1.
Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire
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The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire was one of the most significant events in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Many of those on the Cortés expedition of 1519 had never seen combat before, in fact, Cortés had never commanded men in battle before. However, there was a generation of Spaniards who participated in expeditions in the Caribbean and Tierra Firme, learning strategy. The Spanish conquest of Mexico had antecedents with established practices, in their advance, the allies were tricked and ambushed several times by the people they encountered. When Cortés left Tenochtitlan to return to the coast and deal with the expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez, Alvarado allowed a significant Aztec feast to be celebrated in Tenochtitlan and on the pattern of the earlier massacre in Cholula, closed off the square and massacred the celebrating Aztec noblemen. The biography of Cortés by Francisco López de Gómara contains a description of the massacre, the Alvarado massacre at the Main Temple of Tenochtitlan precipitated rebellion by the population of the city. When the captured emperor Motecuhzoma II, now seen as a puppet of the invading Spaniards, attempted to calm the outraged populace. Cortés had returned to Tenochtitlan and his men fled the city during the Noche Triste in June,1520. The Spanish, Tlaxcalans and reinforcements returned a year later on August 13,1521 to a civilization that had wiped out by famine. This made it easier to conquer the remaining Aztecs, the fall of the Aztec Empire was the key event in the formation of the Spanish overseas empire, with New Spain, which later became Mexico, a major component. The Spanish conquerors could and did write accounts that narrated the conquest from the first landfalls in Mexico to the victory over the Mexica in Tenochtitlan on August 13,1521. Indigenous accounts are from particular native viewpoints and as the events had a impact on their polity. All accounts of the conquest, Spanish and indigenous alike, have biases, in general, Spanish accounts do not credit their indigenous allies support. Individual conquerors accounts exaggerate that individuals contribution to the conquest, downplaying other conquerors, indigenous allies accounts stress their loyalty to the Spanish and their particular aid as being key to the Spanish victory. Their accounts are similar to Spanish conquerors accounts contained in petitions for rewards and these were almost immediately published in Spain and later in other parts of Europe. Interestingly, Cortéss right-hand man, Pedro de Alvarado did not write at any length about his actions in the New World, two letters to Cortés about Alvarados campaigns in Guatemala are published in The Conquistadors. Rather than it being a petition for rewards for services, as many Spanish accounts were, the account was used by eighteenth-century Jesuit Francisco Javier Clavijero in his descriptions of the history of Mexico. On the indigenous side, the allies of Cortés, particularly the Tlaxcalans, wrote extensively about their services to the Spanish Crown in the conquest, the most important of these are the pictorial Lienzo de Tlaxcala and the Historia de Tlaxcala by Diego Muñoz Camargo
2.
Lake Texcoco
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Lake Texcoco was a natural lake within the Anáhuac or Valley of Mexico. Lake Texcoco is best known as where the Aztecs built the city of Tenochtitlan, after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, efforts to control flooding by the Spanish led to most of the lake being drained. The entire lake basin is now almost completely occupied by Mexico City, in the Pleistocene era, the lake occupied an even greater area. There were several paleo-lakes that would connect each other from time to time. At the north in the community of San Miguel Tocuilla there is a great paleontological field. The disarticulated remains of seven mammoths dated between 10,220 ±75 and 12,615 ±95 years were found, suggesting human presence, agriculture around the lake began about 7,000 years ago, with humans following the patterns of periodic inundations of the lake. On the northeast side of the lake, between 1700 and 1250 BC, several villages appear, by 1250 BC, the identifying signs of the Tlatilco culture, including more complex settlements and a stratified social structure, are seen around the lake. By roughly 800 BC, Cuicuilco had eclipsed the Tlatilco cultural centers and was the power in the Valley of Mexico during the next 200 years. The Xitle volcano destroyed Cuicuilco around AD30, a destruction that may have given rise to Teotihuacan, none of these predominated and they coexisted more or less in peace for several centuries. This time was described as a Golden age in Aztec chronicles, by the year 1300, however, the Tepanec from Azcapotzalco were beginning to dominate the area. If Tenochtitlan was the city of the Aztec Empire, and Mexico City the capital of Mexico, then Lake Texcoco is the Lake of the capitals. According to a story, the Mexica wandered in the deserts of modern Mexico for 100 years before they came to the thick forests of the place now called the Valley of Mexico. Tenochtitlan was founded on an islet in the part of the lake in the year 1325. Around it, the Aztecs created an artificial island using a system similar to the creation of chinampas. To overcome the problems of drinking water, the Aztecs built a system of dams to separate the salty waters of the lake from the water of the effluents. It also permitted them to control the level of the lake, the city also had an inner system of channels that helped to control the water. During Cortéss siege of Tenochtitlan in 1521, the dams were destroyed, the Valley of Mexico is a basin with an average elevation of 2,236 metres above mean sea level located in the southern highlands of Mexicos central altiplano. Lake Texcoco formerly extended over a portion of the southern half of the basin
3.
Mexico
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Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a federal republic in the southern half of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States, to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean, to the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea, and to the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Covering almost two million square kilometers, Mexico is the sixth largest country in the Americas by total area, Mexico is a federation comprising 31 states and a federal district that is also its capital and most populous city. Other metropolises include Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puebla, Toluca, Tijuana, pre-Columbian Mexico was home to many advanced Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Olmec, Toltec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, Maya and Aztec before first contact with Europeans. In 1521, the Spanish Empire conquered and colonized the territory from its base in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Three centuries later, this territory became Mexico following recognition in 1821 after the colonys Mexican War of Independence. The tumultuous post-independence period was characterized by instability and many political changes. The Mexican–American War led to the cession of the extensive northern borderlands, one-third of its territory. The Pastry War, the Franco-Mexican War, a civil war, the dictatorship was overthrown in the Mexican Revolution of 1910, which culminated with the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution and the emergence of the countrys current political system. Mexico has the fifteenth largest nominal GDP and the eleventh largest by purchasing power parity, the Mexican economy is strongly linked to those of its North American Free Trade Agreement partners, especially the United States. Mexico was the first Latin American member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and it is classified as an upper-middle income country by the World Bank and a newly industrialized country by several analysts. By 2050, Mexico could become the fifth or seventh largest economy. The country is considered both a power and middle power, and is often identified as an emerging global power. Due to its culture and history, Mexico ranks first in the Americas. Mexico is a country, ranking fourth in the world by biodiversity. In 2015 it was the 9th most visited country in the world, Mexico is a member of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G8+5, the G20, the Uniting for Consensus and the Pacific Alliance. Mēxihco is the Nahuatl term for the heartland of the Aztec Empire, namely, the Valley of Mexico, and its people, the Mexica and this became the future State of Mexico as a division of New Spain prior to independence. It is generally considered to be a toponym for the valley became the primary ethnonym for the Aztec Triple Alliance as a result. After New Spain won independence from Spain, representatives decided to name the new country after its capital and this was founded in 1524 on top of the ancient Mexica capital of Mexico-Tenochtitlan
4.
Spain
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By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spains capital and largest city is Madrid, other urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago, in the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by Germanic tribes and later by the Moors. Spain is a democracy organised in the form of a government under a constitutional monarchy. It is a power and a major developed country with the worlds fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP. Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the span is the Phoenician word spy. Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean the land where metals are forged, two 15th-century Spanish Jewish scholars, Don Isaac Abravanel and Solomon ibn Verga, gave an explanation now considered folkloric. Both men wrote in two different published works that the first Jews to reach Spain were brought by ship by Phiros who was confederate with the king of Babylon when he laid siege to Jerusalem. This man was a Grecian by birth, but who had given a kingdom in Spain. He became related by marriage to Espan, the nephew of king Heracles, Heracles later renounced his throne in preference for his native Greece, leaving his kingdom to his nephew, Espan, from whom the country of España took its name. Based upon their testimonies, this eponym would have already been in use in Spain by c.350 BCE, Iberia enters written records as a land populated largely by the Iberians, Basques and Celts. Early on its coastal areas were settled by Phoenicians who founded Western Europe´s most ancient cities Cadiz, Phoenician influence expanded as much of the Peninsula was eventually incorporated into the Carthaginian Empire, becoming a major theater of the Punic Wars against the expanding Roman Empire. After an arduous conquest, the peninsula came fully under Roman Rule, during the early Middle Ages it came under Germanic rule but later, much of it was conquered by Moorish invaders from North Africa. In a process took centuries, the small Christian kingdoms in the north gradually regained control of the peninsula. The last Moorish kingdom fell in the same year Columbus reached the Americas, a global empire began which saw Spain become the strongest kingdom in Europe, the leading world power for a century and a half, and the largest overseas empire for three centuries. Continued wars and other problems led to a diminished status. The Napoleonic invasions of Spain led to chaos, triggering independence movements that tore apart most of the empire, eventually democracy was peacefully restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Spain joined the European Union, experiencing a renaissance and steady economic growth
5.
Spanish Empire
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The Spanish Empire was one of the largest empires in history. The Spanish Empire became the foremost global power of its time and was the first to be called the empire on which the sun never sets, the Spanish Empire originated during the Age of Discovery after the voyages of Christopher Columbus. Following the Spanish–American War of 1898, Spain ceded its last colonies in the Caribbean and its last African colonies were granted independence or abandoned during Decolonisation of Africa finishing in 1976. The unity did not mean uniformity, nevertheless, some historians assert that Portugal was part of the Spanish monarchy at the time, while others draw a clear distinction between the Portuguese and Spanish empires. During the 15th century, Castile and Portugal became territorial and commercial rivals in the western Atlantic. The conquest was completed with the campaigns of the armies of the Crown of Castile between 1478 and 1496, when the islands of Gran Canaria, La Palma, and Tenerife were subjugated. The Portuguese tried in vain to keep secret their discovery of the Gold Coast in the Gulf of Guinea, chronicler Pulgar wrote that the fame of the treasures of Guinea spread around the ports of Andalusia in such way that everybody tried to go there. Worthless trinkets, Moorish textiles, and above all, shells from the Canary and Cape Verde islands were exchanged for gold, slaves, ivory and Guinea pepper. The Crown officially organized this trade with Guinea, every caravel had to get a government license, the treaty delimited the spheres of influence of the two countries, establishing the principle of the Mare clausum. It was confirmed in 1481 by the Pope Sixtus IV, in the papal bull Æterni regis, thus, the limitations imposed by the Alcáçovas treaty were overcome and a new and more balanced worlds division would be reached at Tordesillas between both emerging maritime powers. Seven months before the treaty of Alcaçovas, King John II of Aragon died, Ferdinand and Isabella drove the last Moorish king out of Granada in 1492 after a ten-year war. The Catholic Monarchs then negotiated with Christopher Columbus, a Genoese sailor attempting to reach Cipangu by sailing west, Castile was already engaged in a race of exploration with Portugal to reach the Far East by sea when Columbus made his bold proposal to Isabella. Columbus discoveries inaugurated the Spanish colonization of the Americas and these actions gave Spain exclusive rights to establish colonies in all of the New World from north to south, as well as the easternmost parts of Asia. The treaty of Tordesillas was confirmed by Pope Julius II in the bull Ea quae pro bono pacis on 24 January 1506, Spains expansion and colonization was driven by economic influences, a yearning to improve national prestige, and a desire to spread Catholicism into the New World. The Catholic Monarchs had developed a strategy of marriages for their children in order to isolate their long-time enemy, the Spanish princes married the heirs of Portugal, England and the House of Habsburg. Following the same strategy, the Catholic Monarchs decided to support the Catalan-Aragonese house of Naples against Charles VIII of France in the Italian Wars beginning in 1494. As King of Aragon, Ferdinand had been involved in the struggle against France and Venice for control of Italy, these conflicts became the center of Ferdinands foreign policy as king. Only a year later, Ferdinand became part of the Holy League against France and this war was less of a success than the war against Venice, and in 1516, France agreed to a truce that left Milan in its control and recognized Spanish control of Upper Navarre
6.
Tlaxcala (Nahua state)
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Tlaxcala was a pre-Columbian city and state in central Mexico. The Tlaxcalans arrived in Central Mexico during the Late Postclassic and they first settled near Texcoco in the valley of Mexico, between the settlement of Cohuatlinchan and the shore of Lake Texcoco. After some years the Tlaxcallans were driven out of the valley of Mexico and moved to the east, over the subsequent years, the Tlaxcallan state expanded with the foundations of Ocotelulco and Tizatlán. The fourth major settlement, Quiahuiztlan, was founded by members of the Tlaxcallan group that had remained in the valley of Mexico. Ancient Tlaxcala was a republic ruled by a council of between 50 and 200 chief political officials and these officials gained their positions through service to the state, usually in warfare, and as a result came from both the noble and commoner classes. Tlaxcala was never conquered by the Aztec empire, but was engaged in a state of perpetual war, as a result of their alliance with the Spaniards, Tlaxcala had hidalgo privileged status within Spanish colonial Mexico. After the Spanish conquered Tenochtitlan and the rest of Mexico, Tlaxcala was allowed to survive and preserve its pre-Columbian culture. In addition, as a reward to the Tlaxcalans unyielding loyalty to the Spanish, conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo describes the first battle between the Spanish force and the Tlaxcalteca as surprisingly difficult. Xicohtencatl the Younger was later condemned by the Tlaxcaltecan ruling council, due to protracted warfare between the Aztecs and the Tlaxcala, the Tlaxcala were eager to exact revenge, and soon became loyal allies of the Spanish. Even after the Spanish were expelled from Tenochtitlan, the Tlaxcala continued to support their conquest, Tlaxcala also assisted the Spanish in the conquest of Guatemala. Following the Spanish Conquest, Tlaxcala was divided into four fiefdoms by the Spanish corregidor Gómez de Santillán in 1545 and these fiefdoms were Ocotelolco, Quiahuiztlan, Tepeticpac, and Tizatlan. At this time, four houses or lineages emerged and claimed hereditary rights to each fiefdom. During the colonial period, the Tlaxcalan people were regarded as being of higher status, however, the indigenous population who had been living in Tlaxcala were reduced to a small minority. It was painted by Tlaxcalteca artists under Spanish supervision, crónica Mexicayotl was written by Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, in Nahuatl and Spanish, in the last decades of the 16th century. Mexico, Manuel Orozco y Berra, Leyenda, fargher, Lane F. Richard E. Blanton and Verenice Y. Egalitarian Ideology and Political Power in Prehispanic Central Mexico, The Case of Tlaxcallan, xicotencatl, rethinking an indigenous Mexican hero, Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl, UNAM. Land and Succession in the Indigenous Noble Houses of Sixteenth-Century Tlaxcala, invading Guatemala, Spanish, Nahua, and Maya Accounts of the Conquest Wars. University Park, Pennsylvania, USA, Pennsylvania State University Press, Spanish language description of the historiography of Tlaxcala Article in Sciencemag about archeological findings at Tizatlan
7.
Aztec Empire
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The Aztec Empire, or the Triple Alliance, began as an alliance of three Nahua altepetl city-states, Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan. The Triple Alliance was formed from the faction in a civil war fought between the city of Azcapotzalco and its former tributary provinces. Despite the initial conception of the empire as an alliance of three self-governed city-states, Tenochtitlan quickly became dominant militarily. By the time the Spanish arrived in 1519, the lands of the Alliance were effectively ruled from Tenochtitlan, the alliance waged wars of conquest and expanded rapidly after its formation. Aztec rule has been described by scholars as hegemonic or indirect, the Aztecs left rulers of conquered cities in power so long as they agreed to pay semi-annual tribute to the Alliance, as well as supply military forces when needed for the Aztec war efforts. In return, the imperial authority offered protection and political stability, the state religion of the empire was polytheistic, worshiping a diverse pantheon that included dozens of deities. Many had officially recognized cults large enough so that the deity was represented in the temple precinct of the capital Tenochtitlan. The imperial cult, specifically, was that of Huitzilopochtli, the distinctive warlike patron god of the Mexica, peoples in conquered provinces were allowed to retain and freely continue their own religious traditions, so long as they added the imperial god Huitzilopochtli to their local pantheons. The word Aztec in modern usage would not have used by the people themselves. The name comes from a Nahuatl word meaning people from Aztlan, for the purpose of this article, Aztec refers only to those cities that constituted or were subject to the Triple Alliance. For the broader use of the term, see the article on Aztec civilization, Nahua peoples descended from Chichimec peoples who migrated to central Mexico from the north in the early 13th century. According to the pictographic codices in which the Aztecs recorded their history, Early migrants settled the Basin of Mexico and surrounding lands by establishing a series of independent city-states. These early Nahua cities were ruled by petty kings called tlahtohqueh, most of the existing settlements, which had been established by other indigenous peoples before the Nahua migration, were assimilated into Nahua culture. These early city-states fought various small-scale wars with other, but due to shifting alliances. The Mexica were the last of Aztlan migrants to arrive in Central Mexico and they entered the Basin of Mexico around the year 1250 AD, and by then most of the good agricultural land had already been claimed. The Mexica persuaded the king of Culhuacan to allow them to settle in a relatively infertile patch of land called Chapultepec, the Mexica served as hired mercenaries for Culhuacan. After they served Culhuacan in battle, the appointed one of his daughters to rule over the Mexica. According to mythological native accounts, the Mexica instead sacrificed her by flaying her skin, when the king of Culhuacan learned of this, he attacked and used his army to drive the Mexica from Tizaapan by force
8.
Pedro de Alvarado
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Pedro de Alvarado y Contreras was a Spanish conquistador and governor of Guatemala. He participated in the conquest of Cuba, in Juan de Grijalvas exploration of the coasts of the Yucatán Peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico and he is considered the conquistador of much of Central America, including Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Historiography portrays that indigenous people, both Nahuatl-speakers and speakers of languages, called him Tonatiuh, meaning sun in the Nahuatl language. Yet he was also called Red Sun in Nahuatl, which allows a variety of interpretations, whether this epithet refers to Alvarados red hair, some esoteric quality attributed to him, or both, is disputed. Pedro de Alvarado was flamboyant and charismatic, and was both a brilliant military commander and a cruel, hardened man and his hair and beard were blond, which earned him the name of Tonatiuh from the Aztecs, the name of one of their sun gods. He was handsome, and presented an appearance, but was volatile. He was ruthless in his dealings with the peoples he set out to conquer. Historians judge that his greed drove him to excessive cruelty, and he was a poor governor of territories he had conquered, and restlessly sought out new adventures. His tactical brutality, such as the massacre in the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan and he was also accused of cruelty against fellow Spaniards. Alvarado was little suited to govern, when he held governing positions and his letters show no interest in civil matters, and he only discussed exploration and war. Alvarado stubbornly resisted attempts by the Spanish Crown to establish ordered taxation in Guatemala, american historian William H. Prescott described Alvarados character in the following terms, Alvarado was a cavalier of high family, gallant and chivalrous, and warm personal friend. He had talents for action, was possessed of firmness and intrepidity, while his frank, but, underneath this showy exterior, the future conqueror of Guatemala concealed a heart rash, rapacious, and cruel. He was altogether destitute of that moderation, which, in the position he occupied, was a quality of more worth than all the rest. Spanish chronicler Antonio de Remesal commented that Alvarado desired more to be feared than loved by his subjects, in his easy recourse to violence, Alvarado was a product of his time, and Alvarado was not the only conquistador to have resorted to such actions. Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro carried out deeds of similar cruelty, Pedro de Alvarado was born in 1485 in the town of Badajoz, Extremadura. His father was Gómez de Alvarado, and his mother was Leonor de Contreras, Pedro de Alvarado had a twin sister, Sarra, and four full-blood brothers, Jorge, Gonzalo, Gómez, and Juan. Pedro had a half brother, also named Juan, referred to in contemporary sources as Juan el Bastardo. Very little is known of Pedro de Alvarados early life before his arrival in the Americas, during the conquest of the Americas, tales of his youthful exploits in Spain became popular legends, but their veracity is doubtful
Spain
Triple Alliance
