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MGD109 t1_iuk39rw wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in Human burial grounds and bullets from Spanish guns uncovered at site of last Mayan stronghold in Guatemala by getBusyChild

Ah right with you sorry.

Well at the time, I'm pretty sure the Spanish throne did have several strong trade routes with kingdoms as far as Central Africa and Greece, so yeah I imagine they're were some thoughts given to diplomacy with far off distant cultures.

I think the issue was in part they also already expected the powers to recognise their power, and didn't consider encountering a new world that had absolutely no idea they even existed.

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[deleted] t1_iuk3pkc wrote

[removed]

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MGD109 t1_iuk49kd wrote

>I do know they had to practice a fair deal of diplomacy there because they weren’t able to go into the interior w/o dying of disease.

Oh it goes back before the colonisation. Spain's history has been connected to the African Kingdom's back to Carthage. For a long period the Moors ruled Spain. When the Spanish took it back, they kept a large number of their trade routes running.

> I’m guessing one of the first things they did to the Natives was turn them into Christians.

Well somewhat. A lot of the conquistadors were honestly just in it for the money. A lot of natives did convert to the new religion, some by force, some by choice, some just to curry favour.

They likewise were careful to preserve elements of the priest hierarchy in areas they conquered, so they would convert the populace more easily. And expanded a large number of missionaries.

But those mostly came later, at the start a lot of it was just conquest and plunder.

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