Downfall of Spain and France
“Critics who claim that Europe’s wealth was built on the exploitation of people overseas have some justification, but the experiences of Spain and France demonstrate that exploitation alone was not enough. To build and sustain wealth, countries must be able to use wealth effectively.” Spain and France are two countries that mastered the art of using people overseas to benefit themselves, and gain power. But with so much success overseas, how did two of the worlds most powerful nations of their time essentially lose their places as world leaders, and dig such insurmountable trenches for themselves that may never be completely filled? Are there any similarities in the downfall of these two once great world powers? The two major regional areas of Spain came together in 1469 when Ferdinand of Aragon married Isabella of Castile, and more territory was added yet again, or re-won, in 1492 with the completion of the “reconquista” when all Muslims and Jews were run out of Spain. Another renowned event of the same year was the accidental discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus who had sought to establish a route to the Indies. Following this remarkable discovery, colonists . . .
Spain would never again be the same. Spain then entered a century-long decline. But how could Spain be on the wane with so much wealth coming in from the Americas? There are a number of different reasons for this: · Spain had no banks and instruments of exchange to store and transmit money. The northern Netherlands, and Holland, won its independence in 1609. · There was no coherent government planning to infuse American wealth into the economy in some productive way. France was beginning to follow a similar path that its neighbor Spain had done not long before it. Suffering defeats at sea, the French retreated from their colonial positions. Rather than being used on investment, money was spent to build churches, palaces, and monasteries. He was raised in Flounders by his father’s family, knew no Spanish, and in fact could rarely be found in Spain. When Charles entered into wars against the Ottoman Turkish Empire in the Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, and into the Christian religious wars of Catholic versus Protestant in northern and central Europe, he bankrupted even the silver-rich treasury of Spain. Napoleon also helped the country to recover financially by establishing a national bank, the Bank of France, in 1803. ” Other reasons for the increase in national debt were: · Dramatic population expansion from 1730 to 1770. About the time that Spain was beginning to decline in power, another great nation was in the making. They lacked commercial intelligence as well as efficient means of transporting goods. In the peace settlement at Paris in 1763, at the end of the Seven Years’ war, they turned over their immense, but thinly populated, holdings in North America east of the Mississippi to the British and those west of the Mississippi to Spain.
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