In 1453 CE, the Ottoman Turks conquered the city of Constantinople sitting at the mouth of the Black Sea, sweeping away the last vestiges of the old Roman Empire. While there is a whole lot involved in all of this, in the end this is U.S. history, not European or world history, so if you want to know more about it, then you’ll just have to read some other book. However, the main thing you need to know is that the fall of Constantinople closed Europe’s last direct links to the Silk Road, a series of trade routes which connected Europe to the Far East and its exotic goods, the most important being spices. This was rather disappointing to the European elites, who suddenly found themselves being forced to pay even more outrageously high prices to have their food taste like something besides salt. Being the furthest west, the elite of Portugal were especially pissed off about this, which is probably why they got the bright idea in their heads to just try sailing around Africa to get to India and beyond. This was a rather novel idea, what with none of them having any idea at the time if you could even sail around Africa, and even rumors claiming all sorts of things like boiling seas and sea monsters, but they said fuck it and gave it a go anyways. It took them some thirty years, mostly because the stars change when you go far enough south meaning all the things the sailors knew about navigation had to be re-learned, but eventually in 1488, Bartholomew Dias found the bottom of Africa, opening up the riches of the Far East to the Portuguese.
Not liking the ramifications of Portugal’s success, namely it was obviously soon to become ridiculously wealthy, the neighboring King and Queen of Spain decided to take a long-shot bet on a crazy Italian schmuck named Christopher Columbus. Now old Chris was convinced that the Portuguese were going about reaching the riches of Asia the wrong way. After all, everyone knew the world was round, so obviously the best way to do it would be to just sail west across the open ocean. Chris was convinced this could easily be done in a matter of two months, mostly because he basically forgot to carry the one and so therefore thought the world was smaller than it actually was. The scholars in the Spanish court of course quickly pointed this out, but being rather desperate and rather worried about what would happen if the Portuguese suddenly became fabulously wealthy, the Spanish monarchs decided to forget common sense and gave Chris three ships in 1492 to try sailing west. Amazingly enough, after two months at sea, they arrived in the Caribbean.
Now of course Chris felt completely vindicated by finding what he thought was Asia, even though there were none of the promised riches in sight aside from some gold earrings worn by the local Taino and Carib peoples he encountered. However, not being one to ever think of himself as wrong, Chris declared the rich parts of Asia were probably just a little further west and then declared the islands he found to be the West Indies and their inhabitants to be Indians. After sailing around a bit, losing one of his ships, and leaving a small group of men on the island of Hispaniola, he sailed home to Spain where he loudly and proudly declared he had totally found Asia, sparking a wave of excitement that confused the hell out of scholars who were pretty damn sure Asia should be farther away. Within six months of his return home, he set out for the Caribbean once more, this time with seventeen ships and some 1,200 men eager to claim the riches of the New World. After sailing around exploring small islands for a bit, Chris returned to his original landing point on Hispaniola where he discovered the locals had slaughtered all of his men. Not really liking the vibe, he headed to a different location to the island to start his new colony. This of course quickly turned into an epic shit show. Believe it or not, being an asshat who is not good at math rarely makes you a good administrator.
The first year of the new colony was not an easy one. Not only was the New World not as overflowing with gold as promised, but a combination of disease, perhaps syphilis or some other previously unknown New World plague, and starvation killed off two-thirds of them within the first year. In order to maintain control, Chris began executing colonists for even minor crimes, and when that didn’t work, he unleashed the colonists on the local natives, allowing his men to beat, kill, rape, and enslave as they saw fit. Now it should be mentioned that some of the native tribes were openly hostile to the Spanish from the beginning, and that some tribes practiced some fucked up versions of cannibalism, such as keeping sex slaves, castrating any male children born to these slaves, and then eating them when they grew old enough. However, the Spanish didn’t differentiate between one tribe and another at all, treating them all the same. After about a year of this, Chris established something similar to the feudal system on the island. In Spain, the feudal system was still very much a thing at the time, serfs being forced to work the lands owned by nobles in return for a place to live. It’s every bit as fucked up as it sounds, but Chris kicked it up a notch by cutting off the hands of any native who failed to deliver a certain amount of gold, cotton, or food. There being overall fairly limited resources on Hispaniola, this resulted in a lot of cut off hands. The natives, finally deciding enough was enough at this point, openly revolted, but were quickly slaughtered by the Spanish whose steel armor and weapons, guns, crossbows, and horses gave them a decided advantage. In response, Columbus began shipping hundreds of natives back to Spain to be sold as slaves, most dying of various Old World diseases during the voyage or soon after arrival.
Chris returned to Spain in 1496, where he was treated like a hero, and then sailed back to the New World in 1498 to search for a large continent believed to be to the south. Though he found South America, he continued to refuse to admit that what he had found was totally not Asia. When he returned to Hispaniola, he found the colonists less than happy to see him, which Chris dealt with by having anyone openly against him tortured. The colonists finally got so tired of his crap, that they sent word of the atrocities back to the King and Queen of Spain, who were less angry about such as things as they were the fact that Chris was not converting the natives to Christianity as they had asked. In 1500, he was arrested and returned to Spain in chains. However, being apparently still a smooth talking bastard, he convinced the King and Queen to not only release him in 1502, but to also fund a new voyage west to most definitely find the riches of Asia this time. Chris explored the Caribbean and the coast of Central America for a year before a storm left him shipwrecked on Jamaica, where he stayed another year because nobody wanted to bother rescuing his sorry ass. He returned to Spain in 1504, never again to sail west. He spent the next two years of his life suffering from various terrible ailments and refusing to acknowledge what he had found was not Asia. He died in 1506 at the age of 54, though his body was sent to Hispaniola in 1536.
