Coming finally to todays lecture yesterday, our topic was discovery. Today is going to the plantation. There is Something Else that sort of bridges the two that we should not pass over without comment. The headline fort would be quite simply conquest the beginning phases of plantation involved conquest of a particularly intensive sort. Bluntly put, the old world progressively and massively conquered the new. The most famous part of this process was the spanish conquest of wide regions of mexico and central and south america, and the destruction along the way of aztecs and mayas and incas and many other native groupings. Historians ever since have wondered how such a small group of invaders could win out so easily and so completely win the numerical odds went so heavily against them. Cortez, the spanish leader who conquered most of mexico in the 15 20s, had only a few hundred soldiers, while his chief opponent, the aztec emperor montezuma, had many many thousands. The question this raises is obviously important. The entire history of the americas would probably have been different had the aztecs succeeded in throwing cortez and his men back into the sea. It is also a difficult question to answer. Lets try to take the whole situation apart sort of piece by piece. One piece is pretty clear and straightforward the spaniards possessed major advantages in military technology. Their weapons, their iron swords and armor, and above all their firearms, guns and canon cannon, were much more effective than aztec arrows and spears and war clubs. Furthermore, the spaniards had greater mobility, since they were on horseback, while the aztecs were on foot. A second piece also seems clear in effect, the spaniards waged on unplanned but utterly devastating kind of bacteriological warfare. I alluded yesterday to native american vulnerability to european diseases, and i will be saying somewhat more about that shortly. The main point right now is that diseases like smallpox just decimated the aztec armies, reducing that only their numbers, but also their basic morale. A third piece is pretty clear the native peoples of mexico were riddled with internal dissension and conflict. The aztecs were dominant. They did rule over a large empire, but many of the smaller subject tribes resented aztec domination, and came to see the spaniards not so much as conquerors, but rather as liberators. Cortez was able to full been in as allies to his own forces, and this went part of the way to evening up the numbers on each side. Even so, the question about the spanish conquest remains. Even when you take into account the factors of technological advantage and biological advantage, bacteriological advantage, and a willingness of at least some native groups to help cortez. You havent said enough to explain the complete success of this tiny, ragtag army of invaders operating in very unfamiliar territory in fact, right on the enemys home turf with no possibility of outside support, or even of resupply, and up against what was arguably the mightiest empire ever seen up to that point in the western hemisphere. Or at least, most historians think that isnt enough. So they have gone on to other kinds of explanation, which usually involves some type of cultural, or even psychological, factors. 100 years ago, plus or minus, when the history of all of this first began to be written, the historians involved simply assumed that european cultures were greatly superior to native american cultures, mentally superior, morally superior, smarter, stronger, more resource will, and during resourceful and daring. Historians assumed this cultural superiority would be reflected on the battlefield in addition to nowadays, such assumptions seem much too arrogant, and perhaps even racist, and they seem intellectually superficial as well. So, more recent scholars of the conquest have tried to make a somewhat different case. They still point to cultural factors, but they talk mostly about misunderstandings and failures in communication, and messages that somehow missed their mark. Here are a couple examples. As cortez and his army approached the aztec capital, montezuma said out ambassadors to greet him with a lot of fabulous gifts gold and silver and other wonderful stuff. Cortez interpreted this by his own account as a sign of weakness. In effect, as a kind of bride designed to persuade him to turn around and leave the a kind of bribe designed to persuade him to turn around and leave the country. In a way, it had the opposite results it whetted his appetite for more. Add another point, montezuma tried to terrify the spaniards into leaving by torturing and executing, and i think cannibalizing, some spanish prisoners. This only stiffened their resolve. They now felt honorbound to revenge the death of their fallen comrades. I imagine they also felt that if they did not succeed in their plans of conquest, they too would suffer the same terrible fate. In a sense, these were messages sent by the indians to the spaniards which backfired and completely reversed their intended purpose. Other aztec messages were also be sensually counterproductive. For example, traditionally, aztec armies would give a loud cry a loud warcry when going into battle to try to frighten the enemy. Cortez tells us that actually, this practice served to reveal aztec positions, and enabled the spanish forces to sort of orient themselves more effectively. In fact, this newer line of cultural explanation goes on even further. It goes on, i think, too much broader and deeper to much broader and deeper considerations. If advocates argue that cortez was much more alert and curious and flexible than his aztec enemies, that he was always a for and responsive to new information. Supposedly he was able to exploit the conflicts among different groups of indians because he was continually asking about them ahead of time. Whereas by contrast, montezuma supposedly was quite unserious about the spaniards, and therefore uncurious about the spaniards, and therefore was on flexible about meeting the challenges they posed. Finally, there was the issue of confronting otherness, something ive already raised in the other lecture. Now i want to turn that around and pose that same question about indian attitudes towards european others. There is some evidence, and we should be careful here, some evidence that the mexican indians viewed europeans as being virtually superhuman. It seemed there was among them a variety of ancient myths and legends about white skinned gods who would one day come as conquerors, and they may have seen the spaniards in Something Like that way. Perhaps, too, they could easily fit certain empirical facts into this picture the deadly power of spanish guns, the skills involved in spanish horsemanship , the size and versatility of spanish ships, and maybe most important , the relative advantage of spaniards to resist those epidemic diseases which proved so devastating to indians. All of those are possibly taken as godlike element. If this was truly the case, if the aztecs did conclude that the spaniards were godlike, it could certainly have undermined their fighting spirit and been at least part of the reason for their ultimate defeat. Please notice my use of the word if in there, because im not completely convinced myself. This whole newer line of cultural explanation for conquest seems, when you get to the bottom of it, to be a kind of updated and perhaps more sophisticated version of the old line. Another way, in short, of declaring european cultural superiority. The aztecs didnt get it. They made all the wrong moves. So, quite against the odds, they were beaten. The gist of the new line. Most of the evidence comes from the spaniards. They left records that can be read today. All we see is their understanding of what is going on. Every look at the same records very carefully, and if we use a little imagination, we can also see that they did not always get it either. Let me go back for one more look to those gifts which montezuma sent to cortez at the outset, and which i said cortez interpreted as a sign of weakness and fear. It is much more likely that they were come up from montezumas own standpoint, a sign of strength. Traditionally, in aztec culture, the leader would express his power through magnificent acts of giftgiving, as if to say i am so strong, i have so much here that i can evenly give away some of what i have got to others. There could be a certain confidence, even a kind of put down implied in such generous acts of giftgiving. None of this is entirely clear or certain. The only thing we can be certain about is that the whole situation was fraught with misunderstanding and miscommunication. In fact, there simply had to be a lot of misunderstanding when each side was completely unfamiliar with the cultural practices of the other. Both sides made mistakes, and perhaps it was just dumb luck that the spanish mistakes proved in the end to be less costly than those of the indians. In fact, getting a good fix on this whole topic, it seems to me especially tricky and difficult. How complete was the conquest how complete was the conquest anyway . What was its actual extent, and how lasting was its impact . How did the conquered people of the various indian groups all across the americas respond to it . Questions like these make a fascinating and complex area of study, and they made ever be finally double finally settled. Historians in recent years have become generally quite reluctant to see conquered groups, the losers, the oppressed, as mere victims who are defeated and helpless to change their fate. Instead, many historians nowadays look to ways in which people resisted and limited the terms of their defeat, and even created opportunities to express their own agency. Agency is another one of those very trendy terms nowadays in academia, meaning in one way or another the ability of any group, even the most downtrodden route, to act on its own behalf downtrodden group, to act on its own behalf. There is no doubt that indian groups could and did resist colonial domination, beginning go most from the moment of battlefield defeat. Sometimes their resistance itself took a military form. There were uprisings and rebellions among the mayas and aztecs all to the 16th century. In fact, there were large native rebellions in Central America as late as the 19 century. Without stretching things too much, you could even look at the guerrilla movements in some parts of latin america in quite recent times el salvador, nicaragua, southern mexico, and colombia, where a treaty was signed last week ending 50 years of conflict most of these resistance movements inc. Composed mainly of ethnically being composed mainly of ethnically indian individuals. There is a five century long history of resistance to external conquest. Theres also no doubt thats native people found the 60 from the 16th the 16th century onward showed a sort of indirect resistance, a cultural resistance. They would continue to practice their old beliefs and customs. For example, their religious beliefs and customs in secret. Or they would sort of coop the practice of christians, and use them in their own way. In fact, if you visit latin America Today, you cannot help but notice a pervasive presence, not just of indian peoples, but also of Indian Cultural traditions. They are everywhere. They definitely suggest some limitations in the conquest process. Still and all, even after acknowledging these limitations, i think we finally must recognize the immense blow, the shock, the trauma, which the conquest became for native peoples, especially its a major parts of south and Central America especially in some major parts of south and Central America. Some symbols of this trauma and a great many latin american villages today, people have as part of their traditional culture rituals and ceremonies in which events from the conquest, now nearly 500 years in the past, are remembered and reenacted. Conquest dances, as they are sometimes called. In most cases, these reenactments present the original, girders original conquerors stash the spaniards as winning all over again. These rituals, as well is the repetition of the original outcome, suggests a continuing struggle to master the trauma of it all, a struggle that is still incomplete. My second example is an object which i intended to bring to our meeting today, and alas i seem to have left it at home. I will try briefly to describe, and how i came upon it. I was traveling in the Western Highlands of one of allah a number of years ago of guatemala a number of years ago. Amazing place. We were in this city, and in the large urban market there, and i notice in one of the market stalls a piece of what looked like very old clock cloth. The problem was the market person who ran the stall was mayan. She didnt even speak any spanish. I really wanted to find out what this cloth was. I think she took me nextdoor, and her neighbor said it is really old. I kept looking at it trying to figure it out. It is actually, functionally a kind of covering that goes over the neck and shoulders and hands him down on the sides. It is quite small, so i think it was some sort of childs. On one side in front, there is a row of figures woven into the cloth that are just large and striding forward, and kind of just massively impressive. They have sort of helmets on their heads, and the and and the expression on their face is terrifying. There is a group of smaller figures who are essentially reeling back, recoiling as it were, with looks of terror on their faces. I did not get the point right away. Finally, again struggling with the language, i asked what it was. The word that came back was con queta. This textile, this piece of cloth, is probably no more than 150 years old. That makes it in some ways all the more intriguing 350 years after the conquest, that whole theme is still being worked out in a specific way. I promised tomorrow, after i have gone home and come back, i will bring the cloth with a. Im embarrassed i dont have it here. Before i move along, i will stop for a couple minutes and see if anybody wants to raise any question. How many horses did the spanish have . John demos i dont know the answer, but i would think several dozen. They had to be brought across the ocean. What was the medical status of the indians . Wasnt that they live in a healthy paradise . John demos im coming to that in a little bit. They want to bring your microphone so your words are for corded fraternity are recorded for eternity. You said you had this cloth, and its a psychology of victimization in America Today . [inaudible] john demos i dont know much about. I know there are a lot of studies along those lines, and i think one does sense it. My quick association to that is a time of the only time ive been to south america. I went to bolivia. That is a country that, as it tells its own history, is just defeat after defeat after defeat. First with the conquest, but that all sorts of other people more recently. We went to the history museum, and it was just an array of concord hearers conquered heroes, as it were. I dont want to generalize too much about this, but i think there is something to it. I want to move along now and zero in on plantation, that other word that, together with discovery, has for so long served to sort of an cap too late our understanding of the opening phase of colonial history. It, too, is a rather big and broad and flexible, one might even say elastic, word, with many Different Levels of eating of meaning. For people directly involved, plantation meant everything having to do with overseas settlement and colonization. The removal, in short, of a certain number of europeans from their original homes on one side of the ocean to new homes on the other side. That meeting works well enough for us, too. We need also to consider this business of plantation in a much broader sense, because overseas settlement was really just one part of a huge process of exchange between the old world and the new, what scholars sometimes call the Columbian Exchange. Im sure some of you have encountered that term before, and maybe you even know the book on which carries that title, and about which the next few minutes are really going to be my own summary of that wonderful book called the Columbian Exchange. As i look over my years in the history business, it seems to me that that book is one of maybe a small handful of absolute landmarks where the whole direction of thinking and study about early america was changed. Id kill to have written a book like that myself. It is now many years instance the book was published, but it is still widely read and widely used, and sometimes still seems remarkably fresh. Looking at this history or graphically for a moment, it was part of the vanguard in historiographically, it was part of the vanguard between our first two as an environmental history. We know so much more about many things under the umbrella of environmental history. The Columbian Exchange is possibly the biggest headline of them all in my mind about environmental history. Here is my summary of that situation. It was a process that had many different aspects, and it went both ways, not just eastwest, but west east as well. I think we must pause here before we take up settlement in colony founding in the narrower sense to try to at least clips the full glimpse the full measure of this exchange. We see it as primarily having three Different Levels of dimensions, each one of them representing a Significant Movement of life forms in one direction or the other, or both together. The first such level, and the one that was in the short run the most decisive, was the exchange of microorganisms, disease, pathogens, everyday germs. I once now to go into it more fully. The native peoples of the americas found themselves on the receiving end of a massive infusion of microbes, of which their bodies simply had no prior experience, and the guests which and against which they had no protection. The problem was nothing less than their genes. They did not have innate biological resistances. I believe the term is an tigens. In short, they were unprotected against the whole legion of deadly diseases that in europe and in other parts of the world had been built up over many centuries and millennia. They had diseases of their own, and resistances against those diseases, but nothing to protect them against what the socalled planters from europe would rapidly introduced to the new world. This was true for longstanding killers like smallpox. It was also true for diseases like measles, which for most europeans was a relatively mild and action infection, usually experienced in childhood without and lasting consequence is. Consequences. There is now in occupation, a back elation against it area i had measles. I was no or near death from it, as many indians centuries ago were. The underlying point here is that these two big american cont