Context and Consequences of the Spanish Conquest of the Americas

The arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean, in 1492, opened the door for further exploration – and eventual conquest – of the Caribbean, and South and Central America, by the Spanish, in the hundred years following his arrival.  But did these men realize that they’d happened upon two vast continents, with great and powerful empires, and trade networks established across its length and breadth?

Not at all. The context behind Columbus’s voyage was the hope of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain – Isabel of Castile and Fernando of Aragon (the power couple that had recently united Spain under Christianity) – to outflank their Portuguese rivals in the continuing attempt by Europeans to find a route to the spice isles of Asia. Columbus’s first voyage ended up on the outskirts of the western hemisphere, a thing unknown to most Europeans.

Violence ensued, as does with all conquests, but these wars – and the founding of the Spanish Empire – ignited the greatest transfer of ideas, culture, human populations, food, animals, technology, and disease in history, in the form of the Columbian Exchange: an event with which the modern world would not be what it is. Likewise, a new name was given to these lands by European intellectuals that has since stuck. In creating ‘America,’ a culture clash of cataclysmic proportion was unleashed, one in which entire peoples were shattered from existence, and an empire – like unto which the world had not yet seen – rose from their demise.