This review was written on February 1st 2013
The book deals with
Columbus and his arrival in the islands of the Caribbean and his later visits there
and of the problems which he and his followers encountered. It describes the
disastrous effects the Spanish conquest had on the local population,
particularly in terms of violence, killings and land occupation. Despite some
protests from some of the clergy, the behaviour towards the natives was
described as scandalous. Many of
the Spaniards were hard-bitten men whose expectations of wealth were often not
achieved and whose behaviour had not been influenced by the traditional
discipline of a national army. Nor was Isabella’s demand prohibiting slavery
adhered to. In addition, the high mortality among the Indians was greatly
increased because of their lack of resistance to smallpox, measles and other
exogenous European epidemic diseases.
Some of the Spaniards
hoped for quick rewards; few received them and there were no rich deposits of
gold although the visit to the West was strongly related to its possible wealth
in these foreign lands. The Spaniards also suffered badly from the tropical
diseases which were foreign to them. Of the 1,500 men who travelled with Columbus
in 1493 only 360 survived to 1502. Half of the 2,500 who arrived with Nicolas
de Ovando a few years later were dead from ‘’a mysterious disease’’.
In pesetas Cortes was worth about six Euro. |
Later chapters deal with
the conquest of the mainland. The Spanish invasion of Mexico was led by Cortes in 1519, seventeen years after
Columbus first arrived in the Caribbean. The history of his exploits is somewhat confusing and it is
difficult to know how much of the detail was based on reality. The underlying
feature was the destruction of the native tribes, of Montezuma and the Aztecs, and
other tribes in the Mexican area. It was more than just the brutish
exploitation of the Indians; it was the almost total destruction of the local
tribes over the next generation or two.
Clearly Cortes was the outstanding
leader of the early Spanish landing on the mainland. Despite his relatively
small number of soldiers, the surprise of the Spanish arrival, their strange equipment,
horses and ships, and the mythical powers attributed by the Indians to such
strange visitors, the local habitants were certain to yield to the ultimate
success of the Spanish.
Pizarro was the outstanding
leader in the early 1500s who led his company of adventurers into Ecuador and
Peru and to the destruction of the Inca tribes. It was in about 1529 that he and
Diego de Almagro planned to set out for Peru and the Inca country on the west
coast of South America. Pizarro
was described as no gentleman nor was Almagro described as any better. It was
they who were the moving force in the conquest of Peru in the 1530s and it was Pizarro
who was appointed the Governor and Captain General by the Spanish Crown; and it
was he who fought and defeated the Inca tribes, ably assisted by the chronic
turmoil which was inherent among the Incas themselves. Inca society was largely
destroyed within a generation or two although some of the more wealthy Incas
managed to survive the Spanish occupation and gradually merged into the mixed
population of Peru and other South American countries. Many histories of the
Incas have been written by Spanish and other authors but one must have serious
doubts about the veracity of these as writing did not exist among the Incas and
related tribes, and accounts were obviously based on tradition and word of
mouth.
Pizzaro, worthy of his own stamp. |
Although no formal army
was ever sent by Ferdinand, the King of Spain, and his successor to conquer the
Western possessions, all the islands and much of the mainland, including the
Mexican area, the Central American countries and all of the northern and eastern
parts of South America soon came under the control of Spain thanks to the
arrival of many shiploads of ambitious Spaniards seeking adventure, gold and
land. And the quite numerous local
tribes, including the Aztecs and Incas, had little protection from the equipment
of the invaders, the ships, the firearms, the horses and the natural energy,
brutality and foreign diseases of the invaders. It is no wonder that such a
vast and settled area and so many settled races were destroyed within a few
generations.
The Spanish conquest had
been virtually completed by a relatively small group of adventurers by the
mid-1500s. By the mid-century they had extended from Peru to Bolivia and Chile
in the south and to Columbia and Venezuela in the north before the steam of the
Spanish conquest began to peter out with their slower spread to the more southern
countries of Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. No permanent Spanish interest was paid to the east of the
Andes at or below the Amazon basin where Portugal gained the huge area of
Brazil. Nor was there any great interest shown to North America, largely because
no discoveries of gold or other sources of wealth were found there and the
Spaniards were faced by the constant opposition of the many local tribes. Florida,
California, New Mexico, Kansas and a few other southern parts of the current
United States were occupied to some extent in the early years. The Spaniards
never achieved firm possession of these areas apart from leaving many place
names. The Spaniards were dominated later by the arrival of the French, the English,
Scots, Irish and other northern Europeans as they spread to the South and West
of the United States.
The fabled lost city of Gold |
In all the writings
about the Spanish conquests of South America the emphasis all the time was
seeking gold everywhere. They called it El Dorado. It was the legend of the lost city of gold – El Dorado. It was something that whetted the
appetite of the Spanish adventurers ever since the time that they first arrived
in the Caribbean. It was gold that turned a race of men into the destroyer of
fellow men and of other races of people.
Although gold was scarce on the islands, there was sure to be much on
the continent. The parish next door was thought to be full of gold and of other
sources of fabulous riches.
Orellana's golden death mask |
The name Amazon was
derived from the name given by the first European ever to travel down the
Amazon to the Atlantic – Orellana was his name and he talked about the female
warriors and it was he who called them Amazons and led to the origin of the
name of the river. Orellana was
the first person in history who crossed the Andes from Ecuador. Not through any
fault of his own, but because he got lost, he found himself on a tributary of
the Amazon. He finished at the Atlantic Ocean on the island of Hispaniola. There were equally fruitless Chimeras
of wealth and glory shared by all the Spanish conquerors and which involved
them at times with amazing feats of heroic endeavour in search of gold and
wealth. In the mid sixteenth
century the Spaniard Coronado pressed into the southern states of North America
and went up as high as the Mississippi and up as far north as Oklahoma and
Kansas. The outstanding feature
for the Spaniards who invaded the lower parts of North America was the lack of
any evidence of wealth, gold or anything worthwhile. The result was that the North American states was of no
great interest to the Spaniards and eventually the centre of North America
remained very sparsely populated until the middle of the 19th
century when they were taken over by Anglo-Saxon settlers migrating from the
Atlantic seaboard, just as South America, east of the Andes was full of rain
forest and sun baked savannahs and remained virgin territory until the early
19thh century. The
pampas of Argentina and the wastes of Patagonia further south, like the
prairies and deserts of North America were largely shunned by Spanish settlers
until the 1870s.
The book gives a good
potted description of the gradual extension of Spanish influence in the West
but emphasises that there was a gradual decrease in Spain and Spanish influence
in recent years. Many parts of
South America remained uninhabited and many of the Indians of the sub-continent
remained active and populated parts of the countries untouched by the
Spaniards, such as Argentina, parts of Chile, Paraguay and the southern parts
of the subcontinent.
Wonder woman, a plastic Amazonian |
Unlike the United States
and Canada, with their adherence to the principles of democracy and the law,
the more southern parts of America north of the equator and all the countries
of South America have had a long tradition of political instability. I expect
that there are more than a few factors in their history which accounts for this.
The history of their genesis under the Spanish conquest must have had a
profound and long-term effect on their delayed adherence to democracy as we
know it in most European countries. One factor was surely the rapacious
behaviour of the Spanish adventurers; another the complexity of government of
such remote areas by the King and government in Madrid; the very mixed basis of
white, Indian and black of diverse nationalities, and possibly the dominance of
the Catholic Church with its strong political role in the affairs of the new
countries and its conflict with the ‘’superstitious’’ beliefs of the native
tribes.
I have not read any book
or article about the Portuguese occupation of Brazil. This is an odd omission
in my history. My review of The Andes and the Amazon refers to
many isolated and mostly primitive tribal groups scattered along the river and
its tributaries and where one finds only settlements or small towns of mixed
basis as one comes closer to the river’s mouth.
Machu Picchu - the' lost city of the Incas'. |
This book finishes with
a potted description of the pre-Columbian tribes of the Americas. The author
divides their history into four periods corresponding to separate ‘’stages of
cultural development’’ – Archaic (7000-2500BC), Pre-Classic (2500BC to AD1),
Classic (AD1 –1000); Post-Classic (1000-1500). Information based on his views must be speculative but the important
message to learn from these speculations is the gross instability of society and
the absence of older literature about pre-Spanish days. Today may not be any
different. If we are to achieve perfection in this world through the ultimate
and permanent achievement of the perfect society, we can hardly be happy about
the ups and downs of the tribal society of the Americas nor can we be reassured
by the history of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, nor can we hope to achieve
perfection through religion. The most convenient religion I can study is Catholicism
because of its well documented history of two thousand years. Can we say that
some of the horrors created by the Church and by its leaders have led to a
better world and to a more rational human society? Can the obsessive grip about
possessions, about ‘’standards of living’’, about the worst aspects of
globalisation, about acquisitiveness - never denied by our pastors - be
rational if this selfish and self-indulgent philosophy is held with total disregard
for the welfare of our neighbours and our natural surroundings on which we
depend?
(Ed. The Spanish title of this blog is courtesy of Google translate - apologies to Spanish linguists if this is somewhat incorrect!)
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