ABSTRACT
Why should the foremost opponent of Spanish conquest have been so chary of the word? Weren't they conquests? What could Las Casas have meant by "so-called conquests," and how is it that he could marshall so graphically all the
the summation of those ingredients? I determined to look more carefully into the historic meanings of conquest. Conquest is, as any schoolboy might tell us, a Latin term. The prefix signifies association, joint action, or intensification. The root infinitive is quaerere, meaning "to seek, search, ask, collect, or acquire." In classical Latin the combined form, that is, the prefix with the verb, signified "to conduct a quest, or to make a thorough search." It did not mean "to conquer." Rome, as did Spain later, won her empire through military engagements, but this was by way of war (helium), battle (pugna, proelium), victory (victoria), or something else, not, or not literally, conquest. In his Commentaries on the Gallic wars, Caesar did not mention conquest. When he said, if he did, 'I came, I saw, I conquered," he used another term, vincere.
