Many people aren't taught the link between the reconquista and Spanish colonial efforts. Granada fell to the Spanish in January, 1492. That was the last Muslim outpost in the Iberian peninsula.

Columbus landed in the New World in October, 1492.

Now, think about this. You have a bunch of trained soldiers just hanging out. They just took the last bit of territory in Spain and had little to do. Which is always a dangerous thing. Especially since soldiers would often work for whomever offered the best pay/looting.

Columbus comes back and...oh, look, we found a whole new group of "dark skinned heathens." So, they just moved the fight to the New World.

If Spain hadn't had a large, well trained, army that was looking to kill for Jesus, I think trade would have been more of a priority.

Conversely, when the English started settling the east coast of America, they came in often expecting to trade. In fact they expected to trade like they had in England. Early on, they ran into problems because the natives weren't idiots. The English would soak a newly contacted area with European goods that they traded for food and furs. Which created problems. One example was iron pots. One settlement used iron pots as trade goods. Which is great until everyone has a freaking iron pot! To top it off, the native population wasn't willing to trade for food if it meant they'd go hungry. Starvation isn't worth an iron pot. This literally caused the English to raid for food.

Interesting contrast.

Picked up Meet the Georgians by Robert Peal this weekend and it covers a lot about the Georgian period, ive researched a fair bit about the 1700s and it had plenty of facts i didn't know and im only about 2 chapters in and he (the author) does tell you where some information comes from and i find the book overall really intresting despite the cover making me assume that it was gonna be pretty childish (it really isnt which is great because the time period was anything but childfriendly), i was pleasantly surprised to see the information in the book be presented in a more light hearted way, made me fall in love with the time period even more, if you would like to learn some more beginner friendly information on the Georgians and your intimidated by history books in a more formal format i would definitely recommend.

I’m just looking for podcasts on modern China through and after Maos tenure and some on the Soviet Union also, and just great history podcasts in general

Another way to see it is what is it compared.

I remember reading on the Laws of Power in how they describe the failure of Portugese in Japan when compared to Dutch - in that Portugese also do some evangelization, which pissed the shogunate off, while Dutch just focus on trading things Japan want, and thus establish good relationship.

Above point is not to talk about necessary facts, but to point out how, in terms to gaining power, one need to provide things that the other people care.

My dads family came to the US from Trondheim, and he told me his favorite aunt came from the old world with hair practically to her feet. His aunt Tora. Old name habits die hard. Thanks for the memory rush from younger days.

During the period from 1492 to roughly 1800, the views of trade were different than today. Today economics classes focus on the mutual benefits of trade, in that each nation can buy goods for a lower cost than they can make them, and we can sell goods at a comparative advantage to make even more money.

At the time, trade was seen as mutually exclusive. This means that resources I import have now been lost as their potential to be imported by you. There was "trade", as in the transfer of goods and wealth from the colony to the homeland. However, each colonizing power essentially worked in autarky.

Enter the Dutch. The Netherlands were essentially a piece of the Spanish empire that broke away. It's a small, below sea level area that had little going for it. But access to the north sea allowed connections to be built overseas, and they realized they could profit from trade in both Europe and the world. They were one of the richest nations because they bought British wool and sold it to Europeans. Then their trade outposts (such as New Amsterdam, today NYC) continued to contribute.

The Spanish largely kept the transfer of goods internal to their empire. It's the modern equivalent of the cold war, little transfer of goods between the imperial powers. The Spanish didn't rely on other European nations for goods, and they believed that trading with them would only hurt their own ambitions within Europe.

What other peoples did Scandinavians historically mix with, besides the Sami and Germans?

Thanks!

Plus he wants Flanders since it's a castle that was located behind his rivals land. Having an alliance by marriage with Flanders would make his enemies surrounded on both fronts. Raping Matilda would not only make it worse but will destroy his reputation among his own faction.

Honestly, it was lucky enough they didn't start a war against Flanders after he beat up Matilda. Honestly, history is weird like that.

Iberian empires were more about extracting resources.

You'd think that but Matilda is the daughter of Flanders is the beloved grandkid of the ruler at the time. She had many lady in waiting and guards, I doubt William had the time to rape her there and then.

They didn't exactly choose, their hand was forced by the American Revolution. Before the American Revolution, they very much considered North America to be the most important part of their overseas empire. Their holdings in India consisted of a few trading posts and they had just recently acquired Bengal. After the American Revolution they had lost the core of their North American holdings, so their attention shifted to India. They rapidly expanded their territory in India until they controlled nearly the entire subcontinent, and to secure their trade routes to India they also conquered South Africa.

Thus the British Empire is divided into two eras: the [First British Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire#%22First%22_British_Empire_(1707%E2%80%931783)), focused on North America, and the [Second British Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire#Rise_of_the_%22Second%22_British_Empire_(1783%E2%80%931815)), focused on India.

It's important to remember that trade in the Philippines wasn't focused on the Philippines. It was focused on China, so the Spanish had no incentive to encourage any kind of economic development there. If anything it would have made their conflict with the Moros on the southern islands more difficult. The world economy had changed enough by the time of the US colonization that you do get some forms of plantation development and a more serious interest in political administration of the Philippines, but whereas the Spanish mostly neglected the country, the US was highly extractive.

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>Other examples of this approach are Ormuz, Goa, and Macao (Portugal) and Bombay and Calcutta (England).
>
>I think the Spanish approach was quite different from the start and that it is fair to say that trade was not their main priority even in the Philippines.

Trade absolutely was the priority in the Philippines. China was a strong enough and unified enough government to forbid the Spanish from entering and trading directly in China. Intramuros was specifically founded to be the location where Spanish and Chinese traders would meet to conduct trade for highly prized Chinese goods like silk. Manila was the terminus of the Spanish galleon trade. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manila_galleon

The big thing that distinguishes Manila from the other examples you listed, except Macao which provided the Portuguese with the same thing the Spanish used Manila for and the British later used Hong Kong for, was that China was strong enough to keep foreign powers out and conduct trade on their terms. India wasn't. It didn't have a unified government or political system or even a national identity.

The European disease issue is tricky. B/c under all the colonial schemes disease was the main killer. Most of the killings in the Mexico conquest initially were native group on native group. It was people who hated the Mexica aligning with with Cortes or taking advantage of the chaos to rebel. But after that, disease went through and killed in large numbers, usually around 30% under all the colonies, and then mismanagement, refusal to grant medical help, reservations and encomienda, forced labor and migration, killed another 60% under all the colonial systems.

But Spain and Portugal had a different legal underpinning to their colonies. The Treaty of Tordesillas required them to Christianize the inhabits and made them subjects of their respective crowns. In the English colonies the inhabitants were foreign peoples. They weren't subjects of the British crown and their land had to be bought or claimed through a doctrine of discovery. This led the Spanish to try to integrate native peoples into the colonies through the encomienda system. Where as the English, and later American and Canadians, needed to push them off of land b/c they were foreign elements, and therefore dangerous.

That doesn't mean the Spanish weren't incredibly cruel. In letters from 1502 and 1503 the Spanish Crown limited enslaving and punishing the native inhabitants but made exceptions for mining, but also for people who wouldn't convert, especially if they practiced cannibalism, human sacrifice, or witchcraft. That became a handy accusation for conquistadors to enslave the indigenous population. But it was limited by the indigenous people's ability to seek atonement with the religious authorities. There was nothing similar in the English colonies. The abuses were somewhat mitigated in the Spanish Colonies in 1512 with the Laws of Burgos.

Both systems conducted a genocide. But the Spanish genocide focused more on cultural elements. By the 1800s, if you look at the battles against indigenous people in Yucatan by the Spanish and in California or Texas by Americans, you can see the difference. The Americans were fighting wars of extermination. The Spanish, and later Mexicans, were fighting for political and cultural control. That's why you have these indigenous communities that are large practiced their rites in secret in Mexico and lived with Spanish descendants in their communities and smaller groups who were isolated from the American/Canadian settlers on reservations, but groups who were able to retain more of their indigenous culture in the US and Canadian systems..

There's a good book on the two different legal theories underpinning colonialism by Robert Miller called Native America, Discovered and Conquered.

It's important to remember that at this time there wasn't really an idea of citizenship in Spain. It was just starting to really form in places like England and the Netherlands. The model of governance was arranged more around the crown and its subjects. And subjects had groups within them. Aristocrats, military officers, missionaries, people in certain towns, peasants, non-Christians, non-Catholics, all had different statuses rights and duties in the Spanish system. Rights, responsibilities, and privileges weren't uniform anywhere. You could be a resident of one town and have the same status and profession as a resident of the next town over and have completely different tax burdens and feudal duties b/c your city or your guild had negotiated something different than the next town or guild has. They were always negotiations between the crown and the subjects.

So it's very true to that the Philippines or Mexico were provinces, but they were also colonies b/c that was type of grant of authority the King and Queen had given to the administrators, and the people in those colonies had different duties and rights both within the colony (Native born Spaniards having the most) and between their colony and the metropole.

I kind of agree with you, but the north American natives were largely effected by european borne diseases rather than actual violence at the start. Spain and Portugal arrived and slaughtered anyone who wasn't useful, and filled the area with their own migrants and turned it into a slave state. They did a lot more in half the time.

England's Royal Africa Company basically pushed the Spanish and Portuguese out of the slave trade. So, I'm not sure this holds up.

The other thing is as terrible as the Spanish genocide of the Americas was, it was a lot less successful than the British genocide of the Americas. Mexico and S. America still had large indigenous populations after the colonization. Spain then focused more on cultural genocide. Whereas the British wiped out and relocated the indigenous people in N. America as they advanced, and then the Americans did the same. Now people's like the Iroquois, Cherokee, and Anishinaabe, which heavily populated the Eastern portion of the country are just small communities, usually far from their original areas.

They focused on those b/c the only thing that China would trade for was precious metals. Spain's trade was focused on silks and spices b/c they were high value items. They needed the currency for that. Acapulco came to exists basically b/c it was the staging area for sending silver to Manila and receiving spices and silks that would then be taken by caravan to Veracruz and shipped back to Spain.

Edit: I linked to it in another answer, but the wikipedia article on the Manila galleon trade has a good explanation of what the Spanish Crown was using the precious metals for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manila_galleon

Charles Mann's 1493 also goes into detail about this trade.

I've read a few books recently, and one of the things you see is that Spain did focus on trade, but mostly for the Crown and the Crown's favorites. You don't get a rise in banking. You don't get the creation of joint stock companies. You don't get an insurance industry. You don't get a growth of the merchant class. You do get a lot of smuggling.

Whereas, the British and Dutch especially, focused on a less top down form of trade. You get the development of risk reduction institutions like the joint stock company and companies like Lloyds of London that mitigate risk. You get institutions that facilitate the allocation of capital. You get exchanges that create visible price signals.

Spain conducted trade in a top down method that focused income back into the top. It was focused on using hard currency from the Americas to trade for high value items in Manila. It wasn't creative about it and it closed a lot of people off from the trade by keeping it a monopoly controlled by the crown. This didn't encourage risk taking or innovation. The Dutch and the English had freer trade systems, the value of the trade was more distributed which created more people able to participate. More people experimented and you get new institutions, you get new methods of efficiency, and so on.

There's also a lot of political institutional differences, especially from English parliament, that prevented some of the more wasteful military adventurism that Spain suffered from.

Frank Fukayama's The Origins of Political Order actually does a good job of highlighting some of the key differences, especially from the standpoint of administration. Spain just didn't invest in administering their territories and didn't develop them b/c there was little reason to. The wealth that could be potentially made would be concentrated into a few chosen subjects of the Crown, the Crown, and the Church. It didn't make sense to take big risks. Read it with 1493 by Charles Mann if you can.

I think it is well known, but the Spanish civil war and their south American conquests seem to come up much more often.

> presumably starting with a mere few dozen disciples--managed to proliferate so rapidly across different languages and cultures (from Rome to Egypt to Iran, etc.) despite facing competition and even persecution from other, previously established religions (such as those in India and the Roman Empire)

All those assumptions are questionable. There’s very little data on how Christianity got started and what happened for the first few centuries. Maybe it started with a few hundred followers and grew at a fairly “normal” rate, just a little faster than others.

In many places, Christians weren’t much persecuted. Ancient people were generally live-and-live about religion. Certain individual emperors would get concerned and try to persecute them, but their policies didn’t necessarily take much effect on the ground. Persecution often backfires and creates inspiring martyrs, then and now.

It does appear that fairly early on, the church was unusually literate and organized, which may have helped them grow faster than others. Maybe it was a coincidence from having a relatively urban, Jewish base. Also, the “established” religions weren’t really autonomous organizations, they were outgrowths of societies and ways of life. So, if you moved from rural Iran to Antioch, or were captured and enslaved, you might lose any connection to your original religion and be ready to pick up something new.

Most colonialism is because of trade.

The Spanish though.. they had to go much further to get to their colonies. In the end they were all about conquest and land claims.

It's simple enough. The French outright built trading ports and left the interior alone for the most part while the English and Duth built productive colonies based around a primary product to contribute to their trading empire. Tobacco and cotton for the English, furs for the French, sugar for the Dutch. There was a lot of overlap of course but those tended to be the major focuses.

The Spanish were more about building self contained, self sufficient communities that mostly did their own thing. A lot of what they built was plonked on top of extant civilizations and their infrastructure so unlike the other European states they tended to build administrative or bureaucratic cities in their colonies very early. It stands to reason, they had a MUCH larger initial population of natives to manage and the existing infrasturcture meant that large population centers could be built and maintained much earlier than the other European colonies that didn't have the bones of prior empires to build on.

While the French, British and Dutch focused on mercantilism for the most part, a lot of Spanish ideas of empire were still rooted in feudalism. Rather than dependent producer colonies or trading hubs the Spanish wanted fiefs that would manage their own affairs, keep their own peace under the authority of the Crown, pay their proper tribute, and answer their king's call to arms.

So yes, it is true that Spain was less focused on trade. Because their view of a proper empire required their colonies to be self sufficient while the British, French and Dutch model favored keeping the colonies dependent on the home country.