Globalization: The Conquistadors In Portugal And Spain

The modern world exists in a state of cultural, political, and economic globalization. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries two nations, Portugal and Spain, pioneered the European discovery of sea routes that were the first channels of interaction between all of the world's continents, thus beginning the process of globalization in which we all live today. This explains the two pioneering nations, their motivations, their actions, and the inevitable consequences of their colonization.
The Age of Exploration marked the highest point of Portuguese imperial power and wealth. At the beginning of the fifteenth century Portugal had an economy dependent on maritime trade with Northern Europe. Although Portugal lacked the wealth of its generation,
Once these deposits were found the Spanish had to secure sufficient laborers to mine it. The exhaustion of gold deposits and laborers in the Caribbean led to the full-scale occupation and exploitation of Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Cuba during 1508-1511. Each occupation followed the same pattern of discovery, local conquest, settlement, exhaustive exploitation, and finally a push into the frontier for new natural resources and slaves. The men who led these campaigns were known as the conquistadors. They adapted the reconquista pattern of military expedition and settlement, often exploiting the pre-existing indigenous rivalries in order to divide and conquer with extreme efficiency. The quest for gold brought the conquistadors to the mainland of Central America where they would repeat the conquest pattern that had been so effective in the Caribbean, to defeat the Aztec and Inca Empires. The Spanish would bring back the things they found in the new world to trade with Spain this was later known as the ‘Columbian Exchange’.
The Columbian Exchange has been one of the most significant events in the history of world ecology, agriculture, and culture. The term is used to describe the enormous widespread exchange of plants, animals, foods, human populations including slaves, communicable diseases, and ideas between the Eastern and Western
The Europeans would export humans, gold and other natural minerals out of Africa. The Africans would exchange humans for raw materials, which caused its population to stagger and communities to become ghost towns. The African people were captured and enslaved and traded to Europe. “As soon as the wretched Africans, purchased at the fairs, fall into the hands of the black traders, they experience in earnest those dreadful sufferings which they are doomed in future to undergo. And there is not the least room to doubt, but that even before they can reach the fairs, great numbers perish from cruel usage, want of food, traveling through inhospitable deserts, etc.” The African people fled into regions for safety of capture into the mountains or deep forest. Africa was always at war with itself, it had rich leaders and poor populations because the leaders or Kings were the ones trading for themselves the populations only lived in fear from becoming slaves the leaders were exporting humans in exchange for guns, alcohol, etc. Africa’s part in the triangle trade was devastating to the continents economy, eventually all kingdoms involved in the trade collapsed allowing Europeans to easily take over this was Africa demise in its