The Reconquest and the New World

Paper Summary:

This paper outlines the Reconquest in Spain and how it shaped a militaristic cultural legacy of a "booty mentality" that the Spanish would eventually carry with them overseas to the New World. The paper first explores the practice of seizing conquered lands from the Muslims with the military leaders subsequently gaining political authority over the territories as well as titles and honors. The paper then touches upon the extension of the religious crusade to the New World, and how Reconquest institutions, such as the encomienda system of labor, were imported to the New World.

From the Paper:

"Christians and Muslims were locked in a brutal struggle for control of the Iberian peninsula for roughly seven centuries, a period also referred to as the Reconquest. Christian victory was considered complete when the city of Granada, the last remaining Muslim stronghold in Spain, surrendered in 1492, the same year that Christopher Columbus's ships dropped anchor for the first time in West Indian waters. The religious fervor and institutions that had developed and been shaped as a result of the Reconquest were then imported virtually intact to the New World. There, institutions such as the encomienda system of labor, originally created for recovery of Iberian lands formerly held by Muslims, were utilized by the Spanish colonists against the native American populations."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Burkholder, Mark A. and Lyman L. Johnson. Colonial Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
• Burns, E. Bradford. Latin America: A Concise Interpretive History. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1994.
• Crosby, Jr., Alfred W. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, C.T.: Greenwood Press, 1972.
• Gibson, Charles. Spain in America. New York: Harper, 1966.
• Kicza, John E. "Patterns in Early Spanish Overseas Expansion." The William and Mary Quarterly. 3rd Ser., Vol. 49, No. 2 (April, 1992), 229-253.

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