Hierarchy (Essay Sample)

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A hierarchy (from Greek: hierarchies, 'rule of a high priest,' from hierarchies, 'president of holy rituals,') is a collection of things (names, values, categories, and so on) that are represented as "above," "below," or "at the same level as" each other. Hierarchy is a fundamental concept in areas as diverse as philosophy, architecture, design, mathematics, computer science, organizational theory, systems theory, systematic biology, and the social sciences (especially political philosophy).
A hierarchy can connect parts directly or indirectly, both vertically and diagonally. The only direct links in a hierarchical system are to one's immediate superior or one's subordinates, albeit a system that is largely hierarchical may also include alternate hierarchies.
INTRODUCTION
Except for Brazil, the Philippines, and Guam, Spain reigned over the whole Americas, including Florida, California, the Midwest and Southwest United States, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and all of South America. Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortez founded the first Spanish colony in the Americas after defeating the Aztecs in 1521. Since it was named New Spain and was ruled by a Viceroy, it was known as the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Other viceroyalties included Peru, Ro de la Plata, and New Grenada.
The society in the Spanish colonies was extremely stratified. Even among Spaniards in these colonies, there was a clear distinction between Spaniards born in Europe and those born in the Americas. They belonged to society's upper crust.
Locals and Africans had the lowest status in the Spanish possessions. They were not permitted to carry weapons or ride horses, both of which were considered status symbols. Spaniards, on the other hand, had mixed-race children by intermarrying with indigenous peoples and African slaves. Castes is a racial classification system for mixed races. Mestizos were born to a Native American mother and a White European father. Mulatos were Africans and Europeans' offspring. These racially mixed people were barred from official posts, the priesthood, and universities. Mestizos had a greater social status than Mulatos, and they enjoyed benefits that Mulatos did not, such as not having to pay tribute.
As a result, the order came into being.
HISTORICAL EXAMPLES
Spain established the viceroyalty of New Spain in 1530 to consolidate its dominance over the Aztecs, Mayas, and other Mesoamerican indigenous populations while limiting the growth of powerful local fiefdoms among the conquistador class after a decade of conquest, exploration, and administrative chaos. This move was timed to coincide with the rising Spanish monarchy's efforts to unite the Iberian kingdoms and weaken the power of the nobles and city authority in the capital. During the Habsburg period (from 1688 to 1700), the viceroyalty of Spain expanded to include all of today's Mexico, the Caribbean, most of Central America, the Philippines, and the western, southwestern, and southeastern United States in fits and starts.
In theory, the complex bureaucratic hierarchy radiated.
Officially, however, the viceroy and other colonial officials were responsible for ensuring that the locals were treated decently; in many cases, they did so by enacting a vast body of protective legislation for these "wards of the state." Lower authorities, whose existence depended on taking resources from the indigenous population, were more inclined to disobey the law, particularly in areas remote from Mexico City. Even the formation of a new administrative authority, the Provincials Internas, in 1776 did little to put the viceroyalty's northern areas under effective control.
In the Catholic Church, where the civil bureaucracy had a parallel, spiritual conquest by Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Jesuits played a critical role.
The early church's humanistic endeavors to give education and social amenities gradually gave place to less zealous, more avaricious priests who collaborated with corregidores to rob the indigenous people of their riches. Some clergy worked as go-betweens, protecting their congregations out of altruism or mutual interest. Scholars debate the nature and extent of conversion, as well as the degree to which religious traditions were integrated, but Catholicism had substantially altered indigenous rites and beliefs by the end of the colonial period.
Beginning in the 1540s, when they could no longer extract labor and tribute from encomienda, Spaniards turned to agriculture, then to silver mining in Zacatecas and other regions north of Mexico City. Agriculture was the most important economic activity during the colonial period.
Strict mercantilist restrictions governed silver mining and transatlantic trade; while Spain never achieved monopolistic control, New Spain's silver was the lifeblood of the Habsburgs' imperial ambitions. New Spain's silver shipments, on the other hand, began to decline in the seventeenth century. Scholars are still debating the nature of this seventeenth-century "depression," but most assume that silver output did not drop significantly, leaving the mystery of what happened to the leftover bullion unsolved. Was it employed to power domestic, intercolonial, or Pacific trade, or did it fall into the hands of the wealthy? Regardless, it had little impact on New Spain's agricultural economy, and the control triangle of hacendados (hacienda owners), miners, and merchants remained in place.
The Bourbons, a French royal line who gained the Spanish crown in the eighteenth century, set their sights on a more lucrative prize. They became increasingly determined to extract more revenue from New Spain by increasing mining production, developing a more efficient tax collecting bureaucracy, and seizing a share of the Catholic Church's massive financial and real estate holdings. These measures were partially successful in directing income to the city, but mercantilist trade and manufacturing organizations hampered their effectiveness. In truth, metropolitan Spain never moved beyond its primarily rural economy and tax base.
There was no significant capitalist revolution or change in domestic production relations in New Spain's rural economy. Demand on the market grew as well.
The crown replied to resistance with militarization and more harsh responses, upsetting the balance or "moral economy" that had often been achieved through Habsburg rule's give-and-take. Even the nobility was disgruntled by the royal acquisition of their lands and the imposition of peninsular officials to replace Creoles. Spain's increasing engagement and spending in European conflicts at the end of the eighteenth century severely weakened Bourbon legitimacy in the eyes of the colony. Creole nationalists praised their unique natural history and mixed ethnicity in poems celebrating the Aztec past and the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's own saint.
The temporary expulsion of the Bourbon king by Napoléon Bonaparte (1769–1821) in 1808 set off a complex chain of events in New Spain. Thousands of lower-class peasants and workers joined a popular rebellion against peninsulares and for the abolishment of tribute that began in 1810. Elites suppressed the rebellion, which included peninsulares as well as Creoles who were alarmed by the prospect of a serious social revolution. Creoles chose an independent Mexico in 1821 only after deciding that they could keep their power and property without causing social turmoil. Their domination, however, did not put a stop to rural ethnic and peasant communities' traditional opposition to the state on a local level.
Spain had the good fortune of having one of the earliest European empires, but the bad fate of getting it before the modern centralized state. Slow and difficult communication, a lack of central military and bureaucratic control, and a lack of modern powerful or compelling techniques of developing legitimacy and patriotic notions all hampered imperial governance. The Habsburg government was forced to adapt to the situation, which it did reluctantly. The monarch issued a flurry of laws, more like exhortations than prescriptions, outlining the crown's id