Heimlich History: Labor Systems and Societal Restructuring in the Americas

Overview

• Focus is on Spanish-imposed labor systems and societal changes in the Americas during European colonization.
• Continuation from the previous discussion on the Columbian Exchange, highlighting the movement and impact of enslaved Africans.

The African Slave Trade

• European involvement altered traditional African systems of bondage.
  • Previously, African slavery involved prisoners of war or payment for debts, with some legal rights and non-heritable status.
• Europeans established forts along the African coast like the Gold Coast and Bight of Biafra.
  • Traded goods, notably guns, for enslaved Africans.
  • Powerful African groups used guns to intensify raids, increasing the slave trade.

Justification for Slavery

• Europeans perceived Africans as strange but human-like, leading to moral justifications for slavery.
• Biblical justification: Curse of Ham
  • Noah's story: Ham saw his father Noah naked, leading to the curse of Canaan to servitude, misused to justify African enslavement.
• Spanish began importing enslaved Africans to the Americas to address labor shortages.

Encomienda System

• Introduced by Columbus, spread throughout Spanish settlements.
• Encomenderos (leading men) granted land and control over native populations.
  • Natives became coerced labor for farming and mining.
• Justified by religious motives: Spanish monarchs' claim to American lands for Christian conversion.
  • Requirimiento: Legal document backing conversion efforts, leading to subjugation if resisted.

Challenges with Native Labor

• High native mortality due to European diseases.
• Natives' superior knowledge of the land led to frequent escapes.
• Shift to African slaves who had better immunity and less knowledge of the land.

Impact on Spain

• Wealth influx, particularly silver, transformed Spain’s economy.
  • Primarily enriched the nobles, leading to peasant impoverishment.

Social Order in Spanish Americas

• Creation of a caste system based on racial ancestry for tax imposition.
• Hierarchical structure:
  • Peninsulares: Born in Spain
  • Criollos: Spanish born in Americas
  • Mestizos: Spanish and Native American ancestry
  • Mulattos: Spanish and African ancestry
  • Africans
  • Native Americans
• Influenced colonial societies throughout the Western Hemisphere.

• The discussion will continue in Unit Two to further explore the influence of these systems.