Summary:
During the middle ages, Europeans began to explore the world around them and its opportunities. The Portugese were the first to do this, claiming Brazil in 1500, Mauritius in 1505 and the Spice Islands, modern day Indonesia, in 1511. The Spanish, largely lured by dreams of gold and riches, began their conquest of the Americas soon after. In 1520 Hernando Cortez seized the Empire of the Aztecs in Mexico, through a vast amount of bloodshed. From 1532, Francisco Pizarro seized the empire of the Incas in Peru.
During the middle ages, Europeans began to explore the world around them and its opportunities. The Portugese were the first to do this, claiming Brazil in 1500, Mauritius in 1505 and the Spice Islands, modern day Indonesia, in 1511. The Spanish, largely lured by dreams of gold and riches, began their conquest of the Americas soon after. In 1520 Hernando Cortez seized the Empire of the Aztecs in Mexico, through a vast amount of bloodshed. From 1532, Francisco Pizarro seized the empire of the Incas in Peru.
Europeans poured vast amounts of energy, money and countless lives into the conquests of empires and the claiming of countries. They did this for several reasons; to reap the benefits of trade, for want of gold, and perhaps least of all, for reasons of religion. Europe is known to have been successful in these endeavors. With their weapons, diseases and ruthless annihilation of those who stood in the way of their ideals and desires, they managed to destroy forever the culture and civilization of the Aztecs and Incas, two of the greatest empires to ever exist.
Prior to the arrival of Pizarro, the Incan society was developed and generally orderly. They lived in large towns filled with markets, traffic and people. There was farming, and the Incas and Aztecs had even progressed as far as maintaining huge standing armies. However, the arrival of the Europeans was soon to destroy their unique system of life.
The Incas and Aztecs were soon introduced to European habits. Previously, alcohol was reserved for ceremonial use and drunkenness was even punishable by death.
(Halcombe, p.2.) The Spaniards were frequent consumers of alcohol, and turned the sale of intoxicating coca leaves into a profitable business. The introduction of alcohol to the Indians can be blamed for a slump in the birth rate, similar to that of Australia's Aborigines for the same reason.(Halcombe, p.2)
The greatest adversary that faced the native people of the Americas was not the European's weapons, manpower or intoxicants. It was the array of new diseases that early explorers brought with them (Goodling, p.1). The Europeans had already had the opportunity to build immunity to many such diseases, that in more 'developed' countries were common during childhood. However, the inhabitants of the New World had never been exposed to them, so a disease that might merely cause sickness in a European was to the natives a deadly virus capable of slaughtering thousands of people. (Goodling, p.1)
Viruses require large groups of people to flourish, (Goodling, p.1) so epidemics were not a large issue for the early travelers to the Americas. By the time Columbus reached the New World, however, the Incas and Aztecs had populations that were by far large enough to sustain mass epidemics.
It is estimated that forty to fifty million people inhabited the Americas at the time of the arrival of Columbus and the Europeans, but most of them were to die within a few decades. (Cowley, p.54) Between 1519 and 1588, Mexico's population is believed to have fallen from thirty million to only three million people. Diseases also made much of the native population too weak to plant and harvest their crops. Because of this, starvation wiped out some populations almost immediately. (Goodling, p.2)
It is likely that the first major epidemic to reach the new world was smallpox. This is supposed because of the fact that there was an outbreak of smallpox on the Hispanola in 1520. (Goodling, p.2) Later on, many other diseases arrived, including pleurisy and typhus. When the Spanish sailed to new places, their diseases would often have the opportunity to establish themselves before they had even arrived, thanks to the fact that messengers bringing the news of invasion would often carry the disease to their people.
The arrival of smallpox made the conquest of the Aztecs much easier for Cortez when he and his men arrived in Mexico.(Cowley, p.55) The already weakened native population did not have the strength or weapons to resist the invasion, and the Aztec leader of the defence against the invasion and many of his men were soon killed after ordering Cortez and his men out of Tenochtitlan.(Goodling, p.2) A siege began which was to last for seventy-five days, during which thousands of Indians died. (Crosby, 1972) The rapid spread of disease among the natives can largely be blamed for the large amount of deaths.
Smallpox was not exclusive to the Aztecs, however. The disease reached the Incan Empire in 1525, killing the Incan ruler, his heir and much of his family. This threw the Incan political structure into chaos and divided the people.(Goodling, p.2) A civil war began concerning who was the next rightful heir to the Incan throne. This war weakened the natives' ability to resist Pizarro and his men when they arrived. Pizarro met with little or no resistance, and was easily able to conquer the people.(Crowley, p.56)
The arrival of the Spaniards also forever changed the religious beliefs of many Indians. The natives were extremely susceptible to new diseases, so it is can be assumed that they would have seen the immunity of the Europeans as almost godlike (Goodling, p.3) . They did not understand the epidemics that were destroying their people. The Spaniards and their immunity to these diseases greatly frightened the native people, and it became increasingly easy for the Spanish to convince the natives that their gods had 'abandoned them' (Goodling, p.3) and that it was their God and their religion that would offer them salvation.
The intricate political structures of the Incas were also crushed by the arrival of the Europeans. Deaths from smallpox were indiscriminate and made it difficult, if not impossible, to give the people any sense of political stability. When Montezuma died, his nephew Cuitlahuac took over but he was soon killed by smallpox during the siege. (Cowley, p.56)
Once under control, the Spaniards reduced the status of the Indians to nothing more than slaves. Under the encomienda system, they provided tribute and labor to their masters, and in return were taught the Catholic religion (Halcombe, p.3). A forced labor system in silver and mercury mines was soon underway, and its workers were treated with shocking cruelty. Though aware of this fact, the governments of many countries were reluctant to interfere; they were less interested in the fate of the natives than in what they could gain from them (Halcombe, p.2)
The Western World reaped many benefits from the conquest of the Americas. The goods brought back from conquered lands allowed a large growth in the economy and far better standards of living. However, for the natives of the Americas, the conquest became synonymous with cruelty, slavery, disease and the eradication of their religious beliefs and culture. The 'discovery' of the New World came at a very high price to those who already inhabited it; this price being the destruction of two peoples that were not merely primitive brutes deserving of their fates, but some of the most developed civilizations that the world had ever seen.
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