A "Culture of Conquest"

In An Indigenous People’s History of the United States, Native author Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz describes the “culture of conquest” that white Europeans had developed over hundreds of years prior to first crossing the Atlantic in 1491. She argues that 4 key events in European history played a major role in creating this culture.

EVENT #1: THE CRUSADES (1096-1300)

The "culture of conquest" began between the 11th and 13th centuries, when western Europeans undertook religious campaigns known as the Crusades (literally, "carrying of the cross"). The Crusades were a series of religious wars between Christians and Muslims started primarily to secure control of holy sites that both religions considered to be sacred. The Christian armies that embarked on these crusades were essentially groups of mercenaries (hired soldiers) who were promised the opportunity to ransack and plunder (steal from) Muslim towns and cities. These exploits gained the mercenaries wealth and glory back home in Europe. As Christians waged war against Muslim-controlled areas in, they also traded goods, and some Christian Europeans grew immensely wealthy through this expansion of global trade.

Towards the end of the 13th century, popes began ordering the leaders of these Christian mercenaries to target "enemies" within Europe itself, including peasants, women who were labeled as "witches," and heretics (people who did not practice Christianity). In this way, these noblemen could seize land and force the commoners living on it into servitude. These domestic crusades served the dual purpose of terrorizing impoverished (poor) individuals and enlisting them in a lucrative, adventurous, and "holy" venture.

Furthermore, the Crusades gave rise to the papal doctrine of "limpieza de sangre," which translates to "cleanliness of blood." Before this time, the notion of biological "race" based on blood was not known to have existed anywhere in the world. Over several centuries in Christian-controlled Spain, as blame and suspicion mounted against Jews, Muslims, Conversos (Jews who had converted to Christianity) and Moriscos (Muslims who had converted to Christianity), the doctrine of limpieza de sangre gained popularity. It allowed "Old Christians" to feel superior to others, regardless of how rich or poor they were.

EVENT #2: THE ENCLOSURE MOVEMENT (1500-1700s)

The term "enclosure" was used by the English to describe the process of turning communal lands into private property. During this period, a large majority of the population, which consisted of peasants, were forced off their ancestral common lands. These commons had served as essential resources for centuries, providing pastures for their livestock, water sources, wood for fuel and construction, and a supply of edible and medicinal wild plants. Without access to these resources, peasants' livelihood as farmers became unsustainable, and many had to abandon farming.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, not only were these commons taken away, but they were also converted into grazing lands for commercial sheep farming. Wool production was the primary domestic and export commodity, leading to wealth for a privileged few and poverty for the masses. With no access to their former commons, rural subsistence farmers and even their children were left with little choice but to seek employment in the new woolen textile factories, often enduring harsh working conditions, especially when job opportunities were scarce due to high unemployment rates.

This displaced population became a pool of potential settlers in the British colonies in North America. Many of them ended up as indentured servants, enticed by the promise of land. These individuals, who had been uprooted from their ancestral lands, and their descendants, were the land-hungry settlers who were encouraged to make the arduous journey across the vast ocean with the hope of obtaining land and achieving a higher social status.

EVENT #3: THE ENGLISH COLONIZE THE IRISH (1536–1691)

During the early 1600s, the English conquered Ireland and declared a half-million acres of land there open to settlement. The settlers who served early settler colonialism came mostly from western Scotland. England had previously conquered Wales and Scotland, but it had never before attempted to remove so large an Indigenous population and plant settlers in their place as in Ireland.

The ancient Irish social system was systematically attacked, traditional songs and music forbidden, whole clans exterminated, and the remainder brutalized. A "wild Irish" reservation was even attempted. The "plantation" of Ulster was the result of centuries of intermittent warfare in Ireland. The English government paid bounties (rewards) for Irish people's heads. Later, only the scalp or ears were required. A century later in North America, Indian heads and scalps were brought in for bounty in the same manner. Although the Irish were as "white" as the English, transforming them into alien "others" to be exterminated previewed how Europeans came to racialize Indigenous peoples of North America and Africans.

EVENT #4: GOLD FEVER (1400s-1600s)

In his quest for gold, Christopher Columbus explored many Caribbean islands and mapped them. Following Columbus, numerous soldier-merchants mapped the Atlantic coast, spanning from the northern Maritimes to the tip of South America. People from the Iberian Peninsula, including merchants, mercenaries, criminals, and peasants, arrived in these lands. They took over the land and possessions of the Indigenous populations and declared these territories as extensions of the Spanish and Portuguese states.

In 1494, the Treaty of Tordesillas divided the "New World" between Spain and Portugal, with a line drawn from Greenland southward through what is now Brazil. This division, known as the Doctrine of Discovery, asserted that the entire world west of this line was open to Spanish conquest, and everything east of it was available for Portuguese conquest.

The driving force behind this new era was symbolized, and indeed fueled, by gold. Gold fever propelled colonization efforts initially focused on obtaining raw gold. Later, the pursuit of gold became more sophisticated, as planters and merchants would establish any necessary conditions to accumulate as much gold as possible. This gave rise to an ideology that placed immense value on gold, despite its limited practical use in reality. Investors and governments devised methods tried to control wealth accumulation and the power that came with it, but "gold fever" was so strong that it mobilized settlers to cross the Atlantic Ocean in pursuit of this metal.

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