Atlantic World - Governance

Governance

The Spanish conquistadores conquered the Aztec empire in present-day Mexico and the Inca empire in present-day Peru with ease, assisted by horses, guns, and above all by the devastating mortality inflicted by newly introduced diseases such as smallpox. To some extent the prior emergence of the Inca and Aztec empires as regional powers aided the transfer of governance to the Spanish, since these native empires had already established road systems, state bureaucracies and systems of taxation and intensive agriculture that were in some cases inherited wholesale by the Spanish. The early Spanish conquerors of these empires were also aided by political instability and internal conflict within the Aztec and Incan regimes, which they successfully exploited to their benefit.

One of the problems that most European governments faced in the Americas was how to exercise authority over vast expanses of territory. Spain, which colonized Mexico, Central America, and the greater part of South America, established a network of powerful viceroyalties to administer different regions of its New World holdings: the Viceroyalty of New Spain (1535), the Viceroyalty of Peru (1542), the Viceroyalty of New Granada (1717/1739), and the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata (1776). The result was strong government that became even stronger during the Bourbon reforms of the 18th century.

Britain approached the task of governing its New World territories in less centralized, manner, establishing about twenty distinct colonies in North America and the Caribbean from 1585 onward. Each British colony had its own governor and an assembly. The North American Thirteen Colonies developed a system of home rule and democratic self-government. Usually only property owners could vote but since so many free men owned property a majority could and did vote. It was the British threat against home rule, and its demand for control of taxation, that led to the American Revolution in the 1770s.