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We shall hardly succeed, however, in getting the feel of modern imperialism if we attempt to retell the story of each conquest. For the result would be a mere catalogue of events. giving no sense of what the actual process of empire building was like. A more hopeful method will be to consider one such conquest in some detail. Which empire, however, are we to choose as our illustration? We might choose the Spanish con- quests in the Americas. The story of the Conquistadors is the most improbable and perhaps the most bloody. A ship load or two of Europeans totally destroyed several Central and South American civilisations, which were technically primitive, without horse or wheel, but which were yet highly organised into considerable local empires. This is, surely, the most fantastic of all collisions between civilisations at different stages of development.
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