It is hard to comprehend a world in which there is no refrigeration, primitive transport and long, cold winters. Most people survived the winters by living off of stored grain and vegetables stored in root cellars such as beets, carrots, onions and cabbages. Most of the available meat was killed off by early to mid-December because there was limited forage for animal feed during the winter. Therefore animal stocks were kept just large enough for breeding purposes for the next year. Fish had either to be smoked or salted and/or dried. Very little fish was available away from the coast and major river valleys. Even the rich had to contend with rotten meat and maggot-ridden grain stocks. Rodents were a real menace. One relatively pleasant way to preserve meat and also disguise the presence of rotten food were spices such as pepper and cloves. These were in great demand in the growing cities of Europe.
During the fifteenth century, the Arabs and other Muslims dominated the spice trade. The reason simply was geography. Use maps to illustrate situation of trade routes. Because the trade routes used by the Muslims was largely overland and passed through the hands of numerous local potentates, there was a huge mark up in the prices of different spices. For example, peppercorns at one point in the fifteenth century were literally worth their weight in gold! So, there was a huge financial incentive to find an all sea route to Indonesia.
The Portuguese were in the best position of all of the European states to follow the African coast southward in a determined attempt to round the African Cape and enter the Indian Ocean. In a general way, many Europeans knew of the Arab exploration and colonization of East Africa so that they knew that Africa did have an East Coast. What remained was to determine where the southernmost point of the African continent was and whether it was navigable. In a series of individual voyages, the Portuguese gradually pushed south until they reached the Cape of Good Hope. Very quickly thereafter, they made their way to Indonesia. The profits from this trade not only made the Portuguese very rich but it provided an incentive for the French, Dutch and the English to follow their routes to the fabled Indies.
The Spanish had the same motivations as the Portuguese but went about their search for an alternative route to the Spice Islands in a different way. As you all know from High School, they decided (or, more accurately, Columbus decided) to sail west on the theory that there was nothing but ocean between the West Coast of Europe and the East Coast of Asia. They knew that the Spice Islands lay off of the East Coast of Asia. The Law of Unintended Consequences struck again and the Americas were discovered.
The so-called "Indians" that Columbus bumped into when he found the Caribbean Islands on his four voyages were themselves fairly recent immigrants from the Venezuelan Coast. They and all of the other peoples of the Americas originated from northeastern Asia in lands that we now call Siberia and Mongolia. Racially, all of the native Americans were Mongols. However, the settlement of the Americas by these Mongolian peoples had occurred thousands of years before at a time when the most of the Europeans had not yet settled Europe. So, it is fair to call them native Americans because they had been occupying many of the settled places for hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of years.
It is important to recognize that virtually all of the cultures of the Americas (and especially the ones in the Caribbean Islands) were basically Neolithic. Although they used and smelted silver and gold and even some copper, their tools were made of natural stone, wood and bone. Furthermore, the native Americans had been relatively isolated for thousands of years from the world island and they lacked immunity to the many diseases carried by the Europeans.
The Spanish, on the other hand, had just finished re-conquering Spain from the Moors. They were in a warlike mood and had little sympathy for peoples unlike themselves. The Spanish had re-conquered Spain in the name of Christ. Their monarchs were devout Catholics and took the side of the Church in the racking debates and wars of religion in Europe. They were also desperately poor. So, they behaved in a rapacious way that lacked a sense of simple humanity.
The combination of culture shock, rampant epidemics, relentless war and pitiless exploitation did in the native Americans. Eventually, almost all of them who lived in the Caribbean died and were replaced by Europeans and Africans. On the mainland, they were far too numerous and the Europeans far too few for them to simply be wiped off of the face of the earth. Instead, they were suppressed and virtually enslaved and, gradually, the survivors evolved a culture that was mestizo (mixed). The emergent society was part Indian, part European and distinctively Latin American.
They are our brothers Vs. The Uncivilized have been justly conquered!
Bartolome de Las Casas and Juan de Sepulveda debated the question as to whether the Spanish conquerors in the Americas had the right to enslave native Americans. De las Casas argued that the natives clearly were human beings and that the Spanish had no right to enslave them in name of Christianity. Sepulveda argued that superior peoples had the right to enslave inferiors and based his argument in part on his reading of Aristotle. Here are a couple of short excerpts from each argument.
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