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Spanish EmpireHabsburg Spain was a superpower and the center of the first global empire in the 16th century. It had a cultural golden age in the 17th century. With the Peace of Utrecht (1713), Spain, stripped of its territories in Italy and the Low Countries, lost most of its power, and became a second rate nation in Continental politics. However, Spain maintained its vast overseas empire until, beginning in 1811, successive revolutions split away its territories on the mainland of the Americas. Nevertheless, Spain held onto significant fragments of its empire in Asia, the Americas and Oceania until the Spanish-American War of 1898, and in Africa until 1975. The beginnings of the empire (1402-1521) According to Henry Kamen, Spain was created by the Empire, rather than the Empire being created by Spain. Three examples set for the Spanish empire are to be recognized in late medieval Aragon, in the 15th-century Portugal of Henry the Navigator and in the ambitious cosmopolitan merchant class of the seaport of Seville. While inland Castile was concentrating on the Reconquista, the Kingdom of Aragon, which developed from the County of Barcelona, looked aggressively into the western Mediterranean to expand territories linked by secure trade routes. Beyond the Balearic Islands, Sardinia and Sicily (1409), the Aragonese Empire acted as far as Greece and Barbary. The Portuguese soldiers captured Ceuta in 1415. The Castilian kings, meanwhile, tolerated the Moorish taifa client-kingdom of Granada by exacting tributes of gold, and, in so doing, ensured that gold from the Niger region of Africa entered Europe. Castile also intervened in Northern Africa itself , competing with the Portuguese Empire, and acquired the Canary Islands (1402-1498). The marriage of the Reyes Catlicos (Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile) created a confederation of reigns, each with their own administrations, but ruled by a common monarch. In 1492, Spain drove out the last Moorish king of Granada. After their victory, they negotiated with Cristopher Columbus, a genovesian sailor attempting to reach Asia by sailing west. Columbus instead inadvertently discovered the Americas, inaugurating the Spanish colonization of the continent. This Castilian Empire was the result of a period of rapid colonial expansion into the New World, as well as the Philippines and colonies in Africa: Melilla was captured by Castile in 1497. The Spanish colonization of the Caribbean began when Christopher Columbus arrived on San Salvador in October of 1492. Queen Isabella of Spain felt obligated to rule over the islands of the pagans as a Christian monarch. Columbus was made an admiral and viceroy of the islands by Queen Isabella, and also he was given a large portion of any profits from ruling the islands. Columbus soon thereafter started exploring the Caribbean with the help of some Lucayo Indians, and he found island of Cuba. When his flagship the Santa Maria was grounded he set sail to go back to Spain. He eventually returned to Spain, creating much excitement among the royals and soon a much larger expedition led by Columbus set sail for the New World. Seventeen ships, along with 1,500 men and many animals such as horses, sheep, and cattle and plants such as wheat, barley, grapes, and sugarcane landed in Dominica, and passed through a great number of other small Caribbean islands before reaching Hispaniola. He discovered the colony of Navidad deserted, so he founded Isabella and put his brother, Bartholeme, in charge of the colony so that Columbus could explore Jamaica and even more of Cuba. Hispaniola suffered as a colony, and by 1496 the colonists complained about Columbus’ rule when he returned to Spain. Slavery first got a foothold in the Caribbean when Columbus negotiated peacefully with Francisco Roldan and his group of rebels from Hispaniola. The encomienda agreement allowed settlers to put Indians to work without having to pay them any wages. This illegal practice became the norm for Spanish colonies for centuries to come, being allowed both by Queen Isabella and Charles V who believed that slavery made the colonies profitable. After Columbus, the subjugation of the New World was led by a series of warrior-explorers called the Conquistadors (conquistador is Spanish for conqueror.) Native tribes were usually at war with one another and some of them were only too willing to form alliances with the Spanish in order to defeat powerful enemies, such as the Aztecs or Incas. The first Spanish conquest in the Americas was the island of Hispaniola. Upon the settlement of Hispaniola which was successful in the early 1500s, the colonists began searching elsewhere to begin new settlements. Those from the less prosperous Hispaniola were eager to search for new success in a new settlement. Thus began a pattern of ravaging the islands in a similar manner to what had taken place in Hispaniola. From there Juan Ponce de León conquered Puerto Rico and Diego Velázquez took Cuba. The first settlement on the mainland was Darin in Panama, settled by Vasco Núez de Balboa in 1512. The Golden Age of Spain (1521-1643) The 16th and 17th centuries are sometimes called "the Golden Age of Spain", but the European empire of Charles and its successors were not only Spaniard or Castilian. Their armies were made up of Germans and Italian, more than Spaniards. Charles and Philip II squandered the American and Castillian riches in pointless wars across Europe, defaulted on their debt several times, and left the Spanish people generally bankrupt. As a result of the marriage politics of the Reyes Catlicos, their grandson Charles inherited the Castilian empire in the Americas, the Aragonese Empire in the Mediterranean (including a large portion of modern Italy), as well as the crown of the Holy Roman Empire and of the Low Countries. Their Empire was constituted by inherited territories, not conquered. After defeating Castilian rebels in the Castilian War of the Communities, Charles was the most powerful man in Europe, his rule stretching over an empire not to be rivaled in size until Napoleon. Charles used his power to defend Catholicism against the Reformation and the Ottoman Empire. Charles attempted to quell the Protestant Reformation at the Diet of Worms but Luther refused to recant his "heresy." However, Charles's piety could not stop his mutinied troops of plundering the Holy See in the Sacco di Roma. The most successful conquistador was Hernn Corts, who in 1520-1521, with Amerindian allies, overran the mighty Aztec empire, thus making Mexico a part of the Spanish empire; this would be the basis of the colony of New Spain. Of comparable importance was the conquest of the Inca empire by Francisco Pizarro, which would become the Viceroyalty of Peru. Ferdinand Magellan and then Juan Sebastin Elcano commanded the first successful expedition to circumnavigate the globe in 1522. After the conquest of Mexico, rumours of golden cities (Cibola in North America, El Dorado in South America) caused several more expeditions to be sent out, but many of those returned without having found their goal, or having found it, finding it much less valuable than was hoped. Some Spaniards, in particular the priest Bartolomé de Las Casas, defended Native Americans against the abuses of conquistadors. In 1542, new Spanish colonial laws were made to protect Indians. In 1552, Bartolom de las Casas published "Short Account of the Destruction of the West Indies" (Brevsima relacin de la destruccin de las Indias), which was used by the other European colonial powers, rivals of Spain, to criticise Spain's role. Spain was relatively early in passing some laws for the protection of the natives of its American colonies, with the first such laws being passed in 1542; however, records suggest that the practice never matched the theory. The one and only Charles V's son, Philip II of Spain (r. 1556-1598) parted the Austrian posessions with his brother Ferdinand. Philip treated Castile as the foundation of his empire, but the population of Castille (which was much less than that of France or England) was never great enough to provide the soldiers needed to support the Empire. He also inherited the Portuguese Empire and tried to marry Mary, the queen of England. It was said that in his domains, the sun never set. The unwieldy empire of the siglo de oro was controlled, not from distant inland Madrid, but from Seville. In 1582, when Philip II moved his court back to Madrid from the Atlantic port of Lisbon where he had temporarily settled to pacify his new Portuguese kingdom, the pattern was sealed, in spite of what every observant commentator privately noted: "Sea power is more important to the ruler of Spain than any other prince" wrote a commentator, "for it is only by sea power that a single community can be created out of so many so far apart." A writer on tactics in 1638 observed, "The might most suited to the arms of Spain is that which is placed on the seas, but this matter of state is so well known that I should not discuss it, even if I thought it opportune to do so." (quoted by Braudel 1984) The service of Manila Galleon was inaugurated in 1565 and continued into the early 19th century. Spanish and Venetian warships, joined by volunteers across Europe, would later crush the Turks in the Battle of Lepanto (1571). This mission marked the height of the respectability of Spain and its sovereign abroad as Philip bore the burden of leading the Counter-Reformation. Even with the bankruptcies and inflation suffered under Philip II of Spain and Philip III of Spain, it is important to note that Spain was still able to capably fight the Dutch, French, Swedes, and a host of Protestant countries on land in the Thirty Years' War, and even with the disaster of the Armada in mind, few can doubt that the Spanish fleet was among the strongest in Europe until the 1660s, when it suffered real humiliation. The Spanish were still able to fight capably at sea in the war. Also, culturally (in literature and art) the golden age (siglo de oro) was in the 17th century, coinciding with the political decline and fall of the Hapsburgs (Phillip III, IV and Charles II). Twilight in the Global Empire (1643-1898) Traditionally, historians mark the Battle of Rocroi (1643) as the end of Spanish dominance in Europe. Spain did have a huge overseas empire, but France was the superpower in Europe, and England in the Atlantic. The kings Philip III and IV were puppets of their ministers and the church, and so inbred that king Charles II was retarded and impotent, dying without a heir and leading to the war of succession. Under the Treaties of Utrecht (April 11, 1713), the European powers decided what the fate of Spain would be, in terms of the continental balance of power. Philip V retained the Spanish overseas empire, but ceded the Spanish Netherlands, Naples, Milan, and Sardinia to Austria; Sicily and parts of the Milanese to Savoy; and Gibraltar and Minorca to Great Britain. Moreover, he granted the British the exclusive right to slave trading in Spanish America for thirty years, the so-called asiento. As a result, in the 18th century Spain was basically a client state of France, and hardly a superpower. Their sizable empire in the Americas made them relevant, but it is difficult - even in light of Floridablanca's reforms - to say that they were anywhere near the ranks of Austria or Russia, let alone France or England. However, the century XVIII will be a century of prosperity for the overseas Spanish Empire and Spain would recover of fast and effective form. In 1781, a Spanish expedition during the American Revolutionary War left St. Louis, Missouri, then under Spanish control and reached as far as Fort St. Joseph at Niles, Michigan where they captured the fort while the British were away. The Nootka Convention (1791) resolved the dispute between Spain and Great Britain about the British settlement in Oregon to British Columbia. In 1791 the king of Spain gave Alessandro Malaspina an order to search for Northwest Passage. Spain lost her posessions on the mainland of America with the independence movements of the early 19th century, especially with the power vacuum during the Peninsula War. In the 19th century, Spain was taken over by Napoleon without firing a shot, the Peninsula war ensued, followed by a power vacuum lasting up to a decade and turmoil for several decades, civil wars on succession disputes, a republic, and finally a corrupt liberal democracy. Spain lost all the colonial possessions in the first 3rd of the century, except for the swaths of desert generously given to it by the European powers when they partitioned Africa, and Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, isolated on the far side of the globe. It is indefensible to say that the Spanish were a world power at any point in the nineteenth century, save for a brief spit in the 1870s when the capable Alfonso XII of Spain and his thoughtful ministers succeeded in restoring some vigour to Spanish politics and prestige. Nevertheless, Spain held onto significant fragments of its empire until the Spanish-American War of 1898, and its coastal toeholds in Africa lasted even longer. At the end of the century most of the remaining Spanish Empire ( Cuba, Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam ) was lost in the Spanish American War in 1898. Colonialism in Africa (1898-1975) There was a Spanish presence in the North of Africa from the time of the 15th century (Canarias, Ceuta, Melilla and Plazas de soberana). In 1778, the Bioko Island, adjacent islets, and commercial rights to the mainland between the Niger and Ogoue Rivers were ceded to Spain by the Portuguese in exchange for territory in South America (Treaty of El Pardo). In the XIX century, some Spanish explorers and missionaries would crossed this zone, as Manuel de Iradier. In 1884, Spain claimed a protectorate over the coast from Cape Bojador to Cap Blanc, too. Conflicting claims with French Goverment were settled by the Treaty of Paris (1900). In 1911, Morocco was divided between the French and Spanish. The Disaster of Annual (1921) was a grave military defeat suffered by the Spanish army. Reference - Fernand Braudel, The Perspective of the World (part iii of Civilization and Capitalism) 1979, translated 1985.
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