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Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar (also spelt Velásquez, 1465-1524) was a Spanish conquistador who conquered Cuba in 1511, became the island's first governor for the next decade, and sponsored expeditions of conquest directed at the American mainland...

The Council of the Indies (El Real y Supremo Consejo de las Indias) operated from 1524 to 1834 and was the supreme governing body of the Spanish Empire in the Americas and Spanish East Indies. Reporting directly to the monarch, the Council...

An audiencia began as a judicial institution in medieval Spain, but in the 16th century, it was applied as the highest form of local government in key cities of the Spanish Empire. An audiencia had a panel of judges made responsible for the...

In 1533 CE the Inca Empire was the largest in the world. It extended across western South America from Quito in the north to Santiago in the south. However, the lack of integration of conquered peoples into that empire, combined with a civil...

The Aztec empire flourished between c. 1345 and 1521 CE and dominated ancient Mesoamerica. This young and warlike nation was highly successful in spreading its reach and gaining fabulous wealth, but then all too quickly came the strange visitors...

The European colonization of the Americas was the process by which European settlers populated the regions of North, Central, South America, and the islands of the Caribbean. It is also recognized as the direct cause for the cultures of the...

Stephen Fuller Austin (1793-1836) has been known, since shortly after his death, as the "Father of Texas," as he was not only the first to lead Anglo-American settlers to the region and establish colonies but also endured the hardships of...

The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas (Tordesilhas) was an agreement between the monarchs of Spain and Portugal to divide the world between them into two spheres of influence. The imaginary dividing line ran down the centre of the Atlantic Ocean...

The Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1492 to c. 1580) is an account written in 1568 of the early Spanish colonization of Mesoamerica, specifically the conquest of the Aztec civilization in Mexico from 1519 to 1521 when Díaz...

The repartimiento system was a distribution of rights to Spanish colonialists and municipalities, which allowed them to extract forced but low-paid labour from local communities in conquered territories. Designed to replace the inefficient...