Not a Conquest
No its not an appropriate word to use because there was no conquest. A conquest is defined as the taking of a certain region by means of warfare, and winning the war. According to the book, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, this did not happened in the Americas because the Spaniards did not win per se.
Hence, the Spaniards were not sent by the king of Spain to wage war. Instead, they were, “armed entrepreneurs” (35). Thus, they were backed up by private companies that wished to grow in wealth. Moreover, they were not soldiers at all. They were not paid to fight or belonged to the military of the king. Most were not even equipped or trained on warfare tactics.
Furthermore, they were helped by thousands of natives that would benefit if they helped the entrepreneurs. How can it be called a conquest when they were being aided, and helped by the ones being “conquered”?
For example, they acquired native translators such as Malintizin. They were also provided with food and shelter by the natives, “they wished only to be given honey, turkey hens, maize, and various fruits, day after day” (153). Conquers do not ask for resources before the conquest, its done after the conquest.
Most of the places that they managed to control was all do to, “disease, native disunity, and Spanish steel” (143). Thus, one could say that circumstances, and nature were the pillars that kept the companies of the entrepreneurs afloat. Circumstances, because of the disunity of the natives, and nature because of the diseases that spread and killed natives by the thousands. Therefore, one could used two words to describe the incidents of the Americas, encounter, and invasion.
How can it be called a conquest when they were being aided, and helped by the ones being “conquered”?
ReplyDeleteConquers do not ask for resources before the conquest, its done after the conquest.
All a part of their cunning strategies, my colleague. But I will be serious, and try to play devil's advocate -
Invasions, if I'm not mistaken, have traditionally been understood as armed undertakings where the goals are typically as follows: get things from or change the current government, liberate or assert authority over the country (in other words, conquer it), or some combination of the above. So to call what the Spanish did an "invasion" doesn't seem that far from calling it a "conquest". Granted, Restall himself uses the term "invasion" on page 128, but not in any real revisionist sense, and in his introduction and elsewhere he speaks of deconstructing the myths of the capital-C Conquest, not the Conquest itself. Also, it's arguable that the resultant cultural impact of the whole saga amounts to a conquest, regardless of what actually happened on the ground.
Further, I'm not sure whether "encounter" adequately addresses the violence of what happened; yes, Restall points out that the conquistadors were "armed entrepreneurs" rather than soldiers, but they were encouraged to claim Mesoamerica and South America lands in the name of God and Spain (cf. the language of the Treaty of Tordesillas) - by force if necessary (Restall 87) - and to subjugate the native people (24). Restall repeatedly points out that this policy of subjugation and the dominance strategies (display violence, etc) used by conquistadors were "procedure", and that what could be fairly called "guerilla warfare" was common practice (32-33).
So while Spanish involvement in the southern Americas might not have been centrally organized enough to be considered a true conquest, the systematic nature of it suggests to me that, if we're going to stick to military terms and not use "conquest", "war" might be better than "invasion". (War of subjugation, war of colonial expansion, what have you.) The American Heritage Dictionary has "war" defined as "open, armed, often prolonged conflict" or "a condition of active antagonism or contention", and I think that the Spanish actions adequately meet these conditions.