Main Points

Trying to find a short-cut to Asia for trade, Columbus sailed from Spain and found some islands whose inhabitants he mistakenly called 'Indians', inhabitants of a continent unknown to Europe
Twenty years later a, handful of Spanish soldiers smashed and conquered the mightiest empires of the Americas and looted huge quantities of gold and silver
Epidemic disease brought from Europe combined with the decapitation of the Aztec and Inca Empires enabled the conquest
Up to 90% of the population of the Aztec and Inca empires, and the Caribbean islands gradually died, mainly from diseases to which they had no resistance
Millions of slaves began to be transported from Africa to the New World for labor; this lucrative capture and selling of humans would continue for 400 years, killing many of them, and deeply changing the cultures of Africa, the Caribbean, and South America
The Spanish and Portuguese created plantations and started making even more money with sugar, cotton, coffee--and some profitable new crops they took from the Natives: tobacco, corn (maize), cocoa, tomatoes, and potatoes
England, France, and Holland, impressed, fearful and jealous of Spanish and Portuguese success rushed to conquer their own colonies

The main idea of this page is that the Europeans, seeking a new route for trade and profit with Asia, accidently found two continents they had no idea existed.

Europe would take over the Americas, because much of the Native population died of disease, its biggest and most powerful cultures not just destroyed, but virtually erased.

New, hybrid European cultures developed in the American colonies created by the Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English over the ashes and graveyards of the Native cultures

Europe, one of the smallest and in some ways, the poorest continents, transformed the two huge continents it conquered into gigantic mines and farms.

Largely operating without, and outside the scope of the religious, governmental, or traditional restrictions existing in Europe, these large-scale plantations became virtual money and death factories. Misery was outsourced and expanded, but profits, for a tiny minority, exploded.

The resources, money, and sheer power developed by the conquest and exploitation of the enormously rich and largely unspoiled Americas, set into motion a succession of events that ended up with the Europeans dominating the rest of the planet.

Finding, conquering, and exploiting these 2 continents helped little Europe to turn the strategic 'tide' and eventually dominate the world. Ever since Alexander, the direction of attack had usually been from East to West: the Huns, the Arabs, the Turks, the Mongols; quite a few times Europe seemed on the verge of defeat and occupation.

But this fantastic and surprising turnaround neither came about through European genius, nor American stupidity.

It was largely a result of luck, of factors--especially the random situation of continental landmasses on the globe--that nobody could control or plan for.

Because the American Natives had been virtually isolated for the last 15,000 years, they had missed many key historical developments. These developments included not just domesticated plants and animals, and technology, but also, and perhaps most important of all, dozens of pandemics which, over millenia had periodically ravaged the Africa-Asia-Europe core area, killing millions.

Columbus' Ricochet

While North and South American cultures existed in virtual isolation, across the Atlantic and Pacific in the 1400s, Africa, Asia, and Europe were connected by a complex network of hundreds of high-traffic trade routes, with people and merchandise moving by land and by sea, sometimes thousands of miles. Some of these routes dated back to prehistoric times: the beautiful blue precious stone from eastern Afghanistan, lapis lazuli, has been found in Egyptian sites, more than 2000 miles away, dating to the Old Kingdom, 4000 years ago.

Contrast this map of medieval trade routes connecting Africa, Asia, and Europe:

The-Eurasian-and-African-World-System-in-the-15-th-century-1.png

with this map, showing mainly local trade routes within New World Native Cultures, but NOT connecting the major civilizations of Mesoamerica and Peru:

A map of the Pre-Columbian, showing regional trade routes--but no trade routes connecting the major civilizations of Mesoamerica and Peru

Columbus' objective was finding a shortcut to Asia to buy luxuries unobtainable in Europe. Instead he bumped into the edge of an unknown continent.

The diary he kept aboard his ship as he sailed into the unknown across the Atlantic already gives us a telling insight into his thinking and motivations: a devout, perhaps even fanatical Catholic Christian, he nonetheless mentions the word 'gold' 126 times, while he mentioned the word 'God' only 25 times.

Disappointed in his lifetime, Columbus' gambit ended up winning big for the kings and merchants in the long term while he hadn't found an easier way to trade with the East, his discovery enabled the West to grow its own cotton, coffee, and sugar.

Not only this, the isolated, technologically outmatched Native cultures could be robbed of colossal quantities of gold and silver, the labor of millions of American and African stolen, providing the money and profits to expand the colonial empires even more, opening the path to a mercantilist-capitalist orgy that would last more than four hundred years, and which still echoes in the present, the foundation of the West's continued domination of the planet.

It began with Mexico

Spain's initial incursions with Columbus had basically stalled in the rim of the Americas in the small Caribbean islands, until a man named Cortes 'hit the jackpot' by finding and then quickly conquering the rich heartland of Mexico, an Empire four times the size of Spain with double the population.

A few years later, another Spanish adventurer, Pizarro, destroyed, robbed, and conquered another, even richer empire in Peru.

The wealth looted from these empires, and the even larger profits from the slave-worked sugar and death factories of Brazil and the Caribbean helped make Spain, briefly, the richest, most powerful and dangerous nation in Europe.

Now the other rival countries of Europe, motivated by fear and greed, decided to copy the Spanish and get their own colonies and build their own empires.

In many ways, the Spanish and Portuguese sketched out the 'blueprint', a how to, drawn in Native and African sweat and blood.

The English, the French, and the Dutch would follow the Spanish and Portuguese; in some ways they would outdo the soldiers of Madrid and Seville. But the 'recipe' would remain more or less the same: trickery, robbery, murder, and enslavement--under a very thin veneer of 'saving souls' or 'bettering the lives of the savages', but profit was almost always the guiding and ultimate 'principle' of operation.

But if the Spanish had failed in taking over Mexico and Peru, then, although we can't be sure, then the European domination and colonization of the world wouldn't have happened.

So let's begin with the Conquest of Mexico.

A painting by famed Mexican artist Diego Rivera, depicting the massive and symmetric Aztec capital city, Tenochtitlan during its time of power and prosperity

Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire, as imagined by Diego Rivera

a 16th century painting showing a detailed bird's eye view of a Spanish land and sea attack

a contemporary painting showing the highly organized mass warfare of Europe, focused on inflicting death and maximum damage--so radically different from the man to man combat of warriors in the Americas, focused on individual glory and capture

MEXICO: 500 Spaniards Conquer a World of 25 million

PERU: 168 Spaniards Conquer a World of 16 million

Cortes had 500 soldiers, 32 crossbows, 16 horses, 13 muskets, 14 cannon, in Perus, Pizzaro had even fewer soldiers...and some very little, but VERY deadly friends: MICROORGANISMS, the fatal legacy of the Old World, unleashed on natives with no immunity.

KEY FACTORS in SPANISH CONQUEST

Communicable, highly infectious diseases brought by the Europeans, to which the Native Americans had never been exposed to, rapidly killed many 'Indios', especially in the densely-populated cities of Mexico and Peru
Surprise is perhaps THE most important factor in winning a war: the Europeans, literally appearing out of the blue, caught the Aztec and Inca empires completely unprepared
The Spanish commanders, Cortes in Mexico, and Pizzaro in Peru, by boldly decapitating the leadership of the highly centralized empires, paralyzed the Native civilizations, which were never able to recover from the twin blows of military attack, accompanied by devastating epidemic
Major native tribes, enemies of the Aztecs and Incas, joined the Spanish attacks. In fact, most of the soldiers fighting under the Spanish banner, were Native Americans; without these fighters and auxiliaries, the Spanish conquest of the New World would probably have been impossible. Both the Aztec and Inca civilizations were empires: aggressive and often brutally expansionist states that systematically attacked and blackmailed neighbors
European artillery and muskets, though slow-firing, unreliable, and inaccurate could nevertheless be deadly, and probably more importantly, had an outsized psychological effect on the Natives who were completely unfamiliar with firearms
Excellent steel armor and steel swords, pikes, and daggers wielded by the Spanish were also a key factor in their victories
Horses brought from Europe, bred and trained for battle, provided tactical mobility and shock effect in battles, but also logistical support in campaigns

a colored drawing from one of the few original surviving books from the time of the Spanish conquest, showing two Native warriors, one of them dressed in a feathered eagle suit, facing each other with shields and volcanic glass swords one of the few contemporary pictures of Aztec warriors, interestingly showing the winners of the individual duels grasping the long hair of their defeated, kneeling adversaries

Aztec warriors pictured in one of the few contemporary books

Assuming that the artists who drew these were accurate their pictures, you can see that they are fighting a sort of ceremonial ‘duel.'

Apparently, Mesoamerican warfare was not about KILLING your opponent, but gaining glory and capturing your opponent alive, so that later he could be sacrificed to the Sun or Rain god (or ransomed back to his tribe, or absorbed/adopted into the tribe that captured him).

This type of combat was very different from the style of warfare that was emerging in late medieval Europe--organized mass warfare where victory--not honor--was what mattered, no matter how many were killed.

Blood Treasure

Columbus' diary reflected the greed of the Europeans with its obssession on gold: in a world economy based on precious metals, they were running out of bullion to finance their trade with Africa, the Middle East, India, and China, but unlike today, they did not have the ability of issue paper credit or sell bonds.

And that's when, providentially, Cortes and Pizarro destroyed and ransacked Mexico and injected a huge shot of gold and silver into, not just the European economy, but the world economy.

a graphic drawing comparing the height of the Washington Monument with the quantities of gold and silver looted from North and South America

A Tsunami of Silver and Gold

The discovery--and robbing--of the Americas pumped HUGE amounts of money into the world economy

gold and silver were much more important 500 hundred years ago, because credit, paper money, checks and bonds were very limited: cash was king
the discovery of the Americas didn't just change the world economy because of the quantity of precious metals that was unleashed, but by the new directions of capital flows
even though Spain took most of the silver and gold, large quantities of precious metals ended up in China, Holland, England, or France
with Karmic irony, the massive flood of silver of gold may have ended up destroying Spain's economy

Before Columbus, Medieval Europe as a whole was lucky to produce 4-8 tons of gold a year and perhaps 50 tons of silver a year; contrast this with just the ransom the Incas paid the Spanish for their leader--a roomful of gold estimated at 11 tons--and annual silver production averages of 270 tons/year and a peak production, in 1560, of more than 400 tons. Indeed, it seems that New World silver production in the century after Columbus was more than all the silver ever mined before the discovery of the Americas--enough silver to build a tower as wide as the Washington Monument--but 14 times taller, at 7,000+ feet.

The profits made were enormous, but the human costs even more incalculable: as many as 8 million Native Americans died working in the mines, and the plantation economy of the Americas, the sugar latifundia of the Caribbean in particular, triggered the Atlantic slave trade, with more than 12 million Africans transported, millions of whom died, either in transit, or on the farms.

And, speaking of farms, though the brilliance and magnitude of the gold, silver, and gems robbed from the Americas trigger the imagination, the total impact of the plants from the New World was far greater: the now re-connected continents would not only trade people and culture, they would trade crops, and this exchange would have often terrible, sometimes positive, but certainly enormous consequences for all of humanity.

Question: Suddenly flooding an economy with money has become a standard technique around the world since the Great Depression of the 1930s; how do these modern-day financial stimuli compare with what happened to the world after 1500?

The Columbian Exchange

The geographical isolation of the Americas for millenia also influenced what plants and animals grew, and didn't grow in the respective continents.

When Columbus' accidental re-discovery of the Americas suddenly reconnected the Americas, a new flow--a two-way flow--of living things, from people, to plants and animals, to microbes--began, and the world would never be the same. This bilateral transfer is sometimes referred to as the Columbian Exchange.

Please look at the drawing below:

a map of the Atlantic showing two large arrows with animals and plants superimposed, with one arrow pointing from Africa and Europe towards the Americas, and another arrow pointing from the Americas towards Africa and Europe

Things that were brought from the Americas to the Africa-Asia-Europe Core :

Crops: tobacco, potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, tomatoes, maize (corn), chocolate, vanilla, pineapples, peanuts

Animals: turkeys

Diseases: syphillis (disputed)

Things that were brought from the Africa-Asia-Europe Core to the Americas:

Crops: coffee, apples, peaches, pears, lemons, oranges, bananas, sugarcane, onions, wheat, rice,

Animals: chickens, cattle, sheep, horses, pigs, cats, large dogs, goats, rabbits, the brown rat (Rattus Norvegicus)

Diseases: typhus, measles, bubonic plague, smallpox, cholera, malaria, hepatitis, diphtheria