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Books of the Brave: Being an Account of Books and of Men in the Spanish Conquest and Settlement of the Sixteenth-Century New World

University of California Press

The extraordinary actions and adventures of these men, while they rival the exploits recorded in chivalric romance, have the additional interest of verity. They leave us in admiration of the bold and heroic qualities inherent in the Spanish character which led that nation to so high a pitch of power and glory, and which are still discernible in the great mass of that gallant people by those who have an opportunity of judging them rightly.
Washington Irving1

The cause of the killing and destroying such an infinite number of souls by the Christians [i.e., Conquistadors] has been simply that their whole end was to acquire gold and riches in the shortest time so that they might rise to lofty positions out of all proportion to their wealth: in a word, the cause of such ills has been their insatiable ambition and covetousness....
Bartolomé de las Casas2

Of these two quotations inspired by the deeds of the Spanish conquerors in America, the second probably accords more closely with the impression held by the majority of that unnumbered throng who have been stirred by their prodigious feats. Indeed, its unflattering characterization of these sixteenth-century adventurers remains so firmly established and so pervasive as to partake of the nature of a hallowed tradition which blots out all other considerations. If a momentary skepticism should raise a fleeting doubt of the fairness of such a harsh judgment, this uncertainty is quickly dispelled by the knowledge that this cherished conviction traces its origin to a contemporary Spaniard of world renown, a Dominican clergyman, Bartolomé de las Casas. Thus the Spanish conquerors are condemned forever by the evidence of a star witness, a conspicuous countryman who had seen their works.

Why, therefore, examine the matter further? Why regard the Conquistador as anything better than a ruthless brigand? Yet there are good reasons, aside from the obvious special pleading of the great "Apostle of the Indians," to suggest the greater justice of the more dispassionate opinion expressed nearly three centuries later by the North American writer, Washington Irving, in the first quotation.

The Spanish Conquistador, like all other human elements before and after him, was the creature of his own age, molded and conditioned by the contemporary influences of his environment. If in retrospect he appears excessively primitive, fanatic, proud, cruel, and romantic, it is only because he reflected more conspicuously than did other Europeans of his age the dominant traits of his own time and of his Western European culture, and only in this light can he be rightly judged. If indeed he did sin more in these various respects than his neighbors on the Continent, it was mainly because his opportunities and temptations were so much greater than theirs.

But why, it may be asked, were the Hispanic peoples singled out to be the first instruments of history in the Europeanizing of the globe through the discovery, conquest, and colonizing of many of its unknown parts? Why did Spain particularly attain a momentary greatness that enabled her to achieve a historic destiny unequaled in human experience? These questions are always likely to provoke discussion, and the answers to them are not easy to find. Periods of greatness of a people or a nation frequently arise from the conjunction of the effect of environmental factors of their own milieu and of historic movements, the latter often set in motion by distant and weaker human aggregations reacting to peculiar local conditions. The peninsularity of the Hispanic peoples and the Commercial Revolution, with its development of trade routes and the international exchange of goods, were the coöperating factors which contributed greatly to the spectacular rise of Portugal and Spain and conferred upon these countries leading roles in ushering in the rise of modern imperialism, nationalism, and capitalism.

The capture of Constantinople in 1453 spelled the eventual doom of the Italian city-states which, in the later Middle Ages, had grown rich in the prosperous commerce with the Near East, and this historic event emphasized the pressing need of finding other pathways of trade. The course of the Commercial Revolution

moved inexorably from the East to the West and hence could not fail to influence radically the destinies of the Hispanic peoples at the western extreme of the Mediterranean. This trend happened, also, to coincide with technical improvements in naval architecture, nautical instruments, and the like. The geographic proximity of the peninsula to the needed new routes, the great imagination, and the extraordinary energy and vitality of its peoples engendered by long residence on the edge of the Unknown and by centuries of successful warfare against the Moors were some of the environmental and inherent factors which prepared the Spaniards and the Portuguese for their mission in history. The Conquistador, endowed with tremendous courage, powerful imagination, and religious fanaticism, and flushed with triumph by his recent victory over the Mohammedan infidel, was the appointed agent to overrun a new world and initiate the westernization of the globe.

The first important step of this process, the spectacular conquest of America by the Spaniards particularly, has been explained alliteratively as the result of three basic drives, namely, "Gold, Glory, and Gospel." If this trinity of nouns sums up rather neatly the fundamental motivation of the sixteenth-century Conquistador in the New World, its brevity calls for some elucidation. Without analysis there is danger of an oversimplification which may lead to a less than adequate understanding of the singular achievements of the Spanish conquerors.

The quotation from Las Casas defines the basic drive of the Spaniards as the greedy pursuit of gold, and doubtless the quest of this precious metal is most widely associated today with the superhuman feats of the Conquistador. Inherent in this concept is the implication that the Spaniard, more than any other European, was animated by a lust for metallic wealth. Yet the inhabitants of the Spanish Peninsula are not today, and have never been, characteristically more acquisitive than their continental neighbors. On the contrary, the Spanish and the Portuguese are among the least materialistic peoples of western Europe. Why, then, the apparently fierce determination of Cortes and Pizarro to possess themselves of the mineral riches of the conquered Indian civilizations?

In the nascent Commercial Revolution, with its emphasis on the exchange of goods, the Hispanic peoples found themselves severely

handicapped. Spain, particularly, was a relatively infertile land with few natural resources aside from its mines. Moreover, its human energies had for a long time been absorbed in intermittent warfare, to the detriment of manufacturing and agricultural activities, and Spain, therefore, produced relatively little that was useful for export trade. With the disadvantages of mountainous terrain, poor highways, and lack of navigable streams added to the clumsy and inadequate means of transportation of the time, the heavy ores and metal of the mines, among...