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Spanish Conquest
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By the 15th century, Eurasians had a much longer history of densely populated, economically specialized, politically centralized, commercial interacting, and competing societies. Fundamentally, Europeans had steel weapons, horses, wheel technology, and sea transport technology. The low-energy technology of the "New World" civilizations was no match for the high-energy technology of the Europeans with their infectious diseases. What attitudes did the Europeans bring with them to justify this invasion? |
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| Answer: ethnocentricity: whenever one ethnic group, in this case Western Europeans, believed (or still believes) that they were superior to native peoples and their cultures. Just for the fun of it: examine Diego Rivera's murals (1929-1935) in the National Palace, Mexico City, which show the Indian cultures, Spanish conquest, and Mexican independence. | |
| Optional reading: 1) Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997. 2) Henry Kamen, Empire: How Spain became a World Power, 1492-1763. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. | |
Central America:
Spanish Conquest 
The Spanish conquest of the Americas was brutal.
Examine
a 
Indian cultures were very old when
the Europeans invaded
their homelands. The Mayan
civilization, for example, was 2,000 years
old. The
Classic
period of Mayan culture was from 300 to 900
A.D. Indian agriculture long sustained some of the world's largest cities,
The Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan dazzled Hernan Cortes in 1519 -- it was
bigger than Paris, Europe's greatest metropolis at the time. The Spaniards
were amazed at the wide streets, ornately carved buildings, and markets.
Thousands of men kept the streets clean, while in Europe the streets were
filled with sewage and dead animals. James Wilson says in The Earth Shall
Weep, "the Western Hemisphere was large, richer, and more populous than
Europe."
