Chapter 24: Colliding Worlds

Yellow = Important
Green = Good example
Blue = Connector

Tainos
- Most prominent people of the Caribbean when Columbus arrived
- Sailed in canoes from the Orinoco River to the Caribbean

Columbian Exchange
- Made Hispaniola (includes Haiti and Dominican Republic) the base of Spanish
operations
- Established Santo Domingo in 1498 to trade (but found that the region lacked spices or
silk)
- Recruited the Taino to mine gold to support
- Encomienda -> the right to compel Taino to work in mines and fields, in return
settles (encomenderos) look after the worker’s health, welfare, and bring them
Christianity (basically slavery)
- Smallpox
- Came to the Caribbean in 1518
- Settlers launched raiding parties to kidnap and enslave Taino to replace
labourers
- Native population plummented from 4 million to a couple thousand

Everyone Else
- Exceptionally rich sources of silver in Mexico and Peru
- Around 1640s, the Dutch, French, English came to the Caribbean to establish
plantations
- Cash crops like sugar and tobacco cultivated well in the Caribbean
- Lack of labourers led to the import of slaves

Conquest of Mexico and Peru

- Conquistadores
- Mexico -> Aztec Empire
- 1519-1521: Hernán Cortés brought down the Aztec Empire with only around 450
- Led the men to Tenochtitlan (Aztec capital)
- Seized emperor Motecuzoma II (died. 1520)
- Initially were drove away, last emperor Cuauhtémoc (circa. 1502-1525)
- Cortés placed the capital under siege in 1521, starving the city into surrender
- Had help from Native people and translators like Doña Marina
 - Cuauhtémoc stood up to Cortés torture, executed in 1525
- Steel swords, muskets, cannons, and horses brought advantages to the Spanish
- Division among indigenous people helped significantly as well
- Smallpox dropped the Aztec population significantly, allowing the Spanish
to conquer
- Peru -> Incan Empire
- 1532-1533: Franciso Pizarro toppled the Incan Empire
- Arrived after a dispute between Huascar (1503-1522) and Atahualpa (1502-
1533), two brothers of the Incan ruling house
- Exploited the differences between factions
- Taken Incan capital (Cuzco) in 1533
- Killed all of the Incan ruling class
- Spared Atahualpa until he delivered larger amounts of gold to Pizarro, once he
did, he was strangled and decapitated
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