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state of human society, in which a high level of culture, science, and government has been reached.

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An economic system built on the assumption that the world's supply of wealth is fixed and that nations must export more goods than they import to assure a steady supply of gold and silver into national coffers. Mercantile thinkers saw the inflow of such wealth as the key to maintaining and enhancing national power and self-sufficiency. Within this context, the accumulation and development of colonies was of great importance, since colonies could supply scarce raw materials to parent nations and serve as markets for finished goods.

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The process of transferring plants, animals, foods, diseases, wealth, and culture between Europe and the Americas, beginning at the time of Christopher Columbus and continuing throughout the era of exploration and expansion.

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In an effort to entice English subjects to the colonies, parties would offer legal bonded contracts that would exchange the cost of passage across the Atlantic for up to seven years of labor in America.

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Total ownership of one person over another.

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Religious reform movement in the 16th and 17th centuries that sought to “purify” the church of England.

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Economic exchange amongst three markets and geographies.

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The government in Spain gave away large tracts of conquered land in Spanish America, including whole villages of indigenous peoples, to court favorites, including many conquistadores. These new landlords were supposed to educate the natives and teach them the Roman Catholic faith. The system was rife with abuse, however. Landlords rarely offered much education, preferring instead to exploit the labor of the local inhabitants, whom they treated like slaves.

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The Encomienda was a system where Spanish adventurers and settlers were granted the legal right to extract forced labour from indigenous tribal chiefs in the Americas colonies of the Spanish Empire. In return, the Europeans were expected to give military protection to the labourers and offer them the opportunity to be converted to Christianity by funding a parish priest.

The encomienda system permitted the Spanish Crown to convert its invading army of conquistadors into colonial settlers, but the system's flaws - maltreatment and significant population reductions from diseases - meant that it was eventually replaced by a system of low-paid labour and large estate management.

Feudal Origins

The Spanish Empire maintained two key objectives in conquered territories: extract material wealth and convert the indigenous peoples to Christianity. Under the category of resources the Spanish saw fit to exploit came the labour of any local peoples in the area. Encomienda was a feudal term which derived from the verb encomendar, meaning "to entrust". In medieval Spain, encomienda referred to the relationship between a landowner and those who worked the land. In a reciprocal relationship, the former received labour while the latter received protection. This concept was applied to land taken back from the Moors during the Reconquista and the colonization of the Canary Islands. Encomienda was then extended to the Americas colonies from 1502 (first in Hispaniola) as a way to justify what amounted to little more than slavery. In 1503 the policy received royal approval, and it spread from the Caribbean to Mexico and Central America, and then to South America as the conquistadors ("conquerors") used it as a means to extract resources and as a reward for their followers.

In a rather dubious justification for exploitation, a favoured European ( encomendero) could benefit from free labour for any purpose whatsoever in return for offering local people a certain level of physical protection and an opportunity to be exposed to the Christian religion and so enjoy the ultimate salvation of their souls.

The encomienda was not then slavery of American Indians, which the pope had prohibited in 1537 (although they did not so favour Black Africans). The European attitude might have eased a few consciences on their side, but, naturally, the indigenous peoples did not often see the relationship in these terms, and thousands suffered what was, in practical reality, slavery in all but name. Further, "there is ample evidence that encomenderos largely ignored their religious responsibilities" (Alan Covey, 372).

An encomienda was usually granted for life but was not hereditary.

There was no connection with land as part of the encomienda as there had been in medieval Spain, instead, in the colonies, encomienda was purely a legal arrangement, and the right could even be held by municipalities. An encomienda was initially given by leaders of conquistador expeditions and then either the viceroy or the (judicial panel) present in the nearest large town. The size of the population tied to a particular encomienda varied; most involved around 2,000 family units, but some could be much larger, such as that assigned to Hernán Cortés in Mexico, which encompassed well over 23,000 family units. Certainly, even a smaller encomienda permitted a settler to have a house built, feed his family, and maintain a small entourage of personal followers ( paniaguados) for his own protection against rebel native peoples - raids on Spanish settlements where the inhabitants and animals were all slaughtered were not uncommon. The indigenous peoples roped into the labour were given protection from other European settlers and adventurers. Regarding the wider community, the holder of the encomienda was expected to send his armed followers to help defend the local settlement if required and to pay for a parish priest.

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An encomienda was usually granted for life but was not hereditary, despite calls for it to be so by holders of the right and some religious orders. It was believed that if settler families had an extended relationship with their labourers, they would treat them better. The call for hereditary encomiendas was rejected by the Crown as it wished to keep its options open and maintain its overall control of the colonies. Consequently, in the majority of cases, the encomienda of a deceased holder reverted to the Crown with a small provision made to a surviving widow and any children.

Labour v. Souls

Initially, the right of encomienda was given to an adelantado, that is a conquistador who had been awarded the license to explore and conquer new territories on behalf of the Spanish Crown. The adelantado could keep 80% of any wealth he acquired in the process (the Crown got the remaining 20%), and this included a right to use local labour. The encomienda was then extended to settlers so that, in effect, an invading army was transformed into a quasi-militia urban population that earned wealth from land worked by indigenous peoples in the surrounding area.

Monarchs were expected, as defenders of the faith & beneficiaries of the goodwill of the Popes, to promote the Christianization of conquered peoples.

There were intense debates in Spain throughout the 16th century as to which of the often conflicting aims of material gain and religious conversion should be regarded as the most important. The 1512 Laws of Burgos set out how indigenous peoples should be treated and the responsibilities of settlers as Christians. Then the Council of the Indies in Spain, which supervised all aspects of the colonies, issued directives that local people should not be exploited to the point of starvation and death. The issue was discussed in a meeting of the Council in 1540, where the members were urged by President Loaísa to consider the following six questions:

1. How should those who had treated Indians badly be punished?

2. How could Indians best be instructed in Christianity?

3. How could it be guaranteed that Indians would be well treated?

4. Was it necessary for a Christian to take into account the welfare of slaves?

5. What should be done to ensure that governors and other officials carry out the government's orders to be just?

6. How could the administration of justice be properly organised? (Thomas, 474-5)

From the Spanish Crown's point of view, the arrangement of encomienda created an inherent conflict of interest. Monarchs were expected, as defenders of the faith and beneficiaries of the goodwill of the popes, to promote the Christianization and ' civilization' of conquered peoples. This naturally meant that killing them with labour was hardly conducive to religious education and conversion. On the other hand, to maximise the extraction of wealth from the colonies, labour was desperately needed for such large state projects as mining precious metals and harvesting crops grown on an industrial scale.

The third group in this triangle of control was the Europeans who had been granted the right of encomienda. Thousands of miles from the monarchy and the Council of Indies, many conquistadors saw no need for niceties as they ruthlessly exploited both local resources and people for their own personal gain. There were protestations by indigenous community leaders and certain members of the Spanish religious orders like the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566), who wrote a graphic description of just what was going on in the New World in his A Very Brief Recital of the Destruction of the Indies of 1522. On the ground, these voices could do little to prevent encomienda becoming, in many cases, a system of extreme forced labour indistinguishable from slavery with the exception that the labourers could not be sold. Further, indigenous American peoples were very often completely unsuited to the alien concept of labouring for another in regular working hours, and the increased contact with Europeans only led to even more devastation of the American population by European diseases. The population of Hispaniola was perhaps around 200,000 before European contact, but by 1522, it had been reduced to 90,000; that of New Spain had been around 22 million in 1500 but was reduced to just 3 million by 1550. Either by hard labour or disease, the fate of the local peoples was grim.

Protest & Change

The situation became so serious for the stability of internal affairs and European-Indian relations that there was even a move to abolish the encomienda in 1542. A set of New Laws attempted to reduce the application of the encomienda but made little headway against the powerful and avaricious forces of monarchy, conquistadors, and settlers who were making a fortune out of the system. In 1573, a more substantial attempt at limiting exploitation was made by Philip II of Spain (r. 1556-1598). The monarch outlawed any use of the encomienda system in any new territories. This hardly helped indigenous peoples already suffering under the system, but it at least indicated a realisation that the system was flawed and could not continue indefinitely. The Americas colonies of Spain were now becoming an area no longer of conquest but pacification.

As the colonisation process evolved and the collaboration of indigenous and mixed-race citizens became essential, so the encomienda system slowly came to an end by the first years of the 18th century (but continued until the 1780s in some pockets of the empire, notably Chile and the Yucatán peninsula). One of the problems with the encomienda system was that there were not enough licenses to meet demand, and in wilder areas, the indigenous peoples, unsurprisingly, proved reluctant to volunteer for such a system. The level of productivity the system could provide given the reduction in labourers due to diseases over time and the unsuitability of native crops for urban markets now feeding Europeans meant that new ways had to be found to ensure agricultural production met the demands of colonial settlements.

The encomienda was replaced by the repartimiento system, which also involved forced labour, but at least this time the workers received a wage, albeit a low one. Known as mita in the Viceroy of Peru, this system obliged indigenous leaders to send a fixed number of male labourers to work for the colonial administration (just as the Aztecs and Incas had done in their own empires). The team usually worked for a number of weeks before being replaced by another group from the same community. The scheme permitted the continued operation of mines and state-run agriculture and the construction of infrastructures such as roads, bridges, and public buildings. The low wages were a poor compensation for being uprooted from one's family and community, but it was a step forward in comparison to the encomienda system. A second alternative to encomienda was the use of slaves shipped to the Americas from Africa. Both slaves and low-wage labour allowed European settlers or settlers of European descent to evolve a new system of managing land and resources, which involved establishing vast estates or haciendas where agriculture (wheat, sugar, olives, and vines), stock-raising (imported cattle and sheep), and mining ( gold and silver) were conducted on an ever-larger scale.

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The encomienda was a system where Spanish adventurers and settlers were granted the legal right to extract forced labour from indigenous tribal chiefs in the Americas colonies of the Spanish Empire...

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Colonies focused on cash crops.

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Colonies with a large agricultural base. Because of location they were key distribution centers in the English Mercantile System.

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Colonies founded by the Puritans for religious purposes. Goal was to create a society as God intended.

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A proclamation from the British government which forbade British colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains, and which required any settlers already living west of the mountains to move back east

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Before the American constitution, this established the United States as a loose confederation of states under a weak national Congress, which was not granted the power to regulate commerce or collect taxes

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An eighteenth-century philosophical movement that began in Western Europe with roots in the Scientific Revolution

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Near the end of the Revolutionary War, the Continental Army had not received pay for many years and threatened to abandon the fight, if they were not compensated.

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A colonist who rebelled against British rule

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Supporters of the new Constitution and a strong federal government. They fear a weak government. Generally very wealthy.

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Plan proposed by Benjamin Franklin in 1754 that aimed to unite the 13 colonies for trade, military, and other purposes; the plan was turned down by the colonies and the (British) Crown.

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The decision to have a bicameral legislature, one house based on population, and one house with an equal number of representatives for every state.

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A colonist who supported British rule

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Supporters of the Articles of Confederation, not the Constitution. They fear a tyrannical national government with too much power and strongly advocate for the Bill of Rights.

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Determined that each slave would be counted as three fifths of a person for the purpose of apportioning taxes and representation.

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One of the biggest accomplishments of the Articles of Confederation. This established a system for setting up governments in the western territories so they could eventually join the Union.

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A period from the early 1600s to the mid 1700s where British Parliamentary Laws were not enforced on the colonists.

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Group of persons organized to acquire and exercise political power

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The fight for the suffrage (voting) for half of the population

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Human-made waterways connecting natural bodies of water, very important for early travel

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Machine invented by Samuel Morse that used a system of dots and dashes to send messages across long distances electronically through a wire. It connected the different hemispheres of the world, allowing for more communication between people.

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Landmark 1803 Supreme Court case in which Chief Justice John Marshall established the principle of Judicial Review, which grants the Supreme Court the power to declare laws unconstitutional

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Eli Whitney’s 1793 invention that dramatically improved the speed for processing cotton, changing the trajectory of cotton production in the United States

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Warned European powers not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere

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Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations - Office of the Historian

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Uniform pieces that can be made in large quantities to replace other identical pieces

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Movement dedicated to promoting moderation and, more often, complete abstinence in the use of alcohol

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A machine that turns the energy released by burning fuel into motion

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Pro Slavery, favored secession from Union, States' rights, agrarian-oriented, opposed gold standard, supported lowering tariff, and opposed imperialism in 1890s

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The British forcibly enlisted thousands of American men into the Royal Navy from passing ships, and refused to recognize that Americans had renounced their British citizenship

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Campaign to end slavery

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Manufacturing businesses first created in the late eighteenth century that concentrated all aspects of production under one roof, reorganized production and divided work. The key aspect was that it was under one roof and had specialized tasks. Made the production faster and more efficient.

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Opposed Jackson's strong-armed leadership style and policies, but promoted protective tariffs, federal funding for internal improvements, and other measures that strengthened the central government.

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19th century belief that Americans had the God given right to spread across the whole continent

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Required that slaves be returned to their owners, even if they were in a free state

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Southern half of the country, a group of states trying to separate over the issue of slavery

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Henry Clay introduced a series of resolutions in an attempt to seek a compromise and avert a crisis between North and South, this included that the Fugitive Slave Act was amended, the slave trade in Washington, D.C. was abolished, California entered the Union as a free state, a territorial government was created in Utah, and an act was passed settling a boundary dispute between Texas and New Mexico that also established a territorial government in New Mexico

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Loyalty or support of a particular region or section of the nation, rather than the United States as a whole

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Freed all slaves and abolished slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States

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Passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´

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When a state attempts to secede from, or leave, the nation it was once a part of

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Granted African Americans citizenship and equal protection under the law

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People of a territory should themselves decide the issue of slavery

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Northern half of the country, a group of states that were generally anti-slavery

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Granted African American men voting rights

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A system of economic production based on the private ownership of property and the contractual exchange for profit of goods, labor, and money

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Positive name for wealthy business owners during the Gilded Age, implying that they helped the United States become strong through their business pursuits

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The idea that the wealthy and powerful were naturally superior and deserved their success

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The railroad owner who built a railway connecting Chicago and New York. He popularized the use of steel rails in his railroad, which made railroads safer and more economical

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Negative term for wealthy business owners during the Gilded Age who made fortunes by monopolizing huge industries through unethical business practices

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The idea that extremely wealthy Americans had a responsibility to spend their money in order to benefit the greater good.

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Known as the steel king; he integrated every phase of his steel-making operation.He pioneered "Vertical Integration" to improve efficiency by controlling the quality of the product at all stages of production and eliminating the middleman

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An organized group of workers that use collective bargaining to improve working conditions

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When writers sought to expose corruption in big business and government

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A man who started from meager beginnings and eventually created an oil empire. In Ohio in 1870 he organized the Standard Oil Company. By 1877 he controlled 95% of all of the refineries in the United States

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Patterns of movement across the country, including waves of new immigrants and formerly enslaved people moving toward urban centers

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A banker who financed the reorganization of railroads, insurance companies, and banks. He bought out Carnegie and in 1901 he started the United States Steel Corporation

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The age between the Civil War and WWI when the American economy grew rapidly and individuals were able to use monopolies to amass great wealth

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The campaign to allow female voters

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A captain and admiral in the Navy who was a prominent supporter of Imperialism

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International organization founded in 1919 to promote world peace and cooperation but greatly weakened by the refusal of the United States to join. Sometimes considered a precursor to the modern UN.

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The practice of allowing investors to purchase a stock for only a fraction of its price and borrow the rest at high interest rates

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The prevention by law of the manufacture and sale of alcohol between 1920 and 1933

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The principle that all countries should have equal access to any of the ports open to trade in China

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The resolution to WWI that squarely blamed Germany by demanding billions in reparations and destroying German military infrastructure

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Tax on imports

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The traditional belief that the United States should refrain from involvement in overseas politics, alliances, or wars, and confine its national security interest to its own borders

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The political orientation of a people or a government to maintain a strong military force and to be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests.

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The movement of African Americans from the South to the industrial centers of the Northeast and the Midwest.

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A popular way to describe the New Deal, referring to relief, recovery, and reform

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A policy in which a strong nation seeks to dominate other countries politically, socially, and economically

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Political ideology that stresses people's membership in a nation

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A message from Germany to Mexico—decoded and shared by the British—that urged Mexico to invade the US to keep the US occupied in exchange for German support for Mexico taking back parts of the Mexican Cession

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American military strategy in WWII to slowly claim territory across the Pacific, leading to the eventual defeat of Japan

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The death and destruction of six million jews and five million other people by the Nazis during WWII.

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Globally centered groups that try to solve world problems.

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Successor to the League of Nations. Exists to solve the world’s political problems.

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Created the World Bank and IMF to solve the world’s economic problems.

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Military alliance primarily between the USA and Western Europe.

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Named by Winston Churchill. This is the metaphorical demarcation between communism and democracy in Europe.

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Military alliance between countries in Eastern Europe and the USSR.

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Theory that communism must be prevented from spreading to other countries and that the USA must use military force to stop it if necessary.

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Belief that if one country becomes Communist its neighbors would also become communist.

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Theory that if one country uses nuclear weapons other countries will use them as well effectively ending the world as we know it.

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Significantly more powerful than past weapons. First used in Hiroshima.

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Vastly more powerful than atomic bombs. Capable of destroying entire cities and permanently irradiating countries.

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Created by President LBJ to improve the social welfare safety net in the USA.

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Supreme Court Case that ended the segregation of schools.

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refers to the economic policies of President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, emphasizing tax cuts, reduced government regulation, and a belief that stimulating economic growth among the wealthy would benefit the entire economy.

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an economic theory asserting that benefits provided to the wealthy and businesses will eventually "trickle down" to the rest of the population through job creation and economic growth

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the general increase in the prices of goods and services over time, reducing the purchasing power of currency.

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the total value of all goods and services produced within a country's borders in a specific time period, serving as a key indicator of economic performance.

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individuals or policies advocating for social and economic equality, government intervention in the economy, and progressive social values.

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actions by a central bank to control the money supply and interest rates, influencing economic activity by managing inflation, employment, and overall economic stability