American History - Global Empire

Given that the initial impetus for Columbus heading west was to reach the riches of Asia, it is undoubtable that the discovery of the New World was a pretty big disappointment. While Portugal became richer and more powerful, importing goods from as far away as Japan via its trade route around the southern tip of Africa, all Spain had was a handful of islands filled with natives who didn’t really have anything worth trading. Numerous Spanish expeditions explored the New World, not with a sense of amazement at the strange new place they had found, but with growing frustration that the huge land mass blocked them from sailing further westward to Asia. However, there level of disinterest quickly evaporated after two major events that took place in the first few years of the 1520s.

The first of these was the conquest of the Aztec Empire by Hernan Cortes in 1521, which in turn led the Spanish to realize that holy crap, the New World contained a literal fuck ton of gold and silver. At the time, finding new sources of gold and silver was a pretty big fucking deal given that pretty much all money worldwide was made from the two metals and people weren’t exactly just finding random easily accessible mines anymore in the Old World. Within months of the conquest being completed, ships laden with gold and silver began sailing from the port of Veracruz in Mexico to the port of Seville in Spain, which quickly became one of the most populous and cosmopolitan cities in Europe. Within twenty years, the flow of gold and silver more than doubled, with further mines being secured in Peru. The king and elites of Spain, suddenly found themselves ridiculously wealthy, and the country began importing large amounts of grain and luxury goods, flooding the European market with newly minted coins which resulted in rampant inflation throughout the continent. It was only the beginning.

The second reason the New World became more interesting was in 1522, when a Spanish expedition led by a fellow named Ferdinand Magellan completed the first circumnavigation of the world by sailing around the southern tip of South America. While Ferdinand himself didn’t complete the journey, killed by some locals in the Philippines, one of his five ships managed to complete the journey, proving that it was possible to reach Asia by sailing west. Unfortunately, given the Portuguese weren’t really down with Spanish ships sailing south of Africa and the prevailing winds and currents made sailing back east across the Pacific difficult, this didn’t do the Spanish much good for awhile. However, after some forty years of failing to find a route, losing many ships and crews, they eventually figured out how to catch the right winds and currents by sailing north. As a result, in 1564, Spain conquered the Philippines and began trading directly with Asia, breaking the Portuguese monopoly. Ships filled with silver from Mexico would sail to Asia and then return with silks and spices, which would be hauled by mule across Mexico, then put on a ship and sent to Spain, which became even more fabulously wealthy.

The new wealth of Spain couldn’t have come at a better time. Thanks to an advantageous marriage and some early military successes, by 1520 the Spanish monarchy controlled not just Spain and large chunks of the New World, but also the Netherlands and scattered lands across Italy and Central and Eastern Europe. The ruling Habsburg dynasty was suddenly the most powerful in Europe, which of course led to a war with some of its neighbors, most prominently France, which lasted for the next ten years. Flush with cash, the Habsburgs raised massive armies to fight their wars in Europe and huge naval fleets to protect their trade lines across the oceans. So desperate was France to limit the power of Spain, that they even allied themselves with the Islamic Ottoman Empire in 1543 when launching a second war, which failed just as miserably as the first, leaving Spain even more powerful. However, a growing religious schism was soon to divide Europe in new ways.

In 1517, Martin Luther launched the Protestant Reformation by nailing a list of reasons he thought the Catholic church sucked on a church door in Germany. Over the next ninety years, the Europe became divided between the old school Catholics and various new kid on the block Protestant sects. Though basically believing the same thing with just some minor variations, mostly involving how much power the Pope and his lackeys had over divining God’s will, these two competing belief systems quickly fell into conflict with each other, with numerous cases of hangings, stake burnings, and other such things people do when they find some new stupid reason to hate each other. As often happens, the situation quickly shifted from a religious one to a political one, with entire states and countries becoming Catholic or Protestant territories, often driven by the political and personal ambitions of the various nobles in control. As the most powerful Catholic nation in Europe, Spain and its Habsburg rulers of course felt it was their duty to protect their preferred version of the church everywhere they could. The resulting wars and political machinations would bankrupt the country several times.

American History - New Spain

When one thinks about the Spanish conquests in the New World, one probably imagines hordes of conquistadors sailing across the Atlantic, armed to the teeth and ready to rape and pillage. In truth, it was much more complex. While thousands of would be conquistadors did sail to the New World during this period, the majority of the conquest was carried out by the local natives themselves. The great civilizations of Mesoamerica and South America were largely defined by rival city-states who were constantly making and breaking alliances and attacking each other for resources, power, and prestige. It was a hotbed of political intrigue. Even the great New World empires, such as the Incan Empire, were divided by internal and dynastic rivalries. The arrival of the Spanish, though limited in number, heralded a significant shift in power thanks to their horses, steel armor and weapons, guns, and cannons. For many of the great civilizations, the Spanish were seen as an opportunity to beat their rivals and expand their influence. Making alliances with the strange newcomers from across the ocean made sense.

When Cortes first invaded Mexico in 1519, the population was estimated to be around 22 million. Due to the spread of small pox, 30% died over the next twenty years, the majority in a fairly short period of time. For both the Spanish and the locals, who knew little to nothing of how disease spread, this would have been seen as a sign of some divine power not being too happy. For the Spanish, it meant god was totally cool with what they were doing. For many of the locals, millions of their brethren dying while the strangers from across the sea remained much more a-okay health wise convinced many that it was in their best interest to go the Spanish way on things. The fact that the Spanish didn’t insist on performing thousands of human sacrifices every year probably didn’t hurt either. Though some continued to resist, the majority willingly accepted the Spanish as the new ruling class, converted to Catholicism, and just generally went along with things. Apocalyptic plagues have a way of upending societies like that. This pattern pretty much repeated itself everywhere the Spanish went, at least until they started coming more in contact with more scattered and nomadic tribes, where the various diseases they brought with them didn’t spread so quickly.

To reward them for their conquests, the conquistadors of all ranks were granted ownership over wide swaths of land. Most of the great Mesoamerican civilizations had been feudal societies where those living on the land had to provide those above them with a certain amount of tribute and free labor, not unlike the Spanish feudal system, so it was a fairly easy conversion for everybody. The Spanish built new cities and roads, imported livestock, introduced wheat, and gathered scattered natives into larger villages where they would be easier to convert and control. To help maintain control, the Spanish were careful not to give the natives any weapons or teach them to ride horses. There not being many women amongst the Spanish, most married native women, their children being given a status that while above the natives, was below people born in Spain. Though in Peru the natives were practically enslaved to mine for gold and silver, in Mexico the mines were in more remote locations, so the natives were paid wages to draw in labor, resulting in the intermingling of many different groups, leading to them being more rapidly assimilated into Hispanic culture.

It should go without saying that the Spanish did not treat their new native subjects all that great. Though serfs back in Spain got treated like shit too, they were still Spanish, so a certain amount of ethics had to be upheld. In comparison, no such qualms existed about the natives, and the Spanish land owners did pretty much whatever the hell they wanted with the natives living on their land, with many pretty much treating them as slaves. However, not everyone was down with this situation, and many of the Christian friars and missionaries sent to convert the natives began to complain to the king of Spain about what was happening. These friars eventually convinced the king to create a law in 1542 declaring the natives were people, and requiring they be paid for their labor and generally not treated as slaves. This did not go over well in all parts of the New World, with some areas openly revolting against the Spanish crown, most eventually accepted the change.

Unfortunately, just four years later, a new apocalypse began. Severe droughts spread across Mexico and Central America, leading to famines in many regions, which in turn led to people flocking more thickly to areas with good food and water supplies. This was soon after followed by severe outbreaks of typhoid, typhus, and a plethora of other Old World diseases. Known as the Cocoliztli epidemic, it killed so many millions of people that there was no longer enough labor to grow food, resulting in even more people starving to death. In total, some 80% of the remaining native population of Mexico, over 12 million people, died in just four years. The Spanish, largely unaffected, were horrified to see the collapse, mostly because the work of the natives was their primary source of wealth. The economic system, largely based on what was pretty much slave labor, collapsed, replaced by a system where Spanish landowners had to increasingly pay wages to the natives. To counter this, the natives were forcefully relocated into smaller areas where any sense of distinct cultures completely disappeared. The largescale loss of life also resulted in an influx of new Spanish settlers, eager to claim newly abandoned lands. A second Cocoliztli epidemic struck in 1576, killing 50% of the remaining native population, or 1.5 million people. The overall population of Mexico would not return to pre-conquest levels until the 1940s.

American History - Conquistador

Now for most of the first thirty years of the Spanish being in the New World, they mostly just hung out on the islands of Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico, which were widely seen as a curious backwater by the Spanish elite. The only people really interested in the New World were bored people looking for adventure and those with little opportunity to move up in the world at home in Spain. Though there was little gold or riches to be had, by enslaving the local natives and treating them like shit, it was possible for even a poor Spaniard to live a life of relative leisure. It should probably be stated that at the time morality was largely based on how similar someone was to you. Same region, same nationality, same religion. As long as people could be classified as “other” in some way, it was pretty a-okay to do all sorts of terrible shit to them. This wasn’t just a European thing, this was an everywhere kind of thing, the only deciding factor being who had the greatest opportunity and ability to treat someone else like crap.

Anyways, starting around 1517, explorers visiting the coast of what is now Mexico began hearing rumors about rich cities of gold in the interior of the continent. However, rumors also included tales of violent locals who practiced enslavement and human sacrifice, which limited interest until 1519, when a guy named Hernan Cortes decided that becoming insanely rich was totally worth the risk of having his still beating heart cut out of his chest. Raising an army of about 700 men without permission, he set sail to Mexico, sunk his fleet to prevent retreat, and marched into the interior.

Now at the time pretty much all of central Mexico was controlled by the Aztec, a powerful militaristic society which ruled over and terrorized the other native groups in the region, forcing them to pay tribute and hand over hundreds of their own to be human sacrifices. It should probably be mentioned that most of the major civilizations in the region practiced human sacrifice, believing that if they didn’t nourish the gods then the sun would cease to rise and the world would end. Though the Aztec had been in the region since the thirteenth century, they didn’t start expanding until the early fifteenth century, resulting in them carving out their empire over the ninety year period before Cortes’ arrival. As a result, many of the first groups Cortes met didn’t see him and his army as invaders, but rather as a possible route for salvation and freedom. As a result, by the time Cortes arrived at the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, an engineering marvel built in the middle of a lake, he had an army of several thousand.

What followed was a chaotic mess of the Aztecs trying to buy the Spanish off by giving them a bunch of gold, Cortes taking the Aztec emperor, Montezuma II, hostage after learning the Aztec had killed some of his men left on the coast, and then Cortes having to march back to the coast to defeat a Spanish army sent to arrest him, the murder of Montezuma II by either the Spanish or his own people, the Spanish and their native allies being forced to flee from Tenochtitlan, Cortes returning to besiege the city for ninety days, disease killing thousands of Aztecs and Cortes’ allies, the eventual fall of the city, and Cortes destroying the city and rebuilding it as Mexico City. All of this took place over a period of about two years, with the end result being the Spanish taking control of central Mexico, both their enemies and allies too weakened from warfare and disease to stop them. As for Cortes, he was not only forgiven for his illegal conquering of the Aztec Empire, because the region was chock full of easily mined gold and silver, but was made governor over the entire region.

The discovery of ridiculous amounts of gold and silver completely changed the dynamic of how the Spanish saw the New World, shifting it from curious backwater to a potential source of untold riches. Nobles and commoners of all types boarded ships to seek these riches. Known as conquistadors, they created armies which rapidly began conquering great civilizations of Mesoamerica. Over the next thirty years they largely conquered southern Mexico, Central America, and the great Incan Empire of the Andes. The great civilizations did not take it lying down, fighting back every step of the way, but their efforts were stymied by rapidly spreading disease, the Spanish taking advantage of long standing rivalries, and the Spanish having horses and superior arms. Though isolated holdouts would remain in many areas until the end of the sixteenth century, the Spanish effectively controlled from Chile in the south to Mexico in the north by 1550.

While conquests were pushing their way southward, a few conquistadors also began pushing their way north, but they found little of interest. While those moving south continued to find fantastic cities of gold, those moving north found only desert and nomadic peoples doing their best to survive. Known as the Chichimeca, these peoples were hostile to outsiders, and facing lots of pain for little gain, the conquistadors largely gave up on ideas of exploring to the north. This changed in 1546, when rich silver mines were discovered in the region. Hopeful conquistadors began moving north to claim these riches, sparking a war that would last for forty years, the Chichimeca using guerilla tactics to wear down the Spanish and their more numerous native allies, who made up the bulk of the Spanish armies in New Spain. The Chichimeca also stole and learned how to ride horses, turning themselves into an even more formidable foe. As the war wore on, the atrocities by both sides became worse and worse. The war did not end until the Spanish changed tactics, shifting from fighting to handing out free goods to the Chichimeca, sending friars north to convert the Chichimeca to Christianity, stopping the enslavement of the Chichimeca, and and handing out free lands on the frontier and higher status in the social ladder to native allies. It worked surprisingly well, and by the start of the seventeenth century, the Chichimeca were largely absorbed into the culture of New Spain.