Spain’s fortunes were linked with the discoveries
of Columbus. In 1498 AD, after some
rather disappointing exploits, he began exploring what is now northern
Venezuela. He came across locals wearing
strings of pearls around their necks. He
discovered a set of islands with astonishingly rich oyster beds. Sacks filled with pearls, ‘some as large as
hazelnuts, very clean and beautiful’ were shipped back to Spain, generating
fortunes for the captains and crews who brought them home. The pearl bonanza was followed by the
discovery of gold and silver as they moved on to Central and Southern America
where they came into contact with civilisations such as the Aztecs and the
Incas. ‘The Indians’ as Columbus wrongly
called them ‘do not have arms and are all naked and of no skills in arms and so
cowardly that a thousand would not stand against three.’ They had watched with wonder at one banquet
as Columbus showed them the accuracy of a Turkish bow and demonstrated the
power of a Lombard cannon and of a spingard – a heavy gun capable of piercing
armour. The new arrivals were proud of
their instruments of death and disdainful of those whose territories they had
violated. ‘They are fit to be ordered
about and made to work, plant and do everything else that may be needed and
build towns and be taught our customs’, Columbus wrote. From the beginning the local populations were
identified as potential slaves and violence quickly became standard. On the island of Cuba in 1513 AD villagers
who arrived to present the Spanish with gifts of food, fish and bread ‘to the
limit of their larder’ were massacred ‘without the slightest provocation’ in
the words of the dismayed observer. ‘I
saw cruelty on a scale no living being has ever seen or expects to see’ wrote
the Spanish friar Bartolomé de las Casas of his experiences in the earliest
days of European settlement. He was
writing a report designed to inform those back home of what was happening in
the New World. What he saw was only the
beginning as he wrote in his horrific account of the treatment of the ‘Indians’
in his ‘Historia de las Indias’.
The native populations in the Caribbean and the
Americas were devastated. Within a few
short decades of Columbus’ first voyage the numbers of the Taino people fell
from half a million to little more than 2,000.
This was in part due to ferocious treatment by those who began to style
themselves as ‘conquistadors’ or conquerors.
The indigenous population fell victim in large numbers to the diseases
that were brought from Europe. The
inhabitants of Tenochtitlan were decimated by highly contagious outbreaks of
smallpox to which they had no resistance.
Famine followed as agricultural production, for which they were largely
responsible, collapsed. In Guatemala,
again around 1520 AD, a severe epidemic of smallpox was followed by a deadly
outbreak of measles.
Herman Cortés, whose expedition resulted in the
death of the Aztec ruler Moctezuma and the collapse of the Aztec Empire,
stopped at nothing to enrich himself. ‘I
and my companions’ he told the Aztecs ‘suffer from a disease of the heart that
can be cured only by gold.’ Cortés and
his men seized the Aztec treasures, pillaging ‘like little beasts, each man
utterly possessed by greed.’ Exquisite
items were looted, including ‘necklaces of heavy gems, anklets of beautiful
workmanship, wristbands ... and the turquoise diadem that is the insignia of
the ruler, reserved only for his use.
They took everything.’
That was not enough. The nobility and priesthood of Tenochtitlan,
the Aztec capital, were massacred during a religious festival. The Spanish force went berserk, chopping off
the hands of the drummers before attacking the crowd with spears and
swords. The sea lanes to Europe now became
thick with heavily laden ships from the Americas. Albrecht Dürer was stunned by the quality of
the craftsmanship of Aztec treasures he saw exhibited in 1520 AD. ‘Nothing I have seen in all my days rejoiced
my heart so much as those things.’ He
says the objects he saw included a sun entirely of gold and a silver moon both
six feet in width, marvelling ‘at the subtle ingenuity of the men in those
distant lands who had created them.’
The Spanish King Charles V was also King of Naples,
Sicily and Sardinia as well as of territories in Burgundy and the Low
Countries. With unlimited funds flowing
back across the Atlantic he was the dominant figure in European politics and
was styled the Holy Roman Emperor. He was a nephew of Catherine of Aragon, wife
of Henry VIII. Henry made himself a very
powerful foe when he sought to sideline the niece of the powerful Emperor.
My
thanks to Peter Frankopan, author of ‘The Silk Roads’
