Examining Empires Term paper
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Not less than a week ago I was channel surfing on my television when Icame across your show on the history channel titled "Examining Empires".I found the show to be very informative and interesting due to the factthat I am learning of the same material in one of my college historycourses. Although the show was very well documented, I became disturbedwith the information that your so-called Latin American history expert,Ms. Ima Psycho distributed. Due to my opposition of the information thatMs. Psycho covered, and her lack of research on the subject, in thecourse of this letter I will inform you of what Ms. Psycho said thatcontrasts with what I have been taught in my history course thissemester. First of all, Ms. Psycho stated very clearly that as far as thepeasants in Peru were concerned, there was almost no difference betweenrule by the Inca Empire and rule by the Spanish colonizers. In heropinion this was because in each case the people were governed by animperial power to which they had to pay tribute in-kind and in laborservice. I disagree tremendously with Ms. Psycho on many accounts. First, in themanner of the labor service and the treatment of their workers, theIncas and Spanish differed immensely. According to Pedro Cieza de Leon,an early member of Spain's conquering armies, who documented thecomplexity of the Incas, stated "in short, it will be understood that asthese lords knew how to enforce service and the payment of tribute, sothey provided for the maintenance of the people, and took care that theyshould want nothing"(Cieza pg. 254). What Cieza was saying was that theInca rulers, though they may have been strict in enforcing service, theyprovided for the people and made sure that the people would never beneedy. In contrast to the Inca's the Spanish colonizers could care lessfor their workers and their needs. As stated by Irene Silverblatt inher chapter on "Women of the Peasantry", "no built in mechanismsexisted to ensure the well being of the laborer or to restrain theexploitation of nature". Spanish colonizers had a different concept ofwho could labor for them than the Incas also. "Under the Incas, peasantwomen, while not formally registered in tribute roles, did contribute tothe fulfillment of labor demands made by the rulers, but they did so inan economic system in which exaction's were tempered. Under Spanishlaw, native women were formally exempt from tribute; however, attemptsto moderate the exaction's made on the peasantry were disregarded bycolonial authorities" (Silverblatt, pg. 129). In other words, Incasused women for labor in an economic system, while the Spanish usedwomen not only illegally for labor purposes, but also for the purposesof gaining tribute and money. Ms. Psycho in her mind felt that it was not necessary to go into detailon just how horrible the Spanish were to their laborers, such as makingmen leave their families at night to work in the mines, while theSpanish colonials put the wives of the working men to work or evenraping them (Silverblatt pg.139). When the comparison of in-kind tributes and how the Inca and Spanishcollected these and who from, again both strategies contrast greatly. AsI cited earlier from Cieza, the Incas collected in-kind tributes fromthe laborers, but with the tribute, the Inca rulers used these andprovided for the maintenance of the people (Cieza, pg. 254). Thelaborers in which the Incas collected these tributes from was thehousehold, where all people in a family can help pay for what isobligated to be paid (Silverblatt, pg. 126). The Spanish also collectedin-kind tribute from their laborers, but instead of putting the moneyback into the good of the people, the goods and in-kind tribute weretaking by the Encomenderos and exchanged for their value on the Europeanmarket (Silverblatt, pg. 126). The people that the Spanish collected these in-kind tributes from was "all indigenous men of common originbetween the ages of 18 and 50, regardless of marital status"(Silverblatt, pg. 126). As you can see, Ms. Ima Psycho, misinformed all of your viewers abouthow close in comparison the Inca and Spanish rulers were in laborservice and in-kind tribute, when truly and historically they had nosimilarities whatsoever. Secondly, Ms. Psycho gave a horrible misinterpretation to your viewersthat European colonization was justified because Native Americans werebarbarians and their civilizations had attained no political or economicachievements that were impressive or worthy of European respect. Againyour professional, Ms. Psycho did not do enough study and research onif her insight was correct, which it was not. Bartalome de Las Casas, Spain's defender of the rights of NativeAmericans, defended the Native Americans in his famous debate againstSepulveda in 1550, clearly stating how civilized these so-calledbarbarians were politically and economically. Las Casas states thateven though Native Americans lack the art and use of writing, they hadno need for the skill of ruling and governing...
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