The rule of empires : those who built them, those who endured them, and why they always fall (25 page)

the Inkans as tyrants and all Andeans as intrinsically backward. They

invoked St. Augustine’s criticism of pagan cultures in arguing that

conquest and authoritarian rule were necessary to force Americans

to give up unnatural practices such as idolatry, human sacrifi ces, and

cannibalism (a charge that had no merit in the Andes). Depicting New

World peoples as Aristotelian “natural slaves” lacking the ability to

reason, they characterized Spanish labor demands as progressive and

civilizing. Clerical apologists ruled conclusively that the
encomien-

deros
had a right to expect reasonable service from their subjects in

return for teaching them discipline and saving their souls. They also

ensured that the critical and indigenously Andean histories produced

by Don Felipe and Garcialaso de la Vega did not see the full light of

day. Refl ecting the need to cover up the messy realities of empire,

Spanish courtiers and imperial offi cials kept the most critical sections

of their voluminous histories out of print.

Moral debates aside, the metropolitan authorities were reluctant

to listen to Las Casas or enact serious reforms because they needed

labor to develop the overseas empire.
Encomienderos
usually used

Indian tributaries as agricultural workers, but in Peru they also

adapted Inka tribute systems to turn Andeans into miners. Nevertheless, the
encomienda
system could not produce enough labor to

meet the empire’s needs, which meant that the Spaniards inevitably

defi ed the Crown’s ban on slave raiding in the Americas. Desperate

for labor, they sent hundreds of thousands of Central American slaves

to the Caribbean sugar islands and Mexican and Andean mines in

the fi rst half of the sixteenth century. When local resistance and the

general demographic collapse of American populations dried up these

reserves, Spanish entrepreneurs turned to the African slave trade to

meet their labor needs.

Las Casas and the reformers eventually forced the Council of the

Indies, which had ultimate authority over Spanish colonies in the

Americas, to do a better job of protecting New World peoples. Spanish offi cials had few concerns about the plight of African slaves, but

they made a show of benevolence in the Americas to maintain the

moral veneer of empire. The “New Laws” of 1542 therefore renewed

the prohibition on American slave raiding, decreed that tribute be

paid in money rather than labor, and banned the creation of new

encomiendas
. Subject Americans still had to toil for the Spanish, but

128 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

the reforms required employers to provide them with reasonable pay

and working conditions. On paper, the New Laws appeared to restore

morality to Spanish imperial rule. In actuality, they were unenforceable. Metropolitan authority in the overseas empire remained weak,

and the extractive imperial economy simply had to have huge inputs

of forced labor. In New Spain, local Spanish resistance to the New

Laws convinced the viceroy not to even try to apply them; in Peru

there were
encomiendero
revolts.

Spain’s embarrassing inability to exercise real authority in the

Americas stemmed from the administrative and communication

problems confronting all early modern empire builders. It was hard

for the Crown to hold its subordinates accountable when it took eight

months for a message from the imperial court to reach Peru. Charles

V and Philip II were two of the most powerful rulers in the sixteenth

century, but they had direct control only over the Kingdom of Castile

and ruled the rest of their European realms as separate kingdoms.

The Habsburg Spanish emperors theoretically had full control of

the Americas as an inheritance from Isabella and the Crown of Castile. Initially, the Castilian Casa de Contratación (house of trade) had

responsibility for both commerce and governance in the New World,

but in 1524 the Council of Indies took over its duties. Administratively, the council divided the Spanish Americas into the viceroyalties, which they subdivided into smaller administrative units based

on the jurisdiction of district courts of appeal (
audiencias
), regional

magistracies (
corregimientos
), and urban municipalities (
cabildos
).

At fi rst glance, this formal chain of authority appeared to be a departure from the systems of indirect rule practiced by the Romans and

Umayyads. Indeed, Spanish imperial law laid out a precise hierarchy

of direct and formal bureaucratic rule in the Americas.

Predictably, however, imperial authority in the Spanish Americas was as faint and circumscribed as it was in earlier empires and

caliphates. Viceroys ignored royal instructions and laws they deemed

unworkable or disruptive simply by declaring
obedezco pero no cum-

plo
, “I obey but do not carry out.” The emperors never tried to force

the issue. They knew their reach was limited and generally tolerated

disobedience if it was accompanied by regular tribute deliveries and

affi rmations of loyalty.

The Catholic Church was another power unto itself in the Americas.

Although a 1508 papal bull gave the Spanish Crown the authority to

Spanish

Peru 129

appoint clergy and create dioceses in the New World, distance allowed

both the regular Church and Catholic religious orders considerable

freedom of action. Some clerics, such as Las Casas, were passionate

defenders of Indian rights, but most churchmen collaborated actively

with local imperial interests.

The most infl uential force in Spanish America, however, was the

settlers who followed on the heels of the conquistadors. Over time,

these colonists eclipsed imperial administrators and churchmen as the

dominant power in the New World. Ancient and medieval empires

rewarded victorious soldiers with land grants in conquered territories,

but the Spanish Empire facilitated civilian colonization on a new and

unprecedented scale. Most colonists came from Spain, but the wealth

of the Americas also attracted migrants from almost every state in

western Europe and, via the Spanish Philippines, China and South

Asia. By the turn of the seventeenth century, locally born Spaniards

(creoles) outnumbered recent immigrants, and by 1650 there were

approximately half a million settlers in the Spanish colonies who

claimed European origins.

Spanish women made this self-sustaining European New World

population possible. Initially, the conquistadors had the implicit permission of the Crown to follow the Roman and Umayyad example of

treating subject American women as imperial plunder. As in earlier

times, the resulting relationships ranged from marriage to concubinage to outright rape. In some cases conquistador leaders used local

women as translators or took Aztec and Inkan wives to stake their

claims to noble status. The resulting hybrid generation of mestizos

complicated the imperial project by unacceptably bridging the line

between citizen and subject. Charles V addressed the problem by

requiring
encomienderos
to marry and encouraging Spanish women

to immigrate to the Americas, and many young women answered his

call in the hope of inheriting the fortunes of elderly
encomienderos
.

The Americas proved such a powerful magnet because European

origins brought privilege and autonomy in colonial societies stratifi ed

on the basis of “blood.” The Inkan chronicler Don Felipe noted bitterly that even the lowest Spanish “tramps” used their exalted status

to live off the Andean populace. “Their refrain is always ‘Give me a

servant’ or ‘Give me a present.’ . . . Every day of their lives they eat

about twelve pesos’ worth of food and ride off without paying, but

still give themselves the airs of gentlemen.”17 Not only could common

130 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

Iberian-born women marry far above their social station in the New

World, but their blood also gave them authority over Andean men as

breeding trumped gender as the key marker of imperial citizenship.

Yet it was diffi cult to establish a clear distinction between Spanish

citizen and Andean subject. The conquistadors married royal Inkan

women to buttress their claims to noble status, and Spanish men of

all stripes used their privileged status to exploit Andean women sexually. The mestizo children produced by these encounters confused

imperial social boundaries and made a mockery of Spanish attempts

to defi ne identity on the basis of inheritance and blood. The situation

grew even more complicated when the Spaniards introduced African

slaves into the Andes, who in turn produced children with Europeans,

Andeans, and mestizos. In the seventeenth century, the imperial state

tried to restore a measure of social order by codifying a confusing

hierarchy of racial categories, known as
castas
, based on the percentage of a person’s European, Andean, and African ancestry.

Imperial offi cials and creoles worried constantly about the contamination of Spanish blood, but the Crown’s foremost concern was

to keep the wealth of the Americas fl owing into Spain. In an era when

mercantile-minded rulers strove to build precious metal reserves, the

Spanish Americas accounted for 80 percent of the world’s silver and

70 percent of its gold. The sixteen million kilograms of silver that

streamed into Spain between 1503 and 1660 was a windfall three

times larger than the combined silver holdings of the rest of Europe.

This bonanza helped lay the groundwork for the development of a

global monetary system by allowing Europeans to purchase goods in

Asia. The Crown claimed 20 percent of the New World bullion, which

the Habsburgs used as collateral for the enormous loans that funded

their European wars.

Mercantilism also inspired Spanish attempts to maintain a strict

monopoly on commerce within the overseas empire. For most of the

sixteenth century, transatlantic shippers had to work through the

ports of Seville and Havana and sail in strictly organized biannual

fl eets. Trade with the Philippines, which was Spain’s primary entrepôt

for trade with China and Japan, was similarly restricted to one to

two galleons that made one round trip per year between Manila and

Mexico. Otherwise, Spanish authorities forbade the colonies to trade

with each other and tried to bar all foreign merchants from its overseas territories.

Spanish

Peru 131

Spain, however, lacked the military and economic means to

enforce this closed commercial system. Spanish empire builders

bit off more than they could chew in acquiring such vast overseas

holdings. Castilian pride and nascent Spanish nationalism led them

to try to keep the imperial spoils for themselves, but they needed

foreign manpower and investment to run and develop their colonies.

This meant that New World wealth eventually fl owed to bankers, soldiers for hire, and military suppliers throughout Habsburg Europe.

Similarly, the enormous importance of early modern Europe’s trade

with Asia meant that Chinese merchants ultimately acquired nearly

half of the American silver.18

More importantly, New World plunder actually contributed to

the bankruptcy of the Spanish Crown. The fl ood of wealth into the

Iberian Peninsula allowed Spaniards to purchase the best products

Europe had to offer, but it drove up prices and destroyed the once

vital Castilian textile industry. The emperors themselves were the

worst offenders. In 1574, the Castilian treasury took in the equivalent

of six million ducats per year, but the expense of the imperial court

and Spain’s European wars required eight million. Facing insolvency,

the Spanish emperors borrowed heavily from German and Italian

bankers at high rates of interest. Cash fl ow problems often forced

them to suspend debt payments and seize incoming private cargos

of American bullion. In return, the Crown compensated the unlucky

owners with low-paying government bonds known as
juros
. No one

was exempt from these royal confi scations, and even the Pizarro family had to buy more than forty-seven thousand gold pieces’ worth

of
juros
.19

These desperate economic measures were symptomatic of the larger

problems plaguing the Spanish Habsburgs. Although they dominated

Europe from the mid-sixteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries, they

could not translate the wealth of the Americas into sustainable power

in Europe. It may seem nonsensical that the enormous wealth of the

overseas empire would be of so little benefi t to Spain, but hindsight

clearly shows that plunder and extraction had toxic consequences in

the imperial metropole. Imperial treasure was a windfall for men such

as Cortés and Pizarro, but it weakened the Spanish Habsburg regime.

Emboldened by the wealth of the Americas, Charles and Philip did not

have to make constitutional concessions to their nobles to raise revenue. As a result, they became addicted to American precious metals

132 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

and had no domestic reserves to fall back on when imports declined.