The Age of Discovery

[Assur]

Angel,Apr 30 2004, 09:36 AM]

edit - Update!
I wanted to compare the two expansions - Portugese and Spanish - the former being a more "benign" than the latter. Portugese establishment of trading companies vs Spanish conquest and colonisation, etc. (I'm not going to paint the picture that black and white, the Portugese *did* in fact establish colonies of their own and conduct slave trade, it's just that the sources I've read so far leads me to believe that the Spanish in a stronger degree than the Portugese sought to take control over the areas they explored rather than cooperating with the people who lived there.

In one of the books I'm using it says that Columbus originally intended to do trade with the natives in the Americas, but because communications failed, he turned to conquest instead.

Hi

The reason the Portugese didn't turn to conquest in the Spanish way was that the Asian states were much to powerful for them to conquer, unlike the Aztecs and Inkas the Asians had guns. Where the Portugese managed to conquer they were everybit as brutal as the Spanish!

Check out:

Hall, Richard: Empires of the Monsoon. The Indian Ocean and its Invaders

The Spanish didn't go east, they went west :D , they reached the Philippines from their colony in Mexico.

Columbus thought he would reach Asia where trade would have been possible, since he only found a few low-level groups he decided to grab the gold they had so that the voyage wouldn't be a total loss.