Benchmark Essay: How did Spain establish an American Empire?
In 1507, Spain published an Introduction to Cosmography…to which are added The Four Voyages of Amerigo Vespucci…The atlas proposed that the “fourth part of the earth”—beyond Europe, Asia, and Africa—that “Amerigo discovered” should be called “Amerige, the land of Amerigo… or America.” The latter paragraphs will include the vigorous expeditions and actions taken that led the Spaniards to establish an American Empire.
A quarter century after Columbus’s first voyage, Spain concentrated its attention on the islands in the western Atlantic. In 1517, an expedition that explored Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico reported the existence of civilizations on the mainland that were richer and more populous that any in the Caribbean, in which Spain had totally stripped of its gold and native population. Two years later, the Spanish governor in Havana commissioned the thirty-four-year-old Hernando Cortes to make contact with the Indian empire in Mexico. Cortes set sail with eleven ships and over 500 men.
The invaders landed near the modern town of Vera Cruz on the Gulf of Mexico. Then marched to the Valley of Mexico, collecting thousands of Indian allies along the way. Cortes had little difficulty winning support from Indian peoples anxious to break loose from the Aztecs’ hold. The Aztec ruler, Montezuma II, decided to invite Cortes to enter his capital, Tenochtitlan, peacefully. Montezuma fed the Spaniards’ greed with gold and other gifts. But, distrusting his intentions, they seized and held him captive until he was killed in the midst of a massive uprising against the invaders. Then, on the night of June 30-July 1, 1520—“La Noche Triste” (sorrowful night)—Aztec insurgents forced the Spaniards to flee the city, losing the riches they had collected as well as a third of their men. But over the next year, Cortes reorganized his followers, mobilized his Indian allies, and built thirteen brigantines that he equipped with firearms and used to control the causeways and block supplies form entering the island city. Finally, on August 21, 1521, the Spanish retook Tenochtitlan, destroying many of its buildings and people in the process.
The Essay on Aztecs 2 Cortes Spanish Mexico
... February 10, 1519, to Mexico (Faber 119). When Cortes landed on Mexico the Aztec king, Moctezuma, got ... Mexican riches back to Spain. Immediately after the conquest of the Aztecs, Spain became the major ... conquer the Aztecs. Cortes started inward towards the capital city, Tenochtitlan. He met an Indian woman ... mistaken Cortes for their god Quetzalcoatl, who was expected to return in that year. Their ...
With the defeat of the Aztecs, the conquistadores, or conquerors, set out in search of other peoples to subdue and despoil. Between 1524 and 1533, Spaniards under Francisco Pizarro defeated the Inca peoples of Peru’s Andean highlands, accumulating in the process thousands of pounds of gold and silver. From Peru, expeditions of discovery and conquest extended out to Chile and Colombia. Francisco Vasquez de Coronado marched into New Mexico and ventured as far north as Kansas in 1540 and 1541, and Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sailed up the California coast and took possession of the land for Spain in 1542. When neither these explorers nor their successors found new empires rich in gold and silver, interest in North America declined.
In 1565, the Spanish founded a post at St. Augustine in Florida, which was the first permanent European settlement in North America, mainly to protect the route of the treasure ships that carried vast cargoes of precious metals from Peru and Mexico to Spain. By 1600, only St. Augustine remained with some 500 people. Mostly comprised of men who lived on government salaries, St. Augustine was sufficiently costly and its continued strategic value so questionable that the Crown decided to abandon it in 1606. It wasn’t until 1700, that St. Augustine was re-established and held perhaps 1,500 people, including black slaves and Hispanized Indians.
All these expeditions and occurrences resulted in the Spanish American Empire. In short, the Spanish found what they sought in Central and South America: sources of wealth greater even than what Portugal gained from trade with Asia. The Crown would have trouble enough establishing its authority over that main land empire given the independent, ambitious men who had taken possession of the Indians and their lands. As for the relatively barren territory to Mexico’s north that Spain also claimed, there was no reason to pay the cost of consolidating her hold on it. In effect, most of North America was left to the Indian peoples who already lived there. In time, that terrain would provide bases for European nations who joined the contest for America relatively late and had to take whatever lands they could get.
The Essay on The French Presence In North America
The French presence in North America was spearheaded by the exploration of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the great river leading inland by Jaques Cartier in the 1530s. The English immediately contested the French claims on the grounds that they conflicted with prior English claims dating from John Cabots landings on the east coast of North America in 1497, thus setting off a struggle which was to ...
