The Voyage to the New World

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The Voyage to the New World

First of all, King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castille got married in 1464. The main reason that they got married was to unite their kingdoms into Spain. The king and queen were Roman Catholic, so they gave power to certain people to convert non-Catholics to Catholicism. In 1482, the Roman Catholic monarchs renew the reconquista,

the military crusade ordered to conquer the remaining Muslim state in Iberia, Granada. In 1492, the Roman Catholic monarchs ordered all non-converted Jews expelled from Spain.

In April, 1492, Spain received reports that the Portuguese succeeded in reaching the Indian Ocean, therefore Spanish monarchs authorized Christopher Columbus to sail to Asia and establish trade and start to convert natives to Christianity. The reasons that the monarchs let Columbus sail were mainly to search for spices and profits, spread

Christianity, and to use some of their new technology like the caravel.

Columbus would receive one-tenth of all the profits, and governance of the

new lands would be shared by the monarchs and by Columbus.

There were mainly three different types of natives who lived in the Caribbean. There were the Ciboneys (in Cuba), Caribs (in the lesser Antilles), and Taino-Arawaks (in the Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, Hispanola, and Puerto Rico). The population of the Caribbean Islands was probably not too much more than 1,500,000 of which about 1,000,000 lived mainly in Hispanola. Hispanola was the center of Taino culture. Between 1509 and

1520, the demand for native labor increased and the native population steeply decreased. Here is a table of how rapidly the population of the Tainos decreased:

1492- 1,000,000 (about) 1514- 28,000

1508- 92,000 1518- 16,000

1509- 62,000 1540- 250

1510- 66,000 1570- 125

1512- 27,000

By the 1540’s the native population of the Tainos did not even exceed 1,000.

In October 1492, Columbus’s ships were bound for Japan, China, and the Indies, but they arrived in the Bahamas. In May 1493, Columbus departed for his second voyage. The new goals were to settle the land, cultivate the land, assert royal authority over the whole area, convert the natives to Christianity, and mainly to search for gold and send it back to Spain. There were 17 ships, and about 1500 men on this voyage. Between 1494 and 1495, Columbus implemented a series of regulations to control the natives and to gain lots of wealth. Each adult must have delivered a certain amount of gold every three months, or else they would be punished by the Spaniards.

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