...discovery, Spain got a religious justification fro conquest and an army of seasoned soldiers, named conquistadores. Also, rulers in Spain developed efficient techniques for controlling new colonies. The conquistadores left a trail of destruction by attacking native villages and killed or captured the inhabitant since they preferred seeking gold and slaves to creating permanent settlements. In 1519, some Spanish soldiers landed on the coast of Mexico. Three years later, these Spanish soldier conquered Aztec empire. The three factors of Spanish victory were technological advantages, division within the Aztec empire, and disease. Later, some other Spanish soldiers conquered a richer empire, Inca empire. By 1550, Spain’s New World empire, which stretched from the Caribbean through Mexico to Peru, was administered from Spain by the Council of the Indies. The council enacted laws for the empire and supervised an elaborate bureaucracy to maintain political control and extract wealth from the land and its people. Then, two expedition went to north America to find gold and silver but they did not find any gold and silver. So Spain stopped to extend its empire and just maintained two precarious footholds in north of Mexico. By a large number of gold and silver flowing into Spain, it became the richest and most powerful state in Europe. However, these American treasure undermined Spanish predominance. Many leading merchants who refused to become Christian was expelled from Spain. The remaining...
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...After reading about The Conquest, I definitely believe there is such thing as barbarism. The definition of barbarism most likely differs from person to person depending on one’s beliefs. Barbarism to me is defined as uncivilized and evil acts of murder without any mercy. The two readings on The Conquest, The Destruction of the Indies and The Conquest of New Spain, both describe barbaric behaviors by the way the authors speak about the actions taken by both the Spanish and the Aztecs. Each culture participated in and practiced multiple events that can be considered barbaric. The Spanish ran havoc through each new conquest as seen in de Las Casas’s, A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies, he explained how barbaric the Spanish were...
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...bishop of Chiapa, and Juan Gines de Sepulveda a humanist, were made into a debate on whether or not what the Europeans did when exploring the New World were morally correct. The Indians suffered greatly in the hands of the Europeans, who believed they were doing them a huge favor. The Black Legend happened during the late 15th through the early 16th centuries it became a huge movement in attempt to dominate Europe by conquering lands. Lands in Mexico and areas near the Yucatan are known as New Spain which became the focal point the Spain conquest. Being the first country to spread their colonies throughout the New World, Spain was made fun of by neighboring countries like England and France. However this type of issue was largely...
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...They say a picture is worth a thousand words; but what if I told you what you know about the Spanish conquest based on these images are not entirely true. The artwork associated with the spanish conquest is surrounded by triumph and destruction. The image of thousands of soldiers rushing onto defenseless natives is one such aspects. The image of Conquistadors being wealthy and scholarly men is another untrue aspect. We’ll take a journey into the misconceptions associated with the Spanish Conquest. Background: The Spanish Conquest began in 1519, due to the Spanish Empire’s wanting to expand their empire. Years prior in 1492 the Spanish crown committed itself in the removal of Muslims from the Iberian peninsula, and the institutionalization...
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...Pressure on the Mestiza/Indigenous Women of Colonial Latin America Colonial times in Latin America were tough for both mestizas/indigenous and Spanish women. Latin America’s status of indigenous women changed in terms of their positions in the hierarchy of society, labor roles, and their marriage responsibilities and their own freedoms. The Spanish women began to impose several changes in order to accustom the indigenous women to their level in order to make the “New Spain” a reality. During early conquest, mestiza women, especially those of noble classes were accustomed to be married off as soon as their fathers had an idea of who they wanted to be allied with and to move up in hierarchy. As Susan Socolow said, “Indeed, chiefs offered their sisters and daughters to Spanish conquistadors, continuing the pre-Columbian pattern of using women to appease the powerful and ally with them.” Reigning Spanish conquistadors or other tribal leaders sought to establish alliances, so women were in other words seen as objects to benefit them. Spanish women at the time of colonization were rare, but for instance, Juan Jaramillo was one of the early conquistadors who married. As said, “Her father, don Leonel de Cervantes was a comendador of the Order of Santiago…” The few rare Spanish women available during the colonization state tended to be noble daughters of comendadors, who were married off quickly to other rising nobles, which is similar to how mestiza women were given off, but different...
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...1. Which of the following states did not become a colonial power in the period 1450–1750? a. Italy b. Russia c. Spain d. France FEEDBACK: Italy was not a unified state in the period 1450–1750 and thus did not have colonies. (See the chapter introduction in your textbook.) 2. Which of the following statements most accurately describes Europe’s global position in 1450? a. Europe had climbed to relative equality in Eurasian commerce. b. Europe had little trade contact with Africa or Asia. c. Europe remained marginal in Eurasian commerce. d. Europe had come to dominate Eurasian commerce. FEEDBACK: The determination of European elites to progress beyond their marginal position in Eurasian commerce was a main incentive for European exploration after 1450. (See section “The European Advantage” in your textbook.) 3. What was the single most important factor that aided the European conquest of the Americas? a. Gunpowder b. Disease c. Horses d. Superior organization FEEDBACK: The peoples of the Americas had no immunity to European disease and up to 90 percent of the population died after contact with the Europeans, greatly easing the process of conquest. (See section “The Great Dying” in your textbook.) 4. Which of the following is an old-world crop that was soon established in Europe’s American colonies? a. Tobacco b. Potatoes c. Corn d. Rice FEEDBACK: Rice is a Eurasian product that soon became an agricultural staple in many locations in the...
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...people did not believe in ownership of land. Some eastern woodlands people used their women to do the farming. Woodland Indians used the resources of their environment intelligently. The entire population was involved in gathering, growing, and hunting for food, although work was generally divided along gender lines. Men were hunters, fishers, warriors, and toolmakers, while women managed the household, made mats, pots, baskets and clothing, and preserved hides. Women were also the botanists and farmers. In between and around the rest of their duties, they raised the children. Just as in our society today, most Woodland Indian women were working mothers. Generally speaking, men and women in Eastern Woodland Indian society did not spend much of the day together, men did not expect to control women, and both genders were respected for the contributions they made to the sustenance of the entire community. What was the Treaty of Tordisillas and what does this have to do with the Pope? Treaty of Tordesillas , 1494, agreement signed at Tordesillas, Spain, by which Spain and Portugal divided the non-Christian world into two zones of influence. In principle the treaty followed the papal bull issued in 1493 by Pope Alexander VI, which fixed the demarcation line along a circle passing 100 leagues W of the Cape Verde Islands and through the two poles. This division gave the entire New World to Spain and Africa and India to Portugal. However, the Treaty of Tordesillas shifted the demarcation...
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...significance of the leadership of Cortes for the conquest of Mexico and its immediate consequences’ Cortes is a man who historians have studied for a long time and there is a vast amount of evidence about him and the conquest that he led to Southern America. The evidence clearly indicates that Cortes was the driving force behind the conquest of Mexico. In 1519 Hernan Cortes and his men landed in Tenochtitlan in search of power and wealth. Word quickly spread to the king, Montezuma. He heard that men had arrived from a faraway land with ‘sticks that spit fire and deer as big as houses’ had landed on the coast. This panicked the Aztec people as they believed in a fatalistic religion that predicted that Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god of war, would return in that exact year to punish them. This set up an instant tension between the two oppositions that meant Cortes would have to lead his men if they were going to conquer this land in the name of God. It’s obvious that Cortes was a very confident and cunning man, as he disobeyed the rulings of the Governor of Cuba and went unbeknownst to the current ruler of Spain, Charles V. This put a huge amount of pressure on Cortes because he either succeeded in his campaign for power or he would be sentenced to death. Leading a group of five hundred men into a strange and unknown land was never going to be a simple task but the characteristics of Cortes’ leadership were a driving force in the conquest of Mexico. This becomes evident from the examination...
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...The Jewish people settled in Spain for a long period of time, with significant proof from as early as 300 C.E., though likely earlier, before they were expelled in 1492. The unpredictable mass expulsion of this seemingly well integrated assiduous people was simply stimulated by the king’s foolish greed accompanied by the intensified nationalism felt by those who had just been inspired by the power of the Roman Catholic Church through the First Crusade against the Muslim Moors. It was the religious zeal of not only the Church and the Queen but also of the masses that really caused the expulsion of the Jewish people from Spain. Of course, the official justification for exiling the Jews was because they were counterproductive to the Church’s ultimate goal – they attempted to prevent the Marranos from severing their ties with Judaism. Anti-Semitism began soon after the beginning of Christianity with the inherent hatred toward Jews simply because they have differing theological and religious practices are not Christian, not because they are specifically Jewish. Anti-Judaism began with the crucifixion of Christ – it became commonly believed that the Jewish people were responsible for the crucifixion which caused initial discriminatory writings against the Jews as a people, as well as societal misunderstanding and distrust. The Jewish people were exposed to severe persecution under Visigoth control in the Mediterranean and more Christian control in Spain. It is therefore not surprising...
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...CHAPTER 1 Encounter I. Patterns of Indigenous Life 1. Geography and environment prompted Indigenous Americans to adopt different forms of social organization 1. Nonsedentary peoples 1. Mobile communities 2. Hunters and gatherers 3. Relatively simple social organization 4. Examples include 1. Chichimecas of northern Mexico 2. Pampas of Argentine grasslands 1. Semisedentary peoples 1. Often lived in forests 2. Relied on some agriculture as well as hunting 3. Built villages, but moved frequently 4. Employed “shifting cultivation” agriculture to take advantage of thin forest soil 5. Examples include Tupí people of Brazil 1. Fully sedentary 1. Permanent settlements 2. Often on high plateaus, rather than forests or grasslands 3. Stability allowed for complex societies 4. Employed irrigation to sustain agricultural base 5. Sometimes developed into city-states or empires 6. Highly stratified societies 7. Examples 1. Aztec empire 2. Maya empire 3. Inca empire 1. Empires of the Americas 1. Aztec empire 1. Aztec refers to the empire, not the people 2. In modern-day Mexico 3. Ruled by the Mexica people ...
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...REVIEW MATERIALS: Conceptual considerations: Discuss paradoxes and four orientations with which John Chasteen characterizes the changing foci of U.S. thinking on Latin America from the early 20th century to the present. •Racial/Cultural and Environmental Determinism: An image by Americans which suggested that Latin Americans are “Hot-Blooded Latins” with too much “non-white” blood, and do not have the self discipline needed in order to make a more democratic, stable society. There were Catholics, lacking a protestant work ethic. Americans also pictured Latin Americans to be lazy individuals. •Modernization Theory: Once the previous idea was settled, it came to the reality that the Latin American countries had to go through modernization, such as the United States, and their feeble network on which their society rested upon was that being criticized. •Dependency Theory: Students were sure that these two previous explanations were merely methods to blame the victims of abuse. They believed that Latin American economies stood in a dependent position relative to the world’s industrial powers. Therefore other nations took their overpowering stand, and forestalled Latin America’s industrialization. “Economic dependency” is why the nation did not follow the path it was supposed to follow. •Social Constructionism: The way race, gender, class, and national identities are “constructed” in people’s minds. Discuss Michel Rolph Trouillot’s theory of historical narratives ...
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...Julius Caesar is known as one of the greatest war tactions in history. His battlefield tactics are still used in modern day warfare. Had it not been for his narcissism, his accomplishments would have been even greater. Augustus Caesar, Julius’ nephew and adoptive son, succeeded his uncle as the new Emperor of Rome. Throughout this essay, I will discuss the achievements of Julius Caesar, the achievements of Augusts, and the qualities of both their personalities. Julius Caesar is known for his many conquests in ancient Roman history. It was an intrical part in making the Roman Empire as vast as it was between 58-50 BC. As a young aristocrat, Julius Caesar went to Greece to perfect his public speaking skills and his knowledge of philosophy (Starr, page 75). In 63 BC he secured election to the august post of “pontifex maximus,” which made him chief in the Roman religious affairs (Caesar, page 4). In 61 BC, after one year of being praetor, Julius became governor of a Spanish province. In 60 BC he returned from Spain with exceptional military experience and decided he wanted to be consul, and as a result, Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey formed the first Triumvirate, which basically means they were the authority in the civilization. The triumvirate ruled for Caesar to be one of the consuls for the following year, 59 BC (Starr, page 79). After one year as consul, in Caesar appointed himself as governor of Illyricum and Cisalpine Gaul for...
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...Competing Interests in the New Land Tension and conflict were a normal part of everyday life between the early settlers and the Native Americans. Several authors emerged during this time, and their personal accounts incorporate critical details necessary to understand the social and cultural differences that hindered peaceful negotiations between the settlers and the Natives. This paper will examine some of those tensions and the resulting conflicts as many countries maneuvered to gain a foothold on new or existing interests in the new land. European cultural exchange with North America stretched back to Leif Ericsson’s arrival at Newfoundland around the year 1000 (Perkins 2). However, it would take an additional five-hundred years before...
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...Tasha Kittle History 11-25-11 The Age of Exploration During the fifteenth and the sixteenth century the states of Europe began their modern exploration of the world with a series of sea voyages. These explorations increased European knowledge of the wider world, particularly in-relation to sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas. These explorations were frequently connected to conquest and missionary work, as the states of Europe attempted to increase their influence, both in political and religious terms, throughout the world. Through their explorations the Europeans also gained control of the spice trade. This accomplishment reduced the price of spices tremendously for the Europeans.With the lands they "discovered" they found new resources and a new market to sell their goods as well. Europe's conquest and colonization of North and South America and the Caribbean islands from the fifteenth century onward created an insatiable demand for African laborers, who were deemed more fit to work in the tropical conditions of the New World. The numbers of slaves imported across the Atlantic Ocean steadily increased, from approximately 5,000 slaves a year in the sixteenth century to over 100,000 slaves a year by the end of the eighteenth century. Evolving political circumstances and trade alliances in Africa led to shifts in the geographic origins of slaves throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Slaves were generally the unfortunate victims of territorial expansion by...
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...the Northern America Spanish empire were the communities where European colonist formulated a multicultural society of mixing different ‘races’ (Divine, page 83). The Spaniards movement back in the sixteenth century hardly affected the demographic growth on American territory. The Iberian Peninsula had experienced a tremendous migration, since the conquest of the territories from the south and the expulsion of the occupation of the empire....
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