Title: BBC - History - The Story of the Conquistadors
Headings: The Story of the Conquistadors
The Story of the Conquistadors
Introduction
Colombian exchange
The Aztecs
Conquistador regret
New identities
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Content: Bartolome de las Casas
It is amazing to think that when Bartolome de las Casas wrote those words in 1542, barely 20 years had passed since the discovery and conquest of the Aztec world in Mexico. It was only three years since the defeat of the Great Revolt of the Incas in the High Andes of Peru. At that moment, in fact, Manco Inca still controlled an independent Inca state in the jungles of Vilcabamba. During the same years in which Cortes overthrew the Aztecs, Magellan circumnavigated the globe. ...has history, and our ways of seeing the world, ever moved so fast as it did in the 16th century? For the first time, people discovered the true scale and shape of the earth. We are blasé about the pace of change in our own day, but has history, and our ways of seeing the world, ever moved so fast as it did in the 16th century? The conquest of much of the New World by Spanish conquistadors during those few years was surely one of history's turning points. Indeed, as Karl Marx and Adam Smith claimed, perhaps it was the greatest event in history. There were many who thought so at the time.