The Voyage to the New World
- Date Submitted: 01/28/2010 06:29 AM
- Flesch-Kincaid Score: 61.6
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First of all, King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of
Castille got married in 1464. The main reason that they got married was
to unite their kingdoms into Spain. The king and queen were Roman
Catholic, so they gave power to certain people to convert non-Catholics to
Catholicism. In 1482, the Roman Catholic monarchs renew the reconquista,
the military crusade ordered to conquer the remaining Muslim state in
Iberia, Granada. In 1492, the Roman Catholic monarchs ordered all
non-converted Jews expelled from Spain.
In April, 1492, Spain received reports that the Portuguese
succeeded in reaching the Indian Ocean, therefore Spanish monarchs
authorized Christopher Columbus to sail to Asia and establish trade and
start to convert natives to Christianity. The reasons that the monarchs
let Columbus sail were mainly to search for spices and profits, spread
Christianity, and to use some of their new technology like the caravel.
Columbus would receive one-tenth of all the profits, and governance of the
new lands would be shared by the monarchs and by Columbus.
There were mainly three different types of natives who lived in
the Caribbean. There were the Ciboneys (in Cuba), Caribs (in the lesser
Antilles), and Taino-Arawaks (in the Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, Hispanola,
and Puerto Rico). The population of the Caribbean Islands was probably
not too much more than 1,500,000 of which about 1,000,000 lived mainly in
Hispanola. Hispanola was the center of Taino culture. Between 1509 and
1520, the demand for native labor increased and the native population
steeply decreased. Here is a table of how rapidly the population of the
Tainos decreased:
1492- 1,000,000 (about) 1514- 28,000
1508- 92,000 1518- 16,000
1509-...
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