We explain what conquest is, its various meanings and how it is present in history. Also, the conquest of America and Mexico.
What is the conquest?
In general, when we speak of conquering, according to one of the meanings of the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy, we refer to “achieving something, generally with effort, ability or overcoming difficulties ”. That is to say, that the conquest is the act in which the own Will to adversity, in which a task is achieved by defeating opponents, overcoming difficulties.
It is a common term, widely applied to contexts different, which comes from Latin I will conquer, verb in turn derived from participle of the verb I will conquer ("watch"). The latter is made up of the voices with ("Together", "next to") and quaerere ("Search" or "require").
So that to conquer is related from its origins with verbs such as "want" and "acquire", with which it shares the idea of making our property something that was alien.
In any case, the idea of conquest always places its protagonist in a victorious position: that of the conqueror, the individual who imposed his will on others or on his own. reality surrounding. Thus, in the romantic sphere, for example, we speak of conquest as synonymous of infatuation, that is to say, of the seduction and the conviction of the loved one.
On the other hand, in sports, there is talk of "conquering victory" or "conquering gold" when a team defeats the other and thus receives a trophy or a medal of recognition. However, the most common use of this term has to do with the history, and especially with political and military history, and alludes to the invasion of foreign lands and the submission of other peoples to the will and service of the conquerors.
This last sense is, unfortunately, the most common of all.
The conquest in history
Throughout the history of the humanity, numerous political and military forces have expanded through the violence the borders of territory under your control. Land tenure disputes between cultures and towns date from the most remote antiquity, and could be seen as a human expression of the struggle for control of a territory that is usually carried out by many species of animals.
Who controls a territory decides what to do with its means and can impose its own order and its own vision of the world, since the conquered, generally, are imposed conditions of slavery, servitude and linguistic and religious assimilation. Hence, many campaigns of military conquest in the Antiquity and the Middle Ages They had not only economic, but also ethnic and religious foundations.
The list of famous conquerors in history is very, very long, but among the most famous are:
- The Persian Cyrus II "the Great" (575-530 BC)
- The Greek Alexander the Great (356-323 BC)
- The Roman Julius Caesar (100-44 BC)
- Attila the Hun (c. 395-453)
- The Mongol Genghis Khan (c. 1162-1227)
- The Turk Mehmed II (1432-1481)
- The Spanish Francisco Pizarro (1478-1541) and Hernán Cortés (1485-1547)
- The French Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
The conquest of America
It is known as the conquest of America to the process of military invasion and political submission of the pre-Columbian peoples of the America of the 15th century, mainly by the military forces of the Spanish Empire and the Portuguese Empire (although also the United Kingdom and other European kingdoms of the time), which began after Columbus's trips to the so-called New World.
The conquest was a war long and cruel, in which the local peoples fiercely fought an army much better prepared and technologically equipped, as well as being the carrier of new and deadly diseases (such as smallpox) for which the native peoples lacked defenses.
The result was the near extermination of local cultures, whose population was significantly reduced, and the beginning of a stage of colonization and cultural assimilation that ended up laying the foundations for what we know today as Latin America (and the United States and Canada, in the North American).
Since most aboriginal peoples were unaware of the writing, the conquest has been narrated mainly from the point of view of the invaders, and much of the rich pre-Columbian cultural legacy has been lost forever, in the face of the intense evangelistic campaigns that the conquest brought with it almost immediately.
The conquest of Mexico
Within the conquest of America, the chapter of the Mexican conquest was one of the main ones, in which the Spanish Empire faced the Empire Aztec or Mexica, counting the former with the help of other native peoples enemies of the Aztecs (Tlaxcalans, Totonac and others), who naively saw the opportunity to free themselves from the yoke of their neighbors.
This conflict lasted between 1517 and 1521, and was led by Hernán Cortés, representative of King Carlos I of Spain, and Moctezuma II, Aztec tlatoani, as well as their champions Cuauhtémoc, Cuitláhuac, Coanácoch, Cacamatzin and others.
The result was the defeat of the Aztecs and their submission to the Spanish yoke, as well as the foundation in the Mexican territory of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the first of the institutions Spanish colonial in America.