2. Spanish and Portuguese Explorers in the Americas in the 1500s
Christopher Columbus to the Caribbean (aka West Indies)
Native Population: Arawak, Taino
Commodities: Gold briefly, then Sugar
Hernan Cortez to Central Mexico
Native Population: Aztec
Commodity: Silver (Zacatecas mine)
Francisco Pizarro to West Coast of South America
Native Population: Inca, Quechua
Commodity: Gold and Silver (Potosi mine)
Pedro Alvarez Cabral to Brazil
Native Population: Tupi, Tupua
Commodity: Sugar

3. The European Advantage
Advances in war technology (firearms, cannon, steel weapons)
Horses
and
Devastating diseases such as small pox allowed the Europeans to quickly dominate the Americas and exploit their resources and peoples.

5. Spain and Portugal Divide the World

6. Spanish Encomienda System
The “encomienda” was the name of the social system that the Spanish transplanted to their holdings in the New World. The land holders were called “encomenderos.”
Spanish conquistadors, settlers, priests or colonial officials were given a grant of land, which included all native cities, towns, communities or families that lived there.
The natives provided tribute in the form of gold or silver, crops and foodstuffs, animals such as pigs or llamas or anything else the land produced.

7. The Encomienda System
The natives could also be made to work for a certain amount of time, say on a sugarcane plantation or in a mine.
In return, the owner, or encomendero, was responsible for the well-being of his subjects and was to see to it that they were converted and educated about Christianity.

10. Spanish Mines
When the Spanish discovered silver in the New World, they opened mines and forced the native people to work in them.
Two infamous mines were
Zacatecas, in Mexico
Potosi, in Bolivia
When they ran out of native workers, they brought African slaves to work in the mines.
Conditions in the mines were horrendous; tens of thousands died.

14. CE
80 – 95 % of the indigenous (“native”) population of the Americas dies from disease and forced servitude
10 million enslaved Africans shipped to Americas to work on plantations and in mines
Spain, and then other European countries become rich, and European culture begins to dominate

15. The Great Dying
Consequence Or
Genocide