Answer:The Spanish colonization of the Americas began under the Crown of Castile and spearheaded by the Spanish conquistadors. The Americas were invaded and incorporated into the Spanish Empire, with the exception of Brazil, British America, and some small regions in South America and the Caribbean. The crown created civil and religious structures to administer this vast territory. The main motivations for colonial expansion were profit and the spread of Catholicism through indigenous conversions.
The Spanish empire in the Americas was formed after conquering indigenous empires and claiming large stretches of continental North and South America, beginning with Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean Islands. In the early 16th century, it conquered and incorporated the Aztec and Inca empires, retaining indigenous elites loyal to the Spanish crown and converts to Christianity as intermediaries between their communities and royal government.[1][2] After a short period of delegation of authority by the crown in the Americas, the crown asserted control over those territories and established the Council of the Indies to oversee rule there.[3]
It is estimated that during the colonial period (1492–1832), a total of 1.86 million Spaniards settled in the Americas and a further 3.5 million immigrated during the post-colonial era (1850–1950); the estimate is 250,000 in the 16th century, and most during the 18th century as immigration was encouraged by the new Bourbon Dynasty.[4] By contrast, the indigenous population plummeted by an estimated 80% in the first century and a half following Columbus's voyages, primarily through the spread of Afro-Eurasian disease.[5][6][7][8] This has been argued to be the first large-scale act of genocide in the modern era.[9][10][11]
The crown established viceroyalties in the two main areas of settlement, Mexico and Peru, both regions of dense indigenous populations and mineral wealth. The Magellan-Elcano circumnavigation—the first circumnavigation of the Earth—laid the foundation for the Pacific oceanic empire of Spain and began the Spanish colonization of the Philippines which would be administered from Mexico.
The structure of governance of its overseas empire was significantly reformed in the late 18th century by the Bourbon monarchs. Although the crown attempted to keep its empire a closed economic system under Habsburg rule, Spain was unable to supply the Indies with sufficient consumer goods to meet demand, so that foreign merchants from Genoa, France, England, Germany, and the Netherlands dominated the trade, with silver from the mines of Peru and Mexico flowing to other parts of Europe.
In the early 19th century, the Spanish American wars of independence resulted in the secession and subsequent division of most Spanish territories in the Americas, except for Cuba and Puerto Rico, which were finally lost to The United States in 1898, following the Spanish–American War. The loss of these territories ended Spanish rule in the Americas.
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