In this lecture, Professor Totten argues European societies after the late Middle Ages were violent, intolerant, and oppressive towards women. The high minded ideals of chivalric warfare were only applied to elites, while poor conscripts, mercenaries, and perceived "heathens" were not accorded such privileges. Economic motivations led Europeans to seek water-based routes to East Asia in order to avoid Muslim traders and middlemen in favor of direct access to these desired markets. Combined with European conceptions of property inheritance, many second and third sons would strike out to earn glory and plunder wealth that led to the Spanish conquest of the Americas.

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