Requerimiento (1513)
Context
In the fifteenth century, maritime powers such as Spain, Portugal, and the Italian cities of Venice, Naples, and Genoa dominated the region around the Mediterranean Sea. Merchants and traders were interested in establishing trade routes, particularly a sea route to Asia in view of the wealth it promised. Rulers wanted to replenish their public treasuries, which had been depleted by war (such as the Hundred Years' War of 1337–1453), disease (especially the bubonic plague—the Black Death), and famine. Additionally, Europeans were growing intensely curious about the wider world, a curiosity sparked in large part by the Crusades, the two-hundred-year series of wars in the eleventh through thirteenth centuries between Christian Europeans and Muslim Arabs over control of Palestine. Thousands of crusaders traveled to the Middle East, either on pilgrimage to the holy sites in and around Jerusalem or simply to make their fortunes through war, and their travels introduced them...
