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23 - The Spanish Destruction of the Canary Islands

A Template for the Caribbean Genocide

from Part III - The Medieval World and Early Imperial Expansions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2023

Ben Kiernan
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
T. M. Lemos
Affiliation:
Huron University College, University of Western Ontario
Tristan S. Taylor
Affiliation:
University of New England, Australia
Ben Kiernan
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
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Summary

The European conquest of the seven islands of the Canarian archipelago lasted almost a century (1402-1496). It was carried mostly by private adventurers backed by the legal rights of the Castilian crown and supplied by private financiers, who expected a quick return. It brought the destruction of the native population of all its islands, the erasure of their names, language, custom, economy, land ownership, ecological environment, beliefs, culture, social structure, and political organization. The means by which it was achieved were enslavement, deportation, disease, and the strategic use of terror. Acculturation, miscegenation, and the building of a colonial society based on plantation agriculture and long-distance trade did the rest to erase any trace of the indigenous culture. Genocide, in the case of the Canary Islands, can be understood both as a process of attrition, following its use by Fein and Rosenberg, and as an outcome, the aggregate result of thousands of specific instances of violence. It also was a prelude, a necessary learning ground and a blueprint of the European conquest and settler colonialism in the Antilles begun in the 1490s. The American conquest proved a much faster application of the same template for genocide, over a vast territory.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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