Confrontations of Cultures | Class 11 History

This chapter introduces the state systems and civilisations of Central and South America, including the Aztecs, Mayas and Incas, and looks at their agriculture, building techniques and social structure. It also traces the voyage of Christopher Columbus, the European conquest of the Americas and the rise of the transatlantic slave trade. Use these notes alongside the wider study collection at Class 11 History notes.

Discovering the 'Indies'

Who was Christopher Columbus?

Christopher Columbus, a well known Italian explorer and traveller, began his journey to the west in 1492 with the support of the Spanish rulers.

The purpose of sponsoring the voyage was to find trading routes where spices and silver could be obtained. In return, the Pope granted the Spanish crown exclusive rights to rule over any new lands that were discovered.

After four voyages, Columbus concluded that the land he had reached was 'the Indies'.

The later explorations

Columbus was aware of India's gold and spices and had set out hoping to reach the East by sailing west. Instead he reached the Americas, which are divided into two distinct cultural spheres. He argued that the 'Indians' of the 'New World' were descended from a variety of cultural groups and were not Asians.

During his explorations, Columbus came across small subsistence economies in the Caribbean and Brazil, as well as strong monarchical systems based on well developed agriculture and mining.

The Aztecs and Mayas of Central America, and the Incas of Peru, erected massive structures.

The colonisation of South America and its indigenous cultures had disastrous consequences. Europeans later began selling African slaves to work on plantations and mines in the Americas, establishing the slave trade.

Study of the cultures

Manuscripts and monuments were ruthlessly destroyed during the European conquest. In the late nineteenth century, anthropologists began to study these cultures, and archaeologists later uncovered the ruins.

• The Inca city of Machu Picchu was rediscovered in 1911.
• Europeans who travelled to the Americas kept logbooks and diaries of their journeys, and records were also left by officials and Jesuit missionaries.
• Europeans wrote about their 'discovery' of the Americas. These histories were written from the point of view of European settlement rather than that of the local people.

The Atlantic crossing

Columbus believed in prophecies and felt he was destined to find a western route to the East, the 'Indies'. The Imago Mundi by Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly, written in 1410, was a source of inspiration for him.

The Portuguese Crown turned down his plans. On 3 August 1492, with the approval of the Spanish authorities, a small expedition set sail from Palos. Columbus and his crew were not adequately prepared for the long Atlantic crossing or for their destination.

The fleet was small, with two caravels named the Pinta and the Nina and a nao named the Santa Maria.

The Santa Maria, with a crew of about 40 sailors, was commanded by Columbus. Despite favourable trade winds, the journey out was long. After 33 days at sea the fleet had still not sighted land, the crew grew agitated, and some demanded that they turn back.

On 12 October 1492 they sighted land at Guanahani, a Bahamas island Columbus mistook for India. The Arawaks greeted them warmly and shared their food and supplies, which impressed Columbus.

They are so inventive and generous with all they have that no one who has not seen it would believe it.

Without consulting the local people, Columbus raised a Spanish flag at Guanahani, now called San Salvador, and declared himself viceroy. He enlisted their help to reach Cubanascan and Kiskeya, which he mistook for Japan. Kiskeya was renamed Hispaniola and is today divided between two countries, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Gold was rumoured to lie in the mountain streams of Hispaniola's interior, though it was not easy to find. The return trip was difficult, with infested ships and a tired, homesick crew.

Over three more voyages, Columbus explored the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles and the South American mainland and coast. It was not the 'Indies' but a new continent that the Spaniards had reached.

Columbus showed that sailing with the trade winds for about five weeks could take you to the other side of the world. A Florentine geographer, Amerigo Vespucci, recognised the size of these lands and called them the 'New World'. In 1507 a German publisher coined the name 'America'.

Communities in South and North America

Communities have lived in North and South America and nearby islands for thousands of years, and many migrations from Asia and the South Sea Islands took place over time. South America was, and still is, densely forested and mountainous, and the Amazon, the world's largest river, flows through miles of dense forest.

In Mexico, in Central America, there were densely settled areas along the coast and on the plains, while elsewhere villages were scattered across forested areas.

Communities of the Caribbean and Brazil

The Arawaks

The Arawakian Lucayos lived on hundreds of small islands in the Caribbean Sea, now known as the Bahamas and the Greater Antilles. People of a gentle temperament, they preferred to negotiate rather than fight.

The Caribs, a fierce tribe of skilled boatbuilders, sailed the open sea in dugout canoes and drove the Arawaks out of the Lesser Antilles.

• The Arawaks lived by hunting, fishing and agriculture, growing corn, sweet potatoes, tubers and cassava.
• They produced food collectively and fed everyone in the community.
• Polygamy was also practised.

They believed that objects, places and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. In other words, they were animists.

What is shamanism?

Shamanism is a religious practice in which the practitioner is said to communicate with the spirit world while in an altered state of consciousness. The aim is to guide spiritual energies into the physical world for healing or other purposes.

Shamans played an important role as healers and as mediators between this world and the supernatural world.

The search for gold

The Arawaks used gold ornaments but did not place the same value on the metal as Europeans did. They happily exchanged gold for the Europeans' glass beads, which seemed to them far more beautiful. Their weaving was highly developed, and one of their specialities was the hammock.

The Arawaks were generous and were happy to help the Spanish in their search for gold. Later, Spanish policy became so harsh that they were forced to resist, with disastrous consequences. Within about twenty five years of contact with the Spanish, the Arawaks and their way of life had largely vanished.

The Tupinamba people lived in forest villages along the east coast of South America. Without access to iron, they could not clear the dense forests for cultivation, but they had a plentiful supply of fruit, vegetables and fish, and so did not have to depend on agriculture. The Europeans who met them envied their freedom, with no king, army or church to regulate their lives.

The state systems of Central and South America

There were some highly organised states in Central America. A generous surplus of corn provided the basis for the urban civilisations of the Aztecs, Mayas and Incas.

Who were the Aztecs?

The Aztecs had moved from the north into the central valley of Mexico, named after their god Mexitli. They expanded their empire by defeating other tribes and forcing them to pay tribute.

Aztec society was strongly hierarchical. Those born into noble families, priests and others granted the title made up the nobility, a small minority that held positions of power in government, the army and the priesthood. The nobles chose a supreme leader from among themselves, who ruled until his death and was regarded on earth as the representative of the sun.

Warriors, priests and nobles were the most revered, but traders also held many privileges and often served as ambassadors and spies for the government. Talented artisans, doctors and wise teachers were also held in high regard.

The land was limited

Because land was limited, the Aztecs built chinampas, artificial islands, in Lake Mexico by weaving massive reed mats and covering them with mud and plants. Canals connected these fertile islands, on which the capital, Tenochtitlan, was built in 1325. Its palaces and pyramids jutted out over the water.

As the Aztecs were often at war, their most impressive temples were dedicated to the war gods and to the sun. The empire rested on a rural base, growing corn, beans, pumpkins, manioc root and potatoes. Clans, not individuals, owned the land and organised public works. As in Europe, peasants were bound to the nobility's lands, which they cultivated in exchange for a share of the crop.

Slave sales were common among the poor, but they were usually short term, and slaves could reclaim their freedom.

All Aztec children had to attend school. The nobles' children went to the calmecac to train as military and religious leaders. Other children went to their local tepochcalli, where they learned history, myths, religion and ceremonial songs, and the boys received military, agricultural and trade training while the girls learned domestic skills.

By the early sixteenth century the Aztec empire was under strain, largely because newly conquered peoples were seeking ways to break free from central control.

Who were the Mayans?

The Mayan culture of Mexico developed remarkably between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, but by the sixteenth century the Mayas had less political power than the Aztecs. Corn cultivation was central to their culture, and many religious ceremonies were built around the planting, growing and harvesting of corn.

Efficient agriculture produced a surplus that allowed the ruling classes, priests and chiefs to invest in architecture and in the development of astronomy and mathematics.

The Mayas devised a pictographic form of writing that has only been partly deciphered.

The Incas of Peru

The Quechuas, or Incas, of Peru built the largest civilisation in South America. Manco Capac, the first Inca, established his capital at Cusco in the twelfth century. Under the ninth Inca, the empire grew to about 3,000 miles long, stretching from Ecuador to Chile.

The empire was highly centralised, with the king as the ultimate authority. Newly conquered tribes were effectively assimilated, and every subject was required to speak Quechua, the court language. A council of elders ruled each tribe locally, but the tribe as a whole owed allegiance to the ruler, and local rulers were rewarded for their military cooperation.

Like the Aztec empire, the Inca empire resembled a confederacy with the Incas in command, and millions of people lived within it.

Building techniques

• The Incas were magnificent builders. They built roads through the mountains from Ecuador to Chile, and their forts were made of stone slabs cut so perfectly that they needed no mortar.
• They used labour intensive methods to carve and move stones from nearby rock falls.
• Masons shaped the blocks using an effective but simple method called flaking. Many stones weighed more than 100 metric tons, yet the Incas had no wheeled vehicles to move them.
• Labour was organised and very tightly managed.

Agriculture

• Agriculture was the basis of Inca civilisation. To cope with poor soil, they terraced the hillsides and developed systems of drainage and irrigation.
• In 1500, cultivation in the Andean highlands was much greater than it is today.
• The Incas grew corn and potatoes and reared llamas for food and labour.
• Their weaving and pottery were of high quality.

Organisational structure

The Incas did not invent writing. However, the quipu, cords with knots denoting particular mathematical units, worked as an accounting system, and some scholars believe the Incas wove a code into these threads.

Because the empire had a pyramid like structure, capturing the Inca chief could quickly cause the chain of command to fall apart. This is exactly what happened when the Spaniards invaded.

The Aztec and Inca cultures shared some features but differed sharply from European culture. Society was hierarchical, yet there was none of the private ownership of resources by a few individuals that existed in Europe.

Priests and shamans were given exalted status, and large temples were built in which gold was used ritually, but gold and silver were not highly valued, again in sharp contrast to European culture.

Voyages and Ptolemy's geographical view

People of the Caribbean began to sail across the Atlantic and came to know of the existence of the Europeans. Navigators used the magnetic compass to identify the cardinal points accurately. Known since 1380, it was widely used only from the fifteenth century, when people ventured on voyages into unknown areas.

Ships played a major role in these voyages. They were well equipped and could carry a large quantity of cargo as well as weapons to defend against enemy ships. The spread of travel literature and of books on cosmography and geography created widespread interest through the fifteenth century.

What was Ptolemy's geographical viewpoint?

Ptolemy, a great mathematician of Egypt, gave the theory of latitudes and longitudes and arranged the world in these terms in his texts, which became available in print in 1477. Through them, Europeans learned that there were three known continents, namely Europe, Asia and Africa.

• Ptolemy suggested that the world was spherical, but he underestimated the width of the oceans, so Europeans had no idea of the distance they would need to travel across the Atlantic before reaching land.

The Europeans' voyages

Many Europeans assumed the journey to land would be short, while others were eager to explore the unknown seas. The phrase 'Voyages of Discovery' was coined to honour the Portuguese and Spanish explorers who pioneered these fifteenth century voyages.

Historians later pointed out that these were not the first voyages from the 'Old World' to unknown lands. Sailors from the Pacific Islands, the Polynesians and Micronesians, had made major ocean crossings, and Arabs, Chinese and Indians had navigated vast stretches of ocean.

The Vikings of Norway, known for their fierce nature, had reached North America in the eleventh century for economic, religious and political reasons.

How did the European economy go into decline?

From the mid fourteenth to the mid fifteenth centuries, the European economy went into decline. Many parts of Europe were depopulated by plagues and wars, trade slowed, and the gold and silver used to make European coins became scarce.

• This was in stark contrast to the earlier period, from the eleventh to the mid fourteenth centuries, when growing trade had supported the Italian city states and led to the accumulation of capital.
• Long distance trade declined further after the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453. The Italians could still do business with the Turks but now had to pay higher taxes on trade.

The Crusades were religious wars that increased trade with Asia and created a taste for Asian products, especially spices. To gain the greatest benefit, European countries looked to set up colonies in climate friendly regions, and until then Europeans had not traded directly with West Africa.

Portugal, a small country that had gained independence from Spain in 1139, led the way. In 1415 Prince Henry of Portugal attacked Ceuta and organised the exploration of the West African coast.

The Portuguese then organised more expeditions and set up a trading post at Cape Bojador in Africa, where Africans were enslaved and gold dust was mined. In Spain, the memory of the Crusades and the Reconquista fuelled private ambitions, leading to agreements called capitulaciones, in which the ruler claimed sovereignty over newly conquered territories and rewarded expedition leaders with titles and the right to govern them.

Spain's empire in America

In Spain's empire in America, the initial discovery was usually followed by a small settlement of a few Spaniards who supervised the labour of the local people.

• Local chieftains were enlisted to explore new lands and, it was hoped, more sources of gold.
• The greed for gold led to violent incidents that provoked local resistance.

The Spanish friar Bartolome de las Casas, the fiercest critic of the Spanish conquerors, observed that the Spanish often tested their swords on the bodies of the Arawaks. Military repression and forced labour added to the ravages of disease.

• Diseases of the Old World, especially smallpox, wreaked havoc on the Arawaks, whose lack of immunity led to large scale deaths.
• The local people imagined these diseases were caused by 'invisible bullets' with which the Spaniards attacked them.
• The extinction of the Arawaks and of all traces of their way of life is a silent reminder of their tragic encounter with the Spaniards.

Columbus's expedition and the conquest

Columbus's expeditions were followed by a sustained exploration of Central and South America. Within half a century the Spanish had explored and laid claim to a vast area of the western hemisphere, from roughly 40 degrees north to 40 degrees south, without anyone challenging them.

The conquest of two great empires was largely the work of two individuals, Hernan Cortes (1488 to 1547) and Francisco Pizarro (1478 to 1541). Their expeditions were financed by the landed gentry, municipal council officials and noblemen, and those who joined supplied their own equipment in exchange for a share of the expected booty.

Cortes and the Aztecs

Cortes and his conquistadors conquered Mexico swiftly and ruthlessly. In 1519 Cortes sailed from Cuba to Mexico, where he met the Totonacs, a group seeking independence from the Aztecs. The Aztec ruler Montezuma sent an official to meet him, for he dreaded the Spanish, their gunpowder and their horses, and believed Cortes might be a returning god seeking vengeance.

The Spaniards pressed against the Tlaxcalans, who resisted and were then brutally massacred. On 8 November 1519 they marched into Tenochtitlan, which awed the invaders. It was five times the size of Madrid and twice the size of Seville, then Spain's largest city.

Montezuma greeted Cortes warmly and led the Spaniards into the heart of the city, where he showered them with gifts. His people, having heard of the massacre of the Tlaxcalans, were apprehensive. One Aztec account described the mood in the city.

It was as though Tenochtitlan had given shelter to a monster.

The Aztecs' fears came true. Cortes arbitrarily imprisoned the emperor and tried to rule in his name, and placed Christian images in the Aztec temple to formalise Montezuma's submission to Spain. Montezuma proposed a compromise by combining Aztec and Christian images in the temple.

The arrogance of the Spanish occupation and its constant demands for gold sparked a general uprising, made worse when Alvarado ordered a massacre during a spring festival. When Cortes returned on 25 June 1520 he faced a crisis, with the causeways cut and severe shortages of food and water, and he was forced to flee. Montezuma died mysteriously around this time.

During the Night of Tears, hundreds of conquistadors and their Tlaxcalan allies were killed. Cortes retreated to Tlaxcala to plan a fresh attack, this time against Cuauhtemoc. Meanwhile the Aztecs were dying of smallpox brought by the Europeans. The conquest of Mexico took two years, after which Charles V honoured Cortes as Captain General of New Spain, and from Mexico the Spaniards went on to rule Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras.

Pizarro and the Incas

Pizarro was uneducated and poor. He joined the army and came to the Caribbean islands in 1502. He had heard stories of the Inca kingdom, where the people were said to be rich in silver and gold, the land of El Dorado, and he made repeated efforts to reach it from the Pacific.

After one of his voyages he met the king of Spain and showed him beautifully crafted Inca gold containers. The king, eager to gain the wealth of the Inca lands, promised Pizarro the governorship in exchange for conquering them.

The situation in the Inca empire was different from Mexico. After a civil war, Atahualpa became ruler of the Inca empire in 1532. Pizarro set a trap, captured the king, and in one of the most extravagant ransom schemes in history the king offered a roomful of gold in exchange for his freedom. Pizarro went back on the agreement, executed the king, and his supporters launched a series of looting sprees.

After the country was occupied there was an uprising that lasted two years, in which thousands died from the violence of the conquerors and from epidemics. The Spanish soon found the silver mines of Potosi, in present day Bolivia, and forced the Inca people to work in them.

Cabral and Brazil

The Portuguese occupation of Brazil was accidental. In 1500 Pedro Alvares Cabral led a large fleet of ships towards India. To avoid stormy seas he made a wide loop around West Africa and ended up on the coast of modern day Brazil, which the Pope had already assigned to Portugal on the map.

The Portuguese were more interested in trade with western India than with gold poor Brazil, but they did exploit one natural resource, timber. The brazilwood tree, named by the Europeans, produced a beautiful red dye, and the local people gladly cut down trees and carried the logs to the ships in exchange for iron knives and saws.

Portuguese and French traders fought over the timber trade, and the Portuguese won by settling and colonising the coast. In 1534 the king of Portugal divided Brazil's coast into 14 hereditary captaincies and granted Portuguese residents the right to own land and to enslave the local people.

In the 1540s the Portuguese set up large sugarcane plantations and sugar mills to export sugar to Europe. When the local people refused the tedious mill work, the owners kidnapped them and sold them as slaves. The local people kept fleeing into the forests to escape the slavers, until there were no native villages left on the coast, only large European towns, and the plantation owners then began to import slaves from West Africa.

In 1549 a formal government was set up with its capital at Bahia, also called Salvador, and from this point the Jesuits came to Brazil. They persuaded the local people to live in villages and taught them Christianity, and above all the Jesuits fought against the enslavement of the local people.

Conquest, colonies and the slave trade

European voyages from the fifteenth century onwards revealed continuous ocean passages that Europeans had largely been unaware of. Before this, no seagoing vessel had crossed the waters of the Americas and the Caribbean or sailed from them to the Pacific or Indian Oceans. All of this happened between the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

The influx of gold and silver boosted global commerce and industry. Between 1560 and 1600, about 100 ships carried silver from South America to Spain each year. Yet neither Spain nor Portugal benefited in the long run, because they did not invest their huge profits in expanding trade or building a merchant navy.

Instead, the Atlantic coast countries, especially England, France, Belgium and Holland, gained the most from the discoveries. Their traders founded colonies and introduced Europe to new world products such as tobacco, potatoes, cane sugar, cacao and rubber. New crops such as potatoes and chillies reached Europe, and Europeans then carried them to India.

The human cost was enormous. Pre conquest Mexico had a population of between 30 and 37 million, the Andean region had a similar population, and Central America had between 10 and 13 million people. Before the Europeans arrived, the indigenous population is estimated at around 70 million. A century and a half later it had fallen to about 3.5 million. The main causes were war and disease.

The sudden destruction of the Aztec and Inca civilisations showed how deep the cultural differences were. Both the Aztecs and the Incas had used warfare to terrorise other peoples, yet the local people had no concept of the Spanish hunger for gold and silver. The enslavement of the population was a reminder of the brutality of the conquest.

South America's experience was distinctive because it coincided with the rise of the capitalist system of production. The conditions were terrible, but the Spanish saw them as necessary for economic gain. Philip II of Spain publicly banned forced labour in 1601 but kept it going by secret decree, and a law of 1609 granted complete freedom to all indigenous people, Christian and non Christian alike. Enraged, the European settlers forced the king to repeal the law and reintroduce slavery.

After 1700, as new activities such as cattle farming on cleared land and gold mining grew, the demand for cheap labour increased. Since the local people would not submit to enslavement, Africa became the alternative. Between 1550 and 1880, Brazil imported more than 3,600,000 African slaves, nearly half of all African slaves brought to the Americas.

Olaudah Equiano, himself a former slave, wrote in his autobiography of 1789 about the suffering of enslaved Africans. Eric Williams was one of the first modern historians to reassess this suffering, in his 1940 book Capitalism and Slavery.

Epilogue

In the early 1800s, European settlers in the South American colonies rebelled against Spain and Portugal, just as the thirteen North American colonies had rebelled against Britain in 1776 to form the United States.

South America came to be called Latin America, because Spanish and Portuguese, two of the continent's main languages, are Latin languages. Its population is a mix of European settlers, called Creole, along with African and native peoples, most of them Catholic, and its culture blends native and European traditions.

Spanish expansion had been built on military showmanship with gunpowder and horses, and the local people were made either to pay tribute or to work in the gold and silver mines.

Why it still matters

This chapter is not just about the past. The way the world remembers Columbus and the conquest of the Americas is being rethought right now.

In the United States, the second Monday of October was long celebrated as Columbus Day. Many people argue that for indigenous communities Columbus's arrival marked the start of invasion, disease and slavery, not a discovery. In 2021 Joe Biden became the first US president to issue a proclamation marking Indigenous Peoples' Day, and he did so again in the years that followed. More than a dozen US states, along with many cities, now observe Indigenous Peoples' Day in place of, or alongside, Columbus Day. It is the same argument this chapter raises about whose story gets told.

The slave trade described here is also part of a live debate. At the Commonwealth summit in Samoa in October 2024, leaders from the Caribbean and Africa pushed reparations for the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans onto the agenda. The final statement recorded that the time had come for a meaningful and respectful conversation about reparatory justice, and Britain's King Charles said the Commonwealth should acknowledge its painful history. Caribbean countries, working through a regional reparations commission, continue to press the case. The events in this chapter are still being argued over in the highest rooms of world politics.

To connect topics like this to today's world affairs, explore the Learnacy Hub, and browse more standardised notes at Resources.

Sources

1. Smithsonian Magazine, National Museum of the American Indian, The Long Path Toward Establishing Indigenous Peoples' Day (2024): smithsonianmag.com
2. Indigenous Peoples' Day (United States), Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org
3. Reuters via U.S. News and World Report, Britain Says Slavery Reparations Not on Its Agenda at Commonwealth Summit (21 October 2024): usnews.com
4. CARICOM Reparations Commission: caricom.org
5. TED-Ed, The rise and fall of the Inca Empire by Gordon McEwan: ed.ted.com