Question

'Most powerful weapon of the Spanish conqueror was not a conventional military weapon at all.' Justify the statement by giving two reasons.

Hint:

Think about what travelled with the Europeans besides soldiers, and why it hurt the native people.

Answer 1

Step 1: Set the background:
After Columbus reached the Americas in 1492, Europeans started to settle and conquer the land. By the mid sixteenth century the Portuguese and the Spanish had conquered and colonised large parts of the continent.
The Spanish conquerors had guns, horses and ships. Yet these were not what decided the conquest.

Step 2: Reason 1: the spread of germs:
The Europeans carried germs of diseases like smallpox to the Americas. The germs went ahead of the soldiers. They spread deep into the continent, even before any European could reach those places.
So the diseases did the work of an advancing army.

Step 3: Reason 2: no immunity:
The original inhabitants of America had been cut off from the rest of the world for millions of years. Their bodies had no immunity (resistance) against diseases that came from Europe.
Smallpox killed a very large number of people and erased whole communities. This left the local people too weak and too few to fight back.

Step 4: Link the reasons to the statement:
This kind of biological warfare made it easy for the Spanish to overpower the Americans in the mid sixteenth century. Germs, not guns, were the most powerful weapon.

Final Answer:
The most powerful weapon was disease. Germs like smallpox spread ahead of the conquerors, and the native people had no immunity to them. \[\boxed{\text{Germs such as smallpox were the real weapon}}\]