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This is far too broad a topic to accurately talk about it in generic terms, but for the most part the main players in the conquest of the Americas were lesser nobility without substantial patrimonies (mostly because they generally hailed from regions were the high nobility owned most of the land as a result of various shenanigans during the Reconquista period) and who hadn't found fortune in the military, so they decided to try their luck in the other side of the ocean.
Of course, this is an extremely broad strokes description, so if you wanted to ask about something more specific, ask away.
Hykal94
Orange Estus Kitteh
- Location
- Firelink Shrine
Alright, specifics then!
1. How many men usually make up an expedition force to the New World including servants and workers?
2. You say these men are lesser nobility, what about the major nobility? Did they go to the New World too?
3. What are they usually armed with? What kind of armour do they wear? Yes we all know the 'popular image' of one but I'd still like details.
4. Who were the most notable Conquistadors? Excluding Herman Cortez of course.
The first expedition of Columbus is probably a somewhat useful benchmark and I conveniently have a fairly detailed breakdown of the crew at hand.
To summarize, the Santa Maria carried some forty dudes, the Pinta approximately twenty five and the Niña more or less the same.
Some did, but for the most part the interests of the high nobility were tied to the court and European affairs, so the role was not particularly prominent.
Some light artillery, but not much in the way of man portable firearms (Cortes started the Mexico thing with like a dozen arquebus available, Pizarro had like three in total). Steel weapons in the forms of swords, spears and halberds were comparatively much more common, as were crossbows. Armor, in the other hand, is closer to the popular image with cuirass being fairly widespread.
Francisco Pizarro, Pedro de Alvarado and Pedro de Valdivia, probably.
galahad
Seeker of Truths
- Location
- Searching for a better world
What is known about pre-Spanish contact cultures of Canary islands ? How much, if any links did they have with Carthaginians and other north Africans. I have seen suggestions they were something like a living fossil. A lost colony of Phoenicians, Numidians or some other north African power from pre-Christian eras. Rediscovered in 14th century. Any validity to this ?
Did Spain have a chance to halt or at least slow down its weakening in the 17th century? Relative decline vis-a-vis France and England/Britain might be impossible to stop, but I was wondering how subsequent history would be if the Spanish Empire could still compete with the French and British as a peer and not as a second-class power following France's lead.
- Location
- Luton Airport
You'd really need to go quite a ways back, given that many of the seeds of Spanish decline were sown in the same furrow as the elements that led to their rise, and many of the innovations that other European nations adopted were responses to Spanish power.
Dynastic centralisation of power so that the feudal grandees could be harnessed to the monarchical will, for example, left them prone to inbreeding, yet reliant on a competent monarch to manage the edifice. Cue Charles II...
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The Worm That Dieth Not
Der Abgrund
Another huge problem was the practice of selling taxes. Essentially, the cash-strapped Spanish monarchs would sell the right to collect a certain tax, or mortgage certain incomes, to wealthy nobles or merchants. This was not tax farming, for the taxes thus sold were lost forever and the payment was purely one-time. It was obviously very damaging to the finances of the crown.
To a certain extent, though, it was sort of natural for major European powers to go bankrupt in the 17th and 18th centuries. The costs of war (and really everything else) were skyrocketing, and capitalist/industrialist/public debt take-off wasn't coming until the 19th century.
To a certain extent, though, it was sort of natural for major European powers to go bankrupt in the 17th and 18th centuries. The costs of war (and really everything else) were skyrocketing, and capitalist/industrialist/public debt take-off wasn't coming until the 19th century.
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
Well, as far as I understand, while it followed France's lead in the Bourbon Family Pact, in return it also got quite much French money to reinvigorate its economy.
Why and to whom would they give it up?
- Location
- Spain
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I recall hearing from a professor of mine that Technically under the treaty of Tordesillias, Brazil was Spanish and the Philippines was Portuguese areas of influence. They traded Brazil for the Philippines.
Something drove them to keep it. What is now the question.
EDIT: Ah.... The Spice Must flow. Brazil didn't have that or Chinese goods so I guess that's why.
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- Location
- Spain
This is wrong. Brazil was always in the Portuguese area of influence. Spain colonized the philipines breaking the treaty, but Portugal didn't contested it.
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
Not quite true. Per the original treaty, only what is nowadays NE Brazil was in the Portuguese sphere. The Portuguese pushed inwards nonetheless.
- Location
- Luton Airport
The various treaties were pretty fuzzy entities to begin with, given they divided up areas of the globe neither power had exactly fully explored. Technically, Portugal should only have had the Eastern Coast of what's now Brazil within their zone, and Spain only a tiny fraction of the Philippines in theirs, but power politics led to plenty of fudging.
Madam Carstein
Cheerful Middenlander Demoness
- Location
- Middenland
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Hers
Plus after a while Spain just got hugely overextended.
Brazil, meanwhile, became very profitable from an early stage courtesy of the Brazilwood (which would give the nation its name) trade since Brazilwood was used for furniture as well as dyes.
Cannot call myself an expert in Canarian history, so I am working mostly out of vague memories here and Spanish wikia, meaning all the usual disclaimers involving anything wiki apply and then some.
In any case, there exists evidence of some manner of human presence in the islands as far back as the 10th century BC, although most theories assume that punic or roman factors played heavily in the large scale settlement (either by displacing north african populations towards the islands or putting people there for purposes of trade).
It is largely accepted that there was some manner of connection with the berbers, because of genetic, linguistic and cultural similarities.
It would have taken... lots of work, really.
If the guys who took over under the rule of poor Charles II had been closer to the mold of, say, Olivares (who certainly mishandled any number of things, but was vastly more capable than the guys who came afterwards), maybe.
But it would have been a very, very long shot, in any case. The economy was a ruin, the nation less a nation than a HRE style confederation of kingdoms who happened to be ruled by the same dude and Spain was not exactly the favorite of anyone in Europe, seeing the previous hundred plus years of trying (and sometimes managing) to kick the asses of most of Europe*.
*I am maybe overstating things, but I am given to understand that in a time in which no European nation much liked any other, Spain was more widely disliked than any other.
- Location
- Luton Airport
One of foundational problems is that Spain had a global overseas empire before many of the tools later used to manage such had been properly developed, so they were stuck with basically feudal exploitation of their colonies, rather than the more sophisticated methods allowed via using joint stock companies to fund investment and trade, for example.
The Habsburgs had widely enough distributed territories that they were basically everyone's, big, overbearingly obnoxious neighbour.
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
Depends on the time period. In the 16th century. In the 17th century, France was Europe's big bully.
- Location
- Luton Airport
By the 17th century, Spain's star was starting to wane, but it still possessed wide territories spread across Europe, and much of the enmity that had built up against it was still there.
- Location
- Luton Airport
Crippling inflation, primitive finances, hugely expensive wars, and a declining royal line.
And by declining he means...
Charles was physically and mentally disabled and infertile, possibly due to this massive inbreeding. Due to the deaths of his half brothers, he was the last member of the male Spanish Habsburg line.[5]
Charles did not learn to speak until the age of four nor to walk until eight,[6] and was treated as virtually an infant until he was ten years old. His jaw was so badly deformed (an extreme example of the so-called Habsburg jaw) that he could barely speak or chew. Fearing the frail child would be overtaxed, his caretakers did not force Charles to attend school. The indolence of the young Charles was indulged to such an extent that at times he was not expected to be clean. When his half-brother Don Juan José of Austria, an illegitimate son of Philip IV, obtained power by exiling the queen mother from court, he covered his nose and insisted that the king at least brush his hair.