What were the bases of the economic and social system of the Spanish empire?

Answer 1

• The economic foundation of colonial rule lay in commercial agriculture and in silver and gold mining based on forced labor and wage labor by indigenous populations.

• On this economic base, a distinctive social order grew up, replicating something of the Spanish class hierarchy while accommodating the racially and culturally different Indians and Africans as well as growing numbers of racially mixed people. Spaniards, mestizos, and Indians represented the major social groups in the colonial lands of what had been the Inca and Aztec empires, while African slaves and freemen were far less numerous than elsewhere in the Americas. The society was dominated by Europeans, but with a rather more fluid and culturally blended society than in the racially rigid colonies of North America. Mestizos

in particular found some social movement possible.