Did you mean: conquistador (the military, history, South America/Mexico/Spain), Conquistadores (Lyrics - Running Wild) More...
Dictionary:
con·quis·ta·dor (kŏn-kwĭs'tə-dôr', kŏng-kē'stə-)  |
[Spanish, from conquistar, to conquer, from Vulgar Latin *conquīsītāre, frequentative of Latin conquīrere, to procure. See conquer.]
| 5min Related Video: Conquistadores |
| Thesaurus: conquistador |
| Military History Companion: conquistadores |
The generic name for those who won the Spanish empire in the 16th century. Not all were Spaniards. The first man to whom the term is applied was Bethencourt, a Norman who conquered some of the Canary Islands starting in 1402. The navigators who made it all possible were the Genoese Columbus, the Florentine Vespuccio, the Portuguese Magellan, and the Englishman Cabot. Among the less successful conquistadores were a group of forlorn Germans in today's Venezuela.
But most were from the frontier provinces Andalusia and Extremadura and all were in the service of Their Most Catholic Majesties Ferdinand and Isabella and successors, with the twin objectives of Christianizing the heathen and providing specie to pay for European wars against the Muslims, rival Catholic powers, and Protestant heretics. The whole phenomenon was a continuation of the centuries-long politico-religious Reconquista of the Iberian peninsula, during which Spanish society became thoroughly militarized. The fall of the last Moorish kingdom in 1492 created a surplus of men proficient at war and very little else, and ‘the Indies’ provided an outlet for the boldest. Fiercely loyal to the crusading Spanish crown in the abstract, their attitude to its practical authority was captured by the phrase ‘I obey but do not comply’.
Nor were all the conquistadores soldiers. Quesada was a lawyer who led a nightmarish expedition up the Magadalena river, arriving in the valley of Bogotá with fewer than 200 sick and starving men, no gunpowder, and no horses. Using mainly diplomatic skills, he achieved dominance over much of the area today known as Colombia. The priest La Gasca prevented what is now Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia from slipping out of his emperor's control. Starting with no more than a royal warrant, he won over the lieutenants of the fearsome Gonzalo Pizarro, while others came from as far away as Chile and the Plate river to pay homage. In Guatemala, the Dominican friar Las Casas succeeded where force had failed and pacified an area known to this day as Vera Paz (‘True Peace’). The Jesuits were later to achieve the same result with the previously irreconcilable Guaraní of Paraguay, reminding us that the conquest was as much religious as political, if indeed the two can usefully be considered separately.
Conquistadores have long been tarred with the ‘black legend’, a device whereby the Creole élites of the independent nations of Hispanic America sought to distance themselves from the cruelty of Spanish occupation. In parallel, English-speaking historians also dwelt on the horrors of Spanish rule, charitably overlooking the fact that a much larger proportion of the Amerindian population survived south of the Rio Grande than the remnant in northern reservations. Today we appreciate that disease conquered the Americas. Battle dogs and horses, gunpowder, steel weapons and armour were indeed all unilateral Spanish advantages, but the Amerindians had no antibodies to the plagues that the Europeans brought with them. Not only did these exterminate whole populations, they also destroyed native faith in their rulers, culture, and gods.
It was a holocaust, but in fairness to the Spanish they placed a market value on Amerindians conspicuously absent from Anglo-American calculations. They needed a healthy population to work their mines and estates for them, so to accuse them of a deliberate policy of extermination is absurd. Nonetheless, they tortured and killed mercilessly and were brutally exploitative of the survivors. It is a multifaceted paradox that the forced immigration of African slaves was born of the saintly Las Casas's concern that the remaining natives should not be worked to death. Instead, the Africans brought new diseases that nearly finished the Amerindians off.
It is notable that the limits of Spanish conquest tended to be where they encountered tenacious resistance. Without the possibility of a population that could be reduced to docility, land alone was of no great interest to men who on many occasions proved they would rather die than work with their hands. The frontier of effective Spanish dominion throughout the colonial period was not very different to the extent of the native empires they took over, a fair indication that the areas outside were probably not worth the trouble and expense of conquest to either the Amerindian imperialists or their Hispanic successors. There were exceptions on both sides, but this and the no less significant factor of interracial breeding (mestizaje) provided the sharpest difference between Hispanic and much later Anglo-American settlement.
Additionally, the Amerindian peoples were constantly at war with each other, enabling the conquistadores to form tactical alliances and to divide and rule. Given the Spanish penchant for treachery and fighting among themselves, this may have been a less significant factor than is generally supposed. Overall, they prevailed because of their remorseless common will and audacity, in the face of which the Amerindians were disconcerted and inclined to believe they were battling demigods. This was crucial in the collapse of the two largest native empires, aided by the fact that the Aztec aim in battle was to take captives for ritual sacrifice and that the Inca system was more administrative than military.
As a military adventure, the extent, speed, and permanency of the conquest bears comparison only with the Alexandrian empire. The Roman and British empires were won over centuries, while the achievements of such as Ghengis Khan and Timur were ephemeral. The names of Columbus in the Caribbean, Magellan and Cano in the Philippines, Balboa in Panama, Cortés in Mexico, Alvarado from thence to Guatemala, Quesada in Colombia, the Pizarros in Peru and Ecuador, Almagro almost everywhere, and Valdivia in Chile are writ large in the pages of history. The footnotes are populated by less fortunate but no less fearless conquistadores such as Cortés's rival Narváez who died in Florida, Pizarro's lieutenant Soto who was buried in the Mississippi, Orellana of the Amazon, Mendoza of the Plate river, and many others who among them in a generation won the first truly global empire for Spain and for the militant Catholic Church with which her destiny has been so inextricably intertwined.
— Hugh Bicheno
| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: conquistador |
For more information on conquistador, visit Britannica.com.
| US History Encyclopedia: Conquistadores |
Spain authorized military expeditions by conquistadores (conquerors) in the Americas. The conquistadores were armies typically numbering a thousand soldiers, but the term denotes primarily the intrepid leaders of these expeditions. Driven by an insatiable booty mentality reminiscent of medieval crusaders, they expected to secure entitlement, land, power, and tributes during the Spanish entrada (entrance) of the sixteenth century.
As the Spanish penetrated the American mainland, fantastic stories of Cíbola, Gran Quivira, El Dorado, fountains of youth, and amazon women fired their imaginations. Hernán Cortés in 1519 vanquished the Aztecs of Tenochtitlán with the assistance of rival Natives. Juan Ponce de León, who sailed around Florida in 1513, was encouraged by Cortés's triumph to undertake a return expedition to the peninsula in 1521. He died from wounds received in a fight with the Calusas. To the south, the conquest of the Incas by Francisco Pizarro in 1532 revivified the visions of grandeur.
In 1528, Pánfilo de Narváez surveyed the Gulf Coast from Florida to Texas, but Apalachee archers and a tempest brought the mission to an end. Four castaways, including Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso del Castillo, Andrés Dorantes, and the black slave Esteban, survived and managed to reach Galveston Island. They traveled among the Natives until 1536, when Spanish slave hunters found them in the province of Sinaloa, Mexico. In 1539, their observations became entangled with the claims of the Franciscan Fray Marcos de Niza regarding the treasures of Cíbola to intensify the allure of the "northern mystery."
Further expeditions pushed the frontiers of the Spanish empire from Georgia to New Mexico. In 1539, Hernando de Soto, a seasoned veteran of the Incan conquest, maneuvered nine ships and more than six hundred soldiers on a journey in search of another Cuzco. After landing in Florida, De Soto and his companions literally fought their way through the woodlands. They crossed the Mississippi River about twenty-five miles below Memphis and advanced into Arkansas and Oklahoma. However, De Soto died from an illness in 1542. His men left his body at the river before returning to New Spain empty-handed. Francisco Vásquez de Coronado in 1540 commanded an army that crossed the Rio Grande and attacked the Pueblo Indians. Coronado dispatched several reconnaissance parties, and after a two-year quest that ended in the midcontinent grasslands, he conceded that there were no golden cities in North America. In 1598 the last conquistadore, Juan de Oñate, directed a colonization venture into Pueblo lands, thus initiating a new phase of mission building and permanent occupation.
From the Andes Mountains to the Grand Canyon, the conquistadores unleashed a catastrophe of a magnitude unknown before the sixteenth century. Although the Spanish Orders for New Discoveries in 1573 curbed the atrocities, the explorers left behind smallpox, malaria, measles, and sexually transmitted diseases. Their discoveries unveiled the physical and cultural geography of Native America, but their presence turned the New World upside down.
Bibliography
Stannard, David E. American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Thomas, Hugh. Who's Who of the Conquistadors. London: Cassell, 2000.
Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992.
Wood, Michael. Conquistadors. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
—Brad D. Lookingbill
| Columbia Encyclopedia: conquistador |
Bibliography
See P. Horgan, Conquistadors in North American History (1963); F. A. Kirkpatrick, The Spanish Conquistadores (2d ed. 1967).
| History Dictionary: conquistadores |
The Spanish military leaders who established Spanish rule in the New World by overthrowing Native American governments. (See Hernando Cortés and Francisco Pizarro.)
| Wikipedia: Conquistador |
 |
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (May 2008) |
Conquistador (pronounced /kɒŋˈkwɪstədɔr/ or /kɒnˈkiːstədɔr/ in English; Spanish pronunciation: [koŋkistaˈðor]) (meaning "Conqueror" in the Spanish and Portuguese languages) is the term widely used to refer to the Spanish [1][2] soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who brought much of the Americas under the control of Spain in the 15th through the 19th centuries following Europe's discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492. The leaders of the conquest of the Aztec Empire were Hernán Cortés and Pedro de Alvarado. Francisco Pizarro led the conquest of the Incan Empire.
The Conquistadores in the Americas were more volunteer militia than an actual organized military. They had to supply their own materials, weapons and horses.
Contents |
 |
The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (May 2008) |
Spanish chroniclers have always maintained traditionally that the conquest of the Americas was an impressive feat that occurred at an unprecedented pace.[citation needed] The stated purposes of these conquests were to equally spread the word of God and to bring this new civilization in the most obscure parts of the world into the Spanish Crown as dutiful vassals. Spain accomplished this goal with astounding ability, quickly expanding its borders far larger than previous Golden empires like Rome, Greece, Egypt. To the contrary, the testimony of some modern indian civil rights groups as well as support from contemporary non-Hispanic humanists and writers Like Matthew Restall and William Prescott[citation needed] have presented the Spanish Conquest of Americas as a series of unfortunate and morally questionable acts driven by greed for gold and resulted in the destruction of several native civilizations. The continued perpetration of the "Black Legend" to denigrate and overlook the accomplishments of Mediterranean peoples by North Europeans with Anti-Hispanic, anti-Catholic, and socialist[citation needed] motives has persisted for the last 500 years. It is due to these erroneous ideas that comments like "the first group of conquistadores that came with Cortes went for the sole reason to find gold in the New World."[citation needed] This is from the previous description found on this page. Like all people, the Spanish cared very much about making a good living and supporting their family. So many historians point to this a fact to the "true purpose" of the exploration of the New World. But how many citizens would join the U.S military today without any pay or compensation for the time spent and dangers faced. Additionally, the idea of a capitalistic society would also be incompatible with that of people eager to risk their lives just for the sake of teaching the word of God to heathens. These biases along with others has tainted the perception and true facts of the discovery, exploration, and settlement in the Americas by the Spaniards.
Historians like Tzvetan Todorov and Jared Diamond have highlighted the short time required for the Spanish conquest and establishment in the Americas.[citation needed] Exposure of these previously remote populations to European diseases caused many more fatalities than the wars themselves, and severely weakened the natives' social structures. Recent genetic studies on the skeletal remains of natives peoples find that very few died as a result of violence but rather by disease. One study[citation needed] estimated that up to 85% of the drop in population was due to illness. Many oral stories are told that the Indians saw this as a sign and lack of faith in their old customs. The people in the Americas were not previously exposed to the variety of European diseases and which resulted in their eventual demise. The diseases moved much faster than advancing Spanish. When the Spanish conquistadores arrived in the Inca empire, a large portion of the population, including the emperor, had already been killed by a smallpox epidemic. When the Francisco Coronado and the Spanish first explored into the Rio Grande Valley in 1540, in modern New Mexico, many of the chieftains complained of new diseases affecting their tribes. The Spanish curanderos (folk healers) recognized the symptoms and attempted to relieve some of the ailments.[citation needed]
The Laws of Burgos, 1512-1513, were the first codified set of laws governing the behavior of Spanish settlers in America, particularly with regards to Native Americans. They forbade the maltreatment of natives, and endorsed their conversion to Catholicism.[3] In the 16th century perhaps 240,000 Europeans entered American ports.[4][5] By the late 16th century American silver accounted for one-fifth of Spain's total budget.[6]
|
|
This article may be confusing or unclear to readers. Please help clarify the article; suggestions may be found on the talk page. (May 2008) |
While technological and cultural factors played an important role in the victories and defeats of the conquistadors, one fatal factor was the disease brought from Europe, especially smallpox, which in several cases destroyed entire nations before the arrival of the Spaniards(debated). Another key factor was the ability of the conquistadors to manipulate the political situation between indigenous peoples, either by supporting one side of a civil war, as in the case of the Inca Empire, or allying with natives who had been subjugated by more powerful neighboring tribes and kingdoms, as in the case of the Aztec empire.
Militarily, conquistadors had several advantages over native peoples, most notably firearms and steel. While the indigenous peoples had the advantage of established settlements, determination to remain independent and the large numerical superiority, which in many cases was a decisive factor in the defeat of the conquistadors,[citation needed] the European diseases combined with the European's advanced military technology and divide-and-conquer tactics ultimately overcame the native populations.
Throughout the conquest, the numbers of people within the indigenous nations greatly exceeded the Spanish conquistadors; on average the Spanish population never exceeded ca 5% of the native population.[citation needed] The Spanish conquistadors commonly allied with natives to bolster their numerically inferior ranks with thousands of indigenous auxiliaries. The army with which Hernán Cortés besieged Tenochtitlan was composed of ca 100,000 soldiers, of which less than 2% were Spaniards.[citation needed]
Although many American civilizations had developed methods for working soft metals including gold, silver, bronze, tin and copper, this knowledge was applied mainly to the development of religious and artistic objects, as well as some household utensils for everyday use. Few metals were used by native populations for military applications. One exception was that the Quechuas and P'urhépecha developed weapons of copper, but these could not match the hardness or durability of iron and steel. Most cultures used weapons of wood, flint and obsidian. Most Conquistadores had limited access to steel armor and helmets as the more common chain mail and leather were worn by the Spanish and were an important factor in their success. However, many indigenous cultures had used woven grasses and leathers as similar protection for centuries. In fact, mostly the mounted conquistadors (the cavalry) used steel breastplates and armor during Cortés' campaign against the Aztecs. The varying climate between coastal and mountain regions and high heat and humidity of Central and South America made wearing such heavy iron and steel items mostly impractical, and the humidity caused a significantly faster rate of corrosion than in Europe.
In their first contacts with native peoples, archaic firearms and especially arquebuses were very formidable battles due to the great impression on morale because of the noise, light and smoke. But their military effectiveness was limited due to the time to reload, difficulty maintaining the weapon with no resources, and availability usually in the single digits for most Spanish parties. The weapons and armor of steel and iron proved to be much more effective militarily. A Spanish sword made from Toledo steele was considered the pinnacle of craftsmanship and a well trained knight could be a dominant foe. When they took control of a nation the conquistadors usually banned possession of steel swords by the subjugated peoples for civil obedience and to the Spanish a sword represented their chivalry, honor, and devotion as Christian Knights.
The animals introduced were another important factor. On the one hand, the introduction of the horse to the American continents by the Spaniards allowed them freedom of mobility and the use of domesticated pack animals which were unknown to the Indian cultures. But in the mountains and jungles, the Spaniards were less able to traverse Amerindian roads and bridges made for pedestrian traffic some times not wider than a few feet wide. In many cases the Spanish taught the native peoples, in places such as Argentina, New Mexico, and California the techniques of horsemanship, cattle raising, and sheep herding training and they soon excelled at the skills of the Spaniards. This later would become a disputed factor in the native resistance to the Spanish and their use of the new techniques. The Spaniards also were well trained at breeding dogs for war, hunting, and protection. The introduction of the Mastiffs, Wolf hounds, and sheep dogs were unexpectedly effective as a psychological weapons rather than physical ones against the natives who in many cases had never seen domesticated dogs, and none of whom had seen horses before.
The Spanish methods of war were some what similar to other Europeans powers, but were more organized and directed within the terms and laws of "a just war" being considered at all times than the Indian's regards to warfare. In addition, the most prominent native peoples like the Aztecs and Mayans preferred to capture their victims for use as sacrificial victims to their own gods rather than to commit their armies to death on the battlefield. Many historians count this as a less brutal way to wage war termed "Flower wars".
One factor in the defeat of the American-Indian civilizations was their demographic collapse. There has been an debate among researchers, that "there is no consensus as to the cause of that collapse; some give genocide as the main cause",which is very exaggerated claim with no factual basis. Some attribute it to the introduction of new diseases and a still others to a combination of both factors. Scholars now believe that, among the various contributing factors, epidemic disease was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the Native Americans because of their lack of immunity to new diseases brought from Europe.[7] The American researcher HF Dobyns has estimated that 95% of the total population of Americas died in the first 130 years after the arrival of Columbus.[8] Cook and Borak of the University of Berkeley claim that the population in Mexico declined from 25.2 million in 1518 to 700 thousand people in 1623, less than 3% of the original population.[9] In 1492 Spain and Portugal populations combined did not exceed 10 million people.[10] There is some consensus that the demographic collapse of the original population of the Americas was the main cause of its military defeat.[citation needed] One factor overlooked is that there was no set political standard among the vast and greatly dispersed indigenous peoples of the Americas. Most peoples were in isolated communities with only limited trade contact and no standard communication. The limited trades was the only constant contact between most new world cultures.
Disease decimating the population is commonly listed as the reason for this decline in population. This happened with the Inca Empire, defeated by Francisco Pizarro in 1531. The first epidemic of smallpox was recorded in 1529 and killed the emperor Huayna Capac, the father of Atahualpa, as well as a large portion of the population. New epidemics of smallpox broke out in 1533, 1535, 1558 and 1565, as well as typhus in 1546, influenza in 1558, diphtheria in 1614 and measles in 1618.[11] Dobyns estimated that 90% of the population of the Inca Empire died in these epidemics.[8]
Finally, Jared Diamond summarizes the causes of the Pizarro's victory as "military technology based on firearms and steel and horses, infectious diseases endemic in Eurasia, European maritime technology, centralized political organization of States Europeans, and in writing".[12] The significance of writing is attributed to the errors of judgement Atahualpa and Moctezuma, which led them to be deceived by the Spaniards since they belonged to a literate society. This allowed them to have at their disposal a huge body of knowledge about human behavior and its history, something that no native nations possessed.
 |
This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (October 2008) |
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
| Translations: Conquistador |
Dansk (Danish)
n. - erobrer, conquistador
Nederlands (Dutch)
veroveraar (van Zuid-Amerika)
Français (French)
n. - conquistador
Deutsch (German)
n. - Eroberer (spanischer Eroberer Perus und Mexikos im 16. Jahrhundert)
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (ιστ.) κονκισταδόρος
Italiano (Italian)
conquistador
Português (Portuguese)
n. - conquistador (m)
Español (Spanish)
n. - conquistadores españoles del siglo XVI
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - conquistador
中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
西班牙征服者, 征服者
中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 西班牙征服者, 征服者
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) أحد فاتحي المكسيك و أمريكا الجنوبيه
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - כובש (ספרדי)
If you are unable to view some languages clearly, click here.
To select your translation preferences click here.
Did you mean: conquistador (the military, history, South America/Mexico/Spain), Conquistadores (Lyrics - Running Wild) More...
 | Coronado Expeditions |
| Western Exploration |
| Montezuma (History) |
 | Who were the conquistadors? Read answer... |
| What is a conquistador? Read answer... |
| Whta is a conquistador? Read answer... |
 | Who were the conquistador's missionaries? |
| Who was involved in the conquistadors? |
| Who were the leaders of the conquistadors? |
Copyrights:
 |
 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Thesaurus. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Military History Companion. The Oxford Companion to Military History. Copyright © 2001, 2004 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| US History Encyclopedia. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more |
|
| History Dictionary. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Conquistador". Read more |
 |
| Translations. Copyright © 2007, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved. Read more |
Mentioned in
