How Did Spain Build The Spanish Empire

In the early 1500 the Spanish empire and its rulers kept spending money that they did not have, and as time went on and each leader came and went they kept losing more and more power. The time period that I focused on was the age of exploration and the reasons why the empire of Spain fell. Carlos the first was ruled from 1516-1556. During his rule they conquered the Inca and the Aztec empires and established and empire that had two administrative divisions. The first was the Vice royalty of New Spain that was located in North America in 1521 and the Vice royalty of Peru which was located in South America and was established in 1542. The Aztec and Inca empire were easily conquered by the Spanish because their administrative structures were the

It isn’t clear that Spain had benefited much from the discovery of silver. Rich countries can often find their in to unnecessary and expensive wars, and Spain was no different. In the year of 1519 which was a great year for Spain, Charles V united the kingdoms of Spain and Austria by being named the Holy Roman empire. King Charles V had a vision of a unified central Europe which couldn’t happen cause of the German nobles. He then gave the Austrian half of his kingdom to his son Ferdinand, and Spain with the resources from the Americas in 1556. Phillip inherited land in the Americas, Europe, Philippines. Shortly into in his rule there was a rebellion in the Netherlands. The rebellion grew and soon the English sided with the Dutch, there was then an invasion of England, which was called the Spanish Armada in 1588. England proceeded to destroy the Spanish armada which ultimately lead to a great period of time in England of wealth and national

Spain at this point had lost so much power that they were also losing land in the Americas. Most of the silver mines went to the Europeans, but at least one third of the mines went to China, either directly transported by Spanish galleons of indirectly by the purchase of Chinese goods. “A significant hunk of the GDP of China- then the world’s biggest economy- was surrendered in order secure a white metal that was produced in the Spanish America and Japan… Think what else those resources could have been used for.” -Dennis Flynn. The Spanish empire’s silver trade was the first truly global market and its consequences were dire, even if it did make some people. Both Spain and China experienced inflation that made their governments weaker for a while. The environment suffered and the search for all of the precious metals led the Spanish to find and eventually destroy two of the world’s great empires, the Aztecs and Inca. And many thousands were killed mining silver and the mercury used to refine it. Through all of this it leads Spain in a great struggle to rebuild, one future leaders would have to figure