New Spain Viceroyalty

We explain what the Viceroyalty of New Spain was, how it was founded and its viceroys. In addition, its general characteristics, economy and culture.

What was the Viceroyalty of New Spain?

New Spain’s viceroyalty was One of the four viceroyal divisions in which the American colonies of the Spanish Empire were organized, together with the Viceroyalty of Peru, the Viceroyalty of New Granada and the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata.

Was The first territorial entity of this type founded by the Spanish crown in Americaonce the Aztec empire is defeated. Its capital was established on the old Mexico-Tenochtitlán city, current Mexico City. It was governed by the figure of a viceroy (the first was Antonio de Mendoza and Pacheco), and its enormous territorial extension came to cover territories conquered by the Spaniards in North America, Central America and even portions of Asia and Oceania.

The viceroyalty It was founded in the 16th century and lasts until the nineteenth centurywhen the first and final social movements occurred that led to the war of independence that culminated in 1821. Then the first empire of Mexico was erected instead.

See also: History of Mexico

Territorial extension

The territory of the viceroyalty was immense. At its time of greatest extension, it encompassed the entire current territory of Mexico and the current lands of California, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Oregon, Washington, Florida, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana parts; In addition to the southwest region of British Columbia, in the current territory of Canada.

To this were added the territories of the current countries of Guatemala, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, which formed the general captaincy of Guatemala.

Besides, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago and Guadalupe The general captaincy of Cuba and the territories of the Philippines, Carolinas and Marianas in Asia and Oceania made up the general captaincy of the Philippines, which although in practice they enjoyed some autonomy, remained under the authority of the viceroyalty.

History of the Viceroyalty of New Spain

Background of the Viceroyalty of New Spain

The War of Conquest of Mexico ended in 1521 and the territory of the extinct Azteca Empire It became governed by the conqueror Hernán Cortés. It was he who proposed to Emperor Carlos V the name of “The New Spain of the Ocean Sea”, since the fertility and climate of those lands reminded him of the Iberian Peninsula.

Under Cortés’ command, the indigenous population submitted to initiate the agricultural, mining and coastal exploitation of the American lands, while initiating the evangelization campaigns led by Franciscan, Dominican and Augustinian missionaries. The war against resistant tribes lasted until the beginning of the 17th century, when they were almost exterminated.

In 1528 the Spanish crown installed a real audience in New Spain with the objective of establishing greater judicial and government control. After complaints of corruption and ill -treatment, a second real audience was installed by the jurist and ecclesiastical Sebastián Ramírez de Fuenlaal, who fulfilled functions of governor from 1530 to the Viceroyalty Foundation in 1535.

New Spain Viceroyalty Foundation

The Viceroyalty of New Spain It was founded in 1535 And his first viceroy was the Spanish politician Antonio de Mendoza and Pacheco, appointed by Emperor Carlos V in April of that year. Antonio de Mendoza landed in New Spain in November 1535 and served as Viceroy until 1550. Then the Viceroyalty of Peru, between 1551 and 1552.

During the Antonio de Mendoza period A currency house and a printing house were installed in Mexico, and public works were promoted. Exploration and conquest trips were also promoted, such as those starring Hernán Cortés in Baja California, and some administrative reforms were implemented to organize the viceroyalty government.

New Spain viceroyes

New Spain had 62 viceroyes, of which the following stand out:

• Antonio de Mendoza and Pacheco. He was the first viceroy, between 1535 and 1550. He implemented a series of administrative measures for the organization of the viceroyalty.
• Luis de Velasco. It was the successor of Mendoza and Pacheco, ruled between 1550 and 1564 and complied with the directives of the new crown laws that promoted the end of the parcel regime.
• Martín Enriquez de Almansa. He ruled between 1568 and 1580, and under his management the court of the Holy Office was installed in Mexico and the Jesuits entered in New Spain.
• Antonio María de Bucelli and Ursúa. He was Viceroy between 1771 and 1779, and actively participated in the promotion of public works.
• Bernardo de Gálvez. He held the position between 1785 and 1786, and implemented organizational and enlightened reforms.
• Juan Vicente de Güemes Pacheco. He was one of the few viceroys born in America, and ruled between 1789 and 1794.
• Francisco Javier Venegas. He was Viceroy between 1810 and 1813. He faced the insurrection of Miguel Hidalgo and the beginning of the War of Independence.
• Juan O’Donojú. Although sometimes the last viceroy of New Spain is considered, it actually did not exercise said position but that of the Superior Political Chief of New Spain, appointed and deposed in 1821.

War of independence and end of the viceroyalty

New Spain’s viceroyalty ceased to exist as a result of the war of independence that, as in other Spanish colonies in America, It exploded after the Napoleonic invasion of Spain in 1808 and the consequent prison of King Fernando VII.

The promoters of independence took advantage of this circumstance to free themselves from the economic and political restrictions imposed by colonial society and had to face militarists who defended the Spanish colonial order.

In 1810 the first independence proclamations were madeinitiated by the shout of Dolores headed by the priest Miguel Hidalgo, and in 1821 the independence that erected an autonomous government was achieved: the first empire of Mexico, governed by Agustín de Iturbide.

Viceregal regime

In political terms, The viceroyalty was made up of various kingdoms, general captains and manorshierarchically organized under the authority of the viceroy, who was the highest authority in the viceroyalty and obeyed the orders of the king dictated from the Iberian Peninsula. They also obeyed the viceroy’s authority the older mayors and corregidores.

Among the kingdoms that made up the Viceroyalty of New Spain were those of Mexico, Nueva Galicia, Nueva Vizcaya, Nueva Extremadura, among others. The general captains that were part of the viceroyalty – each with a governor and a captain general who could be the same person – were those of Yucatán, Santo Domingo, Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guatemala (which was also identified as the kingdom).

There were also two manors: The Marquesado del Valle de Oaxaca, awarded by Emperor Carlos V to Hernán Cortés and his descendants, and the Duchy of Atlixco, granted in the 18th century by King Felipe V to José Sarmiento de Valladares, who had previously been Viceroy.

While the viceroy was at the cusp of the political organization of the viceroyalty and his authority was particularly strong in the central area of ​​Mexico, The government of the furthest areas depended largely on the governors or audiences. The older mayors and corregidores who acted at the local scale used to be subordinated to the audiences. In turn, the Council of the Indies used to decide on legislative and judicial issues, and on matters involving indigenous populations throughout the territory administered by the Spanish crown in America.

From the Bourbon reforms of the late eighteenth century, The intendancies regime was established whereby the King of Spain directly appointed intendants in the twelve territorial entities that brought that name and that dealt with administrative and finance decisions under greater control of the crown.

The viceregal society

New Spain’s society during the colonial era was composed of social strata that used to be defined in racial terms. Thus, whites were distinguished (peninsular Spanish and Creoles born in the viceroyalty) of the indigenous people who had survived the conquest (who, together with their offspring, were subordinated to the Spaniards) and the slaves brought from Africa, which were called blacks, incorporated early in the realization of various tasks such as mining or agricultural work.

The natives were decimated not only by the violence of the conquest but also by the abuse and the diseases introduced by the Spaniards. On the other hand, over the centuries There was a phenomenon of miscegenation among populations of European, indigenous and African origin which was interpreted by Europeans as a kind of caste order, each of which had its own denomination:

• Mestizo. Descendant of Spanish and indigenous.
• Mulatto. Descendant of Spanish and black.
• Baboon. Descendant of indigenous and black.
• Castizo. Descendant of Spanish and mestizo.
• Moorish. Descendant of Spanish and mulatto.
• Albino. Descendant of Spanish and Moorish.

From these categories, others arose that were part of the way of understanding ethnic differences in the viceroyalty era.

Viceroyalty economy

The viceroyalty economy was mainly based on the extraction of natural resources (especially gold and silver mining) as well as agricultural production in haciendas (of native species, such as tobacco, corn and potatoes; or imported, such as sugar cane). To do this Forced indigenous labor and contingent slaves of African origin were used.

Commerce was controlled by the hiring housebased in Seville, and depended on the fleet and galleon system that helped protect the piracy ships. Much of what was extracted in the territories of New Spain was sent to the Peninsula.

The crown imposed on its colonies a model of commercial restrictions that guaranteed the control and the greatest benefit of all economic activity in its viceroyalty. Despite the commercial monopoly, smuggling and piracy extended greatly in territory and viceregal waters, especially promoted by the British crown, the main enemy of the Spanish empire at this time.

The role of the Church

After the conquest he continued an intense work of implantation of Spanish language, religion and culture. In this task the Catholic Church played a central role. The missionaries belonging to Mendicant Orders (Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustinians) initiated an evangelization campaign of indigenous populations that was later resumed mostly by the Jesuits until their expulsion from the New World in 1767.

The imposition of Catholic Morale Beliefs and Codes It was one of the lasting effects of the administration of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, which condemned practices such as polygamy, human sacrifice and polytheism. Images of gods that were considered idols contrary to Christian dogma were also destroyed.

Anyway, the import of the Catholic religion gave rise to the combination of indigenous and Christian symbols in what some anthropologists call syncretism. The Virgin of Guadalupe was particularly significant in the evangelization of Mexico, since it served as a hinge to integrate the indigenous people into the cult. Cases like this abounded in Latin America.

Viceroyalty culture

In the Viceroyalty of New Spain, various aspects of the different pre -Columbian and African cultures with Spanish culture were merged for three centuries.

This influenced that Mexico was one of the American cultural centers of the Spanish empirewhich covered personalities of importance for Hispanic literature such as Sr. Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648 or 1651-1695) and Juan Ruiz de Alarcón (1572 or 1581-1639), as well as other areas such as painting (for example, Miguel Cabrera) or chemistry (for example, Andrés Manuel del Río, discoverer of vanadium). The creation of the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico in 1551 was also important.

Continue with:

References

• “From the Catholic monarchy to the Creole Republic” Brading, DA (1991). Indian orb. Economic Culture Fund.
• “History of Mexico” Von Wobeser, G. (2010). Economic Culture Fund.
• “Viceroyalty of New Spain” Britannica, Encyclopaedia (2013) in British Encyclopedia.
• “Bicentennial of Ibero -American independence” in the Ministry of Culture and Sports, Government of Spain (SF).