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In-Depth Information
Catholic, remained under Spanish control.
During the 17th century they would be
known as the Spanish Netherlands. At the
beginning of the 18th century (after the
W
AR
OF
THE
S
PANISH
S
UCCESSION
) they
would be ceded by Spain and designated as
the Austrian Netherlands until caught up in
the political changes brought on by the
French Revolution. It was not until 1830
that the present-day nation-state of Bel-
gium at last came into existence out of what
had been the Spanish Netherlands.
legend of the “Seven Cities of Cíbola,” these
stories inspired the expeditions of F
RAN
-
CISCO
V
ÁZQUEZ
DE
C
ORONADO
(1540) and
J
UAN
DE
O
ÑATE
(1598). The latter explorer
began Spanish settlement of the region, and
its principal town, Santa Fe, was founded in
1609-10. Disturbed by periodic Amerindian
uprisings and boundary disputes with
T
EXAS
, which lay to the east, this Spanish
colony was surrendered to the independent
republic of M
EXICO
in 1821 and ceded by
the Mexicans to the United States in 1848.
New Granada (Nueva Granada)
This Spanish viceroyalty was created in
1718 by detaching the territory encom-
passing present-day C
OLOMBIA
and P
AN
-
AMA
from the Viceroyalty of P
ERU
. The
name had been applied to this area of
northwestern South America since the ini-
tial Spanish occupation in the 1530s. The
structural organization of the new viceroy-
alty was completed in 1740, when what is
present-day V
ENEZUELA
and E
CUADOR
were
included within the jurisdiction of New
Granada. This viceroyalty was lost to Span-
ish rule in 1819, after which its compo-
nents passed through a series of internal
conflicts and an eventual evolution into
independent republics.
New Spain (Nueva España)
With the “discovery” and first phase of
occupation of the Americas by the Spanish
explorers and conquerors (1492-1540), the
political and administrative organization of
these new realms became a necessity. There
was little serious concern over the question
of ownership, and the assumed right of
conquest made these lands and their peo-
ples subjects of the Spanish monarchs. This
concept of royal acquisition and sovereignty
in the so-called Nuevo Mundo (New World)
led to the initial organization of these royal
dominions into two kingdoms that were
regarded as parallel to existing Iberian king-
doms. The lands of the Castilian and Ara-
gonese sovereigns were referred to in
official documents as “these kingdoms,”
and the new realms abroad were described
as “those kingdoms.” In the absence of the
sovereign in “those kingdoms,” they were
to be governed by viceroys who acted in
place of the absentee monarch. Initially
there were two of these viceregal entities.
The first in regard to discovery and settle-
ment was Nueva España (New Spain). It
encompassed all of the Spanish claims north
of M
EXICO
, Mexico itself (with the capital of
New Mexico (Nuevo México)
This northward extension of N
EW
S
PAIN
included a vast area exceeding the present
boundaries of the state of New Mexico in
the United States (which itself covers a total
of 121,000 square miles). First explored in
1539, Nuevo México contained villages of
the Zuni tribe, which were erroneously
identified as great cities. Conflated with the
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