No Spain, No Gain

With the Portuguese looking for sea-routes to India and Asia, their Spanish neighbors could not stay out of the search very long. The Spanish king and Queen, Ferdinand II and Isabel, had recently finished conquering the lands of the Moors in Spain, reclaiming the country as a Catholic domain. From here they had no where else to expand and, much like the Portuguese, turned their minds towards overseas expansion. They had seen the successes of the Portuguese in their search for the Indies and when a clever Italian, named Christopher Columbus, approached Isabel about the possibility of a trade route heading west, she felt compelled to support his endeavors. 

Figure 3.1: This is an etching of the Nina, the Pinta,
and the Santa Maria

After receiving the support of the Spanish royal court, Columbus set sail on April 3, 1492 with the famous trio of vessels: the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria—the last one being the flagship and captained by Columbus himself. Heading west past the Canary Islands, the famed voyage then headed southwest, propelled by brisk trade winds from the east or, the “easterlies”, believing they were headed directly for the eastern islands of Asia. Instead, the 88 man crew was on a five week journey from the Canaries towards the Bahamas. Early in the morning of October 12, 1492, Rodrigo de Triana, the lookout on the Pinta, spotted land. Later Columbus would claim to have seen a light shining from the island, later called San Salvador. The Italian explorer described the locals as

“well made with fine shapes and faces; their hair short, and coarse like that of a horse’s tail…Some paint themselves with black, which makes them appear like those of the Canaries, neither black not white.”

He continued his journey throughout the Caribbean, encountering numerous other islands, including: Inagua, Cuba, Hispaniola, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. After his main voyage, Columbus had three other voyages to the “New World” in September 1493, May 1498, and May 1502.  From these he brought back indigenous people, gold, tobacco, potatoes, and many other plants and animals never before seen on the European continent.  Though he had found these new and exciting lands, Columbus still believed that he had reached the Indies and died with that belief. Much like the voyage of Vasco da Gama, Columbus’s discovery had forever changed intercontinental interaction.

Another man to sail under the Spanish crown without being a Spanish citizen was Ferdinand Magellan. Being a skilled naval officer from Portugal, Magellan was selected by Charles I of Spain, also Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, to lead a Spanish expedition westward to the Asian “Spice Islands”. The former naval officer, once fallen from grace was to take a crew of 270 men, comprised of all nationalities in search of a gateway from the Atlantic to the South Pacific by crossing through South America. Studying countless charts and maps, he believed the crossing would make it possible to reach the Indies without upsetting the delicate balance of Spanish and Portuguese colonial power. The fleet of five ships left Sevilla, Spain on August 10, 1519 and headed towards the Canary Islands. Due to the need to resupply, avoiding both Portuguese ships and territories, and even an attempted mutiny off the coast of Argentina, the fleet took over one year but it finally reached the Cape Virgenes on October 21, 1520. After a weeks rest, the fleet slowly sailed through the presently-named Strait of Magellan until November 28, when they finally reached the Pacific Ocean, named for its apparent stillness. The happiness was short-lived, however, as the Spanish came to the Philippines. There, after converting two of the local rulers to Christianity, a small battle with a third resulted in the death of Magellan. After his death, the crew fled to the Maluku “Spice Islands” and finally traded for the goods they had come for. After this, the remaining men returned to Spain by circumventing the Cape of Good Hope. Only the Victoria, with 18 men in total, made it back to Spain alive on September 6, 1522. After an expedition of almost three years, the crew had become the first to ever circumnavigate the globe and prove that the Earth was, indeed, a globe.

  

Figure 3.2: A video explaining Magellan's voyage 

As Magellan and his crew set sail, other Spaniards were also hard at work. In 1519, Hernán Cortés set out to conquer the Aztec civilization of Mexico. With an army of 550 troops and 250 indigenous people, he fought a series of battles lasting more than a year and brought Central and parts of South America under Spanish control. His success was partly the result of obtaining allies from tribes that the Aztecs had previously conquered, while another was the superiority of European technology in small arms and artillery. By 1522, Cortés controlled a territory that was larger than that of Spain itself. But the human cost was immense; in a period of thirty years, the Aztec population was reduced from 25 million to 2 million people. This pattern of complete control was repeated wherever the conquistadors landed. For instance, in 1531, Francesco Pizarro easily conquered the Incan Empire of Peru. Gold and silver flooded back to Spain, especially after the huge silver deposits in the Andes Mountains were discovered. With all of these examples, Spain’s wealth and power continued to grow, expanding their interests as far as the eye could see.