This page presents information related to the sixth class session of J. B. Owens's fall 2002 upper-division undergraduate and graduate course, History 360/560, The Spanish Empire. This course is part of the core curriculum in comparative and world history of the Department of History, Idaho State University. The sole purpose of this page is to provide an orientation to the reading assignments and class session for those students enrolled in History 360/560. See the source page for the complete Dublin Core standard metadata.

You may return to the course main page or to the reading assignments and lecture topics page.

During the latter part of this class session, you will respond to a number of multiple-choice items. This will constitute the first part of the first examination for this course. At the end of class, you will receive a page of interpretative examination essay questions, to which you must respond by 1:00 p.m. on Friday, 4 October 2002. You will need a #2 pencil for the multiple- choice part of the examination, and you will send your examination essays to me as an e-mail message.

"Plague Era" America and the Great Conquests

The devastating consequences for the indigenous peoples of the Americas of Columbus's establishment of permanent links between the globe's eastern and western hemispheres and the ways in which subjects and officials of the Castilian and Portuguese monarchs established territorial control in the Americas.

Reading: Burkholder and Johnson, chapter 2.

What political and military factors contributed to the collapse of the Aztec and Inca empires in the face of Castilian intervention?
Why did the introduction of new disease microorganisms in the Americas after 1492 have such devastating demographic and social effects on American Indian populations?
What impact did the Castilian conquests in the Americas have on the roles and conception of women in the social and cultural environments of the various American regions?
Why were Europeans able to found large land empires and settler colonies in the Americas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but asserted these forms of control almost nowhere in Africa or Asia?
If trade were indeed stigmatized by the governing elite of Castile and Portugal, as is often alleged in textbooks, why did so many wealthy Iberians, including aristocrats, quickly take advantage of the available investment opportunities?
Why did some Castilians and Portuguese who went to the Americas protest the exploitation of the conquered indigenous peoples?
Why was Fernando (Hernando, Hernán) Cortés able to recruit the services of so many Indian soldiers as he advanced on the Valley of Mexico?
Why didn't these Indian allies perceive the Castilian warriors as a general threat to their indigenous social and cultural environments?
Why were Castilians always quick to set up, through proper legal documents, a municipality when they moved into a region like Hispaniola, Mexico, or Peru?
Why were a small number of Castilians able to conquer and administer so much of the Americas?
Why did Cortés feel it necessary rapidly to impose Christianity on the Indians?
What factors limited the effectiveness of harquebuses in Castilian conflicts with Indians?
What impact did smallpox have on the Aztecs' ability to defend Tenochtitlán?
What impact did smallpox have on the Incas' ability to resist Castilian invasion?
Why didn't Atahualpa recognize the magnitude of the threat the Castilians represented to Inca domination of the central Andes region?
Why did Manco Inca lead a revolt against his Castilian allies? Why was his independent polity of Vilcabamba able to survive until 1572?
Why were Castilian leaders in Peru unable to maintain a disciplined and unified front in the face of organized Indian resistance?
Why did Charles V empower a viceroy to take administrative control of Peru?
Why did the Castilian elite in Peru feel that revolt rather than cooperation with the royal government was a means to maintain their authority?
Why did the judges of the royal audiencia in Lima oppose the viceroy's government, even though the viceroy represented the same monarchy who had appointed them?
Why wasn't Gonzalo Pizarro able to exploit his position to increase his wealth and authority as Cortés had in Mexico?
Why were Castilian and Portuguese warriors more successful in gaining Indian allies than were their Indian opponents?
Why was Mayan resistance to Castilian conquest so much more successful than that of groups like the Aztecs and Incas? Where else in the Americas was there such determined, long-term resistance to Castilian imperialism?
Why did Brazilian coastal peoples resist Portuguese labor demands?
Why did cattle raising become important in areas like northern Mexico, inland Venezuela and Brazil, and the Plata River region?
What were the biological consequences on the connections between the Americas and Afroeurasia?

Mail questions now. Please include your name and e-mail address in the body of your message.

Revised: 31 August 2002

URL: http://www.isu.edu/~owenjack/spemp/readver5.06.html