Castile and Portugal divvy up the globe along lines of latitude. With papal agreement, Castile's half encompasses most of Central and South America, Portugal's includes Brazil. The treaty allows each to colonize without interference from the other.
African slaves are first imported because disease decimates native people. Spanish attempts to exploit Taíno for labor are unsuccessful. Slave imports to the Caribbean grow over time, becoming key in slave-triangle with the U.S. in later centuries.
Spanish settlements follow in Jamaica a year later. In 1511, Diego Velázquez begins the conquest of Cuba as a base to explore and then conquer the mainland.
Martin Luther seeks to reform the Catholic Church by posting 95 theses on a church door in Wittenberg, Germany. His doctrines, along with others, lead to the creation of new Protestant churches across Northern Europe, emphasizing individual responsibility for salvation and rejecting the authority of the Pope.
The war of conquest lasts two years (1519-1521). Smallpox, starvation and military assault by Hernán Cortés and his indigenous allies eventually bring the Aztec capital city to its knees. On its ruins, a Spanish colony is founded.
Following are the Dominicans in 1526 and the Augustinians in 1533. In Peru, the Dominicans arrive before the others, in 1534, with the Franciscans in 1546, and the Augustinians in 1551. The mission of all three orders is to convert native peoples to Christianity.
Manco Inka besieges Cuzco, taking refuge in Vilcabamba and Antisuyu, temporally restoring a "neo-Inca" state. Spanish capture Vilcabamba, the last stronghold, in 1572.
Pope Paul III's bull, Sublimis Deus, declares the Indians "truly men" and thus capable of becoming Christians. Most importantly, it prohibits Indian slavery.
Spain publishes laws prohibiting the enslavement of natives in the Americas and limiting the duration of encomiendas, royal grants of Indian labor. Encomenderos threaten to revolt and the crown refrains from enforcing all the laws.
The richest source of silver in the Americas, the "Cerro Rico" of Potosí, in the viceroyalty of Perú, is discovered. Silver soon becomes the engine driving New World economies.
Royal decrees lead to the founding of universities in both Lima and Mexico City, the capital cities of Spain's colonies in the Americas. Primary and secondary schools already exist, many run by the mendicant orders to educate and convert native peoples.
Convened in 1545 by Catholic leaders to reform the Church in the face of the rise of Protestantism, the Council decrees widespread changes in the way Catholicism is practiced and disseminated.
Spanish Philippines, established in 1565, is the main conduit of American silver into China in return for trade goods like porcelain, lacquer ware, and silk. Trade with Asia burgeons; Manila and Acapulco become gateways to Asian wealth.
New World peoples lack natural immunities to Old World diseases, and are decimated by waves of epidemics. Typhus strikes in 1546, influenza in 1558, and later smallpox. Thousands die in New Spain in the 1570s; disease runs rampant in the Andes from 1585 to 1591.
Spanish soldiers and friars push north above the Rio Grande. Their settlement becomes the capital of the region and years later, during in the Pueblo Revolt, the site of Spanish retrenchment.
Armed by the Jesuits, the Guaraní of Paraguay successfully resist being made into chattel. The Guaraní will remain among the most independent and politically powerful indigenous groups through independence.
Ming dynasty falls and major overseas market for American silver dissolves. Profits to be made with silver fall, as Chinese goods are no longer so easily available.
Hostilities break out at mines of Laicocota. Friction increases between Basque settlers, Andalusian émigré;s and the Creoles who own the most lucrative mines in the region. War threatens entire mining belt from Chucuito to Cuzco. Only in 1668 does the situation calm.
Four hundred English loot the major Spanish American port connecting the Pacific and Atlantic, one of many lucrative European raids on vulnerable Spanish American ports. By 1670 Spain recognizes English presence in the Caribbean.
A daughter of Spanish emigrants and a native of Lima, Santa Rosa (1586-1617) is the first American saint and named the patroness of the Indies by the Catholic Church.
Pueblo Indians oust the Spanish and hold them at bay until 1693. Their revolt is one of the few indigenous successes, albeit temporary, at throwing off the yoke of Spanish rule.
The mines require great numbers of African slaves, spawn growth of nearby towns, and new international trade. Within 30 years, diamonds will be discovered, increasing Brazil's mineral wealth and demand for African labor.
After a failed harvest brings exorbitant maize prices, crowds made mostly of Indians and mestizos storm the center of Mexico City to protest Spanish domination, looting shops and setting fire to the Viceregal Palace.
Philip V begins massive and much needed reform of the Spanish government in an attempt at greater state centralization and more efficient bureaucracy. Many measures, however, are injurious to the American colonies and lead to Creole disaffection with the royal government.
An elaborate new shrine is dedicated in Mexico City to this dark-skinned Virgin Mary, who is believed to have appeared to the Indian Juan Diego in 1531. She will be named patroness of New Spain in 1746.
The Spanish Crown sells exclusive rights to import slaves into Spanish-American ports, a traffic of about 3,500 slaves a year. Slaves are the backbone of the labor force in plantations and many haciendas.
An outgrowth of Bourbon reforms, this new administrative district is carved out of the northern reaches of the Viceroyalty of Perú, combining Sta. Fe de Bogotá, Quito, and coastal Venezuela.
Juan José de Eguiara y Eguren founds a publishing house to print the Bibliotheca mexicana in 1755, an account of the works written by Creole authors since the founding of New Spain.
British held the city-America's most populous port-for a year before ceding it back to Spain at the end of the Seven Years War. The seizure gives rise to new fortifications and increased military presence in the Spanish Caribbean.
The Bourbon government expels the order from Peru and New Spain. The effort to bolster royal power extinguishes Jesuit influence in Spanish America and releases their holdings of land, art, and architecture to the crown.
The United States rejects British rule and creates a new government based on Enlightenment ideals of self-governance. It will provide a model for the revolutionary leaders of France and, later, of Spanish America.
Crown dismantles protectionist policies. Trade between New Spain and Peru made legal, monopoly licenses for slave trading abolished and Cádiz port monopoly ended. Merchants gain greater access to goods, ports, and markets.
José Gabriel Condorcanque, a Peruvian cacique, takes the name of the last Inka ruler, Tupac Amaru, and rallies local Indian peasantry. The specter of class warfare terrifies Creole elite, and the revolt is crushed.
Hereditary monarchs deposed and republic set up. The Revolution and its rhetoric will stir many Creoles in Spanish America and feed their quest for independence.
In Saint-Domingue, Toussaint-L'Ouverture leads the first successful slave revolt in New World. It affects slaves, slaveholders, politicians and intellectuals across Europe and the Americas.
Napoleon sells Louisiana to the United States for $15 million. This sale will decisively shift relations of trade and power between Spanish America and the U.S., especially in New Mexico, Texas, and New Spain.
After a century of Bourbon rule, Spain's royal family is forced into exile. Ferdinand will be restored to the throne in 1814. Creole allegiance to Spain, tested by decades of misrule, wanes.
Violent attacks leave 2000 Creoles and Spaniards dead and reveal the extent of dissatisfaction among the tens of thousands of poor and middle-class who join the uprising. Hidalgo is ultimately caught and executed.
The cabildo of Caracas, composed of Creoles, refuses to accept the rule of French usurpers in Madrid, and declares itself a junta governing in the stead of Ferdinand VII. Civil war ensues among Venezuela's cities, but the long struggle towards independence has begun.
Simón Bolívar's eloquent letter, written while in exile in Jamaica, establishes his intellectual leadership of the independence movement. Upon his return, he will quickly become the "maximum caudillo" in the war.
Compelled by Iturbide's broad platform on religion, independence, and union, Mexicans, both civilians and military, withdraw their support from Spain's government and it collapses.
The last royalist stronghold in Spanish America is "liberated" when General Antonio José de Sucre Alcalá decisively defeats crown supporters in Ayacucho.
