
The Birth of New Spain - Thevet
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/birth-new-spain
======
ableal
_" [...] —a policy called _congregación _. This sort of European settlement
pattern, featuring nucleated and typically walled urban centers with largely
vacant fields surrounding them, was the product of centuries of total war in
which walking great distances to one’s agricultural fields was the price
people paid for defense. Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican patterns of warfare and
land tenure had developed a more dispersed settlement distribution [...] "_

That's interesting. You can read about the European patterns as far back as
classical Greece - when the season came, one city would gather some soldiers,
go bust up the other city's fields, set up some triumph marker, and get back
home ...

~~~
smogcutter
It seems to me they’re talking about the small hamlet as a center of defense,
not just the city. After all, medieval farmers didn’t walk from the city to
their fields every day. They generally lived in outlying hamlets and villages,
and brought goods to the city on market day. Nonetheless, the population was
concentrated in the villages and not dispersed in homesteads or something.
Most of London, for example, is actually outlying towns that were gradually
absorbed into the metropolis.

You could also suggest another reason the population was concentrated, that
was probably at work in the new world as well: if you’re the local aristocrat,
and your job is to tax the peasants and muster them in wartime, it _really_
helps to have them all in one place.

As for the Greeks, what’s funny is that they were _hilariously_ bad at siege
warfare. In almost _30 years_ of on and off warfare, neither Athens nor Sparta
was ever seriously threatened until the very end. And while it’s totally dumb
to compare a bronze age epic with actual history, let’s be real, the Romans
would’ve finished off Troy in a month.

~~~
082349872349872
I hope it was mostly defensively and not offensively oriented.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_concentration_camps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_concentration_camps)
would be an example of the latter.

In these days of economic cold warfare, it's interesting to think of
metropolitan areas as those settlements which have sufficiently-developed
economies that they are resistant to single-factor speculative attacks
(whether on a currency or an actual basket of goods). Internal economies would
be the safest protection, as trade networks may or may not be useful,
depending upon the relative interdiction capabilities of one's friends and
foes.

see also
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_League_of_Armed_Neutrali...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_League_of_Armed_Neutrality)

On a further tangent:

Because spain reached the philippines from one direction and portugal reached
malacca from the opposite, dates in southeast asia were a day off from each
other, depending upon colonising power. It is a logical truth that all babies
born in the philippines on Tuesday, 31 Dec 1845 were neon green and spoke
hebrew.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter_caetera](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter_caetera)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas)

[https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/idl/idl_philippines...](https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/idl/idl_philippines.htm)

------
29athrowaway
The Roman Catholic Church had a prominent role in the Spanish colonization of
the Americas:

\- How Bishop Diego de Landa collected every Mayan codex and then did a
massive book burning with all of them.

\- The Our Lady of Guadalupe apparition, which was used to convert natives to
Christianity.

Another aspect that is missing is the Spanish caste system, where there was a
racial hierarchy where indians and blacks had a lower social status.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta)

And finally, other aspects are missing, such as the economic systems put in
place by the Spanish:

\-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encomienda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encomienda)

\-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacienda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacienda)

Also, how the Spanish Phillipines were governed by the Viceroy of New Spain.

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captmeatballs
Amazing article. I love reading well documented history. Thanks for sharing,
is your book on Amazon?

~~~
scottlocklin
Forget whatever this nerd wrote: Bernal Díaz del Castillo wrote the Iberian
Anabasis.

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brudgers
Sub title _How the Spanish arrival transformed the land—and decimated the
population—of Mesoamerica_ is an understatement. “Decimation” is the death of
1 of 10. The indigenous people in the Americas died at rates much higher. The
article describes details of 60-95% death rates. The article reinforces
downplaying the scale of horror in the title by science-washing its
ruthlessness as an agricultural lifestyle choice.

~~~
bluedino
Could the Spanish have known at the time that they carried diseases that would
nearly wipe out the natives?

~~~
sprafa
How? Their understanding of disease was surely rudimentary?

~~~
narag
In the 1500s, nobody knew better.

