Four hundred years ago this year, Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro and 160 men departed the small Spanish community of Panama in search of a great and wealthy empire they had heard existed to the south. Although that particular expedition to Peru was largely a failure, Pizarro’s steadfast bravery alongside the so-called Los trece de la fama (the “famous 13”) was enough to gain royal support and inspire enough Spaniards to fund another voyage to Peru a few years later. Pizarro and a few hundred men would conquer the mighty Inca.
Without a doubt, Spanish conquistadors such as Pizarro’s army (and their successors in the ensuing centuries) created an impressive empire, one that eventually traversed thousands of miles from California to Tierra del Fuego, incorporating millions of people. Yet, compared to that of their British rivals to the north, it was a markedly different animal, one whose instabilities, dysfunction, and corruption eventually spelled its doom.
As Americans celebrate our own 250th anniversary, it’s worth contemplating with gratitude what differentiates the “American experiment” from what transpired to our south.
A Larger and Less Governable New World
One of the most dramatic differences between the British and Spanish colonial experiments was simply the sheer size of their New World holdings. Spanish claimed and administered holdings in the Americas — encompassing the Caribbean, Mexico, and what is now the southwestern United States, Central, and South America — were at least ten times larger than what was eventually the 13 colonies governed by the British.
Scholars Felipe Fernández-Armesto and Manuel Lucena Giraldo note in their book, How the Spanish Empire Was Built: A 400-Year History: “The most impressive feature of the Spanish monarchy — its enormous reach — was a source of weakness, for it spread tenuous along effectively indefensible frontiers and vulnerable routes, with resources thinly distributed.”
Thus, even though in total more Spaniards immigrated to Spanish America than did British subjects to the American colonies, the British were concentrated in a far tighter geographic area, with most arrivals arriving in a shorter amount of time. The vastness of the Spanish empire and the small number of actual Spaniards, of course, made their colonies far more difficult to govern. This was especially true given that some of those administrations, such as that in the Andes region, were quite remote, even from other Spanish holdings elsewhere in the Americas.
Moreover, while European diseases wreaked havoc across all indigenous populations, British North America lacked the densely populated urban centers or empires that existed under the rule of the Spanish. This meant that the British colonies from the very beginning were often composed of settlers who created communities of European immigrants.
The Spanish, in contrast, governed former Aztec and Incan empires that had millions of people. This had a direct effect on the character of the colonies in British- and Spanish-administered regions: While the British generally settled sparsely populated (or depopulated) areas, the Spanish ruled over large indigenous populations who lived effectively as second-class citizens, if not little more than slaves. Indeed, Fernández-Armesto and Giraldo note that the Roman Catholic Church often kept indigenous people busy building churches and other projects to shield them from the encomiendas.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Spanish had little familiarity with republican self-government. While both colonies were originally formed under the auspices of a European crown, the British had centuries of decentralized parliamentary government upon which to draw, while the Spanish were exclusively familiar with a traditional and stratified monarchical form of rule. Thus, while the English-speaking Americas formed self-governing communities that were politically and economically independent — permitted, in Edmund Burke’s famous phrase, by “wise and salutary neglect” — the Spanish colonists tended to act as lords of a kingly realm.
An Inherently Unstable Spanish Colonial Rule
All of this said, it is truly remarkable what the Spanish accomplished in their colonies given the geographic obstacles and far more developed indigenous civilizations. As Fernández-Armesto and Giraldo relate, the incredible engineering feats alone across the Spanish colonies often improved upon what had already been accomplished by native peoples. “The Spanish Empire of the beginning of the sixteenth century to the end of the nineteenth would not have functioned without the efforts of the engineers,” they write.
In Mexico City, the Spanish improved on the great Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan by building canals, cisterns, and ditches to curb regular flooding that swamped the city and its inhabitants. In South America, Spanish observers expressed admiration for the Andean peoples’ ingenuity, including roadworks through mountains and valleys which one Spaniard described as inspiring admiration similar to that of “Hannibal’s conquest of the Alps.”
Early on, the Spanish recognized the possibilities associated with a canal across the isthmus of Panama, although it would require modern (American) engineering to pull it off. The church was often at the forefront of construction projects, including bridges, roads, irrigation systems, and rope-walks. All of this was accomplished despite tremendous difficulties in identifying construction materials.
Nevertheless, both the geographic nature of the Spanish Empire and its exploitative character — with colonies viewed as little more than means to extract wealth to send back to Europe — meant that it was only a matter of time before the colonies would attempt to strike out on their own. Inspired by the American Revolution, Simón Bolívar and other revolutionaries eventually threw off the shackles of the Spanish Empire.
However, unlike the Founding Fathers, the Bolívarians were unable to keep their new government together, and the Spanish Empire soon devolved into more than a dozen new countries across Central and South America. Almost immediately, these fledgling nations embraced the same authoritarian qualities as the former Spanish regime.
Thank God for the Peculiarities of America
Fortunately, the American colonists did not suffer the same fate. Many years of self-government, a comparatively tighter and more united geographic landmass, and a civilization that largely shared a common European heritage gave the United States a far better chance of survival.
Despite the many differences between the colonies, they held together, both during the American Revolution and afterward, and labored together to form a “more perfect union” that would in time realize the vision of freedom articulated in the Declaration of Independence. They created a republican form of government that in its political genius and realism regarding the human condition has thus far weathered tempests both within and without.
Evaluating the Spanish empire, Fernández-Armesto and Giraldo observe: “But if one allows for the acceleration of change, it was no discreditable achievement to keep so vast and diverse an empire going for so long in the unpropitious circumstances of the modern world.” It’s undoubtedly true, and an achievement worthy of admiration. But as history has shown us, it was no United States of America.