This Lesson's logo is a Spanish caravelle

THE ENCOUNTER AND THE CONQUEST (Lessons 5,6,7,8)

Cultural-historical framework:	End of the European Middle ages and transition to the Renaissance; Humanism The Encounter of two cultures (1492) The conquest (Mexico, Peru, Chile)
Approximate dates:	From the Encounter (1492) through the Conquest to the end of the 16th Century
Historical landmarks:	Reconquest of Iberia, 711-1492 Search for the eastern route to the Indies by the Portuguese The Spanish and Columbus' enterprise to the west 1492: Fall of Granada; the Encounter (Columbus); Expulsion of the Arabs and the Jews from Iberia Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494 Alvares Cabral (Portuguese) reaches Brazil, 1500 Conquest of Mexico by Cortés: 1519-21 Conquest of Peru by Pizarro: 1531-33 Conquest of Chile by Valdivia: 1540-41
Literature:	Diaries of the discoverers and the chronicles of the conquerors Inventories of what was seen: emphasis on the riches (some exaggeration), and the great deeds. Christopher Columbus (1451?-1506) Hernán Cortés (1485-1547) Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1495?-1584) Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga (1534-1594) Father Bartolomé de las Casas (1474-1566) Guamán Poma de Ayala (1526?-1614?) Anonymous Indigenous authors give their perspective of the Encounter and the Conquest.
The arts:	Architecture: colonial churches, retablos, tiles. Military architecture: defensive forts Cultural mestizaje (mixing of the Iberian and the Indigenous Painting and drawing: illustrations for the chronicles Some exaggeration and fantasy Copies of classical Spanish and Portuguese paintings Cartography: first simple, then illuminated, with some fantasy and inclusion of imagined creatures

Lesson 5: The Encounter of Two Worlds

I. The Iberians

A. The Peninsula and its People

"Europe begins at the Pyrenees". The cliché contains some truth, for the Iberian Peninsula has always been different from the rest of Mediterranean (and certainly northern) Europe. The mountains which separate Spain and Portugal from the rest of Europe have tended to isolate the Iberian Peninsula, and the relatively easy access to North Africa across twelve miles of the Strait of Gibraltar has made the southern parts of the Peninsula a transition zone between Europe and Africa. The other important geographic reality is the way in which the Peninsula juts out into the Atlantic, making it the logical launching pad for maritime enterprises to the west or to the south around Africa.

Fig. 5-1: Iberia

Geography has not been kind to the Iberians, at least as far as the suitability of their soils and climate for agriculture. The land is rough and frequently arid. The central plateau is deeply cut by rivers, which, along with the surrounding mountains, tend to create many small pockets of human population which are cut off from each other. Thus, there is strong regionalism and individualism in the Iberian, characteristics which do not lead to teamwork or easy political control by a central government. The Peninsula's area is about that of the state of Texas. And yet from this relatively small region two countries launched a series of enterprises of exploration and conquest that created in the sixteenth century the largest empires the world had ever seen.

To understand this process, we must realize that the Peninsula (and especially the part of it that became Spain) had long been the target of invaders, and went through an extended and difficult struggle to gain its independence from the Muslim world. This latter struggle, known as "La Reconquista" (the Reconquest) was to shape many of the attitudes the explorers and conquistadores brought from Iberia to the Americas.

Fig. 5-2: Iberian town

The stage for the Reconquest was set by the Visigoths from northern Europe who moved into the Peninsula as Roman power declined in the 5th century. The Visigoths were a quarrelsome lot, and warfare was frequent among the various local rulers. In the year 711 one of them invited the Moors to enter the Peninsula in order to help him defeat a rival. The Arabs, led by Tarik (who gave his name to Gibraltar) were more than happy to oblige, but they betrayed their host, invaded in force and almost conquered the whole Peninsula by the year 718. Although the Arab rule was relatively tolerant, the Christian knights in small mountain strongholds in northern Spain launched a struggle to regain their lost lands and peoples. The Reconquest gradually acquired the character of a religious crusade, pitting Christian against Arab, especially after the discovery of what was believed to be the tomb of the apostle St James (Santiago in Spanish) in northern Spain. The apostle's name became the battle cry of the Christian knights, and Santiago was cast as the warrior saint, patron of the Reconquista, and later of the Conquest of America.

Fig. 5-3: Iberian Arab

There were real heroes as well in the Reconquista. One of them, El Cid Campeador (Cid the Champion) became the quintessential Spanish hero, a man who could fight a battle, court a woman, write a poem, and rule a kingdom, with equal skill, individualism, honor and style. With El Cid as hero, the values of individual military prowess, religious crusades, conquest, and capture of booty (including slaves and serfs) became more ingrained in the Iberian character than the values of hard work or getting one's hands dirty by tilling the soil.

By the middle of the 13th century the Moors had been pushed south to the kingdom of Granada, where the rugged terrain and isolation favored their defense and gave them another two and a half centuries of presence in Iberia. When the last Moorish bastion of Granada fell in 1492, the conquering Spanish kings and knights saw it as perfectly logical and fitting that their God would reward them with a new world to conquer.

B. The Renaissance and the Age of Discovery

The fall of Granada, and Columbus' enterprise, coincided with the intellectual awakening of Europe known as the Renaissance. Although Iberia was late to feel the artistic impact of the Renaissance, in the field of exploration and navigation the Iberians (especially Portugal) were in the forefront.

It is important to note the significance of exploration and discovery in the Renaissance. As humans abandoned the narrow limits of the Church-controlled scholasticism of the Middle Ages, they began to wonder about their natural world and its limits. Thus, the Renaissance was also the Age of Discovery, when humans could defy old superstitions and push the boundaries of geographic knowledge. Most educated people had discarded the old notions of a flat earth, and reasoned that if the earth were a sphere, then it might be possible to navigate around it without running the danger of falling off the edge.

These new notions of geography and cartography became increasingly important when the Turks captured Constantinople in the year 1453 and cut the lucrative European trade route to the far East via the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

C. The Portuguese and the Eastern Route

By the time of the fall of Constantinople the Portuguese had already made considerable progress in developing a sea route to India and the markets of the Orient. Their sea route went down the coast of Africa and was based on the assumption (valid) that one could reach the southern tip of Africa, go around it, and then sail east to India.

In this enterprise Portugal was favored by early independence from both the Moors and the kings of Castille, who ruled what is today the central part of Spain. By the 14th century Portugal was completing its national consolidation and its rise to become a European power.

Fig. 5-4

An extraordinary Portuguese prince, Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), gathered together the best geographers, cartographers and mariners and organized the exploration of the trade route to the east around Africa. There is some irony in his name, since Henry personally never sailed far from the sight of land. But as a leader he was able to launch Portugal's maritime empire, motivated by his goals of increasing knowledge, exploiting the wealth of the East, developing the slave trade in Africa, and extending the religious crusades of Christianity to new areas. Shortly after Henry's death, in the year 1488 the Portuguese explorer Bartolome Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope in southernmost Africa and opened up the long-dreamed of trade route to India and the east. And a few years after that, in early 1500, the Portuguese explorer Alvares Cabral was attempting to follow Dias' route but swung far west into the Atlantic, accidentally discovering Brazil. Had it not been for Columbus' voyages a few years earlier, Cabral would have been the European "discoverer" of America.

Although the Portuguese continued to maintain a strong interest in their route to India and the Far East, toward the middle of the 16th Century Spain gave a far greater priority to America than the Far East. In part this was because Magellan's voyage of circumnavigation (1519-1522) showed how far the western route would be. But more significantly, after the Conquest of Mexico and Peru the gold and silver of the Americas were of much greater value to Spain than spices or trade with the Orient. Unfortunately for Spain, the gold and silver brought inflation in the long run, and led the best and brightest of Spain's young people to leave Iberia and head for the New World. The net result was a slow economic and intellectual decline that lasted for several centuries.

D. Spanish Unification

Developments in what is today Spain lagged behind those of Portugal, which had managed to expel the Moors from its territory two hundred years earlier than its eastern neighbor on the Peninsula. During the period of the Reconquista Spain was not a single nation, but rather a collection of small kingdoms, principalities and other regions under the control of local knights who had risen to power during the long struggle against the Moors. Two of the principal kingdoms were those of Castille and Aragon, which by the 15th century controlled most of the central and eastern part of the Peninsula. In the year 1469 Isabel of Castille and Ferdinand of Aragon married, setting the stage for national unification of Spain when they inherited their respective thrones a few years later, and were proclaimed "the Catholic Monarchs" by the Pope. The sovereigns ruled for a momentous quarter century that saw the final defeat of the Moors, Columbus' voyages, the expulsion (or forced conversion) of the Arabs and the Jews, and the rise of the Castillian language (Spanish) as the dominant tongue of the emerging nation of Spain.

Fig. 5-5: Isabel

The year 1492 was decisive. On the 2nd of January the last Arab stronghold of Granada fell. Any remaining Moors had to either accept conversion to Christianity or leave. The same held for the Jews, and the Inquisition was created to guarantee the purity of the Roman Catholic religion in Spain. That same year Antonio de Nebrija published the first grammar of the Castillian language; when the book was presented to Queen Isabel, it was noted that "language is the perfect instrument of empire". And in August of 1492 an obscure navigator named Columbus, in the service of the Catholic Monarchs, set out to find India by heading west across the Atlantic instead of east, as the Portuguese had already done.

Fig. 5-6: Crest commemorating Columbus' Enterprise

II. The Encounter of Two Worlds

A. Christopher Columbus and his Enterprise

With the 500th anniversary of Columbus' voyage there have been many re-evaluations of the significance of the event and of the role and personality of the chief protagonist. In contrast with prior hero-worship of Columbus, revisionist versions have portrayed him as a cruel exploiter who paved the way for European plundering and destruction of the Indigenous Americans and their culture. But Columbus was the product of his time, and if he had not set out on his voyage it would not have been long before another Portuguese or Spaniard would have done something similar. We noted earlier how only eight years after Columbus the Portuguese Alvares Cabral had accidentally landed in what is today Brazil while he was on the way to India.

The navigator we know as Christopher Columbus was born to a poor family in Genoa, Italy, probably in 1451. Genoa was an important trading and shipping center where the young Columbus undoubtedly met navigators and map-makers who fueled his fascination with the sea. He left Genoa at an early age, and following a series of adventures ended up in Portugal, where he learned the latest developments in navigation from the experts gathered by Prince Henry the Navigator. It was here that Columbus developed his notion of opening up a trade route to India by sailing west instead of east, as the Portuguese favored. Although Columbus' idea was basically sound, he grossly underestimated the size of the earth, and thus the distance from the Iberian Peninsula to Japan or India by the western route. He also, of course, knew nothing of the continent that lay between Europe and the Far East.

Fig. 5-7: Columbus

Columbus had little luck interesting the Portuguese in his idea, since by now they were committed to the promising eastern route and had no resources to commit to his unproven concept. Disappointed, Columbus moved on to Castille in 1485, where he made influential friends and was able to present his plan to an interested Queen Isabel. But the Catholic Monarchs had their own distraction: liberating the Iberian Peninsula from the last of the Moors. For the next seven years Columbus lived a precarious existence in Castille, until in January 1492 the fall of Granada allowed Isabel to devote attention and resources to his proposal.

B. The Encounter

His three caravels sailed on the 3rd of August, 1492. Although sailing conditions were not bad, Columbus had underestimated the width of the Atlantic Ocean and his crew grew restless. At one point there was talk of mutiny and of throwing Columbus overboard and returning to Spain. But he prevailed, and in the early morning hours of the 12th of October land was sighted. For many years there was consensus that this first island which Columbus landed on, and which he called San Salvador, is what today we know as Watlings Island, in the Bahamas. Recent scholarship has suggested otherwise, with another coral island in the Bahamas some sixty miles away as the best candidate. Columbus' own account of this first encounter is given later in this chapter.

Columbus' greatest moment of personal triumph was when he was received by the Catholic Monarchs in Barcelona upon his return in March of 1493. But his discoveries posed a diplomatic problem for the Monarchs when the Portuguese King argued that Columbus had violated various grants the Pope had given his nation in Africa and the Atlantic. The issue was presented to Pope Alexander VI in Rome, who in the year 1493 proclaimed that a line should be drawn from pole to pole to divide the area of Portuguese primacy from that of the Spanish; the Portuguese would get the area east of the line, thus protecting their African discoveries and their eastern route to India, while the Spanish would get the area west of the line, thus guaranteeing their hold in the area discovered by Columbus. Initially the line was to be 100 leagues west of the Azores and Canary Islands, but the Portuguese complained that this was too restrictive and would not give them enough maritime space around their African claims. A year later (1494) the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed between the Monarchs of Spain and Portugal, with the line drawn 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. This line of Tordesillas cut through the eastern tip of South America and carved out the initial portion of the Portuguese colony of Brazil. Subsequent occupation and diplomacy by Portuguese kings was able to move the border between Spanish and Portuguese America so far westward that today Brazil makes up roughly one-half of the South American continent.

Fig. 5-8: Tordesillas

The fact that the Pope used the terms "from pole to pole" in describing the dividing line has been used by some South American geopoliticians, especially from Argentina and Brazil, to argue that the Pope was also dividing up the (as of then) undiscovered continent of Antarctica between the Portuguese and Spanish crowns. The issue has contemporary significance in terms of the competing claims of Argentina, Chile and Great Britain in the portion of Antarctica which faces South America.

C. Literature of the Encounter

The Spanish and Portuguese discoverers, early explorers, and conquistadores were true representatives of the Renaissance. They were actors in the main events of their day, and yet were also writers who chronicled their findings for an eager audience back in Iberia and Europe. As might be expected from such action-oriented people, their literary styles were often uneven, and stressed content over form; esthetics and philosophical contemplation took second place to terse description. Although they embodied many of the Renaissance's traits (individualism and a human-centered spirit of adventure and exploration), they also carried with them some of the baggage of the Medieval period in terms of superstition and belief in magical, legendary and mythical creatures.

D. Art of the Encounter

As was the case with literature, the art of the Encounter tended to be functional. Without the benefit of the photographic camera, sketches, drawings and paintings were the only way to provide the Old World with visual representations of the marvelous discoveries the explorers found. Inevitably, distortions crept in, partly because of the tendency of the explorers to exaggerate in order to stir up interest in their enterprises, but also when these representations were copied and recopied in Europe by people who had never seen the original Indigenous peoples, fruits, animals, and other wonders.

Cartography incorporated these same features. The first maps, such as Columbus', were simple and functional. Later ones added fanciful details, and the ones made in Europe based on the explorers' originals added all manner of decorations and creatures, some based on American reality, and some rooted only in the drawer's imagination.

Columbus: the First Chronicler.

The first European to chronicle the findings of the New World was, logically, Columbus. His writings are a mix of the wonder he felt at the discoveries and a disappointment that slowly grew with the realization that he had not really reached either India, Japan or China. Like all responsible ship captains in the Age of Discovery, Columbus kept a detailed log of his findings and observations. His original log has been lost, but the excerpt that follows was copied by a Spanish priest who arrived in the New World shortly after Columbus, and it is believed to faithfully reflect the original. Even though the description is straightforward, Columbus reveals some of his motivations (and those of his Spanish sponsors) when he comments that the Indians will make good servants and will soon convert to Christianity.

Fig. 5-19: Columbus' map of Hispaniola, 1492

Diary of Cristopher Columbus

Friday, 12th of October (1492). Because they showed us much friendship, and because I knew that they were people who would join us and convert to our Holy Faith better through love than force, I gave them some trinkets and many other things of little value. They took much pleasure from the red sailor's caps I gave them, and from some glass ornaments which they put around their necks. And they were so quickly ours that it was a miracle.

Afterwards they came swimming out to our ships, where we were, and they brought parrots, and cotton thread, and spears, and many other things. They bartered these things for anything we had, such as bits of glass and rattles. In short, they took anything we gave them, and gave us what they had, with much good will.

But it seemed to me that generally they were very poor people. They went around naked as the day their mothers brought them into this world, even the women, although I only saw one (she was beautiful). All the ones I saw were young, and none were older than thirty, very well built, with nice bodies and very good faces. Their hair was thick as a horse's tail, short and hanging over their brows, except for some who had longer hair which they kept pulled back and never cut...

They did not bring weapons and are not familiar with them, because when I showed them swords they took them by the sharp side and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are rods without iron, and some of them have a fish's tooth at the tip, and others have other tips. All of them are of a good height, with good gestures, and well built. They will be good servants and with good skills, since I can tell that they very quickly repeat what is said to them, and I believe that they will become Christians very soon.

Saturday, 13 October. They are all of a good height, and very beautiful; their hair is not curly, but rather free and thick, and they all have a broad forehead and head, with beautiful eyes, not small, and none black, but rather the color of canaries. ... The island is rather large, and very flat, with many green trees, and much water, and a large lake in the center, with no mountains, and it is all so green that it is a pleasure to see it; and the people, very gentle.

Sunday, 14 October. I later saw two or three settlements, with people who all came to the beach calling out to us and giving thanks to God. Some brought us water, and others things to eat; others, when they saw that we did not land, jumped into the sea and swam out to us. And we understood that they were asking us if we came from the sky. And an old man came out in a canoe. And others, in loud voices, called to the rest, men and women: "Come and see the men who come from the sky; bring them drink and food." And many came, and many women.

Fig. 5-10: Columbus and the Indigenous meet

The Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494 (excerpts)

And because of this, they, in the interest of peace and concord, and to conserve their relation and love, which said lord king of Portugal has with the said lords king and queen of Castille, and Aragon, etc, as Their Highness wish, and their representatives acting in their name, and by virtue of their powers, they have granted and consented to the following.

That there should be drawn and marked a line straight from pole to pole, that is to say, from the arctic pole to the antarctic pole, which is North to South.

Said line shall be drawn, as it has been established, three hundred and seventy leagues from the islands of Cape Verde, towards the setting sun (West), by degrees or whatever manner can best or more quickly be done, and everything that up to this point has been found and discovered, and which shall be discovered from now on, and found by the said king of Portugal, and by his ships, be the discoveries islands or continents, from this line, as established here going from the line to the rising sun (East), shall belong to the said lord king of Portugal and his successors, for ever and always.

Fig. 5-11: Spanish caravel