Why Did the Spanish Armada Fail?

12.Francis Drake- As a privateer, or a captain who stole from other ships, he was sent by England's Queen Elizabeth I to raid Spanish ships and settlements for gold. Drake helped defend England against the Spanish and was rewarded the name El Draque, or "the Dragon"

These natural circumstances prevented the English ships from being able to leave the harbor. There was almost nothing the English could do but wait for the tide to turn. If fact, Drake and Howard finished playing a game of bowls even after they got the news that the Spanish Armada was approaching. Their inability to leave the port set them at a disadvantage; however, the Spanish did not take the opportunity to attack them while they were practically defenseless. Instead, they kept on sailing towards Flanders. This lack of aggression on the Spanish part is due to the fact that the Armada did not have many offensive military strategies. If the Spanish were more prepared to fight a sea battle, they most likely could have sailed into Plymouth Harbor and attacked without much opposition. Nevertheless, that was not the case, so the Armada kept sailing and was forced to miss what could have been an opportunity for an easy and effective

With the defeat of the Spanish armada in 1588, Spain began a steady decline to a second rate power. Consequently shifting their original goal of exploring to maintaining or colonizing what lands they still possess.

Lastly the third reason why Magellan led himself to his deathbed. Magellan’s navigational skills were poor. According to Over the Edge of the World, By Harper Collins “he regularly sent small scouting parties in the long boats”, “they would go and come back with news of the findings.. And the rest would follow” Gines de Mafra recalled. This evidence shows that Magellan had planned the way easily, but doing it was difficult. Magellan purely relied on his search parties to go throughout the way. You might argue that he still got through and reached the spice islands, but he reached there with just a handful of men in his Armada.

In 1585 he settled about 100 men on Roanoke Island, but they did not settle and returned a year later. In 1587 he sent another group to settle that included a number of women and children. A supply ship was sent to the settlers but was delayed by the attack of the Spanish Armada on England in 1588. Help did not arrive until 1590, but it was too late and there was no one to be found. The attack of the Spanish Armada was spurred by King Phillip the 2nd. His motives were religious as England seemed committed to Protestantism as well as for economic and political reasons. An English fleet of 197 ships were able to conquer the invasion and led to Spain no longer being able to prevent the English from settling in the New World.

Although there are many reasons why the Spanish-American war took place, the most important was Spain's resentment of Cuba's desire to also become an independent nation. Since Cuba was one of Spain's last territories, they were unwilling to allow independence. As a result, conflict between the two parties erupted. Since Cuba was smaller and less equipped to fight than Spain, their economy took a tumble. Due to the fact that the United States had a great deal of money invested in Cuba's sugar resources, many Americans felt the need to wage war. Additionally, there were separate events that caused anger to American Citizens. One such event was the destruction of a U.S. ship used to protect the American citizens in Cuba. Although the ship's

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.

Ferdinand and Isabella made the Spanish Inquisition exceptionally linked to the government when they petitioned for, and were granted, a bull by Pope Sixtus IV to allow them to appoint inquisitors. This was an unprecedented role held by a monarchy and ensured that politics would be ever present in the Inquisition.3 The inquisitors were thus subject to the monarch and the church. The inquisitors could not have acted in regions without the support of the king. In Seville after the inquisitors arrived and posted their edict of grace, the Conversos reacted by fleeing the city. Ferdinand and Isabella reacted by ordering the citizens to remain in their homes.4 The Inquisitors and the monarchs worked hand in hand in the inquisition. In the late fifteenth

The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest lasting battle of World War II. The Battle was to control the Atlantic Shipping Lanes and lasted from September 3rd 1939 to May 8th 1945, mainly in The Atlantic Ocean, but later spread to the United States and The Caribbean Sea. The Battle of the Atlantic was originally fought by Britain and Canada against Germany until 1940 when the Italians joined the German side. In 1941 the United States joined Britain and Canada in the battle, leading to the defeat of Germany. A significant even that lead up to The Battle of the Atlantic was when U-30 (U-boat 30) attacked Athenia, the passenger liner, a British auxiliary cruiser, within just hours of the British declaring war on Germany, killing 112 civilians that were aboard. These ships were the ones the submarines were told not to attack by The German Navy. This is what some say was the beginning of The Battle of the Atlantic. The Germans were also humiliated from World War One and felt they had not deserved to lose and have the harsh treatment put upon them, as outlined in The Treaty of Versailles.

Write a report on the topic of your choice involving isolationism or United States involvement

The cold, stormy night was all too familiar to the English. A devious plan by Spain's king, Philip II, was being formed to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I of England and rid the world of the English "heretics."1 It was a story of deception, false judgments, and poor planning. What was one king's dream turned into his country's nightmare. While the Spanish had bad leaders, the English had good ones. The Spanish had bigger, but slower ships, while the English had smaller and faster ships. The English knew the weather conditions and how to prepare for them, while the Spanish thought it would not be a problem. The English entered the battle in a calm manner, while the Spanish were overconfident. All of these

Prosperous Political aspects of Spain’s rise was diminutive, however it brutally terminated their Golden age. Ferdinand and Isabella made Spain a strong country with many territories in Europe and the America’s. In contrast one can see the corrupt policies of Philip II and there enormous effect on Spain’s decline. Spain lost a great deal of land trying to convert people to Catholicism. In their efforts to convert and spread Christianity during the thirty years war, Spain lost complete control of the Netherlands. In addition to losing the Netherlands, the English defeat of the Spanish armada completely crushed Spain, not only

Between the years of 1535 and 1547, some sixty-six Spanish ships were captured by French corsairs (Lane 19). Shortly after in the 1550’s, the Spanish came to regret their passive defense strategy when French corsairs made their most punishing raids ever on the Spanish West Indies. They descended on colonies like Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and Cuba, and caused heavy destruction that they never really recovered from. Finally in the early 1560’s, Spain was forced to react with expensive long-term defenses. Since the Spanish waited so long to do so they not only lost wealth because of what was captured, but now they also had to spend money to protect what was left.

Spain under King Philip the second, was the most powerful nation in Europe at the time and sought to weaken Elizabeth’s reign and have her replaced. So, for the Queen to keep her power and avoid open conflict with Spain, England engaged in an “aggressive para-naval policy towards Spain; and sought to counter Spanish expansion in the New World. Privateering expeditions were under the guise of seeking new channels for English trade, but in fact the expeditions mainly attacked Spanish colonies in the New World. The English privateer John Hawkins, was one of the first hired and supported by England to attack Spanish colonies and trading vessels. Hawkins was the first Englishman to trade slaves in the New World, however he employed “warlike” methods of forcing trade and engaged a and defeated a Spanish fleet in the harbor of Vera Cruz. Another famous privateer who was utilized by the English government was Sir Francis Drake. Drake obtained a privateering commission from Queen Elizabeth in 1570, to strike at Spanish trading vessels and port cities. In the years that followed, he sacked the Spanish towns of Nombre de Dios and Panama, which in the process he captured a Spanish sliver mule train. Under Elizabeth's orders, Drake sent sail on December. 13, 1577, where he sought to raid Spain's Pacific colonies he knew were hardly defended. He circumnavigated the globe in the process and

The battle between the Spanish Armada and the Royal Navy in 1588 was the culmination of half a century’s worth of feud between the two countries (Kallen, 2013). Like many other conflicts, it was rooted in geography. England, being located on an island, was therefore reliant on overseas trade. Spain controlled nearly all of the trade out of Europe, so therefore it was necessary to be allied with them if a country wished to trade. Unfortunately for