The Spanish conquest of the Americas in the 16th century was one of the most important and cataclysmic events in history. Spanish expeditions endured incredible hardships in order to open up the lands of the 'New World', and few stories in history can match these for drama and endurance. In Conquistadors, Michael Wood follows in the footsteps of some of the greatest of the Spanish adventurers travelling from the forests of Amazonia to Lake Titicaca, the deserts of North Mexico, the snowpeaks of the Andes and the heights of Machu Picchu. He experiences the epic journeys of Cortes, Pizarro, Orellana and Cabeza de Vaca, and explores the turbulent and terrifying events surrounding the Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires. Wood brings these stories to vivid life, highlighting both the heroic accomplishments and the complex moral legacy of the European invasion. Conquistadors is Michael Wood at his best - thoughtful, provocative and gripping history.
Conquistadors from Spanish or Portuguese conquistadores "conquerors"; Spanish: [koŋkistaˈðoɾes], Portuguese:) is a term used to refer to the soldiers and explorers of the Spanish Empire or the Portuguese Empire in a general sense. During the Age of Discovery, conquistadors sailed beyond Europe to the Americas, Oceania, Africa, and Asia, conquering territory and opening trade routes. They colonized much of the world for Spain and Portugal in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.
The Spanish conquistadores, who were primarily poor nobles from the impoverished west and south of Spain, began building up an American empire in the Caribbean, using islands such as Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Hispaniola as bases. Florida fell to Juan Ponce de León after 1513. From 1519 to 1521, Hernán Cortés waged a brutal campaign against the Aztec Empire, ruled by Moctezuma II. From the territories of the Aztec Empire conquistadors expanded Spanish rule to northern Central America and parts of what is now southern and western United States. Other conquistadors took over the Inca Empire after crossing the isthmus of Panama and sailing the Pacific to northern Peru. As Francisco Pizarro subdued the empire in a manner similar to Cortés other conquistadores used Peru as base for conquering much of Ecuador and Chile. In Colombia, Bolivia, and Argentina conquistadors from Peru linked up with other conquistadors arriving more directly from the Caribbean and Río de la Plata-Paraguay respectively. Conquistadors founded numerous cities many of them on locations with pre-existing pre-colonial settlements including the capitals of most Latin American countries.
Besides conquest Spanish conquistadors made significant explorations into the Amazon Jungle, Patagonia, the interior of North America, and the Pacific Ocean.
Conquest
Portugal established a route to China in the early 16th century, sending ships via the southern coast of Africa and founding numerous coastal enclaves along the route. Following the discovery in 1492 by Europeans of the New World with Christopher Columbus's first voyage there and the first circumnavigation of the world by Juan Sebastián Elcano in 1521 (both voyages promoted by the Spanish Crown of Castile), expeditions led by conquistadors in the 16th century established trading routes linking Europe with all these areas.[citation needed]
Human infections gained worldwide transmission vectors for the first time: from Africa and Eurasia to the Americas and vice versa. The spread of old-world diseases, including smallpox, flu and typhus, decimated the inhabitants of the New World.
In the 16th century perhaps 240,000 Europeans entered American ports. By the late 16th century gold and silver imports from America provided one-fifth of Spain's total budget.
Background
Hernando de Soto and Spanish conquistadors seeing the Mississippi River for the first time.
The conquistadors were professional warriors, using European tactics, firearms, and cavalry. Their units (compañia, companhia) would often specialize in forms of combat that required long periods of training that were too costly for informal groups. Their armies were mostly composed of Iberian and other European soldiers.
Native allied troops were largely infantry equipped with armament and armour that varied geographically. Some groups consisted of young men without military experience, Catholic clergy which helped with administrative duties, and soldiers with military training. These native forces often included African slaves and Native Americans. They not only fought in the battlefield but served as interpreters, informants, servants, teachers, physicians, and scribes. India Catalina and Malintzin were Native American women slaves who worked for the Spaniards.
Castilian law prohibited foreigners and non-Catholics from settling in the New World. However, not all conquistadors were Castilian. Many foreigners Hispanicised their names and/or converted to Catholicism to serve the Castilian Crown. For example, Ioánnis Fokás (known as Juan de Fuca) was a Castilian of Greek origin who discovered the strait that bears his name between Vancouver Island and Washington State in 1592. German-born Nikolaus Federmann, Hispanicised as Nicolás de Federmán, was a conquistador in Venezuela and Colombia. The Venetian Sebastiano Caboto was Sebastián Caboto, Georg von Speyer Hispanicised as Jorge de la Espira, Eusebio Francesco Chini Hispanicised as Eusebio Kino, Wenceslaus Linck was Wenceslao Linck, Ferdinand Konščak, was Fernando Consag, Amerigo Vespucci was Américo Vespucio, and the Portuguese Aleixo Garcia was known as Alejo García in the Castilian army.
The origin of many people in mixed expeditions was not always distinguished. Various occupations, such as sailors, fishermen, soldiers and nobles employed different languages (even from unrelated language groups), so that crew and settlers of Iberian empires recorded as Galicians from Spain were actually using Portuguese, Basque, Catalan, Italian and Languedoc languages, which were wrongly identified.
Castilian law banned Spanish women from travelling to America unless they were married and accompanied by a husband. Women who travelled thus include María de Escobar, María Estrada, Marina Vélez de Ortega, Marina de la Caballería, Francisca de Valenzuela, Catalina de Salazar. Some conquistadors married Native American women or had illegitimate children.
European young men enlisted in the army because it was one way out of poverty. Catholic priests instructed the soldiers in mathematics, writing, theology, Latin, Greek, and history, and wrote letters and official documents for them. King's army officers taught military arts. An uneducated young recruit could become a military leader, elected by their fellow professional soldiers, perhaps based on merit. Others were born into hidalgo families, and as such they were members of the Spanish nobility with some studies but without economic resources. Even some rich nobility families' members became soldiers or missionaries, but mostly not the firstborn heirs.
The two most famous conquistadors were Hernán Cortés who conquered the Aztec Empire and Francisco Pizarro who led the conquest of the Incan Empire. They were second cousins born in Extremadura, where many of the Spanish conquerors were born. Catholic religious orders that participated and supported the exploration, evangelizing and pacifying, were mostly Dominicans, Carmelites, Franciscans and Jesuits, for example Francis Xavier, Bartolomé de Las Casas, Eusebio Kino, Juan de Palafox y Mendoza or Gaspar da Cruz. In 1536, Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas went to Oaxaca to participate in a series of discussions and debates among the Bishops of the Dominican and Franciscan orders. The two orders had very different approaches to the conversion of the Indians. The Franciscans used a method of mass conversion, sometimes baptizing many thousands of Indians in a day. This method was championed by prominent Franciscans such as Toribio de Benavente.
The conquistadors took many different roles, including religious leader, harem keeper, King or Emperor, deserter and Native American warrior. Caramuru was a Portuguese settler in the Tupinambá Indians. Gonzalo Guerrero was a Mayan war leader for Nachan can, Lord of Chactemal. Gerónimo de Aguilar, who had taken holy orders in his native Spain was captured by Mayan lords too, and later was a soldier with Hernán Cortés. Francisco Pizarro had children with more than 40 women. The chroniclers Pedro Cieza de León, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Diego Durán, Juan de Castellanos and friar Pedro Simón wrote about the Americas.
After Mexico fell, Hernán Cortés's enemies, Bishop Fonseca, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, Diego Columbus and Francisco Garay were mentioned in the Cortés' fourth letter to the King in which he describes himself as the victim of a conspiracy.
The division of the booty produced bloody conflicts, such as the one between Pizarro and De Almagro. After present-day Peruvian territories fell to Spain, Francisco Pizarro dispatched El Adelantado, Diego de Almagro, before they became enemies to the Inca Empire's northern city of Quito to claim it. Their fellow conquistador Sebastián de Belalcázar, who had gone forth without Pizarro's approval, had already reached Quito. The arrival of Pedro de Alvarado from the lands known today as Mexico in search of Inca gold further complicated the situation for De Almagro and Belalcázar. De Alvarado left South America in exchange for monetary compensation from Pizarro. De Almagro was executed in 1538, by Hernándo Pizarro's orders. In 1541 Lima, supporters of Diego Almagro II assassinated Francisco Pizarro. In 1546, De Belalcázar ordered the execution of Jorge Robledo, who governed a neighbouring province in yet another land-related vendetta. De Belalcázar was tried in absentia, convicted and condemned for killing Robledo and other offenses pertaining to his involvement in the wars between armies of conquistadors. Pedro de Ursúa was killed by his subordinate Lope de Aguirre who crowned himself king while searching for El Dorado. In 1544, Lope de Aguirre and Melchor Verdugo (a converso Jew) were at the side of Peru's first viceroy Blasco Núñez Vela, who had arrived from Spain with orders to implement the New Laws and suppress the encomiendas. Gonzalo Pizarro, another brother of Francisco Pizarro, rose in revolt, killed viceroy Blasco Núñez Vela and most of his Spanish army in the battle in 1546, and Gonzalo attempted to have himself crowned king.
The Emperor commissioned bishop Pedro de la Gasca to restore the peace, naming him president of the Audiencia and providing him with unlimited authority to punish and pardon the rebels. Gasca repealed the New Laws, the issue around which the rebellion had been organized. Gasca convinced Pedro de Valdivia, explorer of Chile, Alonso de Alvarado another searcher for El Dorado, and others that if he were unsuccessful, a royal fleet of 40 ships and 15,000 men was preparing to sail from Seville in June.
History
Hernán Cortés and his counsellor, the Indian woman La Malinche meet Moctezuma II in Tenochtitlan, 8 November 1519. Facsimile (c. 1890) of Lienzo de Tlaxcala.
Infante Dom Henry the Navigator of Portugal, son of King João I, became the main sponsor of exploration travels. In 1415, Portugal conquered Ceuta, its first overseas colony.
Throughout the 15th century, Portuguese explorers sailed the coast of Africa, establishing trading posts for tradable commodities such as firearms, spices, silver, gold, and slaves, in a worldwide route to Japan, crossing Africa, India, China and Korea. In 1434 the first consignment of slaves was brought to Lisbon; slave trading was the most profitable branch of Portuguese commerce until the Indian subcontinent was reached.
The Birth of the Spanish Kingdom
After his father's death in 1479, Ferdinand II of Aragón unified Castile with Aragón, creating the Kingdom of Spain. He later tried to incorporate by marriage the kingdom of Portugal. Ferdinand notably supported Columbus's first voyage that launched the conquistadors into action.
Treaties
The 1492 discovery of the West Indies by Christopher Columbus rendered desirable a delimitation of the Spanish and Portuguese spheres of exploration. Thus dividing the world into two exploration and colonizing areas seemed appropriate. This was accomplished by the Treaty of Tordesillas (7 June 1494) which modified the delimitation authorized by Pope Alexander VI in two bulls issued on 4 May 1493. The treaty gave to Portugal all lands which might be discovered east of a meridian drawn from the Arctic Pole to the Antarctic, at a distance of 370 leagues (1,800 km) west of Cape Verde. Spain received the lands west of this line.
The known means of measuring longitude were so inexact that the line of demarcation could not in practice be determined, subjecting the treaty to diverse interpretations. Both the Portuguese claim to Brazil and the Spanish claim to the Moluccas (see East Indies#History) depended on the treaty. It was particularly valuable to the Portuguese as a recognition of their new-found,[clarification needed] particularly when, in 1497–1499, Vasco da Gama completed the voyage to India.
Later, when Spain established a route to the Indies from the west, Portugal arranged a second treaty, the Treaty of Zaragoza.
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