Lecture 2:The Fall of the Aztec Empire and the Rise of New

Spain

Outline The First Decades after Columbus:

Cortés and the Conquest of Mexico The Power of the Paper: Setting

up a Colonial Administration The Church in the New World Creating an Atlantic Economy Conclusions

The First Decades after

Columbus

Fledgling colonies in the early 16th century Caribbean Basin

The Cortés mission• Governor Diego Velázquez

and the probing of Mexico• Cortés’s victory over the

Tabascans and receipt of La Malinche

Cortés, Moctezuma, and the fall of Tenochtitlan• The alliance with the

Tlaxcalans• La Noche Triste and the final

siege, 1520-1521

The destruction of the Mayan and Incan civilizations

The climax of the conquistador era: quests for cities of gold, fountains of youth, and gardens of Eden

Moctezuma receives Cortés (accompanied by La Malinche)

Initiating the Conquest of Mexico

Cortés’s Progress from the Coast

Establishing Spanish Credibility: The Massacre at

Cholula

“Storming of the Teocalli by

Cortez and his troops,” Emanuel

Leutze, 1848.

The Spanish and

Tlaxcalans Fight

the Aztecs

Further Spanish Exploration of North America

The Birth of the “Black Legend”

The Power of the Paper: Colonial Administration

Conquistadors vs. bureaucrats• Establishment of

audiencias, 1511 and onwards

• The Council of the Indies, 1524

• The Viceroyalty of New Spain, 1535

Rationalizing resources and collecting the wealth• The

establishment of tax-collecting and the treasury

• Touchy relations b/t peninsulare officials and criollo elites

Antonio de Mendoza, Viceroy

of New Spain, 1535-1550

The Church in the New World

The mandate for converting indigenous Americans• The Spanish

monarchy and papal concessions for New World control

• Franciscans, Augustinians, Jesuits, and the millennial impulse

Tense and tender ties: ambivalent relations between priests and Indians• Cultural conduits

and preservers of native history

• Catalysts for native resistance and cultural destruction

Sahagún

De las Casas

Indian Resistance to Conversion: The Attack on the Dominican Chiribichi

Convent, 1521

Creating an Atlantic Economy

American gold and Spanish affluence

The growing importance of sugar

• Rising prices in Europe

• Caribbean suitability for growing

The problem of labor scarcity

• Decimation of native populations

• Growing interest in African slaves

The logistics of empire: treasure fleets and the “Indies run” A treasure fleet arrives in

Sevilla

Harvesting the Wealth

The Columbian Exchange in Action

Conclusions The Spanish colonial enterprise was unlike

anything ever attempted by a European power, an enterprise that was remarkably efficient and successful, given the unprecedented size of New Spain and the technology and capabilities of the age.

This imperial and colonial enterprise also introduced the “land rich but labor poor” and “freedom vs. slavery” paradigm that would govern much of the Atlantic world for the next three centuries. Making the New World “work,” from a corporate business model, became a key concern from the European point of view.

Indeed, the “free money” flowing from the New World into Spain’s coffers focused the attention and jealousy of emerging competitors on ways to undermine the Catholic Monarchs in Castile.