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The Spanish Conquest of the Americas
The Spanish Conquest of the Americas
The Spanish conquest
by David Bushnell 13/10/25 Britannica
Rodrigo de Bastidas was first to establish Spain’s claim to the isthmus, sailing along the Darién coast in March 1501, but he made no settlement. A year later Christopher Columbus, on his fourth voyage, sailed along the Caribbean coast from the Bay of Honduras to Panama, accumulating much information and a little gold but again making no settlement.
Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire
The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire was a pivotal event in the history of the Americas, marked by the collision of the Aztec Triple Alliance and the Spanish Empire and its Indigenous allies. Taking place between 1519 and 1521, this event saw the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, and his small army of European soldiers and numerous indigenous allies, overthrowing one of the most powerful empires in Mesoamerica.
Tracing the Movement of Populations in Latin America
In the late fifteenth century, Christopher Columbus and his Spanish crew stumbled across the Americas searching for a trade route to Asia. First landing in the Caribbean, the Spanish encountered Native Americans living among the islands. The initial peaceful interactions between the Spanish and the indigenous people of the New World swiftly gave way to the violence of conquest. Many of the Spanish had come to the New World seeking wealth; for them, conquest was an enterprise. The possibility of acquiring riches drew yet more Spaniards to the New World at the dawn of the sixteenth century. Hernán Cortés led the first major conquest in Mexico in 1519 and toppled the Aztec Empire there in 1521.
Conquistador
Conquistadors (/kɒnˈk(w)ɪstədɔːrz/, US also /-ˈkiːs-, kɒŋˈ-/) or conquistadores[1] (Spanish: [koŋkistaˈðoɾes]; Portuguese: [kõkiʃtɐˈðoɾɨʃ, kõkistɐˈdoɾis]; lit. 'conquerors') were Spanish and Portuguese colonizers who explored, traded with and conquered parts of the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania during the Age of Discovery.[2][3] Sailing beyond the Iberian Peninsula, they established numerous colonies and trade routes, and brought much of the New World under the dominion of Spain and Portugal.
The Conquistadors: The Spanish Conquest of the Americas – 1518-1548
In the half-century after Columbus, small bands of daring Spanish adventurers conquered Central and South America, destroying the huge armies of long-established native empires in the process. Some won great fortunes in gold, while many others only died an early death. These men were The Conquistadors. In this partly card-driven, partly procedural game —a brand-new design from Jon Southard — one to five players each control a group of conquistadors, trying to discover and loot the civilizations of the Americas and end up with the most gold and power.
How smallpox devastated the Aztecs – and helped Spain conquer an American civilization 500 years ago
by Richard Gunderman 23/2/19 PBS NEWS
Recent outbreaks in the U.S. have drawn attention to the dangers of measles. The Democratic Republic of Congo is fighting a deadly outbreak of Ebola that has killed hundreds.
Exploring the Early Americas
The Conquest of Mexico paintings are significant both artistically and historically. Painted in the seventeenth century, the eight detailed canvases tell the story of the 1521 Spanish conquest of the native Aztec people. These images highlight battles between the Spanish and the Aztecs, ceremonial encounters of the Spanish conquistador with the emperor Moctezuma, and other pivotal historic moments. The series ends with the dramatic "Conquest of Tenochtitlán" (the capital of the Aztec civilization, now Mexico City) and the capture of the last Aztec king.
Spanish Conquest & Aztecs: The impact and legacy of colonisation
The arrival of the Spanish in 1519 signalled the beginning of the end of the Aztec Empire. The final defeat of the Aztecs in 1521 had a number of consequences not only for the Aztec people, but for the whole Mesoamerican region. Read through these resources to find out more about the impact and legacy of colonisation.
A Cultural History of Spanish America. From Conquest To Independence
Mariano Picón-Salas’ A Cultural History of Spanish America, which appeared recently, was published under the Latin-American Translation Program of the Association of American University Presses. A cultural rather than a political narrative, it consists of a number of lectures given by the author at various universities in the United States.
The Significance of Spanish Colonial Missions in our National Story and our Common Heritage with Spain, Mexico and Latin America
By the end of the 15th century, the Middle Ages came to a close as the modern world emerged. The legacy of the Middle Ages, the "Age of Faith," left its mark on the future of religion in Europe and after 1492, on the Americas. That year, Spain militarily defeated the Moors and initiated a period of expulsion for those who would not convert to Christianity. Following Columbus' first voyage, Spain had a new goal in that regard.
Early Latino History
by National Museum of the American Latino
The National Museum of the American Latino creates transformative experiences, fosters a deeper understanding of American history and culture, and connects communities nationwide.
Colliding Cultures
Juan Ponce de León arrived in the area named La Florida in 1513. He found between 150,000 and 300,000 Native Americans. But then two and a half centuries of contact with European and African peoples—whether through war, slave raids, or, most dramatically, foreign disease—decimated Florida’s Indigenous population. European explorers, meanwhile, had hoped to find great wealth in Florida, but reality never aligned with their imaginations.
Spanish Colonization and Control
Spanish colonists in the Americas attempted to capture and control land, resources, and labor from indigenous societies. They often used violence. They also used lasting methods of control by imposing social and economic institutions, like colonial governments and markets. This led many societies to adapt to European practices.
Timeline: Spanish empire
by HistoryWorld 1492-1968 Oxford Reference
Christopher Columbus, together with the brothers Martin and Vicente Pinzón, sails west from Palos in Spain
97,000 newly acquired artifacts tell story of America’s Spanish past
by Stephenie Livingston 13/3/14 FLORIDA MUSEUM
Early in the 1930s, a gardener discovered a skull while planting an orange tree at the Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park in St. Augustine.
Spanish Conquest and Colonization of the Americas
by James F Hancock 12/11/22 SPRINGER NATURE LINK
Beginning with Columbus’s discovery of the island he called San Salvador in 1492, a Spanish Empire grew in the sixteenth century across most of the Caribbean, half of South America, and most of Central America. As each new area of Mexico, Central and South America were opened by conquest, Spanish immigrants rapidly followed. By 1600, the Spanish had settled in a broad band across highland Mexico, a strip of the Gulf Caribbeans, the Andean and Central American highlands, Chile and Coastal Peru, and Argentina and Paraguay.
European colonization of Americas killed so many it cooled Earth's climate
by Oliver Milman in New York 31/1/19 The Guardian
Settlers killed off huge numbers of people in conflicts and also by spreading disease, which reduced the indigenous population by 90% in the century following Christopher Columbus’s initial journey to the Americas and Caribbean in 1492.
Accept our king, our god − or else: The senseless ‘requirement’ Spanish colonizers used to justify their bloodshed in the Americas
by Diego Javier Luis 2/10/24 THE CONVERSATION
Across the United States, the second Monday of October is increasingly becoming known as Indigenous Peoples Day. In the push to rename Columbus Day, Christopher Columbus himself has become a metaphor for the evils of early colonial empires, and rightly so.
Impact of Spanish Colonization
by Jonathan Cordero National Park Service
Prior to the arrival of the Spanish in 1769, the indigenous peoples of the San Francisco Peninsula, the Ramaytush, numbered about 2,000 persons. They were divided into ten independent tribes along the San Francisco Peninsula.
Genocide of indigenous peoples
According to certain genocide experts, including Raphael Lemkin – the individual who coined the term genocide – colonialism is intimately connected with genocide.[7][8] Lemkin saw genocide via colonization as a two-stage process: (1) the destruction of the indigenous group's way of life, followed by (2) the settlers' imposition of their way of life on the indigenous group.[9][10] Other scholars view genocide as associated with but distinct from settler colonialism.[4][11]
Conquest and Commerce: Spain and England in the Americas
by Lang, James 1/5/1976 DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a stimulating and evocative comparison of English and the Spanish colonial societies from the beginning of settlement until independence. It belongs to the series of Studies in Social Discontinuity under the consulting editorship of Charles Tilly and Edward Shorter. The author is a young, historically oriented sociologist trained at Michigan and now teaching at Vanderbilt.
The Changing Interpretation of the Spanish Conquest in the Americas
by Oxford University Press 3/7/23 WORLD HISTORY ENCYCLPEDIA
The fall in 1519 of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Mexica or Aztec Empire, as it was later called, laid the foundation for the Spanish colonial empire on the North American mainland. It was the first time that Europeans had subjugated a highly organized state outside the world they had hitherto known. In the process, they created the basis for the first global colonial empires.
Spanish Conquest
Many factors conditioned the ways Europeans responded to Native Americans and the ways Native Americans responded to Europeans. Motivations, expectations, political and social structures, religious beliefs, concepts of civilization, and perceptions of wealth and power all played a role. Perhaps nowhere is the complex mingling of such forces more evident than in Hernan Cortés's encounter with the Mexica (Aztecs). Cortés landed at what is now Veracruz in Mexico on Good Friday, April 22, 1519.
The Spanish in North America
Although Spain established colonies in North America in the seventeenth century, by 1750, most remained small military outposts. In Florida, the principal Spanish settlements were located at St. Augustine, Apalachee Bay, and Pensacola Bay. Some Catholic missions had been established in northern Florida in the seventeenth century. But in the early eighteenth century, they had closed. South Carolinians began to raid these missions and sold captured Indians as slaves.
Spanish-American Colonial Manuscripts
Edward E. Ayer (1841-1927), a Chicago businessman who made his fortune manufacturing railroad ties, launched his extensive career as a collector to document the early contacts of Europeans with the native peoples of the Americas after reading Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Mexico while serving in the Union Army in 1864. He set about acquiring as many early manuscripts and books as possible on the discovery, exploration, and settlement of North and South America.
Spanish Colonial Culture
There was little contact between the people of the Americas and the people of Europe before the 1400s; but, after more and more European explorers ventured out to the Americas, a mass migration began. However, this land was already populated with many different indigenous tribes who had been living on this land for centuries. When the native tribes of the Americas and the explorers and settlers of Europe came into contact with one another, a cataclysmic exchange between the Americas and Europe began.
Indigenous America
Europeans called the Americas “the New World.” But for the millions of Native Americans they encountered, it was anything but. Humans have lived in the Americas for over ten thousand years. Dynamic and diverse, they spoke hundreds of languages and created thousands of distinct cultures. Native Americans built settled communities and followed seasonal migration patterns, maintained peace through alliances and warred with their neighbors, and developed self-sufficient economies and maintained vast trade networks. They cultivated distinct art forms and spiritual values.
The Archaeological Study of Spanish Colonialism in the Americas
by Mary Van Buren 31/12/09 SPRINGER NATURE Link
Spanish colonial archaeology has undergone a fundamental shift since the Columbian Quincentenary due to the adoption of a bottom-up understanding of colonialism that emphasizes the analysis of local phenomena in a global context and the active ways in which people negotiated the processes set in motion by the conquest. This review examines five key research foci: culture change and identity, missionization, bioarchaeology, economics, and investigations of the colonial core.
U.S. History Primary Source Timeline
by LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 1600-1763
When the London Company sent out its first expedition to begin colonizing Virginia on December 20, 1606, it was by no means the first European attempt to exploit North America. In 1564, for example, French Protestants (Huguenots) built a colony near what is now Jacksonville, Florida. This intrusion did not go unnoticed by the Spanish, who had previously claimed the region. The next year, the Spanish established a military post at St. Augustine; Spanish troops soon wiped out the French interlopers residing but 40 miles away.
Prevailing facets of Spanish colonialism: the roots of exploitation and inequality in Latin America
Four main facets characterized Spanish colonialism in Latin America and contributed to the persistence of inequality and exploitation in colonial institutions – conversion, easy money, centralism, and political violence. The facets of conversion, easy money, centralism, and political violence are not institutions in themselves, but rather practices and logics of Spanish colonialism whose presence can be seen in social, political, and economic institutions and traced throughout history despite changes and developments in institutions.
What if the Spanish colonized North America like Britain did?
by Thread starterStarlight Glimme 14/7/17 alternatehistory.com
What if the Spanish colonized North America like Britain did, in the area of the 13 colonies. Would there be a British Mexico?
AD 1493: The Pope asserts rights to colonize, convert, and enslave
Pope Alexander VI issues a papal bull or decree, “Inter Caetera," in which he authorizes Spain and Portugal to colonize the Americas and its Native peoples as subjects. The decree asserts the rights of Spain and Portugal to colonize, convert, and enslave. It also justifies the enslavement of Africans.
6 - The Spanish Conquest and settlement of America
‘Without settlement there is no good conquest, and if the land is not conquered, the people will not be converted. Therefore the maxim of the conqueror must be to settle.’ The words are those of one of the first historians of the Indies, Francisco Lopez de Gomara. The philosophy behind them is that of his patron, the greatest of the conquistadores, Hernán Cortés. It was this philosophy which came to inform Spain's overseas enterprise of the sixteenth century and did much to make Spanish America what it eventually became.
The Church in Colonial Latin America
by John F. Schwaller 31/3/16 Oxford Bibliographic
The Catholic Church was undoubtedly the single most important institution in colonial Latin America. Everyone who lived in the region was nominally a member of the Church. The Church controlled all aspects of life from birth, through marriage, until death.
The Spanish fringe
by James Lockhart 10/10/25 Britannica
From the notion of “centre” as used above it follows that the remaining area of Spanish occupation was, from the Spanish point of view at least, peripheral. Most of the Hispanic territories in the Indies were occupied by groups coming precisely from the central areas. Conquering groups had always consisted largely of people of lesser position in the base area, and, as it grew clearer that the central areas were unequaled in their assets, the marginality of the personnel going elsewhere became even more pronounced.
Libraries
by Jamie Dwyer Salt Lake Community College
Bexar Archives
Approximately 5,000 documents surrounding the Spanish colonial province of Texas. Topics include military and diplomatic correspondences as well as social life in the province.
Spanish Colonization Exploration
White Sands National Park will be partially open starting Saturday October 11 through Friday October 17 from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. The visitor center and Western National Parks store will be open from 9:00 am – 5:00 pm each day. Dunes Drive will only be accessible to Dune Life Nature Trail at mile marker 2.5. The Playa Trail and Dune Life Nature Trail will be accessible. The Backcountry Camping Loop, Interdune Boardwalk, and Alkali Flat trails will remain closed. No sledding allowed on Dune Life Nature Trail.
Latin American Collections (Archival)
The collection contains photocopies of articles, publications, and sections of publications, as well as bibliographical notes, handwritten notes, correspondence, and microfilm relating to Perry’s research for his dissertation on art patronage in colonial Mexico. Much of the material focuses on Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza and the Cathedral at Puebla, Mexico.
Spanish Colonialism’s Environmental Legacy, Part One: Origins
by Matt Shipman 27/9/11 NC STATE UNIVERSITY
The mining cities of Huancavelica, Peru, and Potosi, Bolivia, once the pride of the Spanish empire, are now among the most mercury-contaminated urban areas in the world. We are only now beginning to understand the impact that the quicksilver-laced soils of these cities has on their populations today. But to truly grasp the problem, you need to understand how they got this way.
Spanish conquest of the Maya
The Spanish conquest of the Maya was a protracted conflict during the Spanish colonisation of the Americas, in which the Spanish conquistadores and their allies gradually incorporated the territory of the Late Postclassic Maya states and polities into the colonial Viceroyalty of New Spain. The Maya occupied the Maya Region, an area that is now part of the modern countries of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador; the conquest began in the early 16th century and is generally considered to have ended in 1697.
Genocide of indigenous peoples
According to certain genocide experts, including Raphael Lemkin – the individual who coined the term genocide – colonialism is intimately connected with genocide.[7][8] Lemkin saw genocide via colonization as a two-stage process: (1) the destruction of the indigenous group's way of life, followed by (2) the settlers' imposition of their way of life on the indigenous group.
24 - Genocidal Massacres in the Spanish Conquest of the Americas
by Harald E. Braun 23/6/23 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
This chapter examines and compares three genocidal events in the early modern Caribbean and Mesoamerica: the massacres of Xaragua (Hispaniola, 1503), Cholula (Mexico, 1519), and Toxcatl (Mexico, 1520; also known as the Massacre of Templo Mayor). Each of the three mass killings marked a political and military turning point in the history of Spanish military expansion in the Americas.
The Myth of New World Genocide
by Jeff Fynn-Paul 7/3/23 HISTORY RECLAIMED
Hello and welcome everyone. In my talk today, I am going to first lay out why it is that the term genocide was not used by serious historians to describe European colonization in the New World until very recently.
The world’s greatest genocide?
by Michael Turtle 31/7/25 TIME TRAVEL TURTLE
In the country’s capital, Lima, I find myself confronting the thoughts that had been swirling aimlessly in my head. For it was here that much of this death originated, in some form or the other.
Genocidal Massacres in the Spanish Conquest of the Americas Xaragua, Cholula and Toxcatl, 1503-1519
This chapter examines and compares three genocidal events in the early modern Caribbean and Mesoamerica: the massacres of Xaragua (Hispaniola, 1503), Cholula (Mexico, 1519), and Toxcatl (Mexico, 1520; also known as the Massacre of Templo Mayor). Each of the three mass killings marked a political and military turning point in the history of Spanish military expansion in the Americas.
Genocide and American Indian History
by Jeffrey Ostler 2/3/15 Genocide and American Indian History
The issue of genocide and American Indian history has been contentious. Many writers see the massive depopulation of the indigenous population of the Americas after 1492 as a clear-cut case of the genocide. Other writers, however, contend that European and U.S. actions toward Indians were deplorable but were rarely if ever genocidal. To a significant extent, disagreements about the pervasiveness of genocide in the history of the post-Columbian Western Hemisphere, in general, and U.S. history, in particular, pivot on definitions of genocide.
Population history of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas
Population figures for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas before European colonization have been difficult to establish. Estimates have varied widely from as low as 8 million to as many as 100 million, though by the end of the 20th Century, many scholars gravitated toward an estimate of around 50 million people.
California Indian History
by NATIVE AMERICAN HERITAGE COMMISSION
One manner in which we can seek to understand aboriginal California Indian cultures is to look at the tribes inhabiting similar climatic and ecological zones. What emerges from this approach is a remarkable similarity in material aspects of the many different tribes inhabiting those territories. Generally speaking technologies and materials used to manufacture tools, homes and storage containers show great similarity. Hunting, trapping and fishing technologies also are shared across tribal lines terrain, available water plants and animals affected the density of populations, settlement patterns as each tribe adjusted to its environment.
Bartolomé de las Casas and 500 Years of Racial Injustice
This year marks the 500-year anniversary of the pricking of one man's conscience. Bartolomé de las Casas, sickened by the exploitation and physical degradation of the indigenous peoples in the Spanish colonies of the Caribbean, gave up his extensive land holdings and slaves and traveled to his homeland in Spain in 1515 to petition the Spanish Crown to stop the abuses that European colonists were inflicting upon the natives of the New World.
European colonisation of the Americas killed 10% of world population and caused global cooling
by Alexander Koch 31/1/19 THE CONVERSATION
While Europe was in the early days of the Renaissance, there were empires in the Americas sustaining more than 60m people. But the first European contact in 1492 brought diseases to the Americas which devastated the native population and the resultant collapse of farming in the Americas was so significant that it may have even cooled the global climate.
The Story Of... Smallpox – and other Deadly Eurasian Germs
Much of the credit for European military success in the New World can be handed to the superiority of their weapons, their literary heritage, even the fact they had unique load-bearing mammals, like horses. These factors combined, gave the conquistadors a massive advantage over the sophisticated civilisations of the Aztec and Inca empires.
The Holocaust We Will Not See
Avatar, James Cameron’s blockbusting 3-D film, is both profoundly silly and profound. It’s profound because, like most films about aliens, it is a metaphor for contact between different human cultures. But in this case the metaphor is conscious and precise: this is the story of European engagement with the native peoples of the Americas. It’s profoundly silly because engineering a happy ending demands a plot so stupid and predictable that it rips the heart out of the film. The fate of the native Americans is much closer to the story told in another new film, The Road, in which a remnant population flees in terror as it is hunted to extinction.
Spanish Conquest & Aztecs: The impact and legacy of colonisation
by Picryl NORWOOD SECONDARY COLLEGE
The arrival of the Spanish in 1519 signalled the beginning of the end of the Aztec Empire. The final defeat of the Aztecs in 1521 had a number of consequences not only for the Aztec people, but for the whole Mesoamerican region. Read through these resources to find out more about the impact and legacy of colonisation.
