Two empires. A continent. Two eras. Two ways to act. Spaniards and British settled with a difference of more than a century in America and, moreover, in territories with very different characteristics. The empire of the Catholic Monarchs, eminently late medieval, had to face the great American empires and solve their lack of hands with miscegenation; the British, deep in the first phase of modernization of Europe, sent one of his persecuted religious minorities, the so-called Puritans, to fight with a less populated north and with fewer mineral resources to the naked eye. the hispanist Stanley G. Payne (Denton, Texas, 1934) warns in an interview with ABC History of the difficulty of comparing both empires without paying attention to the contexts of each one.
–What are the main differences between the Spanish and British models?
–The Spanish conquerors were that: conquerors, in their day a version of the medieval adventurers, made on the basis of volunteers and a private initiative; and then they gave way to a new society administered according to established Castilian norms, with certain unavoidable new readjustments. The English were more rational and structured in their organization, according to another era, with a high commercial component. They did not form kingdoms of the traditional type, but new autonomous and largely self-governing ‘colonies’, with a different economic orientation. Furthermore, the English colony formed a “settler society” which directly reproduced English society. Women were always an important part of the emigration, but it was not so in the Spanish, with the relative absence of women. That made the direct reproduction of a Spanish society impossible, and thus something totally new was created, a hybrid society of miscegenation.
“Imperialism in India was initiated and for a long time carried on by the East India Company, a private trading company notable for its rational, pragmatic and ‘modern’ structure”
–Why did Spain opt for miscegenation and mixture in its expansion around the world?
-In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries there was almost no alternative. The Spanish demographic decline of the XVII did not give any chance to improve either. In that first, somewhat primitive era, the massive emigration of women was difficult and normally discouraged. Then it has been said that the Spanish attitude towards miscegenation was more tolerant, which is true, but it is not true that the Spanish were not racist, because they were, but at the same time they inevitably mixed pragmatically. The third factor is that the indigenous population in the Spanish Empire was higher, and sometimes overwhelming in proportion to the Spanish, while in North America it was proportionally much smaller. In any case, the difference has been exaggerated. A certain proportion of the North American Indians have been absorbed into the “white” population, while on the reservations today the majority of the “Indian” population is mestizo.
Photography by Stanley Payne.
– Did England learn (facing the conquest of India) from its mistakes after the loss of the 13 Colonies?
-It seems so, although not completely. Two different aspects must be distinguished. The new empire from the end of the 18th century was Asian and then African, of a traditionally “imperial” type and not American-style “colonies”, except in Australia and New Zealand. In South Africa they entered into an atrocious conflict with the Dutch population at the time of the last Spanish campaign in Cuba, with initially similar characteristics. In India, on the other hand, imperialism was initiated and for a long time carried out by the East India Company, a private trading company notable for its rational, pragmatic and “modern” structure, that is, according to the new model pioneered by the Dutch. and English in the 17th century, very different from the Luso-Hispanic «conquerors».
–In the US, can the difference between these two models be seen by region?
–Since World War II there has been a growing trend in the US to a certain homogeneity, and thus regional differences are less than during most of the country’s history. However, some different traits remain. In Florida, for example, Miami is now said to be the “capital of Latin America”, but also Miami is part of a very dynamic state that is growing rapidly with a lot of immigration from all over, so that is only part of a complex whole .
–Is Florida the most Hispanic-American part of the country?
-The most “Hispanic American” state is not Texas or Florida, but New Mexico, not so much based on immigration but on the growth of its own native Hispanic population. There is a certain tendency to look for jobs in the bureaucratic state apparatus, something Hispanic-American. Likewise, the state with the largest Hispanic population is the giant, California, and there are people of Hispanic origin of all types and categories. However, the tendency is to form a kind of Hispanic “proletariat”, especially recent immigrants without professional training, in a state where life is expensive and taxes are very high. That’s almost the reverse of Florida.