The colonization of America by Spanish colonists was one of the most important pages in the nation’s history. The colonial population, with abundant land and natural resources, was soon more than reproducing itself; and constant immigration, now increasing from non-British parts of Europe, added further impetus to its growth. By 1776 the population of the thirteen British colonies had risen to 2,600,000. Nothing comparable to this phenomenal growth occurred in the empires of other powers. A further attraction of the British colonies was that they were self-governing and largely free from the interference or regulation of the home government. This was exceptional, for most European states with colonies regarded them merely as provinces of the mother country beyond the seas and therefore subject to a central direction as close, if not closer, than that of the homeland. The pattern had been set by the Spaniards, who governed the whole of their empire from a council of the Indies sitting in Madrid. The colonial regional viceroyalties had little freedom of action, serving merely as channels for the transmission of orders from Spain to the corregidores who represented the king at the local level. Yet, in practice, this system was slow, cumbersome, corrupt, and vitiated by the venality of offices at all levels. This was one reason why the reforming ministers of Charles III began to introduce, as in Spain itself, a system of intendants modeled on that of France. Women played a crucial role in the colonization of America and the development of society. The home government held that this act was not a measure of taxation at all but rather one of trade regulation. As such, it fell into a sphere in which only the central government of the empire was competent to make policy. This was axiomatic among all the European powers with colonies. However varied the motives of those who emigrated, and however unconcerned they and their descendants became about the affairs of Europe, all governments viewed colonies as primarily designed to enrich the mother country. If they had no economic value, they had no value at all. Their trade must therefore be controlled and regulated so as to promote the home country’s interests. Here again, Spain set the example. Theoretically, all trade with her American colonies had always been channeled through the agency of the ‘House of Trade’ in Seville, transferred in 1717 to Cadiz. From here, a small syndicate of merchants shipping goods to and from selected ports in America. As far as possible American exports were concentrated in two great annual convoys sailing for Spain. But by the end of the seventeenth century, this system was falling apart. Convoys sailed irregularly, and in many years not at all; the number of ships was also much diminished. Interlopers from Holland, France, and England traded directly with most Spanish American ports in relative freedom, and smuggling accounted for perhaps two-thirds of the total trade of Spanish America by 1700. At the Peace of Utrecht, Spain attempted to fob off foreign interlopers by allowing the British and the Dutch to send a ship a year each of goods to Central America. The most striking and spectacular feature of towns was the poverty of most of their inhabitants. Being more concentrated than in the co