Empire and the colonial Americas

El imperio y la América colonial

1492–1808. From 1492 Castile, and then the Spanish monarchy, built an empire across the Americas and the Pacific.

What happened

From 1492 Castile, and then the Spanish monarchy, built an empire across the Americas and the Pacific. Conquest, epidemics and forced labour devastated Indigenous peoples, while Spanish, Indigenous and African people and cultures mixed in new societies. Silver from the Americas fed world trade, and Spanish writers and painters had their Golden Age. Spanish became the language of a continent, taking in words from Taíno, Nahuatl and Quechua on the way.

Within it

• The conquest (1492–1575)
• The viceroyalties (1535–1808)
• The first Bourbons (1700–1808)

Its events

1. 8 November 1519: Cortés meets Moctezuma
2. 13 August 1521: The fall of Tenochtitlan
3. December 1531: The Virgin of Guadalupe tradition
4. 1535: The Viceroyalty of New Spain is created
5. 20 November 1542: The New Laws of the Indies
6. 1555–1571: Friars write the first grammars of American languages
7. 1565–1815: The Manila galleon
8. c. 1568: Bernal Díaz writes his True History
9. March 1691: Sor Juana answers Sor Filotea
10. c. 1765–1788: The Bourbon reforms
11. 1767: Charles III expels the Jesuits