Expansion.

The land grant in the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) opened up a whole range of possibilities for Spaniards, and in the following decades thousands of adventurers, petty nobles, and colonists set out for Cuba, Jamaica, and Hispaniola. They brought with them horses, cows, pigs, European crops and diseases, and appetites for wealth that could not be satisfied by the islands' native societies. The fanatic quest for mineral wealth led the Spanish from island to island, and they decimated the Caribs, Arawaks, and other native populations. Early in the 1500s conquistadors headed for the Central and South American mainlands to search for the treasure that had not been found in the islands. Between 1519 and 1522 Hernando Cortes conquered the Aztecs, the descendants of America's first horticulturalists. His army of four hundred men relied on smallpox and the support of various tributary...