Spain's empire in the Americas

Conquest of central Mexico

After Columbus's voyages, Spanish conquistadors pushed inland from the Caribbean. Hernán Cortés's small force did not win alone: the siege of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Mexica (Aztec) people, depended on tens of thousands of Indigenous allies, especially the Tlaxcalans, who were enemies of the Mexica. A smallpox epidemic had already swept the city in 1520. Tenochtitlan fell in August 1521, and Spain built Mexico City on its ruins.

The Inca Empire

About ten years later, Francisco Pizarro led a small Spanish force into the Andes. The Inca Empire was huge, linked by a long road network along the mountains, but it was weakened by disease and a civil war. In November 1532 Pizarro captured the Inca ruler Atahualpa at Cajamarca, and in 1533 the Spanish took the capital, Cuzco. Inca resistance went on for decades; the last Inca state, at Vilcabamba, fell in 1572.

Potosí: silver and forced labor

In 1545 a mountain of silver ore was found at Potosí, in today's Bolivia. It became the largest silver mine then known in the Western world. Spain made Indigenous communities send workers to the mines under a labor draft called the mita. The work was dangerous, and many died; historians still debate how many.

Silver, Spain and the world

Fleets carried the silver to Spain. The Crown took a share, the royal fifth, and spent heavily on armies and European wars. Much of the silver flowed on into trade around the world, including to China by way of Manila. To rule this vast empire, the king named viceroys, his stand-ins: the Viceroyalty of New Spain, based in Mexico City (1535), and the Viceroyalty of Peru, based in Lima (1540s).

Good to know

• "First" means first among European colonial empires in the Americas; Portugal was close behind in Brazil.
• The conquest of Tenochtitlan depended on Indigenous allies, especially Tlaxcalans, and followed the 1520 smallpox epidemic.
• Pizarro captured Atahualpa during an Inca civil war; "seized his empire" simplifies decades of resistance that ended at Vilcabamba in 1572.
• Potosí's output peaked after the 1570s, when mercury amalgamation and the forced-labor mita were expanded.
• Death tolls among mita workers are debated, so the episode says "many died" rather than giving a number.
• Historians avoid saying Europeans "discovered" lands where millions of people already lived.

For AP US History learners

This is AP US History Period 1 (1491-1607): know that Spain built a large empire in the Americas through conquest, Indigenous alliances and forced labor systems, and that American silver changed the world economy.

Answer to the comment question

What was the silver mountain in today's Bolivia called? Potosí, also known as the Cerro Rico ("rich hill") of Potosí; either answer counts. Silver was found there in 1545, and it became the largest silver mine then known in the Western world, worked by Indigenous people forced to labor under the mita.