Exhaustive Lecture Notes: Conquest of the Americas, Mercantilism, and European Colonial Rivalries

Aztec Conquest and the Fall of Tenochtitlan

• Native Religious Beliefs and Initial Contact:

  • Native populations maintained ancient legends of a light-skinned god possessing a large, fluffy beard. Because indigenous peoples had been isolated for generations, light skin was viewed as miraculous or divine.
  • When Spanish explorers arrived from Southern Europe, their lighter skin tones and facial hair (such as Hernán Cortés's beard) led Aztec scouts to report back to Emperor Montezuma that divine representatives had arrived.
  • Montezuma hypothesized that the Spanish were messengers from god, prompting him to investigate whether the Aztec religion required correction or reform.

• The Capital City of Tenochtitlan:

  • Montezuma invited Hernán Cortés and his Spanish force directly into the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan.
  • Tenochtitlan was a massive urban center, functioning as the largest city in the world at the time and exceeding any city the Spanish had seen in Europe.
  • Modern-day Mexico City sits on the historic site of Tenochtitlan and remains a massive metropolitan area, larger in population and scale than São Paulo, Brazil.
  • Geography: Tenochtitlan was constructed on an island situated in the middle of Lake Texcoco. The city was linked to the mainland via large bridges called causeways. The area was also noted for harboring small indigenous animals described as ostrilados.

• Cortés's Coup d'État:

  • In late $\text{1519}$ (specifically around $\text{December 15, 1519}$), Cortés faced the challenge of capturing an immense city teeming with inhabitants.
  • While standing on a balcony overlooking the capital with Montezuma, Cortés launched a sudden surprise action, seizing Montezuma hostage.
  • Cortés issued a direct threat to the Aztec guard: "you take one step, dog. Carve up your emperor."
  • Through this unexpected violent seizure of power (a military coup executed by a small clique), Cortés established himself as the effective ruler of Tenochtitlan while holding Montezuma captive.

• The Coastal Strategy and Illegal Mission:

  • When landing on the Gulf Coast of present-day Mexico, Cortés ordered his men to burn their ships.
  • Reasons for burning the ships:
    1. To eliminate any option of retreat, forcing his force to commit fully to the invasion.
    2. To conceal the illegal nature of his expedition. Cortés had failed to secure official administrative approval and proper paperwork from Spanish imperial authorities or the King of Spain.
  • Pánfilo de Narváez, the Spanish colonial governor of Cuba, dispatched an armed force to arrest Cortés for his unauthorized mission, sending threatening messages warning Cortés that he was under arrest.
  • Cortés divided his force: he left roughly half his troops in Tenochtitlan to guard Montezuma and suppress the Aztec population, while taking the remaining half to the Mexican coast to combat Narváez.
  • Cortés defeated Narváez's forces on the coast and incorporated many of the men into his own ranks, leaving him with the challenge of retroactively legalizing his mission with the Spanish Crown.

• Aztec Uprising and La Noche Triste:

  • In Cortés's absence, the Aztec population initiated a major armed uprising against the remaining Spanish garrison in Tenochtitlan.
  • On the night of $\text{June 30, 1520}$, the Spanish were forced into a disastrous nocturnal retreat across the causeways of Lake Texcoco. The Spanish refer to this event as La Noche Triste ("The Sad Night").
  • During the retreat, Aztec forces launched heavy assaults from catapults within the city, raining giant boulders down upon the retreating Spaniards. Aztec combatants navigated war canoes along the lake and waterways, striking the Spanish with spears and arrows.
  • The Spanish suffered heavy casualties during the slaughter.

• Rebuilding and Siege of Tenochtitlan:

  • Cortés launched a military campaign to permanently conquer the Aztec Empire, beginning by constructing $13$ light naval vessels called brigantines.
  • Brigantines were small, maneuverable ships designed for a small crew, each fitted with one or two deck-mounted cannons to negate the Aztec war canoe advantage on Lake Texcoco.
  • Battle of Otumba ($\text{July 7, 1520}$): Cortés achieved a strategic victory against Aztec forces in a skirmish while rebuilding his army and recruiting native allies.
  • Indigenous Alliances: The Spanish allied with native tribes—including the Tlaxcala, Tabasco, and Totonac peoples—who sought liberation from harsh Aztec subjugation.
  • The Siege: Spanish and native forces invested Tenochtitlan between $\text{August 1520}$ and $\text{May 1521}$. The formal siege commenced on $\text{May 31, 1521}$, ending with the capture and surrender of the Aztec forces on $\text{August 14, 1521}$.
  • Cortés's offensive force consisted of:
    • $1{,}000$ Spanish foot soldiers (excluding indigenous allied warriors).
    • Fewer than $100$ horses.
    • $18$ heavy land artillery cannons.
    • $13$ cannon-armed brigantines on Lake Texcoco.

• Smallpox and Demographic Collapse:

  • Unintentionally, the Spanish introduced European infectious diseases—primarily smallpox—to the Indigenous populations.
  • Populations across Europe, Asia, and Africa had developed cross-immunity to these pathogens through millennia of continuous contact dating back to the Roman Empire and earlier.
  • Native Americans possessed no prior exposure or natural immunity to Old World pathogens, leading to catastrophic mortality rates among both the Aztecs and Spanish native allies like the Tlaxcala.
  • By the year $1600$, approximately $90\text{\%}$ of all indigenous peoples in the Americas had died from Old World infectious diseases.
  • Over $100{,}000$ Aztecs died during the siege of Tenochtitlan due to a combination of combat, epidemic disease, and widespread starvation caused by disrupted agricultural production.
  • Tenochtitlan was destroyed, and Mexico City was built over its ruins, marking the end of the $152\text{-year-old}$ Aztec Empire.

Conquest of the Incan Empire

• Geography and Quechua Identity:

  • The Incan Empire was centered in modern-day Peru, extending into areas of modern Bolivia and Chile (including the hyper-arid Atacama Desert).
  • The term "Inca" specifically designated the ruler/emperor. The ethnic population consisted of the Quechua people, who spoke the Quechua language.

• Francisco Pizarro's Background:

  • Francisco Pizarro was a cousin of Hernán Cortés born into humble poverty in a destitute neighborhood of Seville, Spain.
  • Cultural Zeitgeist: In Spanish culture at the time, male family members had until roughly $45\text{ years old}$ to establish their societal standing and wealth. Driven by the success of his cousin Cortés, Pizarro sought to conquer his own wealth and empire.

• Arrival and the Incan Civil War:

  • Pizarro landed on the Pacific coast of northern Peru on $\text{May 13, 1532}$.
  • Pizarro landed on the exact day that a $5\text{-year}$ Incan civil war concluded.
  • The civil war had broken out between two half-brothers following their father's death: Atahualpa (the elder brother and successor) and Huáscar Inca (the younger challenger).
  • Atahualpa emerged victorious, becoming the sole Incan Emperor and one of the wealthiest rulers in the world at that time.

• Historical Theory Interlude (Great Man Theory vs. Personal Background):

  • Historical impact is driven by individual choices and actions rather than socio-economic status at birth.
  • Positive example: Frederick Douglass, born into slavery, championed personal responsibility and transformed humanity.
  • Negative example: Joseph Stalin, born into extreme poverty, became a bank robber and dictator who murdered more individuals than Adolf Hitler.
  • Neutral example: Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross.
  • Application: A dirt-poor Spaniard (Pizarro) engineered the downfall of the world's wealthiest sovereign (Atahualpa).

• The Trap at Cajamarca ($\text{November 16, 1532}$):

  • Pizarro invited Atahualpa to a diplomatic meeting in the high-altitude Andean city of Cajamarca, utilizing flattery and humble posture to lower the Emperor's guard.
  • Naïvely expecting a peaceful encounter, Atahualpa arrived with an army of $80{,}000$ Quechua warriors who were ordered to leave their weapons behind at base camp.
  • Pizarro commanded a total force of $168$ Spaniards ($167$ soldiers plus Pizarro), equipped with $4$ artillery cannons and matchlock muskets known as arquebuses (archibus).
  • Before Atahualpa's arrival, Pizarro positioned his artillery and shooters at key tactical high-ground points overlooking the plaza.
  • During the encounter, a Catholic priest accompanying Pizarro handed Atahualpa a large golden crucifix. Atahualpa examined the object and dropped it to the ground, instructing a servant to retrieve it.
  • The priest began shouting in Spanish, and Pizarro gave the signal to fire artillery and muskets into the trapped, unarmed crowd.
  • Panic ensued as thousands of Incas trampled one another trying to flee the enclosed mountain plaza.
  • Pizarro personally rushed and captured Atahualpa, declaring: "take one step and I'll carve up your emperor."

• Ransom and Incan Resistance:

  • Atahualpa brought the Spanish to the Incan Royal Vaults. The Quechua paid an immense ransom in exchange for their emperor's release, filling rooms with gold, silver, rubies, diamonds, and emeralds.
  • Pizarro reneged on the deal and executed Emperor Atahualpa on $\text{August 29, 1533}$.
  • Atahualpa's younger brother, Manco Inca Yupanqui, organized a guerrilla resistance movement against Spanish rule.
  • The Incas retreated into the Peruvian Amazon rainforest, establishing a guerrilla base at Vilcabamba and launching an insurgency that lasted for approximately $30\text{ years}$.
  • Spanish forces finally overwhelmed and conquered the final Incan stronghold at Vilcabamba in $1571$.

Mercantilism and Spanish Colonial Governance

• Mercantile Theory (Mercantilism):

  • Definition: An economic system in which national economic activity is organized, regulated, and controlled strictly for the benefit of the rising national state (e.g., Spain), rather than for individual capitalist profit.
  • System Dynamics: Requires a mother country and a closed colonial network.
  • Economic Cycle: The mother country extracts raw natural resources from the colony. Colonists are strictly forbidden ("hashtag forbidden") from manufacturing finished goods or engaging in independent free-market capitalism.
  • The mother country ships raw goods across the ocean, manufactures finished products (e.g., furniture, electronics/laptops in modern analogies), and sells the finished goods back to the captive colonial market at premium prices.

• Administrative Units and Royal Revenues:

  • Viceroyalties: Large administrative districts ruled by viceroys. Examples include:
    • Viceroyalty of New Spain (Nueva España): Mexico and Central America.
    • Viceroyalty of New Granada (Nueva Granada): Colombia, Venezuela, and Panama.
    • Viceroyalty of Peru.
  • The Quinto (Royal Fifth): A statutory tax claiming one-fifth ($\\frac{1}{5}$ or $20\text{\%}$) of all precious metals (gold and silver) extracted in the colonies, paid directly to the Spanish Crown.
  • Spanish Treasure Galleons: Enormous armed warships constructed to transport plunder and quinto gold/silver back to Europe.
  • The central altar of the Cathedral of Seville in Spain was constructed entirely from $100\text{\%}$ solid Incan gold brought back by Pizarro.

The Columbian Exchange, Portuguese Brazil, and the Transatlantic Slave Trade

• The Columbian Exchange:

  • Definition: The continuous, global transfer of plants, animals, cultures, human populations, communicable diseases, and technology between the Eastern (Old World) and Western (New World) Hemispheres beginning in $\text{1492}$.
  • Key Transferred Items:
    • Horses: Reintroduced to the Americas by the Spanish after indigenous wild horses had died out millennia earlier.
    • Pathogens: European smallpox and flu strains (with modern parallels such as COVID-19).
    • Invasive Species: Modern examples include poisonous lionfish introduced into native ecosystems around Aruba.

• Portuguese Settlement of Brazil:

  • Portugal mirrored Spanish mercantilist economic policies in Brazil between $1521$ and $1555$.
  • Local colonial manufacturing was banned to preserve Portuguese trade monopolies over major cash crops, including coffee, cotton, and sugarcane.
  • Capitães-mor: Local colonial Portuguese officials possessing combined judicial and military power.
  • Indigenous Interactions: Portuguese settlers interacted heavily with native groups such as the Guarani in southeastern Brazil (São Paulo region)—whose name survives today in the popular Brazilian soft drink Guaraná.

• Transatlantic Slave Trade:

  • Beginning in $\text{1518}$, the Portuguese initiated the transatlantic import of enslaved Africans directly to Brazilian sugar plantations.
  • The system was subsequently adopted by the Spanish, Dutch, and English slave traders.
  • Over centuries, an estimated $11{,}000{,}000$ enslaved African human beings were forcibly transported to North and South America.
  • The vast majority of enslaved Africans were brought to Brazil.
  • Conditions during Transatlantic Voyages: Portuguese enslavers routinely threw sick or incapacitated enslaved people overboard into the Atlantic Ocean, calculating that it was cheaper to purchase new captives from West African slave markets (such as Dahomey/Whydah, expanded after $1727$) than to provide medical care.

• Carib and Taino Indigenous Dynamics:

  • The Carib natives (from whom the term cannibal derives) originated in South America and practiced ritualistic cannibalism.
  • The Caribs invaded Caribbean islands and nearly eradicated the indigenous Taino people of modern Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
  • The arrival of Spanish forces violently repelled the Caribs back into South America, unintentionally saving the remaining Taino from complete destruction.

Anglo-Spanish Conflict, Elizabeth I, and the Spanish Armada

• Rise of Queen Elizabeth I:

  • Elizabeth I was the daughter of King Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn.
  • Henry VIII's Religious Break: Desperate for a male heir, Henry VIII requested an annulment from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon (a Spanish Catholic princess). When the Pope denied the annulment, Henry broke away from Roman Catholicism, created the Protestant Church of England (Anglican Church), and had the Archbishop of Canterbury approve his divorce. Catherine was sent to a convent, and Anne Boleyn was later beheaded after giving birth to Elizabeth.
  • Rhyme regarding Henry VIII's six wives: "Divorce, beheaded, died, divorce, beheaded, survived."
  • Elizabeth I assumed the throne as "The Virgin Queen" because she chose never to marry, preserving her political autonomy.

• Escalation with King Philip II of Spain:

  • King Philip II ruled Spain during its Golden Age (Siglo de Oro, spanning $1556 - 1659$, a period of $103\text{ years}$ of international dominance funded by American silver and gold).
  • Philip II sought to re-impose Roman Catholicism on England and merge it into the Spanish Empire. He sent a formal marriage proposal to Elizabeth I.
  • Elizabeth I flatly rejected his proposal ("hashtag no").

• Provocations Leading to War:

  1. Colonial Intrusion: Elizabeth sent English settler John White to found an English colony at Roanoke (modern-day North Carolina), violating Spain's Papal claim over the Americas.
  2. Privateering along the Spanish Main: Elizabeth authorized English "Sea Dogs" (privateers/state-sanctioned pirates), led by Sir Francis Drake, to raid Spanish ports and treasure fleets across the Yucatan, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and the Caribbean.
  3. Knighting of Francis Drake: When Philip II demanded Drake's arrest, Elizabeth summoned Drake to London and officially knighted him ("Sir Francis Drake") on his ship, the Golden Hind.

• The Spanish Armada ($\text{May 1588}$):

  • Enraged by the rejection, privateer raids, and colonial incursions, Philip II dispatched the Grand Spanish Armada in $\text{May 1588}$ to invade England and forcibly restore Catholicism.
  • While sailing across the seas toward England, the Spanish Armada was decimated by violent, unexpected tempests.
  • The English famously attributed these destructive storms to divine intervention, naming them "The Protestant Wind."
  • The disaster shattered Spanish naval superiority, ended Philip II's plans to invade England, and preserved English independence.

Questions & Discussion

• Question on Incan Troop Numbers vs. Defeat:

  • Student Question: How were $168$ Spaniards able to overpower $80{,}000$ Incan soldiers, even if those soldiers were unarmed?
  • Explanation: The shock value of gunpowder explosions and artillery fire from high ground terrified the uninitiated Incan forces. In the mountain enclosure of Cajamarca, mass panic broke out, causing the crowded Incan army to trample itself to death while attempting to escape the unseen ranged weapons.

• Question on Exam Content Focus:

  • Student Question: Will upcoming exams focus primarily on specific factual details or precise dates?
  • Explanation: Assessment items focus primarily on substantive historical facts and analytical concepts rather than pure date memorization, though comprehensive reviews are provided beforehand.

• Question on Technology and Parity:

  • Student Question: Would the outcome of the conquest have differed if Native American empires had access to Old World technology?
  • Explanation: If geographical proximity or trade access (such as the Silk Road) had allowed the Incas and Aztecs access to gunpowder metallurgy, bullet manufacturing, and trade networks, European conquest efforts would likely have been repelled by elite indigenous military units such as the Aztec Jaguar Warriors.