The Requerimiento of 1510
What I wanted students to see from the Requerimiento
of 1510 and from this first assignment
1. To avoid conflicts between two Catholic kingdoms, the pope
had—to simplify—divided the “non-Christian world” between Spain and Portugal.
The line cut through Brazil. Spain received all of the west (except for
Brazil); Portugal, all of the east. (Essentials, p. 20). In your textbook, this
is referred to as the Treaty of Tordesillas. It’s the “donation” referred to
the primary (Requerimiento, p. 1). The giving of
lands and their peoples to a lesser lord was the way of the world in the Middle Ages.
2. To use the beautifully brief and accurate statement that an
on-campus student made after reading the Requerimiento
of 1510, the Spanish gave the Native Americans the choice of being:
·
Servants
·
Or slaves
This was not something new to the world or a Spanish
invention as the concepts, or instructor’s definitions, or the link to the eras showed.
o Servants (or vassals
or subjects) received protection from their lords. In return, they provided
taxes in goods or services. They still saw their families and they had a daily
life.
o Slaves did not.
The Spanish empire was “based on a pattern of ruthless
violence and enslavement” (Essentials, p. 24). This enslavement of native
peoples was “followed by oppressive rule over them.” This was not a new
thing that the Spanish brought to the Native Americans. As your textbook
notes, it was “just as the Mexica had done in forming their own empire”
(Essentials, p. 25).
Notice that in spite of their strong Catholicism, they did not require
conversion in the Requerimiento. They did however
want it.
3. How did it turn out? See how the encomienderos
treated the Native Americans as described on page 29.
The Purpose of This Reading
For students today to realize that:
· With few exceptions
(such as the priest quoted on page 35), people then thought what was written above
was just the way the world is and will always be.
· Many people in many
places—and we will study some of them—have paid dearly, including with their
lives, for 100s of years for most of us humans to decide the above is wrong.
Just remember that not all of us humans think the above is wrong so be careful.
The Purpose of a 1st Writing with a Primary
For students today to realize:
· That writing about
something that is real is different from writing feelings.
· That writing for
someone who is an expert (or works hard to be as useful as an expert) is
different from writing for someone who is new to the field.
For the rest of your life, you will be writing for or talking to experts or for
people who expect you to be the expert.
· That it did not have
to be fancy or long.
· It had to be as true as
you can make it and follow the directions. Simple is great.
Announcement 3 about the 1st Writing: Coaching on
“half-copy” plagiarism
The term “half-copy” plagiarism is not using part of
a section of text. Writers may copy a short phrase from another author or a big
paragraph as long as they:
a) Use pairs of quotation marks (“”) to signal that they did not
create the words
b) Cite the source (cite = give the name of the source and a
specific page per the standard that the professor or boss requires)
c) Change nothing between the pair of quotation marks (“”) that is
not clearly revealed by the required signals of punctuation for deletions and
insertions in the text
------------
The term “half-copy” plagiarism is doing something
useless like typing a sentence from the source and changing it just a bit:
· Your source says: The
frogs and toads swarmed in the ponds.
· You type: The toads
and frogs migrated in the pools.
The Bedford example in Required Evidence shows you a
historical example of “half-copy” plagiarism and of acceptable use.
Ultimate Tip:
if you are looking at the book or the primary when typing, you will slide into
“half-copy” plagiarism and you will probably misread because you are reading
passively. When you start to type, close the book. You can always reopen it.
Announcement 4 about the 1st Writing: Coaching on all these [ ] and … what I grade on and don’t grade on
I checked with a colleague in the English Department for the
current term for the kind of quotations that you see in the textbook and in
writing in history. The term is “integrated quotation.” You can see some
examples on page 21, 29, and 33. The only ellipses (…) I spotted in chapter 1
was the quotation on page 35—a quotation I remember as being a lot longer so I
can see why a textbook would take some out.
I recommend that you use the Brain Trick to create “integrated
quotations” without all this bother with [ ], but I won’t grade on the issue.
If you want to see the Brain Trick and other brain boosters, they are in this
link:
http://www.cjbibus.com/Good_Habits_That_Let_You_Avoid_the_Plagiarism_Pit_and_Quotation_Humiliation.htm
What I do grade on is in the rubric and in the tutorial on
evidence
· If you change the
author’s meaning with how you quote
· If you make the author’s
sentences look grammatically incorrect—and you can do that by misusing those [ ] or those ...
Caution: You must maintain a structurally accurate sentence. You
can't just string together phrases with ... stuck between them.
Reminders:
· This is a history
course about history content.
· On the rubric,
Mechanics (Language and Punctuation) is only 5%. If you have pretty words that
are not true, you make few points.