The Trade Empire

The New World had been reserved for a limited part of Spain; only for the kingdoms of Castille and Leon Columbus had discovered it. It was to give the Spanish government access to the precious commodities of the East. And it offered an opportunity to the nations’ missionary zeal for the prolongation of the “Reconquista” among the heathens of the new world, after the fall of Granada had deprived it of the last European outlet for its spiritual energies. Spain did not look for lands to settle a superabundant population; she had none to spare. Her government, moreover, early recognized the dangers in which these far-distant settlements ruled by ruthless conquerors might involve the metropolis. Its original economic concepts were commercial. So were those of the Portuguese, who had founded a mercantile empire by the conquest of Asiatic trading posts and by sweeping Arab merchant fleets from the Indian Ocean, but who did not want to found a territorial colonial empire. “Pepper and souls” were the objects of the Portuguese crusaders, ¹ who were quickly transformed into conquering traders; “silver and souls” was the Spaniards’ equivalent. Their government spent the precious metals on the armies and navies who were fighting for the world empire of the Habsburg Dynasty and for the supremacy of the Catholic faith. Charles V bore the crowns of a united Spain, of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation and of its possessions and claims in Italy. For a fleeting moment the conception of “World Empire” arose once more on a genuine worldwide scale. The conquest of the New World, west of the great line, stretched the territorial limits of his empire beyond the dreams even of the great Alexander. This new Imperialism was Spanish, Catholic, and Universal; it was to give to the Emperor the control of the world, the Imperium mundi. “Neither day nor night limit it, the setting sun looks upon it and the sun looks upon it when it rises in the New World.”