COLUMBUS VIDEO.docx

the territory of Spain today comprises of 195 365 square miles being principally made up of land on the Iberian Peninsula sharing borders with Portugal to the West France to the north as well as the small principality of Andorra Spain also controls the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean and the C...

the territory of Spain today comprises of 195 365 square miles being principally made up of land on the Iberian Peninsula sharing borders with Portugal to the West France to the north as well as the small principality of Andorra Spain also controls the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands in the Atlantic as well as the two small enclaves of veota and melida on the Northern shore of Morocco\'s Coastline however at the beginning of the 19th century the total amount of territory to which Spain laid claim to exceeded a staggering 5 million square miles stretching throughout almost the entirety of the Americas from California all the way to Argentina and even further afield to the far side of the Pacific Ocean with the Philippines in eastern Asia although this marked the peak of Spain\'s territorial possessions many of these lands were brought under Spanish rule in the prior three centuries in what was one of the most remarkable and Rapid Rises to power of Any Nation in history this is how Spain became the world\'s first superpower \[Music\] in the latter half of the 15th century Spain did not even formally exist the Iberian Peninsula at this time was made up of several Christian kingdoms Chief amongst these were the kingdom of Castile and the kingdom of Aragon over the previous seven centuries both had gradually won back the territory that they had lost to the Moors the Islamic Invaders who came from North Africa and conquered much of Iberia in the early 8th century in 1469 in an effort to join their two kingdoms in a dynastic Union and further consolidate Christian power in the region Queen Isabella the first of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon were married and effectively began a joint de facto rule of a unified Spain With Their Kingdoms United Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand were able to successfully complete the re-conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in the name of Christendom by ousting the last remaining Muslim faction the Emirate of Granada in 1491 having now secured their internal borders the Catholic monarchs could now look to expand the dominions further afield and cash in on the burgeoning international trade routes that were developing to richer more exotic locations overseas this approach had already been adopted by Spain\'s neighbor Portugal as early as the 1420s they had explored much of the Atlantic Ocean and African Coastline in search of a faster and cheaper sea route to the spice-producing East Indies which was hoped would allow them to cut out the expensive Venetian and ottoman middlemen who controlled the trade into Europe from Middle East and via the Mediterranean it was against this backdrop that a genoese sailor named Christopher Colombo or Christopher Columbus as we know him today arrived in the late 1480s with a proposal to find an alternative sea route to Asia being an already well experienced Navigator Columbus championed a new idea which was that instead of sailing South and around Africa one could reach Asia by sailing Westward into the Atlantic and circumnavigating the Earth believing that there would be a vast uninterrupted sea stretching from Europe to the East Indies he initially petitioned King John II of Portugal to fund such an expedition in the early 1480s but his solicitations did not meet with any success news of Columbus\'s proposition soon made its way to the court of Isabella and Ferdinand who were eager to replicate the Mercantile success of their Portuguese neighbors and established Spain\'s own overseas trade routes they agreed to back the Venture and after many years of petitions and careful planning Columbus finally set sail with three small ships the Nina the Pinta and the Santa Maria on the 3rd of August 1492. after a voyage of over two months the ships made landfall on the morning of the 12th of October on an island which Columbus subsequently named San Salvador believing that he had in fact reached the East Indies he also subsequently named native peoples on this island as Indians they proceeded to explore further charting much of the Bahamas Northern Cuba and Hispaniola before returning to Spain in January 1493 with the news that lands yet to be claimed by Europeans had been discovered back in Europe Isabella and Ferdinand were more than infused by the discoveries and quickly dispatched Columbus again on a second voyage this one consisting of 17 ships he subsequently charted much of the rest of the Caribbean while a third voyage between 1498 and 1500 resulted in the first contact with the mainland of South America it was at this point that Columbus realized that he had inadvertently discovered an entirely unknown continent in his fourth and final voyage from 1502 onwards Columbus sailed along much of the coastline of Central America when he died in 1506 possibly somewhat disappointed to have not found his proposed Westerly sea route to Asia he had nevertheless set in motion a series of events that would come to transform the history of the world in the wake of Columbus\'s Discovery a major problem soon arose between Spain and Portugal as to who would ultimately have control and influence over these new lands the Treaty of tortoises was negotiated between the two nations with Pope Alexander VI acting as the intermediary and broker signed on the 7th of June 1494 it effectively divided the world outside of Europe into two spheres of influence one Spanish and the other Portuguese it was believed at the time that this would Grant everything in the Americas to Spain although it would later be revealed that Brazil lay within Portugal\'s region even as the Treaty of tortoises was being negotiated steps were underway to begin establishing permanent Spanish settlements in the New World the first was the city of Santo Domingo established by Bartholomew Columbus Christopher\'s brother on the island of Hispaniola in what is now the Dominican Republic in 1496 from there a wide range of Spanish settlements were established across the Caribbean in the 1500s and 1510s Cuba became the center of the burgeoning Spanish Empire in 1515 following the conquest of the Island from the natives and the establishment of Havana meanwhile exploration of the American Mainland continued and in 1513 the Explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and became the first ever European to set eyes on the Pacific Ocean the development of the Spanish presence in the Caribbean was just a stepping stone towards a greater Imperial Drive the centers of Native American civilization lay on the mainland particularly in Central America where peoples such as the Maya and the olmecs had developed Advanced civilizations over thousands of years by the time the Spanish arrived the preeminent native power was the Aztec empire which ruled much of what is now modern-day Mexico from their capital of tenoshtidlan a vast City built on a lake an approachable only by huge man-made causeways the Spanish at first began by exploring the Yucatan Peninsula in 1517 but soon reports of a rich and Powerful Empire lying somewhere to the West began to reach their ears armed with this knowledge a conquistador by the name of Hernan Cortes set sail with a small Expedition from Havana on the 18th of November 1518 and arrived off the Mexican Coastline a few weeks later in the summer of 1519 Cortez founded the settlement of via Rica De La Cruz which became his base of operations in the Gulf of Mexico that\'s awesome he began to head Inland Gathering allies amongst the native peoples such as the tlax kala whom the Aztecs had conquered and had oppressed for decades in early November Cortez arrived at tenoshtidlan the Aztecs led by their monarch king Montezuma II cautiously welcomed the Spanish whom they viewed with a mixture of awe and fear suspecting on the one hand that these men dressed in metal armor and carrying European weapons were Gods but also fearful of what their true intentions might be Cortez soon tried to seize control of the city detaining Montezuma and calling for reinforcements from the Caribbean Cortez remained in charge there for the next six months but relations between the Spanish and their hosts soon turned ugly and on the 29th of June 1520 Montezuma was killed by his own people while pleading for Khan the following night known in Spanish is La Noche triste the sad night Cortez and his men were driven from tinashtitlan losing almost all of the vast amount of treasure they had managed to accumulate since occupying the city Cortez managed to regroup his small band of Spaniards who numbered less than one thousand men as well as the more numerous allies over the autumn and winter of 1520 by the following spring he began his campaign back towards tinashtitlan and had the city surrounded by early summer beginning a siege that lasted for 10 weeks in the resulting battle the great Aztec civilization was effectively put to an end many of the native peoples had already succumbed to The Perils of European diseases such as smallpox which the Spanish had unknowingly brought with them the natives had almost no natural immunity to these diseases and consequently millions of people died in droves those who had somehow survived or yet to be affected by the disease then had to face the Wrath of the Spanish and their native allies as they entered the city the flax Carlo were particularly determined to eradicate all traces of their Aztec oppressors by sacking looting and pillaging the city putting many of the inhabitants The Sword in the process afterwards tenashtitlan would soon be re-established as Mexico City and become the administrative capital of the vice royalty of New Spain Mexico was not the only Center of advanced civilization in the Americas much further to the South and high up in the Andes Mountains peoples such as the chico and Nazca had built sophisticated societies since ancient times when the Spanish arrived in the new world the Inca civilization had become the dominant power in the region ruling over a territory consisting of much of modern-day Peru Ecuador and Bolivia contact with the Incas was first made in the mid-1520s following which two conquistadors Francisco Pizarro and Diego diamagro led a band of men into Peru with the aim of Conquering the powerful Empire their first expedition in 1528 met with little success though as with Cortez and Mexico they did introduce smallpox to the region which decimated the native population and weakened resistance ahead of the coming Spanish Conquest Pizarro returned to Peru in 1531 armed with royal approval to lead a fresh Expedition against the Inca Empire What followed was a prolonged war that lasted throughout much of the 1530s unlike Cortez in Mexico however Pizarro did not score a swift victory over the Incas partly because their empire was more decentralized and spread out than that of the Aztecs moreover the Spanish were divided amongst themselves in Peru with Pizarro and his brothers leading one faction and the almagros leading another this resulted in a quasi-civil war erupting between the Spanish conquistadors even as they were in the process of fighting Incas Pizarro himself was eventually killed by Diego Del magro II in 1541. by that time the Spanish had established control over much of the region which they were now governing directly from the newly founded Capital at Lima the vicer royalty of Peru was established in 1542 as a counterpart to the viceroyalty of New Spain however the Incas continued to offer resistance well into the 1570s the conquest of these two great native civilizations and the establishment of the vice royalties of New Spain and Peru formed the cornerstones of Spain\'s Empire in the new world during the 16th century but there were also other developments in the late 1530s the Spanish explorer Hernando risotto began a series of Explorations along the northern Frontier of New Spain these saw him chart much of the territory across what is now the Southern United States from Florida Georgia and the Carolinas westwards through Mississippi Louisiana and Texas there were Advanced civilizations here also mound building cultures living in considerable towns and cities like Etowah and Cahokia however while DeSoto was able to bring back information on these regions no determined efforts were made by the Spanish to colonize these regions for many years except for some tentative settlements along the coastline of Florida and in southern Texas quite simply there was better more readily available land closer to Mexico City and other core parts of the Spanish Empire to settle first meanwhile far to the South Juan Diaz de Solis had become the first Spanish explorer to chart the mouth of the Rio de La Plata around what is modern-day Argentina and Uruguay in 1516. another Explorer Pedro de Mendoza LED an expedition here 20 years later and established the settlement of Buenos Aires on the 2nd of February 1536 although like in North America large parts of Argentina are neighboring Chile would remain virtually Untouched by the Spanish for many decades to come Spanish expansion across the Americas was a gradual process and centered mainly on the regions of Mexico and Peru while all of this was occurring in the Americas there was also a Spanish colony being established far across the Pacific Ocean when Ferdinand Magellan undertook his circumnavigation of the globe between 1519 and 1522 he discovered an archipelago of Islands in eastern Asia that lay within Portugal\'s side of the boundary determined by the Treaty of tordesius despite being west of the line for the territory to be claimed by Spain further explorations of these islands were undertaken in the 1540s during which they were named Las Islas Filipinas or the islands of Philip in honor of Prince Philip the heir to the Spanish Throne it was only after he had been crowned as King Philip II in 1556 that a military expedition was finally sent to the Philippines to establish a Spanish colony there in the mid-1560s the northern island of Luzon the largest in the archipelago was quickly conquered and the City of Manila was founded in 1571. the Spanish did however face stiff resistance from the Muslim inhabitants of the southern island of Mindanao an adjacent smaller Islands just as in the new world Spanish rule over the Philippines was fragmentary right from the outset with only Luzon effectively under complete control nevertheless their settlement in the Philippines gave Spain a strategically important foothold in Asia in the East Indies as the Spanish Empire continued to expand in the 16th century it was recognized that immense sums of money would be required to finance the men and material needed in order to sustain Spain\'s claim to these new territories fortunately enough shortly after the conquests of the Aztecs and the Incas large Gold and Silver Mines were discovered in Mexico Bolivia and Peru the Spanish began mining these precious metals extensively and exploited the native peoples of the region using them as forced labor particularly at sites like fedorico near Potosi in Bolivia a veritable mountain of silver discovered in 1545 which produced 80 percent of the world\'s Supply over the next two centuries this bullion was transported Overland to Ports like Cartagena in Colombia and then brought together in an annual treasure Fleet which was sent back to Spain so vast was the amount of gold and silver flooding into Spain\'s coffers that it caused a massive period of global inflation called the price revolution in the second half of the 16th century as more and more Spaniards continued to arrive in the colonies a complex society was beginning to emerge across the Spanish Empire most of those who set off from Spain for the new world in the 16th century were single men often the younger sons of Spanish nobility seeking prosperity in the Americas conversely very few women left Spain in this way and so many of the Spanish men arriving in Mexico Peru and other regions married native women as a result a mixed race or mestizo population soon began to emerge across the Empire this was characterized by the dominance of Spanish as the spoken language and the prevalence of Catholicism in all aspects of colonial life in addition to more Europeans coming to the Americas from the late 16th century onwards an increasingly common sight was the arrival of slaves from Western Africa particularly into the Caribbean where the prosperous sugar plantations required many workers despite the seemingly never-ending supply of treasure being extracted from the colonies by the beginning of the 17th century there was already a decline in the amount of gold and silver arriving back in Spain moreover the Spanish government was spending so much of this money on its Wars in Europe that King Philip II had to declare bankruptcy four times during his reign it was this poor governance and the diminishing supply of gold and silver from the new world which would ultimately lead to the beginning of the decline of the Spanish Empire by this point the Spanish conquests and territorial expansion in Americas had largely stopped as there were no more major civilizations like those of the Aztecs or the Incas to subjugate more importantly however it was the French Dutch and English had begun to occupy much of the land across North America that had been claimed by Spain but had thus far been neglected to settle and colonize it properly these three powers also began to threaten the Spanish dominance of the Caribbean during this time as they fought for possession of many of the islands England for instance wrestled control of Jamaica from Spain during the anglo-spanish war of 1654 to 1660. all of this was symptomatic of the growing stagnation of the Spanish Empire in the 17th century by the turn of the 18th century Spanish colonial society had matured to the extent that there were now settlements across the vast swathe of land from northern Mexico all the way to Chile and Argentina some regions remained largely unexplored notably the Arid Atacama Desert High up in the Andes as well as the dense disease-ridden jungles of Guyana these would continue to remain largely uninhabited by the Spanish however two areas which were experiencing increasing interest during the second half of the 18th century were California and Texas in particular the southwest of California was being explored by The Franciscan missionary juniperocera and his followers from the late 1760s onwards over the course of the next decade they would establish a dozen missionary settlements along the coastline of California which would later serve as the founding of the cities of San Diego Los Angeles and San Francisco meanwhile in the more established centers of Spanish Colonial rules such as Mexico City Lima Buenos Aires and Santiago there were growing divisions there were effectively three classes of individuals living here by the 18th century the peninsulares were administrators and newcomers to the Americas who had been born in Spain Creos were people of Spanish descent who were born in the new world but to parents of exclusively Spanish heritage finally they were the mestizos people born in the Americas to a mix of Spanish and Native ancestors these varied groups were developing different allegiances to Spain with mainly the Creos and the mestizos increasingly believing that the colonies would be better off ruling themselves even though the Spanish Empire had clearly stagnated by the end of the 18th century it had not yet collapsed it would be events in Europe however that would ultimately determine the fate of Spain\'s Empire by 1808 Napoleon Bonaparte the emperor of France had decided to take direct control over Spain and install his brother Joseph as its king this triggered a series of uprisings across South and Central America led by figures like Jose de San Martin in Argentina Bernardo Higgins in Chile Simon Bolivar and Venezuela and Colombia as well as Miguel Hidalgo in Mexico between 1808 and 1810 a series of Wars of Independence broke out across all of these regions with Colonial nationalists seeking to use the opportunity created by France\'s occupation of Spain as a means of throwing off Spanish power in South and Central America altogether they were however opposed by royalist and pro-spanish elements within each of these countries particularly by the peninsulares thus these wars of Independence became long protracted Affairs which dragged on throughout the 1810s furthermore once the legitimate King Ferdinand VII had reclaimed the Spanish story in 1813. Spanish state aid once again began to arrive in the colonies to suppress the rebellions nevertheless in the face of this overwhelming adversity Simon Bolivar managed to lead a successful Revolution across Venezuela Colombia and Panama which led to the establishment of grand Colombia as an independent state in 1819 which was formally ratified in 1821. he then campaigned further south using his resources to liberate Peru from Spanish rule with victory at the Battle of iakucho in December 1824. by that time Jose de San Martin and others had already succeeded in establishing Argentina\'s independence from Spain in 1816. while Chile followed suit in 1818 with its Declaration of Independence though the war against Spain there dragged on until 1826. further to the North after 11 years of intermittent Warfare Mexico left the Spanish Empire as well in 1821 briefly establishing itself as the first Mexican Empire but was quickly followed afterwards by the first Mexican Republic in 1823 the Revolutions of the early 19th century practically eroded Spain\'s vast overseas Empire in its entirety but a few pockets of territory remained under their control which they subsequently guarded jealously for the remainder of the 19th century as the last vestiges of their National greatness these included Cuba Puerto Rico and a number of other small Caribbean islands as well as the Philippines in Asia but as Spain became increasingly wrecked by political instability at home throughout much of the 19th century these last remaining colonies began to experience guerrilla warfare and Insurrection in attempts to achieve independence in the end it was the Cuban War of Independence which began in 1895 which ushered in the final chapter of Spain\'s once Mighty Empire the war there dragged on for several years eventually leading to the United States intervening in 1898 the resulting Spanish-American war was a brief conflict in which Spain was roundly defeated and had to relinquish control over Cuba Puerto Rico and the Philippines which all became U.S dependencies to a greater or lesser extent with that the once vast and immensely Rich Spanish Empire which had begun with a Chance Discovery by a genoese sailor came to an end after 400 years