Sunday, April 29, 2012
motivating factors
We have read many different books in this class, and one thing they all seem to incorporate is the importance of monetary gain. Steve Stern agrees with the fact that monetary gain is the reason for expansion, as well as greed. If these so called conquerers weren't so greedy then there may not have been such strong motivating factors. An example of the limitless greed they portrayed in on page 27 in which Stern writes, "the looting of prestigious shrines and the European thirst for precious metals created the folk legend that Spaniards ate gold and silver instead of food"(Stern 27). It is known how greedy the Spaniards were at the time of conquest that there is even a black legend exaggerating that fact and feeding into what people thought of the conquerers of the time. They also exploited the indigenous people who were entrusted to them by the crown in order to gain monetarily and through the labor that they did. There are many example of the exploitation of indigenous including the mita system and wage labor, all of which kept the indigenous poor and it helped the Spaniards become more rich and powerful. As in any case there were other motivating factors, but wealth and greed seemed to be the most powerful one.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Economic motivation was, according to Stern, the prime factor for Spanish Colonials but it seems that his focus was more the integration of Indigenous peoples and practices into new economic relationships. Throughout the book Indigenous exhibited a great deal of flexibility in profiting from Spanish enterprises. Many, driven by both dependence and opportunism, bought into the new labor relationships in Huamanga. Spanish greed alone was not the main motivating factor but the competition of the emerging system of global trade that drove colonials to exert such pressure on their workers which prompted many indigenous to adopt the same practices.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your post because there was a huge greed involved in part of the Spaniards, but if you look at it closer, governance was the most important towards the end. If you look at Velázquez and Corés rivalry in Restall's book, they were both in search for the conquering license in order to get governance. Another scenario that depicts the greediness is how Pizarro had Almagro executed in 1537 and four years later Almagro's son had Pizarro assassinated.(Restall, 21) I agree it was gold that motivated the conquest of the Americas, but it later evolved into a fight for governance.
ReplyDelete