"It is also important to remember that the Conquest provided the European ruling class with the silver and gold used to pay the mercenary armies that defeated the rural and urban revolts; and that, in the same years when Arawaks, Aztecs, and Incas were being subjugated, workers in Europe were being driven from their homes, branded like animals, and burnt as witches."

Ibid.

@mallaidh Reminds me of arguments by Christopher Hill, Immanuel Wallerstein &c that there was actually much continuity between feudalism and capitalism, and that a major segment of feudal landed elites did an end-run around the democratizing tendencies of the late middle ages by reinventing themselves as agrarian capitalists and allying themselves with the new absolute states to enclose and rack-rent the land.