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What is Spanish Colonization About and Why Should I Care?Įver wonder how we, as modern Americans, got here?Īfter all, our society doesn't look much like the societies that existed here in the Western Hemisphere during the previous few thousand years. Say what you will about the conquistadors, but you can't say they weren't important. Does the phrase "Spanish language" ring any bells? Of course it does because more than 8% of the world speaks it as a first language. Ever notice that there are more than 400 million people who practice Catholicism in Latin America today? The conquest did that. See those horses and that wheat? The conquest brought those. To see the Spanish legacy, all you have to do is look around you. Hate 'em or hate 'em less, the Spanish explorers did leave a deep and lasting mark on the Americas. So, it's hard to say that anything "good" came out of the conquest, but that's the thing with history. The growth of a racially-mixed society eventually caused rifts to develop between Spain and its American colonies, and by 1824, all of Spain's New World colonies except Cuba and Puerto Rico had fought for and won their independence. Sound too good to be true? (For Spain, that is.) Well, it was. It was a pretty ugly time period for the Native Americans, who fought back and won some key battles, but in the end they were dealing with so many diseases that they weren't exactly in tip-top fighting shape. To add insult to smallpox, the Spanish explorers enslaved the Native Americans who weren't killed and then took their natural resources. Maybe the explorers thought they were bringing something great (religion and Catholicism) to the local tribes, but they actually brought diseases that killed millions of Native Americans.
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They also wanted to spread what they thought was the Best Religion Ever, Catholicism.
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They wanted riches and the eternal glory of being really cool by discovering the better water highway to Asia. From 1492 to the 1800s, Spanish explorers were the bullies of the New World.īeginning with Columbus in 1492 and continuing for nearly 350 years, Spain conquered and settled most of South America, the Caribbean, and the American Southwest.Ĭhristopher Columbus and his crew arrived in 1492 after sailing the ocean blue in a quest to find a faster trade route to Asia.