Big Picture Questions

  1. Discuss the economic policies of the Spanish empire in relation to their new conquests. What are the encomienda system and the repartimiento system? How do they differ from slavery as employed by the Portuguese in Brazil and the English in North America?
  2. Discuss the implications of the social hierarchies established by Europeans in the Americas and Oceania. What is the difference between those terms applied to race, mestizos, metis, zambos, and those terms applied to class, peninsulares, criollos?
  3. How successful was the Christian conversion of the indigenous populations in the Americas? What were the differences in the process of missionization between these two geographic areas?