ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with Spanish exploration and conquest westward and turns to the contemporaneous development by Portugal of a sea route to Asia around Africa. It discusses the new trade connections that emerged, the exchange of diseases and plants and ideas, and the development of the Atlantic slave trade. This desire encouraged exploration in two directions: southward around Africa, and westward across the Atlantic. As the Spanish explored the mainland of the Americas, they discovered not only the precious metals that they had long sought but also organized societies. The Spanish conquest of the Americas the Inca and Aztec Empires, most of South America except Portuguese Brazil, and about a third of the modern United States happened in mere decades. The Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca Empires is therefore similar in an important respect to the defeat of many other historical empires.
