The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century | Page 2

the grandeur and nobility of the Spanish national
character, Spain was then neither rich nor populous, nor industrious.
For centuries she had been called upon to wage a continuous warfare
with the Moors, and during this time had not only found little leisure to
cultivate the arts of peace, but had acquired a disdain for manual work
which helped to mould her colonial administration and influenced all
her subsequent history. And when the termination of the last of these
wars left her mistress of a united Spain, and the exploitation of her own
resources seemed to require all the energies she could muster, an entire
new hemisphere was suddenly thrown open to her, and given into her
hands by a papal decree to possess and populate. Already weakened by
the exile of the most sober and industrious of her population, the Jews;

drawn into a foreign policy for which she had neither the means nor the
inclination; instituting at home an economic policy which was almost
epileptic in its consequences, she found her strength dissipated, and
gradually sank into a condition of economic and political impotence.
Christopher Columbus, a Genoese sailor in the service of the Castilian
Crown, wishing to find a western route by sea to India and especially to
Zipangu (Japan), the magic land described by the Venetian traveller,
Marco Polo, landed on 12th October 1492, on "Guanahani," one of the
Bahama Islands. From "Guanahani" he passed on to other islands of the
same group, and thence to Hispaniola, Tortuga and Cuba. Returning to
Spain in March 1493, he sailed again in September of the same year
with seventeen vessels and 1500 persons, and this time keeping farther
to the south, sighted Porto Rico and some of the Lesser Antilles,
founded a colony on Hispaniola, and discovered Jamaica in 1494. On a
third voyage in 1498 he discovered Trinidad, and coasted along the
shores of South America from the Orinoco River to the island of
Margarita. After a fourth and last voyage in 1502-04, Columbus died at
Valladolid in 1506, in the firm belief that he had discovered a part of
the Continent of Asia.
The entire circle of the Antilles having thus been revealed before the
end of the fifteenth century, the Spaniards pushed forward to the
continent. While Hojida, Vespucci, Pinzon and de Solis were exploring
the eastern coast from La Plata to Yucatan, Ponce de Leon in 1512
discovered Florida, and in 1513 Vasco Nunez de Balboa descried the
Pacific Ocean from the heights of Darien, revealing for the first time
the existence of a new continent. In 1520 Magellan entered the Pacific
through the strait which bears his name, and a year later was killed in
one of the Philippine Islands. Within the next twenty years Cortez had
conquered the realm of Montezuma, and Pizarro the empire of Peru;
and thus within the space of two generations all of the West Indies,
North America to California and the Carolinas, all of South America
except Brazil, which the error of Cabral gave to the Portuguese, and in
the east the Philippine Islands and New Guinea passed under the sway
of the Crown of Castile.

Ferdinand and Isabella in 1493 had consulted with several persons of
eminent learning to find out whether it was necessary to obtain the
investiture of the Pope for their newly-discovered possessions, and all
were of opinion that this formality was unnecessary.[1] Nevertheless,
on 3rd May 1493, a bull was granted by Pope Alexander VI., which
divided the sovereignty of those parts of the world not possessed by
any Christian prince between Spain and Portugal by a meridian line
100 leagues west of the Azores or of Cape Verde. Later Spanish writers
made much of this papal gift; yet, as Georges Scelle points out,[2] it is
possible that this bull was not so much a deed of conveyance, investing
the Spaniards with the proprietorship of America, as it was an act of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction according them, on the strength of their
acquired right and proven Catholicism, a monopoly as it were in the
propagation of the faith. At that time, even Catholic princes were no
longer accustomed to seek the Pope's sanction when making a new
conquest, and certainly in the domain of public law the Pope was not
considered to have temporal jurisdiction over the entire world. He did,
however, intervene in temporal matters when they directly influenced
spiritual affairs, and of this the propagation of the faith was an instance.
As the compromise between Spain and Portugal was very indecisive,
owing to the difference in longitude of the Azores and Cape Verde, a
second Act was signed on 7th June 1494, which placed the line of
demarcation 270 leagues farther to the west.
The colonization of the Spanish Indies, on its social