Cortes Colombus Essay
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At the beginning of the fifteenth century, the world was a quite small place for Europeans. While they knew about China and Southern Africa, their worldview was still focused on Europe and the Mediterranean. Within 200 years, Europe would be almost all over the world with settlement on various continents. By 1700, most of the coastline of the Americas would be under the domination of Europeans. Meanwhile, with the European conquest of the Nuvus Mondus -the New World- Europe also discovered and revealed a darker side of itself in the age of exploration.
The Portuguese all throughout the 16th century built a monopoly in the spice trade from the east by dominating the trade routes around the continent of Africa. Spain, on the other hand, began thinking of ways to get around this monopoly by developing a western route to the eastern countries. The Spanish were especially well prepared by history to conquer, occupy, populate and exploit new lands and assimilate new people. " With Portugal dominating the African route to India, Queen Isabelle of Castile was persuaded to take an interest in a western route by a Genoese adventures, Christopher Columbus." Columbus was in his forty-first year. He had lived 9 years in Spain, where he was trading sugar and was making maps and marine charts. During this period, he made many sea voyages that conceived him later in his enterprise of discovery. Finding no acceptance of it in Portugal, he had come to Spain in 1485.
Like all well-informed people of this day, Columbus also believed that the world was round. But Columbus also believed that the world was smaller than was imagined in general and he managed to convince Isabelle that a western expedition would be a short trip. He was, of course, completely mistaken; " he misjudged the size of globe by 25% and the distance of the journey by 400%." As a matter of fact, Columbus and his men would have starved or died, but fortunately for Columbus America did get in the way. " On 12 October he landed in the Bahamas, on an island he named San Salvador." He had encountered a Mundus Nuvus, a New World. His discovery marked the beginning of the age of exploration.
What were the real reasons behind this decision of discovering a new land? Undoubtedly, the discovery of the American continent was almost entirely about one and only thing: money. Columbus first mission to America was to bring gold or something valuable to bring back to Spain. Besides the aim of finding a new route for the spice trade, Spain wanted to expand his territory in order to find and exploit new resources of income. Those were the primary reasons for which Columbus decided to sail. On the other hand, there were also the personal reasons of Columbus. First of all, he was authorized to have 10% of all removable assets of the newly discovered lands, including gold, silver and other precious stones. Secondly, Columbus was specifically granted the powers as admiral, viceroy and governor; the trade therein was to be a crown monopoly under his control. Columbus' dreams were about to come true.
Columbus was incontestably a courageous and honest sailor who made possible the settlement of a new world. But there is certainly the other part of the story. Once Columbus has landed on the New World he met the locals. According to his journal, one of the first things Columbus did was to ask them whether they had any gold. Luckless, he did not find what he was hoping for; only a few of the natives wore some gold articles and, because of the lack of communication, Columbus was not even able to learn where this little amount of gold came from. Then he just turned his attention to the trees and shrubs that can be valuable spices; but which trees and what spices? So far Columbus had any valuable articles to offer to his sovereigns than the beautiful scenery he has described in his journal. But he was aware that scenery would not allow him to become a rich, powerful and famous man, consequently he started to search another source of revenue: he began to keep turning in his mind how this peaceful and timid hosts could be a source of profit. According to his journal, on October 14,1492, he wrote: "When your Highness so command, they (the Natives) could all be carried off to Castile or be held captive in the island itself because with 50 men they could all be subjugated and compelled to do anything one wishes." "By December 16, his ideas in that respect had taken definitive form. "They have no weapons and are all naked without any skill in arms and are very cowardly so that a thousand would challenge three," says the journal for that date. [...]"Thus they are useful to be commanded and to be mad to labor and sow and to be everything else of which there is need and build towns and be taught to wear clothes and learn our customs." " Besides his adventurous spirit of Renaissance, his other side corresponding to exploit the people has emerged. The last thing he did before returning to Spain was to order the capture of a few dozen Indian to be brought back to sovereigns. However this will not be the last time that Columbus would turn his attention to the acquisition of gold and slaves from the Indians. He returned from Spain with over a thousand armed men who were ready to fight against the Arawak Indians. At first, he merely demanded gold and other valuable from them and punished those who refused by disfiguring them (cutting their ears, etc.). When the Arawaks resisted, many people has been taken alive and 500 were sent as slaves to be sold in Castile. Thus, by his own authority Columbus established slavery in the New World.
It could be argued that Columbus was merely a man of his times, and that we cannot judge him according to our modern moral standards. "His obsessions with lineage and imperialism, his seemingly bizarre Christian beliefs, and his apparently brutal behavior come from a world remote from that of modern democratic ideas, it is true; but it was the world to which he belonged. The forces of European expansion, with their slaving and search for gold, had been unleashed before him and were at his time quite beyond his control. Columbus simply decided to be in the vanguard of them." It is said that Columbus was responsible for starting the intercontinental salve trade and the execution system of the local island populations. Slavery existed in Europe, Africa and the New World far before Columbus. Columbus did not invent it; he was just a product of his time.
Soon after Columbus' discovery, every country in Europe turned their attention to the Americas. It was the Spanish, however, that dominated the settlement and exploitation of the Americas. In 1494, Spain signed a treaty with Portugal, the Treaty of Tordesillas that divided the entire world between the two countries. All the trade routes east of the Cape of God belonged to Portugal while the entire routes west across the Atlantic belonged to Spain.
Soon a new type of explorer would enter the scene: the conquistador. As the name suggests, the conquistador set out to conquer the territories of the new continents. At the very beginning they were independent and autonomous entrepreneurs financed by themselves and by individual investors, but then they become private expeditors representing Spain.
"Hernando Cortes (Appendix no.1) was one such conquistador." Cortes who was the mayor of a small town, was appointed to command a third expedition to what is today central Mexico. " But Cortes ambition and personal magnetism made Velasquez suspect his loyalty. Velasquez planned on removing him as the leader of the expedition. Cortes discovered this and cut short his preparations. Cortes sailed across the Gulf of Mexico in February 18,1519." (Appendix no.2)
Once Cortes has reached Mexico, he began to hear of a great city, a city filled with wonders and more importantly riches. Almost all of the present-day Mexico was then part of the Aztec empire. The capital is present day Mexico City which was then called Tenochtitlan: this city was for the Spanish the treasure that they had come so far to find. Cortes did not want to explore trade and search for Christian captives. Rather his goal was nothing less than the conquest of Mexico However, Cortes had a problem had...
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