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214 PERIOD 2 • The Early Modern World, 1450–1750

married elite native women. It was a long-standing practice in Amerindian soci-
eties and was encouraged by both Spanish and Indigenous male authorities as a
means of cementing their new relationship. It was also advantageous for some of
the women involved. One of Aztec emperor Moctezuma’s daughters, who was mis-
tress to Cortés and was eventually married, successively, to several other Spaniards,
wound up with the largest landed estate in the Valley of Mexico. Below this elite
level of interaction, however, far more women experienced sexual violence and
abuse. Rape accompanied conquest in many places, and dependent or enslaved
women working under the control of European men frequently found themselves
required to perform sexual services. This was a tragedy and humiliation for native
and enslaved men as well, for they were unable to protect their mothers, wives,
daughters, and sisters from such abuse.
Such variations in culture, policy, economy, and gender generated quite differ-
ent colonial societies in several major regions of the Americas.

In the Lands of the Aztecs and the Incas

The Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires in the early sixteenth century
gave Spain access to the most wealthy, urbanized, and densely populated regions of
the Western Hemisphere. Within a century, and well before the British had even
begun their colonizing efforts in North America, the Spanish in Mexico and Peru
had established nearly a dozen major cities; several impressive universities; hundreds
of cathedrals, churches, and missions; an elaborate administrative bureaucracy; and a
network of regulated international commerce.
AP ® The economic foundation for this emerging colonial society lay in commercial
CONTINUITY AND agriculture, much of it on large rural estates, and in silver and gold mining. In both
CHANGE cases, native peoples, rather than enslaved Africans or European workers, provided
What was the economic most of the labor, despite their much-diminished numbers. Almost everywhere,
foundation of colonial
rule in Mexico and Peru? that labor was coerced, often directly required by colonial authorities under a legal
How did it shape the regime known as encomienda. It was, in fact, a forced labor system not far removed
kinds of societies that from slavery. By the seventeenth century, the hacienda system had taken shape, by
developed there?
which the private owners of large estates directly employed native workers. With
AP ® EXAM TIP low wages, high taxes, and large debts to the landowners, the peons who worked
Systems of coerced labor these estates enjoyed little control over their lives or their livelihood.
are important to know for On this economic base, a distinctive social order grew up, replicating some-
the AP® Exam.
thing of Spanish class and gender hierarchies while accommodating the racially and
culturally different Native Americans and Africans as well as growing numbers of
multiracial people. At the top of this colonial society were the male Spanish settlers,
who were politically and economically dominant and seeking to become a landed
aristocracy. One Spanish official commented in 1619: “The Spaniards, from the able
and rich to the humble and poor, all hold themselves to be lords and will not serve
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[do manual labor].” Politically, they increasingly saw themselves not as colonials,
but as residents of a Spanish kingdom, subject to the Spanish monarch yet separate
Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample.
Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.

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