Read Online Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 by John H. Elliott - Free Book Online
Authors: John H. Elliott
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granted certain rights. The inhabitants of Hispaniola, and subsequently those of Cuba and other islands seized by the Spaniards, became vassals of the crown, and a potential labour force for crown and colonists - not, technically, as slaves, because vassalage and slavery were incompatible, but as labourers conscripted for public and private works.
The nature of the Indies and its inhabitants therefore favoured an approach based on conquest and subjugation rather than on the establishment of a string of trading enclaves, thus reinforcing the conquering and colonizing, rather than the mercantile, aspects of the medieval Castilian tradition. But, after the first heady moments, the Caribbean began to look distinctly disappointing as a theatre for conquest and colonization. Hispaniola was not, after all, to prove a source of abundant gold; and its Taino population, which the first Spanish settlers had seen as vassals and as a potential labour force, rapidly succumbed to European diseases and became extinct before their eyes.81 The same proved true of the other islands which they seized in their frenetic search for gold. For a moment it seemed as if the imperial experiment would be over almost as soon as it had begun: the meagre returns scarcely warranted such a heavy investment of resources. But once the lineaments of a great American landmass were revealed, and Cortes went on to overthrow the empire of the Aztecs, it was clear that Spain's empire of the Indies had come to stay. The discovery and conquest of Peru a decade later served to drive the lesson home. Here were vast sedentary populations, which could be brought under Spanish control with relative ease. Dominion over land brought with it dominion over people, and also - as large deposits of silver were discovered in the Andes and northern Mexico - dominion over resources on an unimagined scale.
The Cortes expedition - an expedition conceived in terms of subjugation and settlement - therefore fitted into a general pattern of behaviour developed in the course of the Iberian Reconquista and transported in the wake of Columbus to the Caribbean. Traditionally, the Reconquista had relied on a combination of state sponsorship and private initiative, the balance between them being determined at any given moment by the relative strength of crown and local forces. The monarch would `capitulate' with a commander, who in turn would assume responsibility for financing and organizing a military expedition under the conditions outlined in the agreement. The expectation was that the expedition would pay for itself out of the booty of conquest, and the followers of the captain, or caudillo, would receive their reward in the form of an allocation of land, booty and tribute-paying vassals.82 None of this would have been foreign to Cortes, whose father and uncle took part in the final stages of the Granada campaign. Not surprisingly, he pursued his conquest of Mexico as if he were conducting a campaign against the Moors. He tended to refer to Mesoamerican temples as ,mosques', 83 and in making his alliances with local Indian caciques, or when inducing Montezuma to accept Castilian overlordship, he resorted to strategies often used against the petty local rulers of Moorish Andalusia. Similarly, in his dealings with the crown, on whose approval he was more than usually dependent because of the ambiguous nature of his relationship with his immediate superior, the governor of Cuba, he was scrupulously careful to follow traditional Reconquista practice, meticulously setting aside the royal fifth before distributing any booty among his men.84
But Cortes showed himself to be something more than a caudillo in the traditional mould. Unlike Pedrarias Davila, who as governor of Darien from 1513 murdered and massacred his way through the isthmus of Panama with his marauding band, Cortes, for all the brutality and ruthlessness of his conduct, adopted from the first a more constructive approach to the
The nature of the Indies and its inhabitants therefore favoured an approach based on conquest and subjugation rather than on the establishment of a string of trading enclaves, thus reinforcing the conquering and colonizing, rather than the mercantile, aspects of the medieval Castilian tradition. But, after the first heady moments, the Caribbean began to look distinctly disappointing as a theatre for conquest and colonization. Hispaniola was not, after all, to prove a source of abundant gold; and its Taino population, which the first Spanish settlers had seen as vassals and as a potential labour force, rapidly succumbed to European diseases and became extinct before their eyes.81 The same proved true of the other islands which they seized in their frenetic search for gold. For a moment it seemed as if the imperial experiment would be over almost as soon as it had begun: the meagre returns scarcely warranted such a heavy investment of resources. But once the lineaments of a great American landmass were revealed, and Cortes went on to overthrow the empire of the Aztecs, it was clear that Spain's empire of the Indies had come to stay. The discovery and conquest of Peru a decade later served to drive the lesson home. Here were vast sedentary populations, which could be brought under Spanish control with relative ease. Dominion over land brought with it dominion over people, and also - as large deposits of silver were discovered in the Andes and northern Mexico - dominion over resources on an unimagined scale.
The Cortes expedition - an expedition conceived in terms of subjugation and settlement - therefore fitted into a general pattern of behaviour developed in the course of the Iberian Reconquista and transported in the wake of Columbus to the Caribbean. Traditionally, the Reconquista had relied on a combination of state sponsorship and private initiative, the balance between them being determined at any given moment by the relative strength of crown and local forces. The monarch would `capitulate' with a commander, who in turn would assume responsibility for financing and organizing a military expedition under the conditions outlined in the agreement. The expectation was that the expedition would pay for itself out of the booty of conquest, and the followers of the captain, or caudillo, would receive their reward in the form of an allocation of land, booty and tribute-paying vassals.82 None of this would have been foreign to Cortes, whose father and uncle took part in the final stages of the Granada campaign. Not surprisingly, he pursued his conquest of Mexico as if he were conducting a campaign against the Moors. He tended to refer to Mesoamerican temples as ,mosques', 83 and in making his alliances with local Indian caciques, or when inducing Montezuma to accept Castilian overlordship, he resorted to strategies often used against the petty local rulers of Moorish Andalusia. Similarly, in his dealings with the crown, on whose approval he was more than usually dependent because of the ambiguous nature of his relationship with his immediate superior, the governor of Cuba, he was scrupulously careful to follow traditional Reconquista practice, meticulously setting aside the royal fifth before distributing any booty among his men.84
But Cortes showed himself to be something more than a caudillo in the traditional mould. Unlike Pedrarias Davila, who as governor of Darien from 1513 murdered and massacred his way through the isthmus of Panama with his marauding band, Cortes, for all the brutality and ruthlessness of his conduct, adopted from the first a more constructive approach to the
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