To meet the mounting demand for labor in mining and agriculture, the Spanish began to exploit a new labor force: slaves from western Africa. Slavery was a familiar institution to many sixteenth-century Europeans.
With the rise of sugar cultivation as an export product in 1810, Spaniards increasingly utilized enslaved African people for labor on commercial plantations.
Under Spanish law, enslaved people were allowed a few more privileges and protections than the French had granted; in reality, Spanish slave owners violated most of these rights, though in some cases they were upheld.
1811 - Spain abolishes slavery, including in its colonies, though Cuba rejects ban and continues to deal in slaves.
To destabilize British colonization in the north, Spain encouraged British slaves to escape to Florida, where they could convert to Catholicism and become Spanish citizens.
We now believe that as many as 1,506,000 enslaved Africans arrived in the Spanish Americas directly from Africa between 1520 and 1867. We further estimate that an additional 566,000 enslaved Africans were disembarked in Spanish America from other European col- onies in the New World, such as Jamaica and Brazil.
The Spanish conquistadors, who went to Hispaniola and then to other Caribbean islands and finally to the mainland, were rough and violent. They took what they wanted, and when the Indians resisted--or even when they did not--the conquistadors attacked and slaughtered them.
Europeans' enslavement of Native Americans began with Columbus. As the governor of Hispaniola, he forced the Taino Indians to labor in the Spanish fields and mines, and he brought Taino slaves to Spain on his return journeys.
Spanish settlers acquired indigenous slaves in New Spain, just as they did in the West Indies. They took as captives those who had been defeated in war, and sometimes they took over control of persons enslaved through warfare of one tribe against another.
All Five Civilized Tribes—the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations—adopted slavery. During the Trail of Tears, they took with them several thousand African slaves.
Conquistadors subjugated populations primarily to garner personal economic wealth, and Natives little understood the nature of the conquest.
As Spanish Catholic men, these conquistadors and their crews—and soon enough the Spanish Empire—justified their invasions and stealing with evangelization. They said they were going to new lands to spread the Lord's word and save the natives' souls from eternal damnation.
The Spanish were able to defeat the Aztec and the Inca not only because they had horses, dogs, guns, and swords, but also because they brought with them germs that made many native Americans sick. Diseases like smallpox and measles were unknown among the natives; therefore, they had no immunity to them.
The Spanish religious ideology was one of converting the "natives," which in practice meant absorbing them into Spanish society and intermarrying with them once they converted.
Slavery in Spain can be traced to the slag era, Phoenicians and Romans. In the 9th century the Muslim Moorish rulers and local Jewish merchants traded in Spanish and Eastern European Christian slaves. Spain began to trade slaves in the 15th century and this trade reached its peak in the 16th century.
The Portuguese, in the 16th century, were the first to buy slaves from West African slavers and transport them across the Atlantic. In 1526, they completed the first transatlantic slave voyage to Brazil, and other Europeans soon followed.
In the fifteenth century, Portugal became the first European nation to take significant part in African slave trading. The Portuguese primarily acquired slaves for labor on Atlantic African island plantations, and later for plantations in Brazil and the Caribbean, though they also sent a small number to Europe.
The Aztecs were a warrior people and would capture people from nearby tribes and would sacrifice the captured peoples as part of their religion. The Aztec were very much hated and feared by the other Native American tribes. The other tribes saw a chance to get back at the Aztecs and joined the Spaniards.
When they at last broke through the city's defenses, the Spanish and their indigenous allies were ruthless. They subdued the Aztecs street by street, slaughtering indiscriminately and looting what they could. Houses were burned and temples destroyed.
The Aztecs, under their last ruler, Cuauhtémoc (c. 1495-1525), resisted fiercely but were finally defeated in late 1521. Cortés razed Tenochtitlan, building his own capital over its ruins, and proclaimed the Aztec Empire to be New Spain.
The Spanish attitude toward the Indians was that they saw themselves as guardians of the Indians basic rights. The Spanish goal was for the peaceful submission of the Indians. The laws of Spain controlled the conduct of soldiers during wars, even when the tribes were hostile.
The two most famous Spanish conquistadors were Francisco Pizarro, who conquered the Incan Empire, and Hernán Cortés, who took the Aztec Empire.
The first would be to convert natives to Christianity. The second would be to pacify the areas for colonial purposes. A third objective was to acculturate the natives to Spanish cultural norms so that they could move from mission status to parish status as full members of the congregation.
European planters thought Africans would be more suited to the conditions than their own countrymen, as the climate resembled that the climate of their homeland in West Africa. Enslaved Africans were also much less expensive to maintain than indentured European servants or paid wage labourers.