Why The United States Became A Powerhouse After Colonialization While Central America Collapsed
Casey Chalk
Many years of self-government, a comparatively tighter and more united geographic landmass, and a civilization that largely shared a common European heritage gave the United States a far better chance of survival.
Four hundred years ago this year, Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro and 160 men departed the small Spanish community of Panama in search of a great and wealthy empire they had heard existed to the south. Although that particular expedition to Peru was largely a failure, Pizarro’s steadfast bravery alongside the so-called Los trece de la fama (the “famous 13”) was enough to gain royal support and inspire enough Spaniards to fund another voyage to Peru a few years later. Pizarro and a few hundred men would conquer the mighty Inca.
Without a doubt, Spanish conquistadors such as Pizarro’s army (and their successors in the ensuing centuries) created an impressive empire, one that eventually traversed thousands of miles from California to Tierra del Fuego, incorporating millions of people. Yet, compared to that of their British rivals to the north, it was a markedly different animal, one whose instabilities, dysfunction, and corruption eventually spelled its doom.
As Americans celebrate our own 250th anniversary, it’s worth contemplating with gratitude what differentiates the “American experiment” from what transpired to our south.
A Larger and Less Governable New World
One of the most dramatic differences between the British and Spanish colonial experiments was simply the sheer size of their New World holdings. Spanish claimed and administered holdings in the Americas — encompassing the Caribbean, Mexico, and what is now the southwestern United States, Central, and South America — were at least ten times larger than what was eventually the 13 colonies governed by the British.
Scholars Felipe Fernández-Armesto and Manuel Lucena Giraldo note in their book, How the Spanish Empire Was Built: A 400-Year History: “The most impressive feature of the Spanish monarchy — its enormous reach — was a source of weakness, for it spread tenuous along effectively indefensible frontiers and vulnerable routes, with resources thinly distributed.”
Thus, even though in total more Spaniards immigrated to Spanish America than did British subjects to the American colonies, the British were concentrated in a far tighter geographic area, with most arrivals arriving in a shorter amount of time. The vastness of the Spanish empire and the small number of actual Spaniards, of course, made their colonies far more difficult to govern. This was especially true given that some of those administrations, such as that in the Andes region, were quite remote, even from other Spanish holdings elsewhere in the Americas.
Moreover, while European diseases wreaked havoc across all indigenous populations, British North America lacked the densely populated urban centers or empires that existed under the rule of the Spanish. This meant that the British colonies from the very beginning were often composed of settlers who created communities of European immigrants.
The Spanish, in contrast, governed former Aztec and Incan empires that had millions of people. This had a direct effect on the character of the colonies in British- and Spanish-administered regions: While the British generally settled sparsely populated (or depopulated) areas, the Spanish ruled over large indigenous populations who lived effectively as second-class citizens, if not little more than slaves. Indeed, Fernández-Armesto and Giraldo note that the Roman Catholic Church often kept indigenous people busy building churches and other projects to shield them from the encomiendas.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Spanish had little familiarity with republican self-government. While both colonies were originally formed under the auspices of a European crown, the British had centuries of decentralized parliamentary government upon which to draw, while the Spanish were exclusively familiar with a traditional and stratified monarchical form of rule. Thus, while the English-speaking Americas formed self-governing communities that were politically and economically independent — permitted, in Edmund Burke’s famous phrase, by “wise and salutary neglect” — the Spanish colonists tended to act as lords of a kingly realm.