assumed hegemony over all of Spain, "either by aiding the monarchs of Castile [militarily] . . . or by taking advantage of that kingdom's frequent internal difficulties to force it to cede portions of frontier territory" (Vicens 62). At the same time, Aragon added other Mediterranean islands to its control and also engaged in a few crusades against the Muslims. The point is that the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile created the strong Spanish monarchy that evolved into the Spanish empire. This did not mean that Spain came easily to the idea of extending its empire toward uncharted territories. As Jane notes Columbus's opponents in the court of Ferdinand and Isabella had discouraged royal support of exploratory voyages in favor of pursuing the war against the Moors on one hand but on the other also on account of prevailinag "orthodox religious opinion [in the court] and reinforced by all the weight of eccelsiastical authority" (Jane xv). This matter of orthodoxy and authority is profoundly important where the encounter between Spaniards and indigenous American peoples is concerned, although these factors assume a slightly different shape in the New World than in the Old World.
The year 1492 was the decisive one for this whole dynamic, and the imperial ethos appears to have been both influential and contagious. That is, the ethos was not confined to Spain, where the encounter between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the New World was concerned. It is not too much to say that after 1492 the whole of Europe was imbued with an ideology of superiority that was to have drastic consequences, particularly for non-Europeans.
In the Spanish case, this meant that a dominant feeling was that Spanish Catholics had both opportunity to find gold for the throne and obligation to carry the true faith to savages. Not knowing in advance what peoples he might encounter, Columbus could not shape his missional sense to conve...