Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
The greatest challenge to the concept of a universe in which humankind was central to the explanation of history took place during the sixteenth century. The nature of the relations between peoples across the world took a new turn as European states embarked on unprecedented commercial and colonizing ventures in areas of the world inhabited by people of different races, beliefs, and social organizations. Those undertakings entailed a cultural exchange of political, social, and religious values through a process that was never peaceful, and that implied either the imposition of values by one dominant society on the other, or the displacement of the weaker group. While Europeans found a powerful cultural resistance in India and China, and were unable successfully to establish their culture there, the indigenous societies of the Americas became vulnerable after their military defeat. Spain, the main beneficiary of the first allocation of the newly discovered hemisphere to its west, through the Treaty of Tordesillas (1493) had an explicit interest in replicating its society and in furthering its religion there.
This goal implied a massive and long-term cultural enterprise. Cultural transfer involved many processes, some of which took place simultaneously and began to unfold from the time Christopher Columbus set foot on land in 1492. Others took time and developed through trial and error. Three hundred years of historical evolution meant that none of the peoples who met in the Spanish Indies escaped from change and no institution remained static.
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