Spain & Colonies

The Spanish colonization of the Americas was Spain's conquest, settlement, and rule over much of the western hemisphere from 1492-1898. more...

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Beginning with the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492, the Spanish Empire gradually expanded from early small settlements in the Caribbean to over three centuries to include Central America, most of South America, Mexico, what today is Southwestern United States, the Pacific and Caribbean coasts of North America, reaching Alaska. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Spanish possessions in America began a series of independence movements, which culminated in Spain's loss of all of its colonies on the mainland of North, Central and South America by 1825. The remaining Spanish colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines were occupied by the United States following the Spanish-American War (1898), ending Spanish rule in the Americas. The Spanish settled in many different places all over America.

Christopher Columbus

Portuguese explorers had recently been establishing new routes north along the West African coast, and it seemed likely that the Portuguese caravels would shortly reach the rich trading areas of Asia by traveling east. After his failure to persuade the King of Portugal to sponsor his expedition, Columbus was able to convince the recently crowned monarchs of the Kingdom of Castille and the Kingdom of Aragon, Isabella and Ferdinand, to finance his novel idea: to reach the trading partners in Asia by traveling directly west across the Atlantic Ocean.

Columbus's voyages were also taking place at the end of seven centuries of the Reconquista, in which the last Moorish kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula (in Granada) was brought under Christian control. The Native Americans, like the Moors in Spain, were for a time considered without rights as long as they were not converted to Catholicism.

Columbus was made governor of the new territories and made several more journeys across the Atlantic Ocean. He profited from the labour of native slaves, whom he forced to mine gold; he also attempted to sell some slaves to Spain. While generally regarded as an excellent navigator, he was a poor administrator and was stripped of the governorship in 1500.

On his immediate discovery of the Taíno people (one of three local Arawak-speaking indigenous groups), whom he met right after arriving on the island of Hispaniola on his first voyage, Columbus got the impression that he could conquer these people easily. In his journal he wrote, "I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men and govern them as I please" - and he proceeded to do just that.

Read more at Wikipedia.org