The Spanish Empire

• The territory of Spain today comprises 195,365 square miles, principally made up of land on the Iberian Peninsula, sharing borders with Portugal to the West, France to the north, and 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 Ceuta and Melilla on the Northern shore of Morocco's Coastline
• At the beginning of the 19th century, the total amount of territory to which Spain laid claim exceeded 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
• This marked the peak of Spain's territorial possessions, many of which 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
• In the latter half of the 15th century, Spain did not even formally exist, as the Iberian Peninsula was made up of several Christian kingdoms, chief amongst them 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, Queen Isabella the first of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon were married, effectively beginning 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 their 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, as 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
• 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
• Columbus championed the idea that instead of sailing South and around Africa, one could reach Asia by sailing Westward into the Atlantic and circumnavigating the Earth
• Isabella and Ferdinand agreed to back Columbus's venture, and after many years of petitions and careful planning, he finally set sail with three small ships - the Niña, 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
• Columbus also subsequently named the native peoples on this island as "Indians"
• 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
• Columbus subsequently charted much of the rest of the Caribbean, and 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, and in his fourth and final voyage from 1502 onwards, he sailed along much of the coastline of Central America
• When Columbus died in 1506, 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 Tordesillas was negotiated between the two nations, with Pope Alexander VI acting as the intermediary and broker, signed on the 7th of June 1494
• The Treaty 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 Tordesillas was being negotiated, steps were underway to begin establishing permanent Spanish settlements in the New World, the first being 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, with Cuba becoming the center of the burgeoning Spanish Empire in 1515 following the conquest of the Island from the natives and the establishment of Havana
• Exploration of the American Mainland continued, and in 1513 the explorer Vasco Núñez 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, as 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 Tenochtitlán, a vast city built on a lake and 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 Hernán Cortés 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
• Cortés founded the settlement of Villa Rica de la Cruz, which became his base of operations in the Gulf of Mexico, and began to head Inland, gathering allies amongst the native peoples such as the Tlaxcala whom the Aztecs had conquered and oppressed for decades
• In early November, Cortés arrived at Tenochtitlán, the Aztecs led by their monarch King Montezuma II cautiously welcomed the Spanish whom they viewed with a mixture of awe and fear
• Cortés soon tried to seize control of the city, detaining Montezuma and calling for reinforcements from the Caribbean
• Cortés 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 calm
• The following night, known in Spanish as La Noche Triste (the sad night), Cortés and his men were driven from Tenochtitlán, losing almost all of the vast amount of treasure they had managed to accumulate since occupying the city
• Cortés 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, and by the following spring he began his campaign back towards Tenochtitlán 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 having 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
• Afterwards, Tenochtitlán would soon be re-established as Mexico City and become the administrative capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain
• Mexico was not the only center of advanced civilization in the Americas, as much further to the South and high up in the Andes Mountains, peoples such as the Chica and Nazca had built sophisticated societies since ancient times