Overseas Oppression

Christopher Columbus, in a letter to the King and Queen of Castile following his first royally funded voyage, reveals Spain's desire to develop as a world power in the latter half of the fifteenth century. As a newly united country, previously under Ottoman control, Spain was overshadowed by rival nations in both Europe and Asia that were larger, stronger, and most importantly, wealthier. Columbus' account not only conveys the need for repeated voyages to the Indies in order to generate wealth for the Spanish Empire, but he indirectly lays out the justifications and foundations of slavery in the New World as a result of the natural resources and inferior native peoples he encounters through his use of selection of detail, diction, and tone.