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The Spanish Empire, [b] sometimes referred to as the Hispanic Monarchy [c] or the Catholic Monarchy, [d] [5] [6] [7] was a colonial empire that existed between 1492 and 1976.
- The Pyramid of Government
- Council of The Indies
- Viceroys
- Corregidores
- Audiencias
- Alcaldes Mayores & Town Councils
- Interrelations & Limitations
Spain colonised vast parts of the Americas starting from the landing by Christopher Columbus(1451-1506) in 1492. Working through the Caribbean islands and then moving on to the mainland in the first decades of the 16th century, by 1570, some 100,000 Europeans were governing over 10 million indigenous peoples who inhabited lands from what is today t...
The Council of the Indies (El Real y Supremo Consejo de las Indias) was based in Spain, and it was created by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (r. 1519-1556) in 1524 to oversee all colonial matters in the Americas and the Spanish East Indies. The name of this institution comes from the term then used to describe the Americas, the 'Spanish Indies'. The...
The viceroy directly represented the Spanish Crown in their particular colonial territory, a viceroyalty being the largest administrative area within the empire. There were eventually four viceroyalties: 1. The Viceroyalty of New Spain(today's Mexico, Central America, parts of the southern United States, the Caribbean Antilles, and the Philippines)...
The corregidor was a judicial and political officer who directly represented the Spanish Crown. He was, in effect, the governor of a specific area. The corregidor in New Spain served for five years if selected from Spain, but only three years if recruited locally. In Peru, he served for just one year. Thecorregidor appointed administrators (tenient...
All the major cities of the Spanish Empire had an audiencia, which was responsible for certain legal, political and commercial matters which concerned both European settlers and indigenous peoples. The audiencia had jurisdiction over a particular city and its surrounding area. It met in regular sessions (acuerdos) and passed legislation (autos acor...
Local town councils (cabildos) were led by a mayor (alcaldes mayores) who typically served for three years. Beneath the mayor were the councillors (regidores), between four and six in a small town and at least eight in larger towns. The councillors were initially appointed by the Crown but then elected by the local citizens (vecinos), that is prope...
All of the above institutions and individuals were so organised that they kept each other in check and resulted in no single person or body ever becoming so powerful that they might threaten the interests of the Spanish monarchy. Another specific policy to ensure this objective was to limit the terms of office of officials in any single location. T...
- Mark Cartwright
The Spanish Empire became the foremost global power, dominating the oceans as well as European battlefields. Spain enjoyed a cultural golden age in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when silver and gold from American mines increasingly financed a long series of European and North African wars.
The viceregal system dated from 1535, when Antonio de Mendoza was sent to govern New Spain, or Mexico, bypassing the still-vigorous Cortés. A second viceroy was named for Peru in 1542, and the viceroyalties of New Granada and Río de la Plata were formed in 1739 and 1776, respectively.
views 1,653,987 updated. SPANISH EMPIRE. When the United States entered the community of independent nations in 1783, its neighbors to both the south and west were territories of the Spanish Empire. Spain claimed sovereignty over the North American continent west of the Mississippi River and the Florida territory.
Although the institutional framework of the colonial legal system clearly originated in Iberia, the degree to which the formal and customary laws governing the colonies reflected Spanish political and legal hegemony is disputed by historians.
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Key terms. The Spanish colonial caste system. A diagram illustrating the Spanish caste system. Core historical themes. Motivations for colonization: Spain’s colonization goals were to extract gold and silver from the Americas, to stimulate the Spanish economy and make Spain a more powerful country.
