Cortes & Colombus essays

Cortes & Colombus essays At the beginning of the fifteenth century, the world was a quite small place for Europeans. While they knew about China and Southern Africa, their worldview was still focused on Europe and the Mediterranean. Within 200 years, Europe would be almost all over the world with settlement on various continents. By 1700, most of the coastline of the Americas would be under the domination of Europeans. Meanwhile, with the European conquest of the Nuvus Mondus -the New World- Europe also discovered and revealed a darker side of itself in the age of exploration. The Portuguese all throughout the 16th century built a monopoly in the spice trade from the east by dominating the trade routes around the continent of Africa. Spain, on the other hand, began thinking of ways to get around this monopoly by developing a western route to the eastern countries. The Spanish were especially well prepared by history to conquer, occupy, populate and exploit new lands and assimilate new people. " With Portugal dominating the African route to India, Queen Isabelle of Castile was persuaded to take an interest in a western route by a Genoese adventures, Christopher Columbus." Columbus was in his forty- first year. He had lived 9 years in Spain, where he was trading sugar and was making maps and marine charts. During this period, he made many sea voyages that conceived him later in his enterprise of discovery. Finding no acceptance of it in Portugal, he had come to Spain in 1485. Like all well-informed people of this day, Columbus also believed that the world was round. But Columbus also believed that the world was smaller than was imagined in general and he managed to convince Isabelle that a western expedition would be a short trip. He was, of course, completely mistaken; " he misjudged the size of globe by 25% and the distance of the journey by 400%." As a matter of fact, Columbus and his men would have starved or died, but fortunately for Columbus America...