raori921 OP t1_izdwm1v wrote on December 8, 2022 at 11:47 AM

Reply to comment by bangdazap in Why is the Spanish colonial empire often said/implied to be "less focused on trade" or "not prioritising trade" compared to other empires like the Dutch, British, Portuguese etc.? by raori921

Silver, too. I wonder how much they ultimately took out of their American colonies over the 300 years or so they were there.

In many ways the economic profile of Spanish rule, at least in the Americas, does seem to revolve much more on direct extraction than trading with local populations.

jandemor t1_izeelkd wrote on December 8, 2022 at 2:35 PM

The Philippines were never a colony of the Spanish Empire, nor was the Spanish a empire. All territories and citizens under the Spanish Catholic Monarchy were provinces of the same country ("españoles de ambos hemisferios"), with the same rights and duties, liberties and freedoms of Spanish-born Spaniards. The Philippines had the same status and was as much a colony as Granada, Castille, or Andalucia. Of all that direct extraction of resources (to put things into perspective, Peru extracted as much silver last year as the Spanish in 400 years), only 1/5 (the quinto real) would go to the Spanish Crown back in Spain (minus whatever sunk in the way), while 80% of anything stayed in the overseas provinces.

If you want to talk about trade, at the end of the 18th century, the UK sold their textiles in Mexico at 20x the price in England, and it was this cash that bank-rolled the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution would have never happened without the British trade with the Spanish provinces of the New World. Contraband (undeclared goods) made up to 90% of the trade.

elmonoenano t1_izf32j8 wrote on December 8, 2022 at 5:20 PM

It's important to remember that at this time there wasn't really an idea of citizenship in Spain. It was just starting to really form in places like England and the Netherlands. The model of governance was arranged more around the crown and its subjects. And subjects had groups within them. Aristocrats, military officers, missionaries, people in certain towns, peasants, non-Christians, non-Catholics, all had different statuses rights and duties in the Spanish system. Rights, responsibilities, and privileges weren't uniform anywhere. You could be a resident of one town and have the same status and profession as a resident of the next town over and have completely different tax burdens and feudal duties b/c your city or your guild had negotiated something different than the next town or guild has. They were always negotiations between the crown and the subjects.

So it's very true to that the Philippines or Mexico were provinces, but they were also colonies b/c that was type of grant of authority the King and Queen had given to the administrators, and the people in those colonies had different duties and rights both within the colony (Native born Spaniards having the most) and between their colony and the metropole.

jandemor t1_izipf0m wrote on December 9, 2022 at 12:01 PM

Thank you for your reply.

Citizenship wasn't developed anywhere in the world until the French revolution. I said "citizens" to use the modern term; before that, people were subjects (to a crown).

On this, the Leyes de Burgos (1512) clearly state: "los nativos son seres humanos libres y vasallos de la Corona Castellana" (natives are free human beings and subjects of the Castillian Crown), and as such had the same rights as Spanish-born Spaniards: to own property, free movement, right to a proper lodging, paid and dignified work, good health, to marry and to create a family, to nourish themselves, and even to keep their traditional indigenous customs, culture and languages.

I know rights and duties, taxes etc. changed even if you moved to the next town over (still does!), but your "fundamental" rights were the same for all Spaniards (indians and Spanish-born) in the whole realm of the Spanish (in 1512, Castillian) Crown. 300 years later, the first Spanish Constitution (1812) recognized citizenship for the first time in Spanish history, and granted Spanish citizenship to all "Spaniards in both hemispheres".