Jason Porter

CRN: 22225
Was Spain Conquest of the Americas a Success or a Disaster?
Was Spains conquest of the Americas a success or a disaster? What were their
goals; did they achieve it? From my point of view, Spains conquest of the Americas was
a monumental success. This is because Spain gained territory, great wealth and people
to convert to Catholicism. This paper will examine the successes of the Spanish
colonization of the new world as well as the positive impact they had.
Spain conquered and colonized the majority of South, Central and North American,
as well as the Caribbean. There were four main factors that helped Spain have success
in the Americas. The first is the period of intellectual and artistic flowering during the 14th
and 15th centuries. The Renaissance celebrated human possibility, an outlook that
motivated Europeans to explore the world. (Old Worlds Collide slide) Second is the
success Spain had over the conquest over the Muslims in Spain that had the military
wanting to conquer. (Old Worlds Collide slide) Another factor is that Columbus
discovered the West Indies under the Spanish flag. The last is that Pope Alexander VI,
his decreed in the bull Inter caetera and the Treaty of Tordesillas. These two factors
divided the new world into two parts, the Spanish and Portuguese. The territory gain was
in four main parts. The South American territory comes from the Inca Empire which is
present day Peru. From there the territory heads north through much of Central America
to North American which consisted of Aztec territory in Mexico to California, Texas, and
parts of Florida. Most of the islands of the Caribbeans were also conquered. As Thomas
A. Bailey said, As the realization gradually dawned that the American continents where

a rich prize in their own right, Spain became the dominant exploring and colonizing power
in the 1500s. The bare statistics of Spains colonial empire are impressive. By 1574,
thirty-three years before the first primitive English shelters in Virginia, there were about
two hundred Spanish cities and towns in North and South America. A total of 160,000
Spanish inhabitants. (Hollitz, p. 13)
The Treasure Fleets of Spain brought back a huge amount of wealth. First off the
wealth of the treasure fleet wasnt just gold, silver or gems. It included tradable goods
such as lumber, tobacco, spices, sugar and food unique to the Americas. This influx of
new tradable goods, gold, silver and precious metals, helped Spain become one of the
richest countries and a major world power. It was this wealth that spurred on a turn of
events that shaped today. The success that Spain was having, as well as the amount of
wealth the treasure fleets were bringing back, caused the other European countries, the
English, French, and Dutch, to establish their own colonies. This caused the golden age
of pirates, the colonies of England in the north and the French Colonies along the
Mississippi. The trade from these colonies and back, brought technology and resources
to the natives.
The size of the population that Spain converted to Catholicism was a massive
undertaking. The conversion to Catholicism in the Americas not only changed the religion
of the population but changed the culture. A lot of these changes are felt today. Most of
the territories that Spain held are catholic even today. The language and traditions from
Spain are also mixed into the culture. The Spanish didnt just push out and conquer the
natives, they went about to integrate them into the society. As Thomas A. Bailey said,
Majestic cathedrals dotted the land, printing presses were turning out books, and literary

prizes were being awarded. Two distinguished universities were charted in 1551, one at
Mexico City and the other at Lima, Peru. Both of them antedated Harvard, the first college
in the English colonies, by eighty-five years. It is clear that the Spaniards, who had more
than a centurys head start over the English, were genuine empire builders. As compared
with their Anglo-Saxon rivals, their colonial establishment was larger and richer and as
an entity lasted quarter of a century longer. The English settlers, disagreeable though the
thought may be, were more successful than the Spaniards in killing off the Indians...
(Hollitz, p. 14)
If you look at the goals of Spain when they conquered the Americans, they were
successful. Spain gained territory that lasted for a long time, they held the majority of the
Americas. They gained riches that turned them into a major world power. They also
converted the population of the territories they held to be Catholicism. If you look at the
territories that Spain once held, today the majority are Catholic and Spanish speaking
countries. If you look at their goals they were hugely successful and had a huge impact
in the Americas and Europe.

Works Cited
Cartwright, B. (2015, January 27). Old Worlds Collide.
Hollitz, J. (n.d.). Thinking Through the Past, Volume 1 (5th Ed.). Cengage.