Mediterranean Pirates
Spain's geographic location at the entrance to the Mediterranean is, in many ways, both a blessing and a curse. With it's 7,000 kilometers of coastline, Spain has historically been a maritime power and a conduit for goods travelling from North Africa and the Middle East to Europe. Spain's seaports contributed to its rise to global power more than 500 years ago. Excavations have found Phoenician settlements strong enough to have survived the fall of Tyre (in 573 BC) and subjugation of eastern Phoenicia. Abdera (Adra), Baria (Villaricos), Carmona (Carmo), Gadir (Cadiz), Malaca (Malaga), and Sexi (Almuqecar) all prospered in an area where trade was controlled through Carthage. Commerce with Eivissa (Ibiza) on the Balearic Island extended Carthaginian influence even further north. Finally, Cartago Nova (Cartagena) was established late in the 3rd century BC as a base from which to mastermind the conquest of Spain.
In 1588, the Spanish Armada was dispatched against England by Spain's Catholic
King Philip II, leading to an early and important confrontation in the nearly
20-year Anglo-Spanish War of 1585-1604 (the "Twenty Years' War").
The Armada had been sent following a rift in Anglo-Spanish relations resulting
from commercial competition, religious differences, and disputes over English
aid to Protestant Dutch rebels. The Spanish fleet was repulsed by English
defensive ships, however, and suffered major losses in a September Atlantic
storm while rounding the coast of Scotland en route to Spain. The Spaniards
were nonetheless able to regroup quickly, and defeated a retaliatory English
invasion force dispatched to Spain and Portugal in 1589.
The Spanish navy was retooled in the 1590s and effectively solidified Spanish
control over the waves, protecting treasure fleets from privateering while
vanquishing English opponents on the high seas and on the coasts of Spanish
America, and Spain continued as Europe's dominant power into the 1600s.
Spanish Migration to the Americas
By 1600, two phases of Spanish migration to the Americas had ended: the flow of explorers (1492-1519) and that of conquerors (1521-1548). The discovery of silver in 1548 at Zacatecas, in north-central Mexico, led to a Spanish effort in colonization and settlement. In 1573, the "Ordinances of Discovery," promulgated by the Spanish crown, outlawed the brutal treatment of native Americans that had characterized the conquerors like Cortes, Vasquez de Coronado, and de Soto. After 1573, Catholic priests became the vanguard of Spanish expansion in the Americas in their establishment of missions to Christianize the native Americans.
Patterns of migration followed the Spanish missions. Once priests formed
a mission community, soldiers followed, assigned to presidios (military camps)
in order to protect the missions. On the heels of the soldiers came civilian
settlements dedicated to providing food, clothing, and other goods for the
presidios and missions. The 1573 Ordinances and the 1681 "Recompilation
of the Laws of the Indies" gave strict regulations for the formation
of new communities in the Americas.
In the seventeenth century, Mexico City, originally built by the Aztecs in
an island in Lake Texcoco, was by far the most populous city in North America.
Churches, chapels, convents, schools, homes, hospitals, public baths, and
government buildings were built by the Spanish on the Indian site. In 1700,
about 100,000 people lived in Mexico City, with about 100,000 more around
the city. About half the population was Spanish, with about forty percent
black or mixed and less than ten percent Indian.
Spanish America Slave Trade
A lucrative slave trade thus evolved to provide laborers for Spanish America. The asientos de negros were contracts between the Spanish crown and slave-trading companies to the Central and South American colonies. An illegal slave trade also developed.
The Spanish brought slaves from English or Portuguese traders and shipped
them into Mexico, the Caribbean, and other areas in Central and South America.
Like the Portuguese, the Spanish found the native American population diminished
at the very time that it seemed that plantations and mines were becoming increasingly
profitable. African slaves, most of them packed into ships sailing to Mexico,
provided labor to the Spanish settlers. In the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, about 200,000 Africans were imported into Mexico, but in 1817 there
were only 10,000 slaves there. Of these, only 6000 were identified as Negroes.
High mortality served to diminish the number of slaves, while intermarriage
with native Americans further diminished the number of those who would be
identified as of African descent.
Hundreds of thousands of Africans were imported as slaves into other Spanish
territories: Peru, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, and the Spanish Caribbean (Santo
Domingo, Puerto Rico, and Cuba).
Cadiz
Cadiz, originally called Gadir (which means"an enclosure" in Phoenician), the earliest and most significant of the Phoenician ports on the Spanish coast, was a natural location for an outpost. Within easy reach of the Guadalquivir River, major source of alluvial deposits, and built on the protected shores of a narrow peninsula enclosing Gulf of Cadiz, this city is still today the capital of its province. Little remains of the ancient settlers, but excavations have led to the discovery of Phoenician sarcophagi. One of Spain's oldest and best-preserved Roman theaters was also discovered nearby.
January 27, 1855, Atlas
London, United Kingdom
WINE DUTIES.—The Cadiz papers give an account of Mr. Oliveira's visit to that city in connexion with this subject, and intimate the deep interest which all the great houses at Jeres and Port St. Mary's take in the question. The honourable gentleman, it seems, has made a complete survey of the various establishments and been most favourably received, added to which the leading commercial houses of Cadiz are beginning to view the principles of free-trade with some favour, even as regards a reduction of the Spanish tariffs. Mr. Oliveira is expected home early in February, when he will bring forward his motion on the wine duties.
Canary Islands
Once known to the ancient Romans as the Fortunate Islands, the Canary Islands were named after the large dogs (Canes) found living on the islands. Located off the northwestern coast of Africa. The Canary Island's archipelago includes (7) major islands, all remnants of very steep, extinct volcanoes: Fuerteventura, Gran Canary, Gomera, Hierro, La Palma, Lanzarote, and Tenerif.
