------------------------------------------------- Aditi Angiras The discourses of Columbus‚ Cortes and Las Casas in Tzvetan Todorov’s The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. -- Tzvetan Todorov was born in Stalinist Bulgaria and came to France in the early 1960s. His personal experience of the internal “otherness” which Julia Kristeva describes as “strangers to ourselves”‚ lead him to explore the American encounter which was a “unique event in the history of humanity” in that
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When the Spanish conquistadors came upon the Inca Empire‚ they realized that there were bountiful amounts of treasure such as gold and silver‚ which tempted them to conquer the empire and found their own colonies. Consequently‚ the conquistadors‚ led by Francisco Pizarro‚ fought the Inca and utilized their steel weapons and horses‚ as well as the smallpox virus to rout their enemies. The conquistadors easily defeated the Inca‚ who were already fighting a civil
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The English began colonizing in the late 16th century and came out on top when all their colonies were built through America. The Spanish really conquered most of the Western Hemisphere‚ their colonization attempts were started by the Spanish conquistadors‚ It went from Christopher Columbus arriving in America in 1492 and went on for nearly four centuries when the Spanish Empire expanded in most of present day Central America. The English reached it’s peak of gaining land through colonization
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to conquer the Americas so easily. Fatal diseases and high mortality-rate among the indigenous native were the key killers in the new world. He gives many examples from primary source evidence such as journals and statements by the European conquistadors and missionaries. In the third chapter‚ Crosby focuses on the European introduction of their plants and animals to the new world. These introductions changed the
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Advantages the Spanish had over the Incas The Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire is one of the most important campaigns in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. This operation‚ although carried out by Spanish conquistadors and their native allies‚ took decades of fighting to subdue‚ one of the mightiest empires in the Americas. One may ask‚ if the Incas were so powerful‚ how could they possibly have fallen to the authority of the Spaniards? Did they not have a strong enough army? Were there
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as a failure‚ due to the lack of the Northwest Passage. Once the queen of Spain realized the goldmine (quite literally)‚ that was before her‚ she sent basically an entire army of conquistadors to seize the assets of the natives‚ and secure it for the Spanish empire. The three “G”s are what the Spanish conquistadors sought after. God‚ Gold‚ and Glory‚ all of which they could find in the native inhabitants possession. They “harvested” the souls of the natives by converting them (whether they liked
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South America‚ so they can have certain opportunities to roam the lands in search of gold without any unwanted interruptions. Conquistadors were granted trusteeship over the indigenous people they conquered‚ in an expansion of familiar feudal institutions‚ notably the commendation ceremony‚ which had been established in New Castile during the Reconquista. The conquistadors scrupulously adhered to the Spanish law of conquest by reading the Requerimiento‚ which ordered defiant Indians‚ in Spanish‚ to
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Empire. The complex‚ yet beautiful structure of the city‚ helps illustrate and advocate the cultural and architectural superiority that the Inca civilization had compared to other native tribes during their time before the invasions of the Spanish Conquistadors. Machu Picchu‚ commissioned by Inca emperor Pachacuti‚ was originally built as a ceremonial and administrative center for the Inca Empire. The emperor lived in the capital of Cuzco and was responsible for distributing power over the
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The Indian societies were of a huge variety with different traditions and cultures which the Europeans became aware of the more they explored the Americas. However‚ the Europeans too‚ were considerably different with their aims and this therefore created different results from each relationship between the two. The Europeans were interested in a variety of things when they went across the Atlantic to the Indies‚ for example‚ the assistance of the Native Americans as military allies and valuable resources
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The Fall of the Spanish Empire The Spanish Empire experienced a time of massive growth and exploration which came to an end in 1588. By 1598 Phillip III had inherited Spain with a bankrupt economy. This marked the decline of the great empire that had controlled an extensive amount of territories. Its decline can be attributed to the massive influx of gold and silver into the economy during the Age of Exploration which made Spain temporarily wealthy but had irreversible negative long term economic
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