption.

Gold is New Granada's only significant export; it alone can support the cost of transportation from the interior to the seacoast, given the primitive state of internal transport networks.

Theoretically, such tropical commodities as sugar can be grown for export along the coastal plain, but New Granadan producers cannot compete with the more developed plantation economies of Cuba or Venezuela.

Hence, gold pays the bill for virtually all New Granada's imports, which are mainly for the upper social strata: wine and oil from Spain, cloth and other manufactured goods either from Spain or from other European countries by way of Iberia (or as contraband bypassing Spanish ports entirely).

Coarser textiles and other handcraft items are made locally, however, and sometimes traded from one province to another.

One example is the cotton cloth produced in the northeastern province of Socorro (present-day Santander Department).

This industry features the putting-out system, whereby an entrepreneur farms out successive stages of the production process to local households.

This system is widespread at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Europe and gives full or part-time employment to a significant number of criollos and mestizos.

New Granada in the beginning had formed part of the Viceroyalty of Peru, which was formed in 1544 and comprised all of Spanish South America plus Panama.

However, subordination to the viceroy in Lima was mostly nominal, and in 1717-19 New Granada in its own right attains viceregal status, which it loses in 1723 but regains permanently in 1739.

In its final shape, the Viceroyalty of the New Kingdom of Granada includea Venezuela, Quito (now shorn of jurisdiction over Pasto and Popayan), and Panama.

Venezuela becomes a captaincy general and as such conducts most affairs without reference to the viceroy, exactly as New Granada had done when attached to Peru, whereas Quito is a presidency and not quite so independent of the viceregal capital.

Yet when even a fast courier will take weeks to travel from Santa Fe to Panama or Quito, officials in these outlying areas enjoy substantial autonomy in practice.

Exactly the same can be said of the viceregal administration at Santa Fe vis-á-vis the Council of the Indies and other officials in Spain who in principle exercise supreme executive, legislative, and judicial authority over all Spanish America.

It is understood that sometimes an order from the mother country may be inapplicable in a given colony, whose top administrator can then suspend it while appealing for reconsideration—with a final decision likely to be years in coming, if it comes at all.