Spain Research Paper

Spain was one of the pioneers of colonialism.But as the time passed Spain could not keep up with other European powers? In your opinion what would have changed Spain’s destiny?

Old Colonialism started with 15th century.Spain and Portugal were the first to send their men to discover.In the end, Spain went to Latin America and looked for gold and silver there. Spain took away the resources that used to be common to the indigenous population (gold&silver, man power) and used these resources to cover its consumption and war expenses. Spainish also tried to Christinize indigenous people. Spain was one of the earliest colonial empires but why it could not keep up with others, what caused its downfall? Spanish were benefiting from the colonial regions while imposing devastating social and economic changes and ironically these changes had no lasting benefit to the colonial empires either. Spain used the gold and silver for the consumption of Spainish elite which caused unproductive investment in government buildings and private villas. Cheaper luxury good were improted from Holland and Britain which created a flow of Spanish gold and silver to other European powers. The popular saying “Spanish held the cow and the Dutch milked it” was coming from here.

Mexico

while Spain was purely exploiting Latin America. A good example for this is the case of Mexico. When we compare British in US and Spanish in Mexico we see that net burden of colonial rule in North America is just 0.3 while the estimated annual burden of Spanish colonialism (with taxes &cost of not trading with other countries) was 7.2 percent of national income.Spain also could not manage the money flow because it lacked a banking system which might have function efficient intermediary between savers and