Factors That Brought the Spanish Colonization to the

859 Words4 Pages
Factors that Brought the Spanish Colonization to the Philippines My knowledge on this is sketchy at best. Spain wanted a trade route into the east for goods and spices. Since Portugal had a monopoly on trade with Japan, Spain needed to find another country willing to trade with them and establish a trading post in the East. Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese Sailor who fell out of favor with the Portuguese court had long been toying with the idea of circumnavigating the world(everyone thought the world was flat, so if you sailed the opposite way to the West you'd fall off the Earth, Magellan believed the theory that the Earth was round and that if you sailed far enough west, you'd end up in the east), but he needed a financier to fund such a journey since no one thought such a journey was possible and considered it a gamble because no one has done it before, so he approached King Felipe and Queen Isabella of Spain with a proposal to conquer any land he comes across in the name of Spain in return for ships, crew and supplies, the Spanish couple were desperate for new lands and trade route so they took a gamble and gave Magellan 3 ships, a crew, supplies and a mandate to conquer in the name of Spain. The rest is history. Since Europe lost the Crusades, trade in Europe lost access to goods available in the Orient, spices, silk etc. The Portuguese had locked in the eastward trade and Spain, to survive economically with a growing economic power next door, had to discover a westward route. When they stumbled into the Philippines, they found Muslims- LOL. I would have loved to have seen their reactions. But more importantly, they found no Portuguese had claimed the area. They had their foothold in Asia and the keys to Oriental trade for Europe. The Americas were an accident. The Philippines was really where they wanted to be all along. Spanish colonization Permanent
Open Document