AM 214: Imperial Rule and Governance

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AM 214 Imperial Rule and Governance
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Order and Hierarchy

• Tension about proper type of society that should
  be established in the New World
• A) recreation of European societies in the New
  World
• B) these societies to be put under the control of
  European empires
• C) societies that actually developed in the New
  World diverged from European practice

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Authority and the Periphery

• Authority flowed not from the centre out towards
  the periphery but was constructed out of an
  ongoing series of negotiations, of reciprocal
  bargaining, between the centre and colonies
• Result conformity to traditional values of
  order, hierarchy but a willingness to break out
  of old values and subvert them

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John Winthrop
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• John Winthrop in all times, some must be rich,
  some high and eminent in power and dignity
  others mean and in subjection
• A Modell of Christian Charity (1629)

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Hernando Pizarro
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• Hernando Pizarro they were saying amongst
  themselves that soldiers without horses counted
  for little when it came to the distribution of
  land but he gave them his word that no such
  thought had ever crossed his mind, because good
  soldiers are not to be begrudged by their horses,
  but by the valour of their persons. Therefore,
  whoever showed himself brave would be rewarded in
  conformity with his service for not to possess
  horses was a matter of fortune, and no
  disparagement of their persons.

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Basis of Rule

• Importance of gentility
• Sir Thomas Smith a gentleman is someone who
  professeth liberal sciences and to be short who
  can live idly and without manual labour

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Composite monarchies

• A series of different realms and territories with
  their own distinct traditions and forms of
  government that are subject to one and the same
  monarch
• Mark Greengrass Europes political structure
  (ca. 1600) was still dominated by a multiplicity
  of regional political entities, just under 500 in
  all, from city states to the Holy Roman Empire

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Spain as a composite monarchy

• J.H. Elliott Spain consisted of a variety of
  kingdoms almost all of which owed allegiance to
  the same ruler as a result of either dynastic
  accident or dynastic design.

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Differences between empires

• Spain neither a consolidated or a very well
  integrated state
• Portugal long a unified kingdom with
  centralising monarchs, John II and Manuel I
• England diverse set of ethnicities and a model
  of understatization
• France built upon the principle of
  incorporation. Large standing officialdom with a
  large standing army

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Factors affecting colonial political development

• 1) limited resources of European states
• 2) distance. Adam Smith the European colonies in
  America were considerably more remote from the
  seat of government than the most distant
  provinces of the greatest empires which had ever
  been known before
• 3) Economic orientation of the colonising process
• 4) the desire everywhere in the colonies to
  recreate Europe in the Americas

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• Private agents of colonisation
• Virginia Company Royal African Company East
  India Company
• Adelantados donatorios, proprietors, patrons,
  seigneurs

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Maintaining Rule Spanish America

• Spain was the European nation with the most
  effective control over their colonies
• Discovery of silver and gold
• Spanish empire in America a medieval construct
  Edmundo OGorman Spanish colonisation is
  animated by a medieval spirit whatever it
  contains that is modern is a blemish in it
• Reconquista, encomendias, repartimentos, cabildo,
  policias, haciendas

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Maintaining Rule British empire

• More control in the peripheries
• Colonists insistence on enjoyment of all English
  laws as English subjects
• Importance of negotiation and government by
  consent
• Aim of government emulation of French and
  especially Spanish modes of colonial government