Spain had what seemed like an empire from the 15 century to the 19 century. Spain controlled the Caribbean islands, and the Americas. Spain was controlled by a social pyramid. At the top were Peninsulares. Creoles were right below the Peninsulares, who were of Spanish descent but had less power because they were not born in Spain. Below the Creoles were a mix of Native American and Europeans called mestizos. After that were Mulattos which were European and African. Below everything were first slaves and then Native Americans. Spain controlled these countries for several centuries. However, there was a revolution during the 19th century. The Creoles led the revolution to maintain their level of power and or wealth. The Creoles wanted to go up the social pyramid and gain power but they still respected the Natives(which are lower class) because of their sense of pride/loyalty to their country. A revolution was something that the Creoles thought was good. Something had to be done about Spain because they had no rights to be in Latin America, "at the same time we are struggling to maintain …show more content…
ourselves in the country that gave us birth against the opposition of the invaders"-Simon Bolivar (Doc A). Creoles were proud to be of European descent but they were Latin Americans. The Creoles considered themselves Latin American and not Spanish so they fought to get Spain out of their countries. Spain had many restrictions and taxes on Latin American countries making the Creoles wanting to revolt. Spain was still taxing many products even though there was a drought/famine which made the economy plummet.. Spain controlled taxes and regulations on Latin American products/goods. The Creoles did not like this and felt that Spain were leaching off of them . "In 1808-1809 drought produced a great mortality among Mexico's livestock and decimated the harvest... Food prices tripled. As in the past, agrarian crisis soon affected the rest of the economy: mining and manufacturing faltered and unemployment rose."-Alan Knight (Doc D). The counties were already struggling to survive with the lack of vital resources. Having Spain’s restrictions made the Creoles think that independence was the only way to thrive in life and or survive. The social pyramid was a scale that measured wealth or power so this was a big motive for Creoles to revolt against Spain.
The Creoles were a lot larger than the Peninsulares but only 12 Creoles were judges while having 87 peninsulares. The Creoles had some power because they were not at the bottom of the pyramid but the Peninsulares still overpower them. The Creoles wanted to gain power but they still wanted lower classes to be below them. "If the Creoles had one eye on their masters, they kept the other on their servants. The Creoles were intensely aware of social pressure from below, and they strove to keep the coloured people at a distance… white superiority was not unchallenged; beyond its defenses swarmed Indians, mestizos, free blacks, mulattos and slaves..." -Leslie Bethell. (Doc F). The Creoles had a conflict of gaining power but keeping lower classes behind
them. If there was no revolution the Creoles had the most to lose and the most power to gain. Loyalty to their home countries was also a big motivation for the creoles, The Creoles were disconnected from their European origin because of the strict lines of status.The revolution lead to independent nations all over the world with governments of their own. Latin America was able to break away from their mother country and form self-governing countries.
Creoles struggle loyalty to their motherland and birth country. In Document A Simon Bolivar stated that creoles are in a complicated situation. They are trying to decide which side they should support. In Document B it showed how unfair creoles were treated even though by blood, peninsulares and creoles are the same. The creoles had a lot less power and worst jobs. The
What does Bethell mean when he writes, "If the Creoles had one eye on their masters, they kept the other on their servants"? conscious social position, not friendly w/ peninsulares but worried from lower class revolution
For four hundred years Spain ruled over an immense and profitable global empire that included islands in the Caribbean, Americas, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. After the Napoleonic Wars (1808-1815) many of Spain’s colonies followed the US’s lead, fighting and winning their independence. These revolts, coupled with other nations chipping away at Spain’s interests, dwindled Spain’s former Empire. By 1860, only Cuba and Puerto Rico were what remained of Spain’s former Empire. Following the lead of other former Spanish colonies, Cuban fighters started their campaign for independence, known as the Ten year war (1868-1878). This war developed into a Cuban insurgency which fought a guerilla war against the Spanish occupation.2
…their goal was probably not only independence from Spain but also the creation of a new society in which they would fully participate. Blacks rebelled against racism and inequality, landless peasants regardless of race stood up for land, popular cabecillas wanted political power, and orientales in general hoped to gain control of their region’s destiny. The potential for the war to become a social revolution was strong indeed. [57]
The Spanish and English cultures were scarcely similar and notably different because of the interaction with indigenous people and the timing in which the interactions occurred. The Spanish and English were very different in how they interacted with the indigenous people. The Spanish main reason for coming to North America was to spread Catholicism. In the Catholic church if two people were both Catholic then the two people would receive the sacrament of marriage. After marriage the two would create a Catholic of their own. This had created 5 new races of people. The races of humanity was then looked at as social classes. The highest social class was a full white European, then a mestizos, which was a someone who was European and an Indian, followed by Indians, African slaves, and lastly a Zambos,
Before the revolution started in Saint Domingue, Saint Domingue was producing 60% of the coffee around the world and produced 40% of the worlds sugar at the same time (Haitian Revolution, www.webster.edu). Comparing all the French colonies, Saint Domingue was the most profitable and the most successful of its possessions. Saint Domingue was the most prosperous and wealthiest island in the Caribbean, but for Plantation Owners. In 1789, mulattoes were about 28,000, followed by white people which where 32,000, and the last group was black slaves, which numbered up to 500,000 (Haitian Revolution, www.webster.edu). The lowest class in saint Domingue was the black slaves, which outnumbered the whites 10 to 1. Saint Domingue had so many slaves that out of the 1 million slaves at this time in the Caribbean, the slave population in saint Domingue mad up half of it. Since this colony was mostly driven by its slave labor, it was one of the richest and the colony that gave more profit of them all in that time. What made this colony one of the richest colonies was their land. Their soil was very fertile and it had and ideal climate, letting it grow a lot of its main productions, like sugar, coffee, cocoa, Indigo, tobacco, cotton and vegetables. When the revolution started to spark in 1789, there we...
This particular revolution was meant to rid the country of its dependency upon slavery; however, it did very little to procure the exact solution that the natives of this country wanted. It’s stated more than once in this story that a true and honest living is not easily come by for any native of Haiti and they earn very little money when a job is available. People are paid an insubstantial wage, live in shantytowns, and often times go to bed with their stomachs distended from a voracious and unforgiving hunger. In The Norton Mix Introduction to Literature, Danticat shows these significant consequences of the Revolution by stating that when it got really bad for the family, they would boil ground sugar cane so that it would get rid of the hunger pangs that often tormented the children of the poor (p. 229).
On July 14th, 17189, a shot was heard around the world: the Bastille had been stormed. Propelled by Enlightenment ideas, a rigid class system, and resentment with the monarchy, on this day the French decided to take matters in their own hands. In the next three years, the French overthrew their monarch and established a government and constitution that promised equal rights for all. As the saying goes, history repeats itself. So was the case in Latin America. By 1810, revolutionary fervor had spread to Venezuela. The revolution here was caused by similar reasons. As a colony of Spain, Venezuela did not have a representational government or equality for all its citizens. Peninsulares, or European-born Spaniards, held all the important governmental positions. Like the nobility in France, Peninsulares did not have to pay taxes. Their children (as long as they were also born in Europe), had many educational opportunities. Below the peninsulares were the creoles, or Venezuelans of Spanish descent. Creoles owned much of the land, but they were considered inferior to the peninsulares. Like the bourgeoisie in France, creoles had to pay high taxes and were subject to strict regulation. Creoles were disappointed in what they saw as social and political inequality, and desired to obtain self-representation in the government. At first hesitant, creoles declared their independence amid the weakening of the Spanish crown and the spread of the Enlightenment ideas. The Venezuelan Revolution was influenced by the French Revolution by the spread of Enlightenment ideas, social inequality, the discontent of creoles, and their desire to gain independence from France and form a new democratic government.
The Spanish rule had effectively started to take over in 1598 when a man by the name of Juan de Onante began his invasion on the indigenous people. Onante was able to set up the first Spanish colony which consisted of soldiers and women and children. The land that he invaded was inhabited by the Natives but when they had the first colony the Spanish began to segregate the natives into two groups the “Barbaros” and the “Pueblos”. The Spanish colonization had over 100 communities spreading over hundreds of miles. Although, they were lumped into ‘...
Looking back into history, at around the 1500s to the 1600s, people were very much the same in the sense that many countries were looking to aggrandize their economy and appear the greatest. It was this pride and thinking that motivated many of the superpowers of the world’s past. Two such monarchies in the European continent included England and Spain, which had at the time, the best fleets the world has ever seen. Because both were often striving to be the best, they conflicted with one another. Although England and Spain had their differences, they both had a thirst to see new things and it was this hunger that led them both to discovering different parts of the “New World” and thus, colonizing the Americas.
The conquest of Latin America was a fairly quick process in which the theme of hegemony was vastly prominent. The cultures of colonialism and competitive nature to obtain wealth through exploitation were the main driving force of hegemony. It is natural to exploit the people of lower class or societal rank for one's own advantage, and that is what happened. As the pressure of power and control became overbearing toward the people, resistance was sure to follow.
The Age of Revolutions was a period of time in which many global revolutions took place, especially within America and Europe. A revolution is an overthrow of government or social order in favour of political change. There were many revolutions that took place between 1760 and 1840, most notable being the American Revolution from 1775 to 1783, and the French Revolution beginning in 1789 and ending in 1799. These, along with the Napoleonic Empire, which carried on from the French Revolution and lasted until 1815; all greatly transformed the Atlantic world. This occurred through these global revolutions, which inspired another revolution within the slave island of Haiti. The focus of this essay will be on the aforementioned revolutions,
Early in the nineteenth century rebellion against European authority broke out in Latin America. First, slaves on the island of Haiti revolted against their French masters. Led by former slave Toussaint L'Overture the Haitians defeated France making Haiti the...
...d Haitian revolutions all believed that if they didn’t take their opportunity to succeed from their various rulers, they may lose all hope of ever doing so. It was this desperation for freedom, and the act of rebellion alone, that makes the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and Haitian Revolutions radial. They can be seen as some of the first major uprising to not only challenge those in control, but to incorporate Enlightenment ideas as part of their justification.
...he Portuguese Americas. They both chose to relocate the indigenous people. The Spanish Americas were more successful than the Portuguese because of the diseases inflicted upon the Native Americans by the Portuguese. Each power (Spanish and Portuguese) wanted to regulate the Native Americans. Again, the Spanish were more successful. Even with the Spanish being greedy and wanting to take advantage of the land and the fruits it had to offer, they first instilled structure by forming a type of government. The Portuguese allowed the power to lie in the hand of the group of people who had wealth and could buy their way into powerful positions.