European Expansion into the Americas

European countries sought to expand for various reasons. While most likely not their first priority, they wanted to expand their territory and reap the resources of the new areas of the Americas (many of which they had never even encountered up to that point). Second, countries such as Spain, France, and the Netherlands (and their merchants) were desperate to establish a new trade route and bypass the overland trade stranglehold the Ottoman empire had established in the Middle East, thereby “eliminat[ing] Islamic middlemen and win[ning] control of the lucrative trade for Christian western Europe” (Liberty, 20). Perhaps the primary reason, though, was the European notion that Christianity and Catholicism were inherently superior to the naturalistic religions and belief systems of the indigenous people in the Americas and should be spread by all means and methods necessary. The Spanish conquistadors and others overthrew, murdered, and infected as they invaded, all in the name of “saving” the savages from their “heathen” ways and converting them to European religion.

This provided a method of rationalizing what may have otherwise been considered genocide and intolerable cruelty. In other words: Sure, we might’ve enslaved them and accidentally diseased them and decimated them as a whole population, but that pales in comparison with the gift we’re giving them: saving their eternal souls and spreading the Word of God!

In Columbus’s case, he decimated the population of Hispaniola this way. The masses he enslaved to perform forced labor for the Spanish Empire were unaccustomed to the work and treated badly, including being starved and brutalized. In 1528, Spanish priest Bartholome de las Casas characterized the treatment of Indians as “…most horrible servitude and captivity which no one who has not seen it can understand. Even beasts enjoy more freedom when they graze in the fields” (Freedom 5). In addition to the Indian population decreasing from these conditions, new European diseases brought from Spanish urban areas were inadvertently introduced to these indigenous people that didn’t possess any natural immunity. Their numbers were reduced from an estimated 300,000 to one million in 1492 to having “nearly disappeared” within the next fifty years (Liberty 27).

This discourse was likely a surprising revelation for citizens of both Spain and its European rival countries. Commonly-held views of the New World’s exploration and the spread of Christianity were most likely imagined as civil and humane to all involved. This document gave European countries also seeking a piece of the Americas justification for their own subsequent invasions, alluding to coming “to rescue” the Indians from cruel Spanish treatment. Eventually Spain to try to reverse (or at least diminish) its reputation and “Black Legend” of sustained cruelty by implementing the “New Laws.” These were not universally welcome among the Spanish settlers, however, and – although the Indians were no longer slaves and had some access to land and wages – “[the new system] still allowed for many abuses from Spanish landlords and by priests who required Indians to toil on mission lands as part of the conversion process (Liberty 33).”