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con·quis·ta·dor (kŏn-kwĭs'tə-dôr', kŏng-kē'stə-)  |
A conqueror, especially one of the 16th-century Spanish soldiers who defeated the Indian civilizations of Mexico, Central America, or Peru.
[Spanish, from conquistar, to conquer, from Vulgar Latin *conquīsītāre, frequentative of Latin conquīrere, to procure. See conquer.]
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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 |
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| 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 |
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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] "conqueror") (meaning "Conqueror" in the Spanish and Portuguese languages) is the term used to refer to the Portuguese and Spanish [1][2] soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who brought much of the Americas under the control of Spain and Portugal in the 15th through the 17th centuries following Europe's discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492. The leaders of the conquest of the Aztec Empire were Hernan Cortes and Pedro de Alvarado y Contreras. Francisco Pizarro led the conquest of the Incan Empire.
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The captains of the company were not conquering old people and adolescents as the rest of the host. They were usually mature men, who fought in earlier battles with the Muslims in southern Spain. Conquistadors were more mercenaries than actual soldiers. They had to buy their armor, sword, and horses. The warlords of the conquest of Mexico (Cortes, Alvarado) were, on average, 34 years old. Francisco Pizarro, the oldest of all, was called "El Viejo" (The Old One) by the Spaniards and "Apu Machu" by the Incas.
The authority of the captain was assured by being granted a royal commission, by his experience and by the fact that he controlled the spoils. On some occasions, captains resorted to extreme measures to maintain their authority, as when Hernán Cortés ordered his men to burn their ships or when Francisco Pizarro charted the bay with his sword on the island of Gallo.[clarification needed] Due in part to these types of actions, the soldiers began to see the conquistador captains as heroes and legendary figures. In the case of the conquest of Peru, discipline was maintained until the spoils were split among the men. Once the strict discipline was relaxed, murders and even armed uprisings against the captains resulted.[citation needed]
Another feature of the conquistadors was the relatively low percentage to come from nobility compared with other contemporary military ventures. Julio R. Villanueva Sotomayor suggests that only 30% of conquistadors were noblemen.[citation needed] Commoners made up the bulk of the Spanish forces. Joining a conquistador company was a very attractive method of social advancement in a rigidly stratified society, and a particularly enticing one for un-employed veterans and mercenaries.[citation needed]
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Spanish chroniclers have traditionally characterized the conquest of the Americas as an impressive feat that occurred at an unprecedented pace.[citation needed] The stated purposes of these conquests were equally to spread the word of God and to bring civilization to the most obscure parts of the world. It accomplished this goal with astounding ability, quickly expanding its borders far into other territories. On the contrary, the testimony of some indigenous peoples as well as some contemporary Spanish humanists, clergymen and other writers[who?] 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. But the first group of conquistadores that came with Cortes went for the sole reason to find gold in the New World.[citation needed]
Historians[who?] have highlighted the short time required for the Spanish conquest of vast populations in the Americas. Exposure of these previously unexposed populations to European diseases caused many more fatalities than the wars themselves, and severely weakened the natives' social structures. The people in the Americas were not previously exposed to several European diseases which resulted in their much higher fatality rate than that of European populations. The diseases moved much faster than invading armies. 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.
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]
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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 annihilated 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 sophisticated methods for working 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. The iron armor and helmets used by the Spanish were an important factor in their success. However, the refined textile technology of Andean civilizations, allowing tissues up to 500 threads per inch structured in successive layers, enabled them to develop efficient armor that was eventually adopted by the Spaniards, replacing their metal helmets and breastplates,[citation needed] as these were not suitable for tropical climates. In fact, only the mounted conquistadors (the cavalry) used steel breastplates and armor during Cortéz's campaign against the Aztecs. The high heat and humidity of Central and South America made wearing such heavy iron and steel items impractical, and the humidity caused a significantly faster rate of corrosion than in Europe.
In their first contacts with native peoples, firearms and especially arquebuses were very effective in battles and made a great impression on morale because of the noise, light and smoke. But their military effectiveness was limited, partially due to their limited availability. The weapons and armor of steel and iron proved to be much more effective militarily. For this reason, when they took control of a nation the conquistadors usually banned possession of iron weapons by the subjugated peoples.[citation needed]
Animals were another military factor. On the one hand, the introduction of the horse to the American continents by the Spaniards in some cases allowed them to move quickly to a battlefield and to maneuver quickly once armies were engaged. But in mountains and jungles, the Spaniards were less technologically adapted than the Amerindian cultures, which had adapted techniques to build roads and bridges through such terrain. In some cases native peoples, mainly in South America, in places such as the pampas and Patagonia, appropriated and developed techniques of horse training and riding such that they soon exceeded the skills of the Spaniards.[citation needed] This became a decisive factor in the native resistance to the Spanish. The Spaniards also used dogs to track and attack indigenous people and slaves in the jungle and forests. Horses and war dogs both were more effective as psychological weapons than physical ones against the natives who in many cases had never seen dogs, and none of whom had seen horses before. They both caused a great deal of terror amongst the natives.[citation needed]
The Spaniards' methods of war were similar to those of most Europeans, which were more bloody than Native American warriors were accustomed to.[citation needed] In addition, some native peoples did not carry out mass killing of enemies on the battlefield, but instead caught and held them for occasions of ritual sacrifices.[citation needed]
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. 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 did not exceed 10 million people.[10] There is some consensus that the demographic collapse of the original population of Americas was the main cause of its military defeat.[citation needed] 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.
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| 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)
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