“They [the Spaniards] attempt to establish their power by converting the native peoples and using their labor to extract wealth, keeping them in a state of vassalage under the Catholic Church and the Crown. Conversely, our nation's design in these parts of America is to send out industrious families who will clear the forest, cultivate the land with their own hands or with servants, and live apart from the natives, whom we do not seek to convert or civilize, but rather to remove from our borders as we expand our plantations.”
— Adapted from an English promotional tract on colonization, c. 1650
Which of the following differences between Spanish and British colonization models in North America during the seventeenth century is most directly reflected in the contrast described in the excerpt?
- Spain integrated native populations into a highly stratified social and economic system based on coerced labor, whereas Britain established settler colonies that largely excluded Native Americans and relied on European immigrants for labor.Answer
- BSpain focused on granting private ownership of large tracts of land to conquistadors without royal oversight of native labor, while Britain utilized the headright system to guarantee the economic autonomy of native populations.
- CSpain relied solely on peaceful religious missions to extract wealth, while the British Chesapeake and New England colonies developed identical family-centered, egalitarian economies based on mixed farming.
- DSpain utilized temporary indentured contracts to build its agricultural empire, while British colonies relied exclusively on hereditary chattel slavery as their primary labor force from their inception.