Spanish Conquest of the Americas

The causes

Since 1492, the Spain of the Catholic Monarchs had sought to expand across the Atlantic, following Christopher Columbus. The expeditions, financed by the Crown or by private contracts, promised wealth and land to soldiers and adventurers, the conquistadors. The Spaniards also wanted to convert the peoples to Christianity. The Aztecs dominated subjugated peoples, and the Incas had just come out of a civil war between the brothers Huáscar and Atahualpa, which gave the Spaniards allies. Smallpox epidemics, which arrived with the Europeans, finally weakened these societies.

The conquests also have their origins in the Caribbean. At the beginning of the 16th century, the Spanish founded settlements on Hispaniola, today Haiti and the Dominican Republic, where the Taino population collapsed under disease and forced labour, and where gold ran out. The colonists therefore looked for new wealth on the mainland. The military culture of the Reconquista, completed in 1492 with the capture of Granada, had formed men used to campaigns and sieges, ready to risk their fortunes. Finally, Diego Velázquez, governor of Cuba, financed Cortés's expedition in 1519, before trying to revoke it once it had left the island.

The course of the war

In 1519, Hernán Cortés left Cuba with a small army and landed on the coast of Mexico. He allied himself with the Tlaxcalans, enemies of the Aztecs, then entered Tenochtitlan in November 1519, where Emperor Moctezuma II welcomed him. Conflict broke out: Cortés had to leave the city in 1520, when the population rose up. He returned in 1521 with thousands of Indigenous allies, besieged the city for several months and took it in August 1521. During the siege, smallpox struck the Aztec population.

In Peru, Francisco Pizarro landed in 1532 with a small force. At Cajamarca, on 16 November 1532, he invited the Inca emperor Atahualpa to a meeting, then took him prisoner during an attack on a crowd that was largely unarmed. Atahualpa was executed in 1533, and the Spaniards entered Cusco in November 1533. Resistance organized: in 1536, Manco Inca, a ruler whom the Spaniards had placed on the throne, rebelled and besieged Cusco, without success; he withdrew to Vilcabamba. The Incas maintained a state there until 1572, the year Túpac Amaru, the last ruler of this refuge, was executed.

The Noche Triste, the night of 30 June to 1 July 1520, was a rout: while fleeing Tenochtitlan by the causeways that cross the lake, the Spanish and their allies lost a large part of their men. Cortés withdrew toward Tlaxcala, where his allies provided him with new troops. He then had brigantines built, sail-and-oar boats whose parts, transported from Tlaxcala, were assembled on the shore of Lake Texcoco. This flotilla allowed the besiegers to control the city's canals during the siege of 1521.

The siege of 1521 was a war of destruction. The besiegers demolished houses to fill in the canals and advance, while the Aztecs, led by Cuauhtémoc, defended every district, and the city lacked drinking water and food. Cuauhtémoc was captured on 13 August 1521 while trying to flee by canoe, and resistance ended. A few years later, during an expedition by Cortés to Honduras, the last ruler of Tenochtitlan was executed, in 1525. His execution ended the line of rulers of Tenochtitlan.

At Cajamarca, Atahualpa offered his release in exchange for a ransom: filling with precious metal the room where he was held, and then a second one with silver. The booty was immense, but the emperor was nonetheless executed in 1533. The division of the treasure sharpened the rivalries among the conquistadors. Diego de Almagro, Pizarro's partner, felt wronged; the two men waged war on each other, and Almagro was executed in 1538. Pizarro was in turn assassinated in Lima in 1541 by supporters of Almagro. The Crown then had to send magistrates to restore order in Peru.

The consequences

The Aztec and Inca empires disappeared as states. The Spaniards founded Mexico City on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, then created the viceroyalty of New Spain in 1535 and that of Peru in 1542. Indigenous populations suffered a major demographic collapse, caused largely by disease, violence and forced labor. The exploitation of the silver mines of Potosí, from 1545, enriched the Spanish Crown. The memory of this conquest remains at the heart of debates on the history of Latin America.

In the years after the conquest, the Crown entrusted groups of Indigenous people to colonists through the encomienda system, which obliged them to work and pay tribute. Religious figures such as Bartolomé de las Casas denounced these abuses, and in 1542 the Crown promulgated the New Laws, which limited the system without abolishing it. Accounts of the conquest remain a field of debate: the chronicles of Bernal Díaz del Castillo, a soldier who took part in the expedition, recount the conquest from the viewpoint of a conqueror, while the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún, with Nahua informants, recorded in the 16th century the words of the conquered.

Timeline

1. 1519Hernán Cortés lands on the coast of Mexico
2. 1521Fall of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital
3. 1532Francisco Pizarro captures the Inca emperor Atahualpa at Cajamarca
4. 1533The Spaniards enter Cusco
5. 1572End of the Inca state of Vilcabamba, the last bastion of resistance

Key figures

• Hernán Cortés, conquistador who takes Tenochtitlan
• Moctezuma II, Aztec emperor when the Spaniards arrived
• Francisco Pizarro, conquistador who subdues the Inca empire
• Atahualpa, Inca emperor captured at Cajamarca