The Spanish Empire, And The Empire Of The Portuguese Empire

The motives of the French,Dutch and Spanish empires had a lot of similarities when they where coming over to the New World. They all revolved around the same concepts power money, and spreading their dominant faith. They did vary quite a bit when it came time to set up colonies in the New World. Spain was convinced that Catholicism was far superior to any other religion.

The three colonial empires of Portugal, Spain, and England were the most dominate in the fight for land in the Americas. While the motivations for these three colonial empires were similar and all of the Native Americans and/or Africans saw the Spanish Portuguese and English as one brutally similar people, economic differences between the three of them would ensure that their colonies would develop in dramatically unique ways.

During the 15th century, many considered Spain insignificant. However, within a century it became a world-dominant power in Europe. Although Spain only took a brief time to rise, it was also short-lived. The rise of Spain was due to its flourishing culture, stable political system and successful voyages to the New World. On the other hand, its decline was due to religious control, resistance from other countries and inflation.

In Victors and the Vanquished, Schwartz poses the question of “How can we evaluate conflicting sources” (ix)? Through reading historical events such as the “Conquest of New Spain” there is an undeniably large amount of destruction of cultural material and bias testimonies of events recorded several years after they occurred. After analyzing the Spanish Conquest of Mesoamerica there is a debatable amount of evidence from the Mesoamericans and Spanish explanations of this event in history. The intentions of each explanation created a conflict to historians, art historians and anthropologists on which viewpoint holds to accuracy. There is also the issue of not only inaccuracies, but the motives behind each bias account. As many of these aspects are taken into consideration, interpreting each justification between both sides of history in Mesoamerica as a clash of ethnocentrism between two different cultures that causes an uncertainty of what actually happened in history.

“Compare and contrast the early colonial empires of Portugal, Spain, and England in terms of motives, economic foundations, and relations with Africans and Native Americans. What factors explain the similarities and differences in the two ventures?”

What were the French, Dutch, and Spanish empires like in the seventeenth century? It is always interesting to see the many differences, and similarities, between peoples. If someone would want to compare these colonies, that person would need to look at the political, economic, and religious backgrounds of all of these colonies. All of these empires have a lot of similarities. French , like some of the other colonists, went to the New World to find gold, but the French also went to the New World the find a NorthWest passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, which they did not find . When the French colonists first arrived, North America did not look good for settlement and exploration, and the first settlements in NewFoundLand and Nova Scotia were unsuccessful because of poor financial planning and conflicts with Indians. In New France, they had a small white population and took little land,unlike the Spanish. Because the French had a more diplomatic way of doing things, they had good relations and alliances (which they needed because of the

Four empires embarked in the journey of exploring and conquering the New World: the Spanish, French, Dutch, and English. Among these empires, the new world was first and most vastly conquered by the Spanish. In 1492, the italian explorer Christopher Columbus sailed to America for the first time under the orders of the Spanish Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. In this and his following three journeys he discovered what he at first thought were the west indies. After this the Spanish Empire conquered the majority territory of America. The success of the Spanish New World Empire can be attributed to better support, and organization than any of the other New World Empires; making it the most efficient of all Empires.

While addressing his men, Hernan Cortez made grand promises of honor, greatness, and riches to those who did not abandon him on his mission to conquer the natives. He vowed that the war would “bring [them] fame” and “make [them]… the richest of all men who have crossed the seas” (Document 3). In this speech alone, the main, overarching reasons behind the Spanish conquest of the New World are unveiled. Cortez’s promises of gold, glory, and God spread through the masses, creating the major objectives for the conquistadors. These three motives influenced the Spaniards’ attitudes and shaped them into ones of bigotry and disrespect, that were later morphed into the protection of the native Indians.

Spain and the United States began relations in the earliest days of North America’s colonization. Spain’s settlements in Florida, followed by other colonies in Louisiana, Texas, and the Southwest and California, meant that early American colonists would come into contact and later into conflict with the Spanish. In the early days of the American Revolutionary War, Spain assisted the Americans in their struggle for independence. Many years later, relations between Spain and the U.S. deteriorated and war broke out; in recent decades, however, the countries began repairing economic relations once again.

Before World War I, Portugal and Spain status as global powers diminished while the Netherlands, France, and Great Britain won. The power of both Portugal and Spain significantly reduced after the two countries lost some of their colonies and other territories in the Americas. Notably, the two nations' economic and political interests suffered because they depended on commodities and taxes from their foreign colonies. For instance, Brazil's declaration of independence in 1822 and the subsequent war that followed heavily affected the global fortunes of Portugal. On the other hand, Spain lost some of its territorial possessions to the U.S. in 1820 after Florida became part of the USA. Moreover, it was involved in a war of independence a year later with Mexico, in which the country suffered defeat. Other Spanish colonies in South and Central America also managed to unite and gained independence from Spain by 1825.

Though North America was first explored by Europeans when Nordic people settled in modern-day Canada circa the 11th century, widespread colonization of the North American continent did not truly occur until the arrival of Spanish explorers four centuries later. English explorers quickly followed the Spanish to the New World and, though each group of colonists faced similar issues, the two colonies handled life in North and Central America quite differently. The Spanish and English colonies were generally the same in regard to their treatment of Native Americans while significantly different when examining the role of the European government on their colonies ' leadership in addition to their diverse economic foundations.

* 10. The system of royal monopoly control of colonies and their trade as practiced by Spain and Portugal in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries proved to be inefficient and

Cortés came not to the New World to conquer by force, but by manipulation. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, in the "Conquest of New Spain," describes how Cortés and his soldiers manipulated the Aztec people and their king Montezuma from the time they traveled from Iztapalaopa to the time when Montezuma took Cortés to the top of the great Cue and showed him the whole of Mexico and its countryside, and the three causeways which led into Mexico. Castillo's purpose for recording the mission was to keep an account of the wealth of Montezuma and Mexico, the traditions, and the economic potential that could benefit Cortés' upcoming conquest. However, through these recordings, we are able to see and understand Cortés'

During the 15th through 16th centuries, The Portuguese and Spanish explorers were very attracted to valuable resources, new land, and trade routes. These motives encouraged them to seek out new explorations and search for items that would benefit their home countries. Common resources that both the Spanish and Portuguese sought out included silks, porcelain, spices, persian horses, silver, and gold (Chasteen, 2001). Although the Portuguese and Spanish explored and sought out new land for many of the same reasons, they also had some different causes for exploration which were often very specific to the needs and goals of Portugal and Spain.

1. Three arguments’ that Juan Gines de Sepulveda used to justify enslaving the Native Americans were for gold, ore deposits, and for God’s sake and man’s faith in him. 2. Three arguments that Bartolome de las Casas gave in attacking Spanish clonial policies in the New World were the Indians eating human flesh, worshiping false gods, and also, he believed that the Indians were cowardly and timid. 3. For comparisons that Sepulveda used, in lines 1-7, to express the inferiority of the Indians was their prudence, skill virtues, and humanity were inferior to the Spanish as children to adults, or even apes to men. Comparisons he used to dismiss the significance of the Indians