The Spanish empire in the Americas — a colonial case study

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The three main motives usually given for Spanish expansion into the Americas: Catholic religious mission, silver and plunder, and personal status/land for ambitious conquistadors.

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Private Spanish soldier-adventurers, like Cortés and Pizarro, who financed and led their own conquest expeditions in return for loot and governing rights, rather than acting as a royal army.

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Cortés led a few hundred Spaniards, allied with resentful subject peoples, to conquer the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan between 1519 and 1521.

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Pizarro captured the Inca ruler Atahualpa at Cajamarca in 1532 and, within a year, seized control of the vast Inca Empire in the Andes.

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A large colonial territory (e.g. New Spain from 1535, Peru from 1542) ruled on the Spanish king's behalf by a viceroy holding near-royal executive power.

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Royal appellate courts in the Spanish colonies that judged legal cases and also checked the power of the viceroy in their region.

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A grant giving a Spanish settler the right to demand labour and tribute from an assigned indigenous community, supposedly in return for protection and conversion — in practice, often a brutal forced-labour system.

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A mountain in the Andes (modern Bolivia) where Spain discovered enormous silver deposits in 1545; it grew into one of the world's largest cities and financed the Spanish crown.

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A rotational forced-labour draft, revived from Inca practice, used to conscript indigenous men to work Spanish silver mines like Potosí under brutal conditions.

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A Dominican friar who witnessed colonial abuses firsthand and campaigned against them, helping push Spain toward the New Laws of 1542 to restrict encomienda cruelty.

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Council of the Indies (Spain, drafts law) → viceroy (executive ruler of a viceroyalty) → audiencias (regional courts checking the viceroy) → encomenderos (local labour/tribute holders).

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Spain expanded overseas through private conquest and colonial viceroys resting on encomienda labour and silver; the Ottomans expanded contiguous land through a salaried devshirme elite and timar grants — both used religion to legitimise rule.