Effects case study — the conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires

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The fall of the capital, Tenochtitlan, to Cortés and his Indigenous allies in 1521, after a prolonged siege.

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Pizarro's capture and execution of the Inca emperor Atahualpa at Cajamarca, in 1532–33.

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A large Spanish colonial territory ruled on behalf of the king by a viceroy, replacing Indigenous imperial rule.

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The Viceroyalty of New Spain (1535, over the former Aztec lands) and the Viceroyalty of Peru (1542, over the former Inca lands).

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The catastrophic Indigenous population collapse after 1492, caused mainly by Old World diseases like smallpox — estimated around 90% over a century in parts of the Americas.

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Encomienda: a grant giving a colonist the right to demand labour/tribute from a community. Mita: a rotating forced-labour draft, adapted from an Inca system, used mainly to staff silver mines like Potosí.

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It was the largest silver mine in the Spanish Americas, worked under the mita forced-labour system, and became central to Spain's global wealth and the world silver trade.

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The 'royal fifth' — a 20% tax the Spanish crown took on all silver mined in its American colonies, funding Spain's wars in Europe.

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The blending of two belief systems into a new hybrid form. Example: devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe (1531), which blended Catholic Marian devotion with an existing Aztec goddess site.

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Conquest caused disease, which caused massive Indigenous population decline, which created a labour shortage that colonists filled by importing enslaved Africans across the Atlantic.

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Argue for one effect (often demographic collapse) as the most significant because it reshaped the others — labour systems, the economy and migration all followed from it — while still covering all categories.

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The Tlaxcalans allied with Cortés against the Aztecs; the Inca civil war between Atahualpa and Huáscar left the empire divided when Pizarro arrived.