HIST 1011 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Stone Age, Smallpox, Bartolomé De Las Casas
Document Summary
Iberian peninsula is at the very end of the european continent. Con dence after forcing the muslim moors out of the iberian peninsula. Limited number of directions where spanish can sail. Have had practice with expansion by taking over the nearby atlantic islands (e. g. canary islands) Have experience with dealing with and converting a native population. Additional experience for taking over americas by taking over. Native americans and vikings were the rst to discover north america. Was conquest inevitable? (i. e. if cortes had failed, would someone else. Advanced city state called tenochitilian is the capital. Built on a lake using a grid system--->very sophisticated engineering. Uses ally system: convince surrounding city-states to become allies with the capital city-state (used either collaboration or coercion as its means of forcing nearby city-states into alliances) Technically, still in the stone age since they had not perfected the use of metal. A lot of the warfare was for ritual purposes.
