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King Philip revived the banned encomienda for Menendez
Source: Situado and Sabana #82
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PRIVATE INVESTMENT Philip II's resurrection of two feudal institutions, the adelantamiento and the encomienda, reflected the financial straits of the Spanish Crown. An adelantado was a kind of royal surrogate or champion, a lord of the marches. An adelantamiento was the royal concession of economic and seigneurial privileges to a rich man who would undertake at his own expense to pacify a specified territory on the frontier within a stated period of time. Philip II made extensive use of the institution, often delegating the selection of adelantados to his viceroys. The encomienda recalled the European manorial system. In the Spanish American society that the conquistadores hoped to establish, they would be knights and the Indians would be serfs. AN10 The king's champion rewarded his men by assigning them the Indian tribute of a certain locality, in exchange for which they were supposed to give the Indians protection and Christian indoctrination. This trusteeship arrangement, which gave rude soldiers virtual carte blanche to abuse the natives and defy the king, was no sooner in place than the emperor began to dismantle it. The New Laws of 1542-1543 prohibited the granting of further encomiendas, made existing grants nonhereditary, and forbade the "servicio personal" which encomenderos had been exacting from "their" Indians. (Bushnell SS)
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