5.13 Wealth?
While gold is often touted as the great motivator of exploration and conquest, this is only part of the story. In Spain, the Inquisition rises up in part to address some of the issues of wealth. Investigate this through this video clip:
“Spain.” The Renaissance, Reformation, and Beyond: Towards a Modern Europe. 1997. Films on Demand. Through “Spain’s Wealth and Excess.” The Renaissance, Reformation, and Beyond: Towards a Modern Europe. 1997. Films on Demand. 3:56.
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The Spanish and Portuguese invasions of the Americas were nothing less than a catastrophe for the Native peoples of the Western Hemisphere. Whole cultures were obliterated, empires fell, and the survivors found themselves at the mercy of conquerors whose major priorities were the extraction of mineral wealth and the exploitation of labor. The impact of the conquests on Europe took longer to become entirely evident, but in the long run the conquest of the Americas sparked the beginning of the process by which Europe became one of the dominant global regions. Europeans now had access to not only enormous quantities of precious metal, but vast new natural resources.
