Questions Refer to the Passage Below

Questions refer to the passage below.
Spanish king Charles V appointed Hernán Cortés governor of Mexico. The king also appointed several royal officials to constrain his power.
"It happened, however, that a Spaniard saw an Indian of Temixtitan eating a piece of flesh taken from the body of an Indian who had been killed when they entered Iztapan, and he told me this; so in the presence of that chief I had the culprit burned, explaining that the cause was his having killed that Indian and eaten him which was prohibited by Your Majesty, and by me in Your Royal name. . . . I wished that none should be killed, but that, on the contrary, I came by order of Your Majesty to protect their lives as well as their property and to teach them that they were to adore but one God, who is in the heavens, Creator and Maker of all things . . . ; and that they must turn from their idols, and the rites they had practised until then . . . I, likewise, had come to teach them that Your Majesty, by the will of Divine Providence, rules the universe, and that they also must submit themselves to the imperial yoke, and do all that we who are Your Majesty's ministers here might order them in Your Royal name; for, acting thus, they would be favoured and maintained in justice, and their lives and properties protected, but that, acting otherwise, they would be proceeded against and punished according to justice."
Fifth Letter of Hernán Cortés to Emperor Charles V, September 1526.
-Cortés's conquest and governance of New Spain is best understood as part of which of the following historical processes?

A) The establishment of maritime empires
B) The reconquista
C) The establishment of land-based empires
D) The Atlantic slave trade