Questions tagged [spanish-empire]

The overseas territories held by Spain from the early 16th century. The twilight of the empire is generally considered to be the early 19th century although it did not formally end until 1975 when Spain withdrew from the Spanish Sahara.

Filter by
Sorted by
Tagged with
34 votes
10 answers
23k views

Why does Latin America have a higher number of surviving Native Americans than North America?

Despite having the same disease susceptibility and technological inferiority against the Europeans, it seems that Native Americans have much more surviving descendants in Latin America compared to ...
user69715's user avatar
  • 7,090
31 votes
2 answers
7k views

Please help identify these old coins found in Germany?

We found these two identical coins in our garden (near Wuerzburg, lower Franconia / northern Bavaria): Coin side A: coat-of-arms of sorts: (the scale units are centimetres / millimetres) Coin Side ...
FrankH.'s user avatar
  • 421
8 votes
2 answers
5k views

What were the ranks in the Army of Imperial Spain?

At the time of the Latin American wars of independence, the Imperial Spanish army employed men in ranks like Capitán (captain), Sargento (sergeant) and so on, between the King and the lowliest ...
Aaron Brick's user avatar
  • 27.7k
16 votes
5 answers
4k views

How did former Spanish colonies in the Americas become so fragmented?

If we only consider countries that are connected by land, there are 16 Spanish speaking countries in the Americas, totaling 11,301,072 km2 in area. That's only slightly larger than Canada (9,984,670 ...
Orion's user avatar
  • 3,784
10 votes
6 answers
4k views

Did native Mexicans prefer Spanish rulers to the Aztecs?

In his letter to Charles V, Hernan Cortes states that it was only necessary to threaten to return them [the natives] to their native masters in order to make them serve the Spaniards very willingly. ...
Nikolay Nenov's user avatar
51 votes
3 answers
8k views

Why didn't Portugal found universities in its colonies like Spain?

Imperial Spain and Portugal conquered and developed huge empires. Both monarchies were Catholic and seized huge amounts of land in the 1500s. Both European motherlands had numerous universities, but ...
Aaron Brick's user avatar
  • 27.7k
27 votes
5 answers
25k views

How did the gold of the new world cause the Spanish Empire to collapse?

There are some arguments that Spain over-exploited the precious metal deposits of the new world, leading to wide-scale inflation. This, coupled with their expulsion of Jewish money lenders, caused ...
Evil Washing Machine's user avatar
19 votes
7 answers
4k views

Spanish-American war from Spain's perspective?

What did the Spanish-American war look like from Spain's perspective? Did the general population support the war? What were the reasons why Spain lost, was the general public aware of these reasons ...
Ovi's user avatar
  • 2,094
18 votes
2 answers
5k views

How did Aztec armor and weaponry match up to the Spaniards?

If you discount the germs and the gunpowder, how did the average Aztec warrior match up against the average Spaniard facing him? As I understand it European metallurgy was considerably more advanced, ...
Nerrolken's user avatar
  • 7,692
12 votes
5 answers
27k views

What caused the decline of the Spanish empire?

What caused the gradual decline of the Spanish colonial empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? A post I read claimed that the Spanish overestimated their wealth, and my teacher pointed ...
Ovi's user avatar
  • 2,094
6 votes
4 answers
998 views

Which is more correct, Carlos I or Carlos V?

I asked this in the Spanish StackExchange and they send me here. One very well known emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) is known as Charles V (or in Spanish: Carlos V), but it is also known as ...
Moritz's user avatar
  • 789
6 votes
1 answer
632 views

How many Manila Galleons were sacked and by whom?

From the 1500s into the 1800s New Spain operated the "Manila Galleon" trade route across the Pacific. Something over four hundred huge, wealthy ships sailed, and of course they did not all arrive. ...
Aaron Brick's user avatar
  • 27.7k
4 votes
1 answer
615 views

What would the Wikipedia page for Spain have said in 1490?

I'm trying to understand the Spanish empire prior to the discovery of America - I'm not looking for a book length answer, just a broad summary like what would have been on a Wikipedia page at that ...
Samid's user avatar
  • 2,202
3 votes
2 answers
581 views

Who was the first retailer in Monterey, California?

There were no businesses in the Spanish presidio at Monterey. Trade goods from the missions and passing ships came through, but there wasn't much to buy. Outside the fort, what was the first fixed-...
Aaron Brick's user avatar
  • 27.7k