Conquistadors The Rise and Fall_1of6_A New World
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00The New World, home to a complex patchwork of indigenous people, an intricate medley
00:17of ancient cultures and traditions, trade routes and languages.
00:21In some ways, indigenous culture was way more advanced than actually European society at
00:27the same time.
00:29These were the Americas.
00:32Four thousand miles away, a fractured Europe battled its way through the final decade of
00:37the 15th century, its kingdoms clamoring for new lands, fabulous wealth and ever more power.
00:44The Iberian Peninsula is the preeminent power, without a shadow of doubt.
00:49This was an era of immense growth and expansion, with the Spanish Empire at its vanguard.
00:55This expansion was incredibly rapid.
01:00Ours is a tale of an Iberian queen's chance encounter with a small-time Italian mapmaker,
01:07Christopher Columbus, a man swept up by a grand dream whose greatest mistake would go
01:14on to birth the Age of Exploration.
01:18In a way, Columbus became the first conquistador by accident.
01:22He inaugurated the process of conquest used by other conquistadors.
01:27But were these men the brave Catholic pioneers spoken of across half a millennia of Spanish
01:33literature?
01:34Or simply a gold-hungry elite crashing through the Americas, decimating unsuspecting indigenous
01:41populations with war and disease?
01:46We are about to hear the true story of the Conquistadors.
01:59The Iberian Peninsula, a vast coastline stretching out towards its neighboring continent of Africa.
02:07Encouraging trade, but also providing temptation.
02:12This was a fragile kingdom, scarred by centuries of religious warfare, by a clash of cultures
02:19and of faiths, of Christians and Muslims, of shifting power and beliefs.
02:26The political environment of Iberia in the 15th century was pretty complicated.
02:30You had three leading Christian kingdoms, Portugal, Castile, Aragon.
02:36When we think about the Iberian Peninsula, or we use names like Spain or Portugal, we
02:42do that very often equating, really, Spain to Castile.
02:46Castile being the central kingdom, being the one who would have more sort of relationship
02:52with other European powers we are aware of.
02:54But it was richer, so that's why we think of it as the center.
02:59Spain is a tricky name to trace, that its origin goes back to the Latin word Hispania,
03:06and so in that sense it goes back to the Roman period, at least for referring to the Iberian
03:10Peninsula.
03:11But it's a term that sort of takes a while to come into play.
03:17In the beginning, most would simply describe themselves as Christians.
03:22In the middle part of that century, Castile is actually racked through a civil war over
03:27who's going to be the new monarch.
03:29Eventually that war ends and you have the ascension of Isabella of Castile.
03:36And one way that the Christian kingdoms try and improve their position is by allying,
03:40and so you have the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella.
03:45It's basically going to unify the power of Aragon and Castile, two very prosperous kingdoms,
03:52in the Iberian Peninsula and kind of join their forces.
03:55This became kind of like the unit around which the power of Spain as a discomposite
04:03monarchy is going to become quite important in the early modern period.
04:07Isabella, in particular, had a vision of kind of unifying the entire territory of the Iberian
04:12Peninsula, not only under one crown, but also under one single faith.
04:22This violence had immersed the peninsula for nearly 800 years, since the earlier 8th century
04:28invasion of Iberia by the North African Berber Muslims.
04:33Ferdinand and Isabella looked to expand their territory by going after the remaining Islamic
04:40caliphates in the southern part of the peninsula.
04:44And they bring to fruition a process that many scholars have called the Reconquests,
04:48the Reconquista.
04:51Most of the time, Christians and Muslims and Jews are living side-by-side in peace.
04:57Every now and then, there are wars and violence, and gradually Christians retake control of
05:02the peninsula.
05:04In 1492, the last Muslim kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula, Granada, falls to Queen Isabella's
05:12army.
05:16Her devotion to Christianity knew no bounds.
05:21Her ruthless, violent mission, a world bonded by one faith.
05:27At the same time, they're going to force all Jews to convert to Christianity or leave.
05:35They are going to also create the Inquisition that's in charge of policing new converts,
05:40new Christians, and Christians in general.
05:42The perception of what makes an early modern state becomes different.
05:47It's not anymore the diversity, it's not anymore that sort of pragmatic dealings with
05:54people of different faiths for economic gain or intellectual debate, but rather it's one
06:01ruler, one language, one religion.
06:04Together, Aragon and Castile formed a mighty Catholic kingdom, the beginnings of a global
06:13superpower.
06:16To the east, the Byzantine Empire teetered on the edge of collapse, the Ottomans desperate
06:22for control.
06:24This chaotic power shift jeopardizing lucrative trade routes connecting Iberia and Asia.
06:30For Europeans at this time, not just Spain, Asia was the site of great wealth and luxuries.
06:37And so the trade route to Asia was of paramount importance.
06:43The Ottoman expansion in the eastern Mediterranean didn't close off the trade routes, but it
06:48made the cost of that trade more because the Ottomans began to put in new taxes on those
06:53trade routes.
06:54It's going to make it very difficult for these European kingdoms to access these luxury goods
06:59that they crave from Asia.
07:02Safe passage to Asia would be essential if Iberia was to thrive.
07:07But new routes across perilous terrain proved fraught with danger, and only one feasible
07:13option remained, tackling the seas.
07:17So began nearly a century of heated competition between Spain and Portugal.
07:23The Age of Exploration, as the two main Iberian powers battled the oceans.
07:30It's Portugal that really paves the way for Western Europeans to move across the Atlantic
07:37by focusing on developing trade routes along Atlantic Africa.
07:44The Portuguese exploration of the western coast of Africa is going to be to find another
07:48route east around Africa to Asia.
07:53The result of this expedition was actually quite high.
07:57Portugal gets really important territories, prestigious positions, places like Madeira
08:03and the Azores.
08:05One of humanity's bleakest schemes was born during these fateful expeditions, the African
08:12slave trade.
08:14As the Portuguese expanded down the African coastline, one of the things that they very
08:18quickly recognized they could bring back as trade, or to trade for there and then have
08:24markets for back in Europe, was enslaved peoples.
08:28By then, the institution of slavery was quite ordinary in Europe at the time, in the Mediterranean.
08:36In the Iberian Peninsula, it was not uncommon to find white slaves from the Caucasus, the
08:43Caspian Sea, but those sources of slaves started to disappear precisely in the aftermath of
08:51the fall of the Byzantine Empire.
08:53So African slaves, either from North Africa or from actually Sub-Saharan Africa, became
08:59more and more frequent.
09:02The association between blackness, Africanness, and slavery became dominant in the European mind.
09:11The Portuguese movement helps to pioneer navigation in the Atlantic world, helps to in many ways
09:18create new networks of trade, which are bringing money into the Iberian Peninsula.
09:24There was a real sense that Castile needed to do something to compete with Portugal.
09:31They've had a little bit of expansion into the Canaries, they claim those, but as Queen
09:36of Castile, Isabella, wanted to bring Castile a greater share of this overseas trade and expansion.
09:45Queen Isabella wouldn't have to wait long before just such an opportunity arrived, in
09:51the form of a little-known Italian mapmaker harboring serious ambitions.
09:58Christopher Columbus.
10:08Christopher Columbus was a sailor, a merchant.
10:12He had worked extensively the Atlantic trade routes.
10:16He had experience as a navigator.
10:20Some historians claim that he knew pretty well from the Gulf of Guinea all the way to
10:25Iceland.
10:27He ended up in Iberia quite by accident.
10:30The ship on which he was sailing was attacked, and so everybody had to jump overboard.
10:36And Columbus was a strong swimmer, and he swam something like seven miles, and ended
10:41up at the southwestern tip of Portugal.
10:46And that's when he started making a living by selling books and also drawing maps.
10:52So that gave him access to this very vibrant maritime community of Portugal.
10:57That is crucial.
10:58It was there where he figured out that yes, traveling west, finding a route to Asia was doable.
11:07The planet's oceans remained a terrifying mystery.
11:11Explorers, reliant upon little more than a hearty dose of good fortune, every voyage
11:16marred by the lack of fresh fruit and vegetables on board.
11:21Scurvy would often take grip, death always lurking nearby.
11:27The European imagination of the world, we can roughly understand through the old medieval
11:33TO maps.
11:35A TO map is a map that essentially shows the T inside an O, and this was a way of dividing
11:41the world into Europe and the two portions of Africa and Asia.
11:48So those three landmasses, Europe, Asia, and Africa, pretty much describe the contours
11:53of what Europeans know to exist at this time.
11:58The other model we have for that time period are perhaps the Portolan charts that were
12:01used by navigators.
12:03There's some really quite striking precision in the Portolan charts about the immediate
12:09contours of Europe and some of the ports that they know very well, the trade routes that
12:14they are accustomed to traveling, but everything beyond that is sort of a great mystery.
12:19Now maps were important.
12:20In fact, they were held as highly state secrets.
12:24Penalty of death could be imposed if you were found to be providing maps to people not within
12:31the realm of your kingdom.
12:34Maps were also political documents because they told the world, this is my domain.
12:40This is what we created.
12:41And maps were also works of art and often played to the ego of the person who had the
12:48map made or the person who was trying to claim the domain of those regions through this map.
12:58So Columbus is like many other individuals that are looking to profit from the desire
13:08to get goods from outside of Europe.
13:11And Columbus has this idea that if you can go west, you can get to the east.
13:18And he tried to sell this idea to different kings in Europe with little success really.
13:24He tried England, he tried Portugal, and they questioned his theories about how big
13:30the earth was.
13:33Nautical people, people who were into the business of exploring and supporting exploration,
13:39they had a very clear idea that the world was round, that there was this big ocean.
13:47Most people understood the exact size of the world that had been calculated even without
13:51it being circumnavigated.
13:53Columbus said, no, no, no, the world is much smaller than that, which means I can just
13:56sail across what we think of as the Atlantic Ocean to reach Asia.
14:01And they said, no, you can't.
14:02It's much further than that.
14:03They were right.
14:04If you put this to a Pacific and Atlantic Ocean together, ships in the 16th century
14:07aren't going to be able to make that voyage.
14:09Everyone would die of scurvy.
14:10So the irony is that he's actually a bad navigator.
14:14And it's by being a bad navigator and being very stubborn about it that he insists on
14:19making those voyages.
14:22The other problem is that because there's no knowledge of what's to the west, it's
14:27hard to know how likely a good return is.
14:31So Columbus is making a tough proposition.
14:33He's making a proposition to go in a direction where no one knows what's there.
14:37And Columbus is telling everyone that they're wrong about the size of the earth.
14:42But from the point of view of Castile and Queen Isabella, it's a reasonable risk to
14:47take.
14:50Columbus was about to encounter his first stroke of luck, impeccable timing.
14:56His proposal, a voyage so wildly dangerous it would surely fail, provided a low-risk
15:02opportunity for Queen Isabella.
15:04If, by some miracle, Columbus did succeed, he might just boost Castile's stature in
15:10Europe whilst bringing the unexplored world under the control of her beloved Catholic
15:15faith.
15:17One way to think about Spain's ambitions in this period is they understood themselves
15:22to be on a divine mission.
15:26They understood that the Great Judgment would not occur until the entire world was Catholic.
15:33So even though the trade route was important, I would argue that they also had profound
15:37religious goals entwined with them.
15:41And so the Spanish crown accepted Columbus's project.
15:47Columbus signed a very specific capitulation with the king and queen that gave him right
15:52to titles and profit if he delivered his part of the deal, right?
15:57And that part of the deal was to get to Asia.
15:59He gets nothing if it's not Asia.
16:08The stakes couldn't have been higher for Columbus.
16:11If he failed in his quest to discover a new trade route to Asia, not only would he be
16:16in breach of contract, losing out on a great sum of money, but he would also face public
16:23humiliation.
16:25Despite the risks, the Italian mapmaker had no real sense of the size and scale of his
16:31undertaking.
16:32However, the sailors he had hired knew even less than their captain.
16:38Haunted by memories of friends lost to the colossal ocean's relentless hurricanes, for
16:44these simple folk, this vast expanse swum with terror-inducing tales of horrifying creatures
16:52lurking in the deep.
16:56Columbus would attempt to cross this formidable expanse in three modest vessels, the Santa
17:02Maria, the Niña, and the Pinta.
17:06With 300 square meters of sail and over 3,000 meters of rope for rigging, the Santa Maria
17:13held capacity for up to 100 barrels of food and equipment, whilst the Niña and Pinta
17:20were smaller, utilizing conventional square sails for open ocean speed and triangular
17:26Latin sails for coastal maneuverability.
17:31Columbus and his fleet were to be but a piece of flotsam, bobbing alone in an uncharted
17:37body of water, an ocean which covers over 20% of the surface of the globe.
17:46Early August 1492, Columbus sets sail.
17:52With him are 90 proficient seamen bearing a broad set of important skills.
17:57Carpenters, physicians, even goldsmiths were to be found on board.
18:03None of these men had any idea how long they would be away from home, from their lives
18:08and loved ones.
18:11Following a month spent in the Canary Islands restocking provisions, the three ships headed
18:16west into the vast blue expanse, into the unknown.
18:23Columbus had to prove himself worthy of the Atlantic Ocean.
18:28He and his crew were entirely reliant upon his instinct and maritime skills.
18:35So historically, before Columbus and up to Columbus's time and well after Columbus's
18:40time, pilots really sailed by a technique called dead reckoning.
18:46So basically that required a fix, so a point of departure that you knew the location of
18:51and you basically pointed your compass to the place where you wanted to go to and you
18:57just kept track of the distance on a map.
18:59And that generally worked but for smaller bodies of water like the Mediterranean.
19:07But when people started venturing into much larger bodies of water like the Atlantic and
19:12even more so the Pacific, this would not work.
19:15So they developed a technique to first of all determine latitude, that is north-south
19:20distance.
19:23First developed by the ancient Greeks, the astrolabe helped mariners to roughly determine
19:28their latitude.
19:30Longitude, which are those lines that cross each other, really did not come into existence
19:37until the 18th century.
19:39Longitude depend upon accurate timekeeping.
19:43There were a time some of the foremost pilots in the world were able to use magnetic declination
19:48in order to try to approximate east-west distance.
19:52So these were the technologies that enabled Europeans to travel over these enormous bodies
19:57of water.
20:00As the weeks dripped by, tedium evolved into tension.
20:06Columbus's crew grappling with a shortfall in provisions and a mounting suspicion that
20:11their intrepid leader might not actually be leading them to dry land.
20:17Narrowly avoiding a fatal mutiny, Columbus convinced his sailors to press on with a glimmer
20:23of hope offered by a sighting of birds flying overhead.
20:28Could this glimpse of life mean that the shores of an unexplored land were finally within
20:34reach?
20:36Suddenly, Columbus spotted something.
20:40A dot on the horizon.
20:43After all this time, could it really be land?
20:48His perseverance had prevailed.
20:50Not that he knew it yet, but Christopher Columbus had just become one of the first non-indigenous
20:56people ever to lay eyes on the North American continent.
21:06The Caribbean is a variety of islands, large, some small.
21:17They're populated by small to large communities.
21:23Today, we think of them all being sort of connected to a linguistic and ethno-linguistic
21:30group we think about as the Taino.
21:33They all have tribute systems in which commoners pay tribute to nobles.
21:40Nobles were known as caciques.
21:44Tainos worship cemillas, which are features of the land.
21:49They could be certain kind of sculptures.
21:51So they had a kind of deep association with the land around them.
21:55They were agriculturalists.
21:56They also practiced hunting and fishing and long-distance trading.
22:01Unfortunately, however, as historians, we actually don't know all that much about them
22:06through historical records.
22:08They do not practice writing, at least in systems that we recognize today.
22:15That being said, they are connected to each other through trade, through exchange, and
22:21also through things like marriage and family relationships to establish alliances.
22:26They'd marry with other groups.
22:31We'll never know the exact spot at which Columbus made landfall.
22:42Some believe he dropped anchor at San Salvador, where contact was first made with the indigenous
22:48Taino populations.
22:51Columbus and his men would have been ecstatic to see the beaches of the Antilles.
22:59Obviously, they had been on the voyage longer than they'd hoped.
23:02They were running low on food.
23:03There had been a quasi-mutiny to go back to Spain.
23:08You can imagine that the excitement of reaching what, certainly in that moment, they thought
23:14was the Far East would have been so great.
23:17To see the Taino communities, I think there would have been a great hope of expectation
23:24that all of the risk, all of the tribulations that they'd experienced on the voyage over
23:29would soon be realized in the wealth of Asia.
23:38We have some pretty good accounts for the first encounters between Columbus and the
23:43Taino.
23:44He writes about it in his journal.
23:45We also have accounts from other chroniclers who had talked to the original members of
23:51Columbus's crew, as well as those that come on later voyages.
23:57Not surprisingly, the overwhelming initial sentiment is curiosity.
24:03Obviously, Columbus, when they sight land, is hoping that he is beginning to see places
24:11and people that he would assume would be in the East.
24:16The Tainos were a very peaceful people, and he saw them as sort of these naive children.
24:22In fact, he often kind of talked to them about hijos de Dios, or children of God, because
24:28they were so innocent.
24:30And he observed in his letters and his conversations that these people were not only docile and
24:36subservient, but they would be easy to conquer.
24:38They would be easy to enslave, and they would be easy to have their labor exploited for
24:44the great glory of Spain.
24:48One thing that these native people had developed were these dugout canoes that really kind
24:54of astounded Columbus and the Europeans, because some of them carried 30 to 40 people.
25:00Some of them were large enough to carry as many as 150 people.
25:03And these canoes traveled very fast and very efficiently, and so there was a great deal
25:07of interaction among the native people in the Caribbean.
25:11These people did not live isolated lives, and so when Columbus came upon them, yes,
25:16they were kind of awed by these strange-looking individuals, but they were not completely
25:21inexperienced in terms of coming across people from different backgrounds.
25:29The biggest difference was at the level of technology, and that Europeans, Iberians,
25:36had technology which was far beyond what was available in the Caribbean.
25:44Although the Taino had canoes and other craft that could cross between the islands, they
25:49were nothing like the caravels that the Spaniards were coming on.
25:55And certain technologies like steelsmithing, firearms, these things greatly differentiated
26:04the Taino from the Europeans.
26:07Columbus was delighted to set foot on what he believed, and likely prayed, was one of
26:12the tiny islands dotted along Asia's periphery.
26:16He had made it, fulfilling his contract with the queen.
26:21Now he needed to figure out what treasures lay in wait.
26:33This discovery only added to the explorer's swollen sense of confidence.
26:38Soon, an emboldened Columbus went in search of the bustling metropolis of Sipangu, the
26:44island we now call Japan, and the fabled Chinese port town of Saitam.
26:51He instead washed up in Cuba on October 28th, before pushing southeast in his fretful search
26:57for luxurious eastern goods to ship home.
27:03On December 5th, a floundering Columbus runs upon what would prove to be his most important
27:09discovery.
27:10Hispaniola was called Haiti, actually, Haiti, he was actually, that's the original name
27:16of the island, Haiti.
27:17It is in Hispaniola where they're going to actually try to kind of explore a little more
27:21fully, where they actually get in touch with a chief in the north of the island, and they're
27:26going to establish kind of a relationship.
27:31It's never clear to what extent Columbus is able to communicate with any of the natives
27:35that he encounters.
27:38Initially, the encounters that Columbus has with the Taino, there are attempts to try
27:46and make one side understood through hand gestures and other sort of pantomime.
27:55What ends up happening is Columbus does know that he needs translators, and one of the
28:02things that he does is that he does steal Taino to try and use them as translators.
28:09And there are other moments in these encounters when Columbus does act in ways that are aggressive.
28:19They use those captive translators to begin to forge relationships with some of these
28:24caciques to get a little bit more information about the island of Hispaniola and its people
28:32to further his goals of commercializing the voyage.
28:41We know that when Columbus arrived on the shores of the Antilles, he chose to call the
28:48people there Indios, because he had believed that he had made it to the Indies, which in
28:55their mind encompassed everything from India to China.
28:59And as a result then, the inhabitants for the Spanish became Indios, generally.
29:07Very quickly, Columbus and the Spaniards that followed began to recognize that there
29:12were many nations of Indias, naciones de Indias, or gentes, peoples.
29:17And so, while the term Indios took as the sort of general racialized term for all of
29:24Native Americans, they did recognize that there were distinctions between different
29:29nations of indigenous peoples, and were very keen to exploit those differences if it was
29:35possible to do so.
29:39The Taino know that these new arrivals have been taking captives, and so there's certainly
29:45a wariness on the part of some caciques to the Spanish.
29:51But the caciques on the island of Hispaniola, there are rivalries between them.
29:58There was at least some incentive to try and see what an alliance with these new arrivals
30:05could be, how it might change the sort of power dynamics on the island.
30:09And so, at least one of the caciques, Guancanagari, does choose eventually to sort of open more
30:16lines of communication with Columbus.
30:19The warm approval of this chiefdom leader allowed Columbus space to investigate the
30:25forests, streams, and hills of Hispaniola.
30:30He knew he urgently needed to find, or fabricate, some good news to send home.
30:35There are moments of trade, he's bringing trinkets and different kind of goods to trade
30:40with the natives.
30:41He's going to actually receive some gold pieces and gold jewelry that is going to give him
30:46the sense that there is indeed gold in those lands.
30:49And he's going to report all this to the kings in great detail.
30:55It's a diary he's writing for the kings to read.
31:00And he describes that there's great abundance, that the tropical region would be most suitable
31:05for European agriculture, which it obviously was not, that it would be a great producer
31:11of wealth, and in particular there was gold just sort of readily available in the streams
31:17and rivers that one could just simply go and collect it, that there were great numbers
31:22of indigenous peoples who could be converted to Christianity and then become vassals or
31:28subjugated peoples under his authority or Spanish authority very easily.
31:36He wants the kings to fund a second trip, so when we read Columbus's narrative, we need
31:43to be very much aware that that's what he's set up to do.
31:47So we need to be very careful with the information that he provides because he's painting a very
31:50rosy picture about the possibilities of the land, he talks about the natives as being
31:55very docile, being very willing to learn the new Christian faith.
32:01He is very clearly thinking about every ounce of gold that he finds or hears of as ways
32:08of paying back this expensive endeavor.
32:12And he is also suggesting every time he mentions the conversion of people to Christianity that
32:19if gold is not sufficient, at least we have found Christian souls.
32:24So I do think he's under a great deal of pressure and he is manifesting that in the
32:28two things that the monarchs most want to see, which is gold and potential converts.
32:38He also insists that he's found Asia and that those islands are off the coast of Asia.
32:43Historians have debated ever since whether he really believed that, which I think is
32:49probably the case, or whether he just said that because that was what was in his contract.
32:55So we would need to wonder to what extent Columbus had to convince himself that he was
33:01indeed where he said he was because he knew that otherwise he would have nothing.
33:14In a further attempt to gain Isabella's approval, despite his costly mistake, Columbus makes
33:19a point of noting the potential for Spain's very own free workforce in the form of Hispaniola's
33:27indigenous people.
33:29Columbus also touted the quality of the slaves that he found there and the intelligence and
33:36the industry of the slaves that he found in New World.
33:39Before going to the Americas, Columbus had traveled in the company of Portuguese sailors
33:44to what is now the coast of Ghana.
33:47So he had an experience of how the Portuguese had established trading forts that traded
33:54in slaves.
33:57That experience really shaped Columbus's thinking about what to do when you get into a new land
34:06and how to go about trying to develop that land as a European colony.
34:12With Aninia's cabins bulging with the island's most beguiling exotic artifacts, Columbus
34:18wastes no time in racing back to Spain, his letter to the crown hungrily lobbying for
34:25a far larger return voyage.
34:28This lavish patronage was his for the taking, Columbus was certain of it.
34:34However, having run the Santa Maria aground, he would be forced to order 39 of his men
34:40to remain on Hispaniola.
34:44They were to construct and inhabit a permanent fortress and await his return.
34:50It is with the remnants of the Santa Maria that they're going to build what is going
34:54to call the Navidad Fortress or the city of, oh, the town of Navidad, which was founded
34:59on Christmas Day.
35:00That's why it's called Navidad.
35:02This is actually the first European settlement in the Americas.
35:06And it's ostensibly under the protection of Guancanagadi that the Spanish, who remain
35:12on Hispaniola when Columbus leaves, will be supported and have access to food and trade
35:18at their settlement.
35:20He understands that, you know, the power is not in his side, so he's going to be conservative.
35:26He's going to actually try to treat the natives as allies and treat them well and gain support
35:31from them because they need it to actually be able to travel back.
35:35They need the food.
35:36They need the supplies.
35:38And so Columbus left these people in charge, and he said to them, you are to treat these
35:42individuals with kindness.
35:44You also to continue to explore the island and find whatever wealth that you can.
35:50And you are to be their protector.
35:53We can only imagine how incredible it might have been to be left behind.
35:58Those vessels, the only thing that connects you with your homeland, right, with your land,
36:03with your people, the people that you know, and be left in completely unknown land surrounded
36:08by people that you really do not know anything about.
36:14So he's going to go back with all kind of the goods that he's been able to kind of like
36:17accumulate in his time, all the kind of like precious, all the gold that he's been able
36:22to accumulate, different goods that he encountered from cassava to kind of like agricultural
36:27products that he found.
36:29And he also actually took natives with him, forced them to actually come with him because
36:35he intended to actually not only show them to the Queen, but also to sell them as slaves.
36:43For Columbus, I guess it was important for him to prove to the Queen, you know, what
36:47do these natives look like, right?
36:49And he had no qualms whatsoever about taking them and bringing them with him.
36:56The return journey across a tempestuous Atlantic proved perilous.
37:01Fierce storm after fierce storm battered all that remained of the fleet, separating the
37:06two boats, forcing the Niña, with Columbus on board, into port at Lisbon.
37:13The man who would transform Castile's fortunes emerged from the Niña on March 15th, 1493.
37:21Details of his discoveries, alongside well-thumbed reproductions of his famed letter, rapidly
37:27spread across an enraptured Europe.
37:31But the King of Portugal was deeply unimpressed.
37:35He felt these mysterious Asian islands had been illicitly claimed by Spain.
37:41In the Middle Ages, it was not uncommon for different kingdoms, when they had disputes,
37:45to actually go to the Pope and ask for his intercession.
37:54The Pope was concerned about two Catholic powers fighting each other, and so he came
38:01and negotiated a settlement between Spain and Portugal.
38:09The first series, from Pope Alexander VI, known as the Alexandrine Bulls, essentially
38:16divided the world into two spheres of influence, between the Spanish and the Portuguese.
38:22Later on, the Spanish and the Portuguese also negotiate this in the Treaty of Tordesillas,
38:27which creates the dividing line, which goes through the middle of the Atlantic, lops off
38:32the nose of Brazil, and then continues on to the other side of the world.
38:37And so the Philippines are part of the Spanish area, whereas parts of the Spice Islands and
38:44mainland China would be in the Portuguese area.
38:47Can you imagine an individual coming together and saying simply, we're going to divide the
38:53world among ourselves?
38:54What kind of hubris and arrogance is that?
38:57But that's the way the Europeans saw themselves.
38:59Not only the Spaniards, but the English, and the French, and the Dutch, and the Portuguese.
39:06They believed that they were the superior civilization, and therefore had the right
39:11to do whatever they needed to do to impose their will on lesser people.
39:18It also takes on an important political aspect, and that is, in order to justify the Spanish
39:26presence in the New World, the Spaniards are responsible for Christianizing the natives.
39:32So they have a legal basis to hold on to the territory, as long as they're Christianizing
39:37the natives.
39:38And that is crucial, because it's, first of all, somewhat, again, a continuation of the
39:43Reconquista, when you're linking, sort of, going ahead with territory, with converting.
39:48But also, it leaves the door open for criticism, because in the moment in which you do not
39:53achieve that conversion, you're not Brazilitizing, you're not making people Christians, anyone
39:57can say, well, then your right to territorial control was linked to conversion, and you're
40:03not achieving that.
40:09Columbus's first voyage was a success only insofar as he discovered that there were lands
40:16within reach of European vessels to the West.
40:23It was not a very successful voyage for him financially.
40:26They didn't find a lot of items that were particularly valuable.
40:31But its greatest value was in forging a path that then could be followed again and again
40:38and again in the decades that followed.
40:41The Portuguese were getting way more wealth at the time through their trade in West Africa.
40:50And that is part of the reason why they feel completely fine signing the Treaty of Tordesillas,
40:56because they see themselves as winners of that treaty, because they have preserved for
41:01themselves the commercial potential of West Africa, and relegated Spain to whatever they
41:10could find beyond that imaginary line in the middle of the Atlantic.
41:15With that in mind, Spain's bet was really a large bet that could potentially have turned
41:23into nothing.
41:24It turned out to be a big deal, but back then in 1492, 1493, it was not a big event.
41:31It was what somebody has called a non-event.
41:36Columbus, now bolstered by divine backing, once again set his sights westwards.
41:42He hadn't found a swift, safe route to Asia.
41:46He needed to rapidly turn his discovery into a worthy investment for the crown.
41:53Beneath the burden of this enormous pressure, Columbus's impetus shifted from exploration
41:58to conquest.
42:01Cold fear merging with one man's uncompromising ego, which would soon lead to the deaths of
42:06thousands of native people, and begin Europe's merciless colonization of the Americas.
42:15Columbus prepared for his return to Hispaniola, and to the men he had abandoned at the fortress
42:20of La Navidad.
42:21A far larger fleet of ships set sail, loaded with supplies and heavy weaponry.
42:28They were prepared to use force if necessary.
42:30What they didn't know was that the killing had already begun.