conquistatori

Conquistatori, the plural of conquistatore in Italian, is the term used to describe the soldiers, explorers, and administrators who led the European conquests in the Americas during the 16th century. While the broader process involved many actors, the word is most closely associated with Spanish and, to a lesser extent, Portuguese ventures under royal sponsorship aimed at expanding dominion, gaining wealth, and spreading Christianity.

During the early 1500s, figures such as Hernán Cortés in Mexico and Francisco Pizarro in Peru led military campaigns that toppled large Indigenous polities—the Aztec and the Inca, respectively. Other conquests included expeditions into Central and South America, the Caribbean, and parts of North America, as well as the Pacific and the Philippines in later years. Conquistadores often operated with formal warrants granted by crown authorities, and their efforts combined military force, strategic alliances with rival Indigenous groups, and rapid territorial administration.

The campaigns had profound and lasting impacts. Economically, they opened large-scale extraction of precious metals and resources; politically, they reshaped colonial administration and established new hierarchical societies. Socially and culturally, the processes disrupted Indigenous political structures and populations, leading to demographic decline due to disease, warfare, and forced labor under systems such as the encomienda.

Historiography presents the conquistadores in nuanced terms: as agents of imperial expansion and state power, as explorers who opened new worlds, and as perpetrators of violence and dispossession. Their legacy remains a central topic in discussions of the colonization of the Americas.