Guns and Gold; Faith and Food : 153 



sickness, starvation, torture, death of men and destruction of ves- 

 sels. 



Europe felt she had paid a great and bitter price and demanded 

 a great and bitter reward. Europe began to go everywhere in the 

 world and everywhere she went she took possession of lands and peo- 

 ple. Again why? 



For centuries Europe had remained static, self-contained, hedged 

 in by powerful enemies. Portions of Europe had even been con- 

 quered by non-European invaders as when the Moors held large sec- 

 tions of Spain and Portugal, the Tatars crowded Russia and eastern 

 Europe, or the Ottoman Turks moved into the Danube basin. Then 

 she aroused as though from slumber, her nations seemed to gather 

 strength, they looked out from their shores to new lands, their ships 

 began moving on all the seas of the known world and the known 

 world in the century from 1450 to 1550 more than doubled its area. 



The chief reason assigned for the making of far voyages of discov- 

 ery and conquest was to convert the heathens and barbarians to Cath- 

 olic Christianity. This was the reason set forth in the proclamations 

 and orders of the sovereigns and it was accepted and repeated by the 

 admirals, the captains, and the general companies of exploration and 

 colonization. It was a genuine, real and vital enthusiasm; however, it 

 was not the only announced reason for such undertakings. In most 

 orders, letters and accounts of the explorers themselves, other pur- 

 poses appear. Chief among the purposes named are these: to develop 

 trade routes to India or elsewhere in the Far East; to discover and 

 annex lands for Portugal or Spain and later for other countries; to 

 fight savages and heathens where they cannot be converted; to cap- 

 ture and send home gold, silver and other treasure. 



These were all acceptable purposes in the intellectual and moral 

 climate of those days. These could be accepted as desirable or at any 

 rate as necessary ends. The spirit of the age was brave and adven- 

 turous — it was also ruthless and cruel. For example, occasionally in 

 the records there are statements about the desirability of sending 

 Negro slaves from Africa to Portugal or Indian slaves from the Carib- 

 bean to Spain. In those days there were people who disliked slavery. 

 Father Las Casas was one of them who made it his life work to try 

 to protect the Indians from exploitation, cruelty and slavery. Queen 

 Isabella of Spain was another one. Such people, however, were in 

 the minority and various degrees of slavery and servitude were ac- 

 cepted as an almost inevitable part of the consequences of living. 



The trouble was that in the execution of the plans the relative 



