Empirical Spain Analysis

An Analysis of the Rise and Fall of Empirical Spain The European continent as a whole boasts an impressive list of nations and cultures of times past and present that dominated the world. One nation in particular, Spain, held a fairly impressive empire worth noting from the Fifteenth century to roughly the late Seventeenth, early eighteenth century. What is important about each Empire that the world has seen is what allowed it to become an empire; what allowed the nation to prosper and expand, as well as what led to that empire’s decline if one occurred. Only upon such reflection can a society collectively learn and improve. The Spanish Empire itself gained ground competitively largely through exploration and image. Its downfall, on the other …show more content…
Charles V chose to consider the foreign lands that Spain had claimed as independent states united by obedience to the Crown, each realm having its own custom laws and institutions with a common central administration devoted to the King’s rule . Because Spain’s resources were so minimal, the Americas were the key to filling in gaps for the nation’s financial and supply needs. The Americas were essentially the future of empirical development in wealth, resource, prestige, and military ability. Charles V knew this, and made it his directive to channel gold, slaves, and supplies from the new world directly into the Spanish Empire. These resources and prospects of wealth allowed Spain to recover from any debts they had accumulated up to the exploitation of the new world. Wealth, power, land, and people’s support are the key elements to any successful empire, and Charles V had just filled in the missing prerequisites for said empire and the start of a “Golden …show more content…
By the late Seventeenth century, Spain’s economy began to decline, aggravated by the large number of imperial commitments it had in the world, largely affected by the poor structural details that Spain managed to survive with throughout its empirical growth . Spain had issues with debt, managing wealth, and maintaining supply lines to the Americas amongst competing nations. Once settlements began independently operating, they began to opt toward cheaper forms of trade. Spain saw decreasing benefit in settling colonies they could not firmly maintain control of because they often strayed from the Empire’s main goals without the military presence Spain lacked overseas. Spain’s lack of financial structure, military presence, and ability to adequately maintain trade with the new world caused the Empire’s hold in the West to crack. In fact, historian Robert Merriman noted that Spain’s poor structure and ill-prepared military presence “…combined to overwhelm her with a load of responsibilities, all over the world, so tremendous that she could not carry it for long.” Spain had developed a decent empire by the late sixteenth century; however, it was barely clinging on to the lands in the West it had once ruled in the fifteenth century. Spaniards as a whole were also no longer supportive of the imperial movement as they were during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs. Also the few coastal settlements that were