Spanish Empire Research Paper

Within fifty years of Christopher Columbus discovering the New World, the Spanish empire had gained almost complete control of Central America and the majority of South America. Furthermore, the Spanish controlled large portions of southern Europe, including much of Italy, Austria, and the Netherlands. The success of the Spanish empire began its gradual decline in the seventeenth century. Many factors contributed to the ultimate demise of the Spanish empire, but the main cause of the fall of the empire was Spain’s poor economic decisions. The Spanish government delegitimized their currency, overextended their empire, and created an army that they could not financially maintain all within the seventeenth century. Additionally, they continued to get involved in
Consequently, other European leaders, such as Elizabeth I of England, capitalized on of their economic mistakes. The decline of the Spanish empire transpired because the Spanish government improperly handled their new-found wealth and lost piles of it to piracy, which lead to their eventual bankruptcy and demise as one of the most significant European powers of the era. The year 1492 sparked the dawn of an empire. When Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas he unlocked a world of untold wealth and power for Spain. Within the homeland, Spain exhibited “a lack of natural advantages…Yet, in the last years of the fifteenth century and the opening years of the sixteenth, it seemed suddenly, and even miraculously overcome” (Elliot 1). They expanded their empire to the farthest reaches of the earth claiming land in places as close as Africa and as far as the Philippines. Their conquests in the New World provided them with a new source of resources,