[This chapter will write about the "entrusted guardianship system" implemented by the Spanish in the colonies. The purpose is to contrast with certain systems in Beijing in the future. Friends who are not interested are advised to skip it. 】
On the Portuguese Galenic sailing ship "Grandura", the Northern Expeditionary Fleet held a rather modern negotiation with the Philippine Governor-General.
The main commanders of both sides held talks on various matters of the war on the Portuguese ship. In addition to the expedition fleet commander Gao Zhenxin and the Philippine Governor Santiago de Vera, the participants also included Zhu Yingfeng, the honorable representative of the Ming Dynasty. As well as the missionary representatives of the five major Spanish orders in the Philippines: Augustinians, Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, and Augustinians: Priest Santos de Gutierrez from the Society of Jesus.
In addition, the captain of the Portuguese "Grandura" Pedro de Di Fradish served as a third-party representative and served as a witness to the negotiations. Because of language exchange and other relations, both parties to the negotiation also brought several attachés and interpreters, but the Beiyang Expeditionary Force Army Division did not send any personnel.
On the long oval table, Gao Zhenxin sat calmly, listening to the interpreter relay a piece of nonsense made by Governor de Vera, and then said calmly: "Are you willing to readjust the tax rate? Unfortunately, it is too late."
He paused slightly and continued: "Earlier, you occupied Luzon and other places. In essence, this was an invasion of our vassal country of the Ming Dynasty. Due to the long distance, Luzon did not have time to report the situation to our court. General matters, so Ming Dynasty did not interfere too much in this matter..."
Governor de Vera over there could actually understand a lot of Chinese. He immediately started to defend himself when he heard the words, but he seemed to be able to only understand, and he still spoke in French. The interpreter had no choice but to follow up immediately and said: "Your Excellency the Governor said: Dear Commander Gao Zhenxin, the war between the Kingdom of Luzon and us has nothing to do with the Ming Empire, and the kingdom cannot be counted as destroyed, although the royal family of the kingdom was almost destroyed. , but we have been actively looking for other blood relatives of the royal family...
Currently, the administrative system we implement in the Philippines or Luzon is the 'entrusted guardianship system', which means that we still recognize the existence of the Kingdom of Luzon. In this regard, we believe that it is unreasonable for Your Excellency the Commander to launch a war against us on the grounds that a vassal country has been invaded. "
Gao Zhenxin didn't know what the so-called "entrusted guardianship system" was for a while, so he pondered a little and said: "I request to adjourn the meeting. I need to know some information about your so-called 'entrusted guardianship system' from my attachés."
Governor de Vera immediately said: "There is no need to adjourn the meeting. I will be happy to explain this system to you personally."
"No need." Gao Zhenxin couldn't believe him at all, and of course he wouldn't listen to his explanation. He waved his hand and said, "We have information about this, so I don't need you to intervene." After saying that, he stood up and led people back to the place prepared by the Portuguese. lounge.
Then, the attaché sent by the Nanyang Fleet to help them understand the situation in Luzon explained to him the entrusted guardianship system.
The "entrusted guardianship system" implemented by Legazpi, the colonist of the Kingdom of Castile, in the conquered areas of the Philippines was actually directly copied from the Americas. This system has long been widely implemented in the Americas, and it can be used in later generations. Notorious" to describe.
This system actually began to emerge as early as when Columbus discovered America. When Columbus made his first westward expedition in 1492, the frankness and generosity of the American Indians aroused the greed of the Spanish. Columbus and his associates vividly demonstrated racial discrimination. When they saw the Indians, they felt nothing in their hearts. Apart from the concept of "master and slave", there is no concept of any equal relationship.
Although Columbus was polite to the Indian chiefs who received him on the surface, he did not respect the Indians in his heart. On the one hand, he enthusiastically made friends with the Indians and gave them gifts, but on the other hand, he thought about how to enslave these friendly Indians.
Therefore, in the "Logbook" written to the Spanish kings (referring to the then Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon), Columbus clearly wrote that he intended to enslave the weak and kind-hearted people. Indians:
"Your Majesty may be sure that this island and all the rest belong to your Majesty as much as Castile. Nothing is needed here but a colony, and you can direct them to do what you will. Everything. Because I led these few people on the boat to visit all the islands here without encountering obstacles.
I have seen that I only sent three crew members ashore, and countless Indians there just fled in all directions, and no one dared to do anything wrong to these crew members. They had no weapons, no power to defend themselves, and they were so timid that a thousand men could not stand against three men. It follows that they are fit to obey orders, fit to work under compulsion, fit to sow seeds, and do whatever else we need to do. "
In addition, Columbus also strongly advocated the weakness of the Indians in many letters to the Spanish court, saying that as long as the Indians were simply trained, they could become the best source of labor for the colonies:
"I know that they (Indians) are a nation that can accept liberation relatively well. It is a wonder that they are so friendly to us. They do not carry weapons and do not know what the weapons are for. Because I showed them to them, they Because of their ignorance, they grabbed the edge of the knife and cut their own hands. They had no iron tools.
They are generally quite tall and good-looking, with strong bodies. I believed at first, and I still believe, that people coming to the island from the mainland could handle them, and that they would make good servants and excellent journeymen. "
In fact, the Spanish idea of enslaving Indians did not arise out of thin air. European society had already had the phenomenon and policy of enslaving others long before the discovery of the Americas. The Spaniards' concept of master-slave and racial relations with Indians were based on the Portuguese's concern for enslaving black Africans and the Spanish's enslavement of the Canary Islands in the mid-15th century.
At that time, most Europeans believed in the concept of innocence of enslaving other people, and European society was very tolerant of this. Therefore, neither the Spaniards nor other Europeans who came to colonize the Americas felt that there was anything wrong with enslaving Indians. .
However, according to the Bible, Christians do not have the right to enslave others. Therefore, a Spanish priest who was contemporary with Columbus also criticized Columbus's enslavement of Indians in harsh words:
"Please note here that this innocent, friendly and noble demeanor of the Indians, their modesty, and their lack of arms and self-defense, made the Spaniards treat them with insolence and superciliousness, and used the best they could find. The harshest and hardest work was forced upon them, leaving them oppressed and facing destruction.
Columbus exaggerated himself with words, and what he imagined here and what he said was the beginning of the cruel treatment he later subjected the Indians to. "
However, in order to plunder profits, most of the Spaniards ignored the Bible and the priest's advice. The Spaniards, led by Columbus, began to use force to massacre the Indians on a large scale and capture the Indians as slaves. Even Queen Isabella's repeated orders asking the Spanish colonists to treat the Indians well had no effect at all. The day when Columbus "discovered" America became the beginning of the Indians' suffering.
In 1494 AD, in order to suppress the resistance of the Indians and plunder wealth, Columbus led the army to conduct a careful search on Hispaniola (Haiti), attack any Indian village that dared to resist the Spanish colonial government, and plundered wantonly Indian property, and about 1,500 Indians were captured back to the colony as slaves.
In order to obtain funds to develop the colony and prove the future of the colony, Columbus also specially selected 500 "best men and best women" and transported them to the slave market in Spain for sale, starting the infamous slave trade in the Americas.
In addition, Columbus also brought the remaining more than a thousand Indian slaves to the square, allowing all Spaniards to pick and choose as many as they wanted, in order to promote the development of the colony and bribe the Spanish colonists.
But because there were not many Spanish colonists at that time, and many of them had enslaved some Indians before, there were still about 400 old and weak Indians left with no one to choose from. At this time, the Spaniards spared them and told the remaining Indians to get away, ending this tragedy.
Colonial officials at the time recorded that some Indian women even gave up their children in order to escape the clutches of Spanish colonists as quickly as possible:
"They (Indian women) were afraid of being caught again. In order to better escape from us, they threw their babies on the ground and began to escape like desperate people. Some people escaped like this by crossing mountains and ridges, crossing rivers and wading through water. Flee to a place seven or eight days away from Isabella Colony.”
After the Spanish colonists obtained Indian slaves, they would let them cultivate the land, serve themselves, or perform various arduous tasks, such as gold panning, mining, etc.
In the process, a large number of Indians died in pain. In order to make up for the labor shortage in the colonies, the Spanish colonists continued to capture or force Indians into slavery as supplements or for sale. Therefore, many Indian villages were razed to the ground, and a large number of Indians were razed to the ground. Indians were forced into slavery.
Columbus, who had tasted the benefits of enslaving Indians, officially implemented a cruel tribute tax system on the Indians in 1495 in order to obtain gold and prove the prospects of colonizing America to the Spanish court.
Columbus announced that all Indians on the island were under the rule of the Spanish colonial government, and every adult Indian must pay a certain amount of gold or cotton to the colonial government as a condition for not being killed. This system of forcing Indians to pay tribute of gold and property was the tribute tax system, which was the main method used by Spanish colonists to collect gold at that time!
The tribute tax system was very cruel. According to regulations, every Indian over 14 years old had to pay gold sand or gold nuggets that could fill an "Eagle Bell" to the colonial government every three months, while the Indian chief had to pay every two He paid a gourd filled with gold to the colonial government every month.
If there are no gold deposits on the land where the Indians live, they must pay 25 pounds of cotton yarn or cloth every three months as a substitute for gold, otherwise they will be severely punished.
When the colonial government weighed the taxes paid by the Indians and ensured that they were qualified, they would give the Indians who paid the tribute a bronze medal with a seal and let them wear it around their necks to prevent new extortion or taxation. Personnel were executed.
This tribute tax system is very unreasonable. The tax standards set are too high and it is difficult for the Indians to complete them on time. The Spanish used the gold and cotton cloth they initially collected from the Indians as the source of planning tax standards. However, the problem was that these gold and cotton cloth were accumulated by the Indians over several generations, so they appeared to be rich in wealth.
When the property accumulated for generations was handed over to the colonial government, the Indians could no longer get more gold and cotton. They could only go to rivers or streams to pan for gold or weave cotton day and night. This obviously led to a series of disasters and revolts that forced the Spanish to lower their standards by half, but this remained an impossible task.
Although the Spanish used a tribute tax system on the Indians in the American colonies, due to the lack of gold and other property in the area, the Spanish colonial government spent several years killing a large number of Indians but failed to obtain a large amount of gold.
Not only did it fail to earn back all the money spent on colonizing America, it could not even guarantee the stability of the most basic supplies of supplies to the colonies. This led many Spanish colonists to gather and launch multiple rebellions to resist the rule of Columbus and the colonial government, demanding More benefits and powers.
Eventually, as the number and scale of rebellions increased, the colonial government headed by Columbus had to meet their demands in order to regain the support of the rebels. In 1498, a colonial system called the allotment system was officially established in the Americas. The system gave each Spanish colonist many benefits and powers.
This system can generally be regarded as the origin and predecessor of the "entrusted guardianship system".
However, a very important contradiction arose at this time: the tribute tax system and distribution system implemented by the Spanish in the early Americas were actually implemented privately by the colonial governments and colonists, and were an unofficial system. Without any communication with the Spanish court, they secretly divided up the land and subjects that originally belonged to the Spanish king, and turned the Indians into slaves.
In this process, the Spanish court not only did not benefit from it, but the colonists' measures to enslave the Indians also affected the Spanish court's tax revenue-because according to Spanish law, only free people were obliged to pay annual tribute.
Therefore, there were differences and contradictions between the Spanish court, headed by the Spanish king and members of the royal family, and the American colonists and colonial governments. Although both exploited Indians, their specific methods and methods of exploitation were very different. .
The Spanish court wanted to use some peaceful method to turn the Indians into their direct subjects, just like ordinary Spaniards, and then exploit and rule the Indians through political and economic means.
The colonists wanted to turn the Indians into their own private property, and then enslave, trade and kill them at will, or plunder all the fruits of the Indians' labor. They did not want to share the benefits of the Indians' labor output with the Spanish court.
In its attitude towards the Indians, the Spanish court advocated gentle treatment of the Indians. Especially in order to promote Catholicism and develop more Christians, the Spanish court often ordered the colonists to treat the Indians well and guide them to convert to Catholicism and become believers in God and subjects of the Spanish King.
For example, the Spanish kings sternly emphasized in their edict to Columbus on May 29, 1493: "The primary purpose of the exploration voyage is to change the beliefs of the Indians. The explorers must treat the Indians with extreme kindness and love, and promote Friendly relations between the Indians and the Spaniards, and we will punish anyone who mistreats the Indians.”
But the Spanish colonists had no motivation to change the Indians' beliefs. They were only interested in squeezing and exploiting the fruits of Indian labor. Moreover, if the Indians converted to Catholicism and became Christians, then according to the doctrine that Christians cannot enslave Christians and that everyone is equal before God, the Spanish colonists could no longer exploit the Indians wantonly.
Therefore, for a long time, the number of Indians who converted to Catholicism was very small: it was not that the Indians refused to believe, but that the Spanish colonists did not bother to promote it at all.
This triggered policy changes such as the Spanish kings and their successors continuously sending determined missionaries to the colonies to preach. Priest Santos who appeared in the "Manila Peace Talks" today is a representative of the "five major sects". From the fact that he can participate in such a level of talks, it can also be seen that the influence of the church on the colonies has become much greater at this time.
All in all, after the tug-of-war between the Spanish court, the colonists, and the American Indians, the Spanish colonists and the colonial government finally had to change and compromise on the existing policy of enslaving the Indians, so as to promote the new colonial system-"entrusted guardianship" The production and application of "system".
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