SPAN 44 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Forced Conversion, Caravel, Eurocentrism
Week 2: Discovery, Exploration, and the New World
Scenes of encounter: Christopher Columbus and the first transatlantic voyages
● “Encounter” isn’t the best word, as from the beginning there was violence and asymmetry in power
● Competition for the control of routes to the East (species); wanted SPICES!
● Chris Columbus at the Portuguese and Spanish courts
● The role of Queen Isabel of Castile
○ Funded CC’s trips
● 1492: the year America was “discovered”
○ But also the time of the beginning of the inquisition
○ The European context The Crusades and Spanish Reconquest
■ 1492:Muslumic kingdom of granada conqured by spain and christened; the Indies and Inquisition
● Forced conversion
● Expulsion of religious minorities
○ Obsession of orthodoxy of faith and...
● Purity of blood
● Logic of Crusades and the “just war”
● An era of voyages and explorations
○ Technological advancement in instruments of navigation: compass, sexton, astrolabe; not known in
Christian Europe up to this point
○ Use of caravel ships, a relatively new type of ship, huge and fast
■ Allowed for storage of lots of supplies (33 day trip!! :o)
○ Development of cartography (mapping)
■ Mappers getting a better idea of space and distances,
■ creating an abstract image of what the world looked like
● Columbus’s 4 voyages
○ 1492: innaugural trip
○ 1493
○ 1498: first time seizing mainland latin america
○ 1502: touched mainland, explaning coastal areas of present day honduras, guatemala, and yucatan
penninsula
● Columbus’ Letter to Luis de Santagel (1493)
○ Return of Columbus’ first voyage
■ Point of the letter is to show his success that that he has produced results
○ Addressed to King Ferdinand’s Keeper of the Privy Purse (treasure)
■ Advocate of Columbus before the monarch
■ Private court document
○ Later printed in barcelona; by 1500, there ar 1600 editions in several european languages
■ Private document that became a best seller
● Everything in the letter was so fascinating and new!
○ Importance??
■ Widely read
■ Establishes basic tropes and images of “America”/”New World” for the centuries to come
● Representation of its nature
● Representation of its inhabitants
■ Eurocentric paradigm
■ Comparison as prevalent mode of description; lots of it!!
● Land and landscape (size)
● Material culture (canoes)
● Physical and ethnographic details of amerindians (appearance of people)
○ Scenes and acts of possession; scene of DOMINATION! (not “encounter”)
■ Initial confusion: who are they? References to cathay and the grand khan
● “Cathay” is old name for Japan, he thinks he’s in Asia
■ Taking posession (p. 115): peaceful, proclamation, royal standard
■ Renaming (p. 115) certain interest in natie toponyms (Guanahani)
● “I renamed them [islans] all”
■ Acts of power
■ “Discovery”, “encounter”, “conquest”
○ The way he describes everything in the letter is an act of power, hoping to impress his superiors and
dominate his subordinates
The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account
Bartolome de las Casas and the Narratives of Conquest
● After the “discovery”....
○ Crown and chruch divide newly discovered territories
■ Spain and Portugal already arguing about who gets what land; it wasn’t just Spain interested in
expansion
○ Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494 (and the Pope’s Bulls)
■ Regulates how the new land is going to be divided btwn Spain/ Portugal
■ Partition of the new land between Spain and Portugal (abstract line: merdian)
● Portugal owns what’s to the east of the meridian (present day Brazil) and Spain owns
what’s to the west (rest of Latin America)
● Expeditions to the mainlandand conquest process
○ One wave of exploration led by hernan cortes to the Aztec empire
○ 1594 and on, Francisco PIzzaro, exploring/subjugating/dominating the Inca empire
○ Explorations of southest America (texas, new mexico, california), but een the southeast (florida, louisiana)
■ One of the soldiers got lost and ended up in Florida, held captive by native american tribes
● Some important texts about the conquest
○ First hand accounts in the form of narratives, most told from the European POV
● Systems of organizing land and labor in the new world
○ The encomienda
■ Spaniards were granted lots of land and a number of indians
■ Goal was their protection from warring tribes and their instruction in Spanish language and
Christian faith
■ In return the encomendero obtained tribute: labor, gold, etc. from indigenous people
● Not a voluntary deal for the indians
■ PERMANENT relationship, lifetime protection
○ The repartimiento
■ Comes from “repartir”, meaning to distrubute
■ Spaniards given Indigenous peoples to work for them
● These people were not under protection
■ TEMPORAL, indigenous working for Spaniards for limited amount of time
● Labor was intermittent
○ The mita
■ Originally a precolumbian system to organize communal labor used by the Incas
● Worked similarly to repartimiento system
■ This system of distribution of labor was used by the Spaniards to appropriate indigenous labor
● In practice…
○ Not many differences (sometimes documents, like The Devastation…. Use the terms interchangeably)
○ All these systems derived in multiple forms of abuse, exploitation, and practical slavery!!
■ In theory these Spaniards were “protecting” and “christianizing” the indigenous people but the
reality was much more than that
○ Bartolome de las Casas was fighting for the abolition of the system of encomienda
■ His text is a denunciation of what Spanish conquest looked like
■ Substitution of indigenous labor by black slaves labor (1510s)
■ Abolition of Indian slavery and encomienda (1542)--> “New Laws”
■ Abandonment altogether of American territories by the Spanish Crown and restitution to the
native peopels (1560s)
● Bartolome de las casas and the doctrine of the (Un)just War
○ Son of an encomendero with properties in Hispaniola (now Dominican Republic)
○ In his youth---> benefitted from the encomienda system, slave owner (black people and indians),
accompanied Spanish military campaigns on the island
■ His narratives come from a POV of EXPERIENCE!
○ Later in his life----> became Dominican priest, repented and horrified
○ University of Salamanca ---> theology and philosophy
○ Justnaturalism---> an intent to harmonize the divine, the natural and political orders
■ Philisophical framework in which he operates
● The Poemics of Posession
○ Early conquerors used the requerimiento----> demands voluntary (or not) and immediate subjection of the
monarch of Spain
■ Demanded indigenous people to subjegate themselves to spanish crown
■ Disagreement led to violence
○ It was “legal” form to obtain land for the Spanish Crown
○ Requerimiento was criticized systematically by Las Casas, as well as the systems of encomienda and
repartimiento
■ Bartoleme de las casas emphasized not only how the enslavement was wrong, the means by
which they did so was too
■ Was successful in his denouncing in that…...
○ The Spanish Monarchs
■ Passed New Laws (1542) for the protection of the native peoples from encomenderos
■ Abolished requerimientos in 1556
○ However, the situation of the native population did not improve much…
● Las Casas, a Persistent polemicist
○ Originally devised by Las Casas as a text (manuscript) for King Charles, and members of the Council of
Castile and Council of Indies (1542)
○ Printed by Las Casas himself for prince Phillip II (1552)
○ Turned European best-seller; multiple editions nad translation into Dutch, French, English, German,
Italian, and Latin----> Spanish “Blac.k Legend”
■ Descriptions even illustrated (as many Europeans were illiterate) so that EVERYONE could
understand the barbarity and atrociousness
● Some general traits of the devastation of the Indies:: A Brief Account, 1542/1552
○ Rhetoric of the “eyewitness” testimonial
■ “As we saw withour own ees…” p. 27
○ Polemical tone: shocking and hyperbolic
■ “This large island was perhaps the most densely populated place in the world” p. 27
■ Intention to shock because his goal is to persuasive and effective, to generate a response!
○ Highly visual rhetoric, scenes of tableaux
○ Theological, legal, and classical references
■ America as the garden of Eden; Amerindians as sheep, Christians as wolves
■ Just vs. unjust war; just ruler vs. tyrant
■ Indigenous peoples as primitive Christian martyrs, Spaniards as Roman empires
○ Abundance of sharp contrasts
■ “They have the healhiest lands in the world, where lived more than 5000 souls; are now deserted,
inhabited, by not a single living creature”
○ Abundance of inversions
■ Indgenous peoples as true Christians and childish creatures without sin; Spaniards as sinners
and demons, ruthless people
● Even if at the time indigenous may or may not have been converted; these people are
innocent and good while Spaniards are basically devils
■ American Paradise turned into “infernal hell”
Document Summary
Week 2: discovery, exploration, and the new world. Scenes of encounter: christopher columbus and the first transatlantic voyages. Encounter isn"t the best word, as from the beginning there was violence and asymmetry in power. Competition for the control of routes to the east (species); wanted spices! Chris columbus at the portuguese and spanish courts. The role of queen isabel of castile. But also the time of the beginning of the inquisition. The european context the crusades and spanish reconquest. 1492:muslumic kingdom of granada conqured by spain and christened; the indies and inquisition. Logic of crusades and the just war . Technological advancement in instruments of navigation: compass, sexton, astrolabe; not known in. Use of caravel ships, a relatively new type of ship, huge and fast. Allowed for storage of lots of supplies (33 day trip!! Mappers getting a better idea of space and distances, Creating an abstract image of what the world looked like.
