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Compare the spanish conquest of the aztec and inca
Hernan cortes: is he a hero or a villain
Compare the spanish conquest of the aztec and inca
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In this week’s reading, “Spanish Conquest” by Elizabeth Carmichael and Chloe Sayer discuss the subjugation, ethnocide, and struggle the indigenous population of Mexico endured during the Spanish conquest. The Spanish conquistador, Hernan Cortez, enslave and forced the Aztecs to believe that Christianity was the one true religion. Therefore, the indigenous people were forced to convert their faith through the Spanish missionaries to lose their indigenous roots. Later, the authors explain the many difficulties and conflicts Spanish priest underwent to teach the Christian faith to the Aztecs. The Spanish friar first taught the indigenous people Christianity in Nahuatl.
This chapter tells us the reaction of Motecuhzoma, if receive in peace or war. After discussing with his brother and his son he decided to receive them peacefully. The next chapter tells how the Spaniards and their allies come to the city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan by the course of Iztapalapa, as major local people come to meet and dialogue between Moctezuma and Cortes, with the help in translating the Malintzin. Further comments, the attitude taken by both the Spaniards and indigenous lords. At the end of chapter tells how the Spaniards, after being installed, interrogating Motecuhzoma about gold stocks and how to seize
Most books have either portrayed Hernán Cortés as either a brave conquistador hero who helped transform Mexico for Spanish use, or as a cruel racist who helped instill a genocide upon millions of Mexican natives. The truth, however, can be a lot less black or white. In the book Victors and Vanquished: Spanish and Nahua Views of the Conquest of Mexico, we see that the moral nature of Cortés is more grey than most think. Cortés, in his conquest of Mexico, has performed good and bad deeds towards his own men and towards the Nahua people. To begin with the analysis of Cortés’s actions, we can look at the various good deeds he exhibited during his time in Mexico.
Matthew Restall’s book Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest takes a look at the history of the conquest of the New World, while at the same time, attempting to decipher through certain myths that have gained historical ground over time. He looks at what parts of these myths have some truth to them and what parts of them seem purely fabricated. While going through these myths, Restall starts from the beginning from the reader’s point of view. He does this in order to give the reader ideas of what the myths are, and where they come from. Restall then pushes aside what countless historians used to think to be true for hundreds or years, and shares a new, deeper look at some of the myths.
In his campaign against the Aztec Empire, Cortez relied upon the other local indigenous tribes for assistance. Why did they ally themselves to Cortez and how did they help him secure ultimate victory? In Cortez’s venture to seize Mexico from the Aztec powers he was given he allied with other indigenous tribes, such as the Tlaxcalan's. It can be seen that perhaps the ally was more of mutual want for the destruction of the Aztecs as a mutual enemy rather then the want to benefit one another but the result shows us that this ally between the indigenous and the Spanish Hernan Cortez resulted in both the siege of Mexico and downfall of the Aztecs which may not have happened without this alignment.
The Aztec civilisation, led by Moctezuma II, stood as one of the most sophisticated and advanced civilisations of its era (1325 AD- 1521 AD). Armed with powerful weapons, like wooden spears and metal shields, the Aztecs faced a merciless army. When Hernan Cortes and the Spanish conquistadors entered the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, on 20 April 1519 AD, driven by their pursuit for God, gold, and glory, it would only take two years before Cortes’s small army had conquered and annihilated this powerful civilisation with Spanish military technology. The collapse of the Aztec civilisation was significantly influenced by their weak wooden weaponry, tactics of diplomacy, espionage, and sacrifice that proved no match for the superior Spanish weaponry,
The Mexica people of Tenochtitlan, situated on an island in Lake Texcoco and the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan’s two principal allied city-states, the Acolhaus of Texcoco and the Tepanecs of Tlacopan, formed the Aztec Triple Alliance which has also become known as the “Aztec Empire”. Henan Cortes, along with a large number of Nahuatl speaking indigenous allies, conquered Tenochtitlan and defeated the Aztec Triple Alliance under the leadership of Moctezuma II. In the series of events often referred to as “The Fall of the Aztec Empire”. Subsequently the Spanish founded the new settlement of Mexico City on the site of the ruined Aztec capital.
In central Mexico the Spanish myth of the golden northern land stirred awareness in the legend of Aztlan. According to their own histories the Aztecs had left their homeland in 1168 and journeyed to the lakes where in 1325 where found in Tenochtitlan. By mid-1700’s the Edenic picture of the north had been forgotten in the minds of the authorities in Mexico City. Since most of the settler from the very beginning were Indians and Mestizos and had intermarried with northern natives it wasn’t surprising that eventually saw the border land as their
Did the Spanish Conquistadors misrepresent the Aztecs, and how has this affected the enduring legacy of the Aztecs? [Note of clarification]: This essay is referring to the Aztecs as the Mexicas, due to misinformed terminology popularised by the Spaniards, the name ‘Aztecs’ proved to not be appropriate or correct when referring to the people who controlled the Tenochtitlan region in 1519, when the Spanish arrived. Though the name Mexica still begs some ambiguity in context, it is more respectful when referring to the people of the ‘Aztec Empire’.
The author gives insight on how many ways the Spaniards used their power to assist in the downfall of the Aztecs. The reason why the Spaniards became victorious, was because the Spaniards were looked upon as if they were gods because of their outer appearance. The Aztecs broke bread and welcomed the Spaniards with gifts and parties. The Aztecs triggered their relationship with the Spaniards by holding a ritual for the arrival of the god which included a human sacrifice. The Spaniards didn’t agree with the rituals and began to despise the Aztecs.
After Cortez arrived on the banks of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico in 1519, the natives living there, under the powerful Aztec empire, thought they had been expecting his arrival. The native Aztecs believed that this was the day it was foretold that the god, Quetzalcoatl, would return to the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, and reclaim his throne. The Aztecs, the warrior race who had ruled Yucatan and most of Mexico since 1440, then honoured this new man and his people as gods and invited him into their city. They did not know that Hernando Cortez was not the god they thought he was, but a Spanish conquistador there to eradicate them and their civilisation. He captured their emperor, Moctezuma II, forcefully seized Tenochtitlan, and, afterwards,
Many of the causes of disaffection which I have pointed out as existing generally throughout the Spanish Colonies, did not extend to Mexico by any means in the same degree as to the rest. Her superior population gave her importance, while her mineral treasures, and her vicinity to the Peninsula, ensured to her a constant supply of European manufactures. The very process too, by which these treasures were drawn from the bosom of the earth, gave value to the landed property of the Interior, from the intimate connexion that must always subsist between mining and agriculture; and this concurrence of favourable circumstances diffused a degree of prosperity throughout the country, which few Colonies have ever attained, none, certainly,
In Mexico by 1503, the Aztec Indian tribe had amassed many smaller tribes into a brittle collection of people and ruled the region under emperor Moctezuma II; Moctezuma II held the Indian communities together through strict subordination. The gathering of smaller tribes into a larger community with one ruling tribe, establishes the mindset in the smaller tribes that the Aztecs are the regional Hegemon. Messages from subordinate Gulf coast tribes reached the Aztec Emperor in 1519 of the Spaniards landing and described the likeness of Cortez to an Aztec’s mythological feathered serpent. The Aztec superstitions were known to the smaller Indian tribes, which foretold the feathered serpent’s return to Tenochtitlan to take back its land.
The Spanish were able to colonize Mexico without much resistance.” After the smallpox epidemic, the Aztecs were even more vulnerable. The Spanish exploration and conquering of Tenochtitlan was to gain power for the Spanish empire, but the city’s people were somewhat considered rebellious, and consequently, Cortes needed to conquer/kill the people first. By taking down the people of the city, Cortes was exposed to the city’s great treasures for his reward of gold; he retrieved all the gold he could, and travelled back to Spain where he was labelled a hero for his acts of
This power imbalance and these payments are key in the subjugation of the natives. Furthermore, the paternalism of the Spanish toward the Indigenous peoples is obvious: “Captain [Cortes] stared at him [Cuauhtemoc]…then patted him on the head” (p.117). Post-conquest, and still today, “difficult relations” between the descendants of the Indigenous peoples and the “others” (p.117) still exist. The European view of the natives “as idolatrous savages” or, on the contrary, as “models of natural virtue” (p.175) demonstrate the versatile and often contradictory views held. Similarly, the Aztecs at times saw the Spaniards as gods, and other times as gold-hungry savages who “fingered it like monkeys” (p.51).
