ABSTRACT
This chapter turns to the Spanish and Portuguese conquests of the sixteenth centuryand their immediate consequences. It first examines how so few Europeans rapidlyundermined most organized resistance and subsequently explores the widespread ramifications of the exchange of plants and animals between the New World and Europe. Attention then shifts to the colonial period to understand how Europeans attempted to consolidate their rule, and ways that Latin American and Caribbean peoples actively resisted the colonial order. Emphasis is placed on the emergence of new societies within the context of colonial rule (ethnogenesis) and some of the lasting political, economic, social, and cultural legacies of European colonialism. The final section focuses on the Quincentennial controversy and how indigenous peoples have taken an active role in redefining the events of 1492.
