The Caribbean: The First Hundred Years of European Colonization

Flag of Castile and León, House of Habsburg Rule Style (16th-17th Centuries).
By Heralder - History of the flag, Spanish Army[1]Style: Menéndez-Pidal De Navascués, Faustino; El escudo; Menéndez Pidal y Navascués, Faustino; O´Donnell, Hugo; Lolo, Begoña. Símbolos de España. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 1999. [[:en:ISBN|ISBN 84-259-1074-9]], CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25596589

Western Europe passed from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration (Age of Discovery) in the fifteenth century. Under the leadership of Prince Henry the navigator, the kingdom of Portugal, a seafaring nation located on the southwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula, began exploring west into the Atlantic and south down the west coast of Africa.

Portugal claimed the Madeira Islands west of Morocco in 1419 and the Azores west of Portugal in about 1427.

In 1451, Cristoffa Corombo, also known as Christopher Columbus, was born in the Republic of Genoa. In 1473, he began his apprenticeship as business agent for several wealthy families of Genoa. His travel for these families landed him in Lisbon where he married Felipa Moniz Perestrelo, the daughter of a Portuguese nobleman. This marriage gave him access to the nobility of Portugal. Columbus’ travel as business agent took him down the coast of West Africa, a coastline being explored by Portuguese navigators.

Columbus, who believed he could sail to the East Indies by sailing west rather than south, took his proposal to King John II of Portugal but his proposal was overshadowed by the Portuguese successes in sailing south. By 1486, Columbus, who must have realized that his efforts to convince King John were in vain, left Portugal for Spain to seek patronage from King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile.

Iberia in 1492. Map of the Iberian Peninsula, 1270-1492, showing the kingdoms of Portugal, Castile, Navarre, Granada, Aragon, and Majorca. Located June 12, 2023. Public Domain.https://www.ncpedia.org/media/map/iberia-1492.

While Columbus was in Spain, the Portuguese continued to have success sailing down the west coast of Africa. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias arrived at the Cape of Good Hope near the southern tip of Africa and Cabo das Agulhas then sailed around the actual southernmost point of Africa that divided the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans. The cape is now known as Cape L’Agulhas.

Columbus’ proposal to Ferdinand and Isabella was not well received at first. Finally, in April 1492, Queen Isabella relented and financed Columbus' voyage, not because she thought the proposal was sound but rather she knew that if she did not, another kingdom would. Afterall, Columbus had sought financing from Portugal first and now his brother was on his way to England to petition King Henry VII.

On the third of August, Columbus sailed from Palos de la Frontera, a town on the southwestern Ibearian coast, with his three ships, the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. On the twelfth of October, he landed on the island of Guanahani in the Bahamas which he called the San Salvidor. Although Columbus believed he was in the East Indies, he claimed the West Indies and all the Americas for God and his benefactor, Queen Isabella, and her kingdom of Castile.

A New and accurate chart of the West Indies with the adjacent coasts of North and South America by Emanuel Bowenl (1767) and Jessica Lee. Reproduced from the original from the Geography & Map Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C., May 30, 2023. https://www.loc.gov/item/95684859

During this, Columbus’ first of four trans-Atlantic expeditions, he visited Cuba and Hispaniola before returning to Spain in early 1493. Later that year, Columbus made his second Atlantic crossing sailing with seventeen ships and twelve hundred men. Rather than enter the Caribbean from the Bahamas, he approached from the south and worked his way up the Lesser Antilles: Dominica, Guadalupe, Montserrat, Redondo, and Antigua, before reaching Puerto Rico and Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles. After spending some time on Hispaniola establishing a colony, he set out for Cuba and Jamaica.

On this second voyage, Columbus brought sugarcane to the Caribbean. Sugar would become the cash crop of the Caribbean. Columbus’ second voyage marked the beginning of the Spanish colonization of the New World.

Columbus’ claim of the Antilles for Castile created a conflict with the 1481 papal bull that affirmed Portuguese claims to all the non-Christian lands south of the Canary Islands.

Castile, by sailing west, and Portugal, by sailing south, did not have irreconcilable competing interests in land bordering on the Atlantic Oceans. These two Catholic kingdoms agreed in 1494 to divide the world by drawing a line from pole to pole down the Atlantic Oceans along a meridian three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, islands off the west coast of Africa. The treaty also divided trading and colonization rights. Castile received the exclusive right to lands west of this line (the Americas less Brazil); Portugal received the exclusive right to lands east of this line (west Africa and Brazil). The formalities became the Treaty of Tordesillas. Pope Alexander VI, in recognition of Isabella and Ferdinand’s defense of the Catholic faith within their kingdoms, officially bestowed upon them the title “Catholic King and Queen.”

Castile proceeded to settle the four largest islands in the Caribbean Sea: Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. Large sugar plantations were developed in Cuba and Hispaniola and they required the labor of enslaved people. The first known sugar mills in the Caribbean were in the colony of San Domingo in southeastern Hispaniola in 1506. Also, gold was mined from open-pit mines. The plantations and the mines were labor intensive. After exhausting the availability of enslaved labor from the indigenous population and the enslaved people at home, Castile turned its attention to West Africa. Soon the number of enslaved Africans outnumbers the Castilian settlers. By 1574, for example, a census listed Hispaniola’s population as 1,000 Spaniards and 12,000 enslaved Africans.

Jamaica, on the other hand, had fewer sugar plantations and it existed for its food, hides, and ship repair. The population of Jamaica reflects the different agricultural practices between Jamaica and Hispaniola. In the early 1600s, Jamaica’s population was only between 2,500 and 3,000.

In 1508, Juan Ponce de León, who first came to the Caribbean as a “gentleman volunteer" with Columbus’ second voyage in 1493, founded the first settlement in Puerto Rico, the smallest of the four islands settled by the Castillians. Early Puerto Rico was an agricultural economy and produced sugar cane, tobacco, coffee, and cocoa for export to Castile.

Meanwhile in 1500, Pedro Alvares Cabral sailed from Portugal intending to land on the west coast of Africa. He missed his destination and landed in Brazil. Cabral claimed Brazil for Portugal. Under the Treaty of Tordesillas, Portugal had the exclusive right to Brazil. Now that the Portuguese knew about Brazil, they took advantage of the Treaty of Tordesillas by harvesting brazilwood trees located in the coastal forests. The dense, orange-red heartwood produced a marketable red dye. The forests, once cleared, were replaced by sugar plantations. After the indigenous population was decimated, the Portuguese also imported enslaved Africians.

Back in the Old World

When the Castillians and the Portuguese were exploring the oceans, the English and French were fighting a series of wars that became known as the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453). The wars originated over competing claims to the French throne between the English House of Plantagenet and the French House of Valois. Finally, the French army defeated the English army at Castillon to end the war.

The English then turned inward and fought a series of civil wars over control of the English throne. These wars, that became known as the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485), were fought between two rival cadet branches of the royal House of Plantagenet: the House of Lancaster (represented by a red rose) and the House of York (represented by a white rose). These extended wars extinguished the male lines of both houses, leading to the Tudor family of Wales inheriting the Lancaster claim through Lady Margaret Beaufort, a descendant of King Edward III.

This power struggle came to a head in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field when the army of Henry Tudor defeated the army of King Richard III. Richard died on the battlefield and Henry claimed the throne of England and the Lordship of Ireland as Henry VII. He married Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter and sole heir of Edward IV, thereby uniting the rival claims and ending the Wars of the Roses. The two roses were combined to form the Tudor rose.

King Henry VII reigned for nearly twenty-four years. His foreign policy was to maintain peace and his domestic policy was to create economic prosperity. He entered into a number of treaties and trade agreements to further these goals. He stabilized his government’s finances by creating a financial council that created and collected new taxes.

Henry and Elizabeth had four children who survived childhood: Arthur, Margaret, Henry, and Mary. In 1502, Arthur married Catherine, the youngest daughter of Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon. Five months after their marriage, Arthur contracted the mysterious “sweating sickness” and died. The next year, Margaret Tudor, Henry and Elizabeth’s elder daughter, left England to marry James IV, the King of Scotland.

As Columbus was exploring the West Indies for Castile, the English began their exploration further north. Henry VII contracted with John Cabot, an English born navigator, to sail westward in search for a western passage to the East Indies. In 1497, Cabot left Bristol, England, but found his path west blocked by North America. His exploration was the earliest known European exploration of the North American coast since the Norse visited Vinland in the eleventh century.

Events that Changed the World

Henry VII died in 1509 and he was succeeded by his second son who became Henry VIII. Within a few months of his father’s death, Henry married Catherine of Aragon, the widow of his older brother, Arthur.

Eight years after Henry VIII became king, the first of four events took place that would change western Europe and the Americas forever.

In 1517, Martin Luther posted his ninety-five theses on a church door in Germany thereby beginning the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic Church was being challenged and Lutheranism would spread through much of Germany, Scandinavia, and eastern France.

Lutheranism differed from Roman Catholicism in their views on the authority of the Scripture, how individuals achieve salvation, and the observance of certain sacraments.

The second event, this time half-way around the world in the Caribbean, was taking place. Hermán Cortés sailed from Cuba to conquer the Aztec Empire and the Mayan Civilization in Mexico. Francisco Pizarro followed with his conquest of the Inca Empire in Peru. These conquests led to the discovery of silver mines in Potosí (modern Bolivia) followed by silver and gold mines in modern Mexico and Peru. Cartagena, Colombia, Portobelo, Panama, and Veracruz, Mexico, were to become important ports for the shipment of silver and gold to Spain.

Third, another Protestant movement was beginning in German Switzerland. In 1519 Huldrych Zwingli was preaching against ecclesial corruption, fasting, the requirement of celibacy on the clergy, the veneration of saints, and excommunication thereby setting the stage for the Swiss Reformation. In around 1530, John Calvin, a French theologian and contemporary of Zwingli broke from the Roman Catholic Church. In 1532, he published his first book, a commentary on Seneca’s De Clementi. Calvin was forced to flee France during the Affair of the Placards in mid-October 1534. In that incident, reformers had posted placards in various cities criticizing the Roman Catholic mass, to which adherents of the church responded with violence against the reformers and their sympathizers. In January 1535, Calvin moved to Switzerland and the next year published Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Calvinism (Reformed Protestantism or simply Reformed) spread into western and southern France, the Netherlands, parts of Germany and central Europe. In France, Calvinists were called Huguenots. Calvinism differed from Lutheranism as to atonement, salvation, predestination, sovereignty, and grace.

Fourth, the mass enslavement of people from West Africa and their forced relocation to the Americas created a racial hierarchy that continues to haunt the world. As the indigenous people were enslaved, they were put to work on the plantations and in the mines. Soon, many died from the infectious European diseases, harsh working conditions, and armed conflict. The Treaty of Tordesillas, by giving Portugal the west coast of Africa, denied Castile a direct supply of enslaved labor. Castile was not to be denied. It created a monopoly contract call “asiento de negroes.” Under this triangular system, a country or company could seek the exclusive right to sell enslaved Africans in the Spanish Caribbean. A ship with the asiento contract would leave a European port with a cargo that could be sold or traded in a West African port for enslaved people. The ship would transport them across the Atlantic and auction them in a Spanish Caribbean port (this leg of the triangle was known as “the middle passage”) and return to the European port with sugar, rum and other commodities from the Caribbean.

Castile Dominates the Caribbean in the 16th Century

Castile’s control of the Caribbean during the 1500s went unchallenged except for harassment by pirates and privateers. For example, when the silver mines opened at Potosí high in the Bolivian Andes in 1545, silver would be carried by llamas and mules down to the Pacific coast port of Arica in northern Chile to be shipped north to Panama City, then carried by mule train across the Isthmus of Panama to Nombre de Dios on the Caribbean coast for shipment to Havana and then to Castile. The silver did not always reach Havana. In 1572, Francis Drake, an English explorer and privateer, sacked Nombre de Dios. The next year, he was joined by the French privateer, Guillaume Le Testu, and they ambushed the Spanish silver train that was carrying the Potosí silver across the isthmus. When Drake returned to England, Queen Elizabeth I received her share of his plunder. Before the end of the century, Portobelo, a more easily protected harbor, had replaced Numbre de Dios, for the shipment of Peruvian silver.

For almost a century, Castile was the only kingdom settling on the mainland of the Americas. In 1510, Diego de Nicuesa founded Numbre de Dios as a Castillion colony on the Isthmus of Panama. It remains one of the earliest continuously inhabited European settlements in the continental Americas. As Hernán Cortés was invading Mexico in 1519, he founded the port of Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico. After conquering the Aztec Empire in 1521, he rebuilt the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, and renamed it Mexico City. In 1535, the Crown of Castile (the union of the crowns of Castile and León) established New Spain as a viceroyalty and located it in Mexico City. A viceroy was appointed who was loyal to the king rather than to Cortés. Under this viceroyalty, Acapulco, on the Pacific coast, was founded (1550) as was St. Augustine in northeast Florida (1565), and Portobelo in Panama (1597).

At the same time, northern South America was being colonized. In 1529, the Crown of Castile formed the Governorate of New Castile and appointed Francisco Pizarro as its governor with its capital at Jauja, Peru. Pizarro was the first governor of New Castle and the Captain General of New Castle from 1529 until his assignation in 1541. During his tenure, Maracaibo in northwest Venezuela was founded (1529), followed by Cartaguena in Colombia (1533). In 1529, Pizarro was given permission to lead a campaign to conquer the Incas of Peru. Within several years, 1531-1533, Pizarro, his brothers, and their indigenous allies conquered the Inca Empire. Lima was founded in 1535 and the Castillian capital moved there. Two years later, Lima’s neighboring port city of Callao on the Pacific Ocean was founded. Callao became the main port for Spanish commerce in the Pacific. All goods from Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina were carried over the Andes by mules to Callao to be shipped to Panama, carried over land to Nombre de Dios on the Caribbean coast (or after 1598 to Portobelo) for shipment to Havana and then to Castile. Arica, Chile, on the northern Chilean coast, eleven miles south of the Peruvian border, was founded in 1541. Santiago, Chile, a thousand miles to the south of Arica, also was founded in 1541.

King Charles I of Castile, Isabella and Ferdanand’s grandson, created a viceroyalty of Peru in 1542 and three years later, silver was discovered in Potosí and this led to the creation of the mining town of Potosí. Arica became the main port for Bolivian silver coming down from the mines at Potosí.

San Antonio de Gibraltar, on the shore of Maracaibo Lake, in Venezuela was founded in 1592 and it became an important center for the export of cocoa.

England could not challenge Castile at sea prior to Henry VIII because England had no standing navy. Within seven years into his reign, Henry had two dozen warships built in England and had purchased additional warships from Italian shipbuilders and from members of the Hanseatic League, a commercial and defensive confederation of guilds and towns in Central and Northern Europe.

At the time when England was developing its navy, King Henry II of France was declaring war against Holy Roman Emperor Charles V who also was King Charles I of Castile and Aragon. Henry’s intent was to recapture parts of Italy and ensure French, rather than the Habsburgs, domination of European affairs. Charles’ father, Philip I, brought the Habsburg Empire to Castile when he married Isabella and Ferdinand’s daughter, Joanna, who became Queen Joanna of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. The war became known as the Habsburg-Valois Wars and the Italian War of 1551-1559.

In 1560, the second year into Queen Elizabeth’s reign, Scotland followed its own reformation and modeled its church, called the Kirk, after Calvinism. Scotland was still an independent kingdom and would not join England to form Great Britain until 1707. The British Isles was, in 1560, now split three ways: the Kingdom of Ireland remained predominantly Roman Catholic; the Kingdom of England was Anglican; and the Kingdom of Scotland was predominantly Calvinist.

Across the English Channel, France was preoccupied securing its eastern land border from the Habsburgs and its western land border from the Kingdom of Aragon. In France, the Catholic church was being challenged by Lutheranism in eastern France and Calvinism (Huguenots) in western and southern France. This led to the French Wars of Religion between French Catholics and Protestants (Huguenots) that began in 1562 and ended in 1598 when Henry IV, Good King Henry, promulgated the Edict of Nantes that granted religious tolerance towards the Huguenots. The Edict of Nantes was revoked eighty-seven years later by the Edict of Fontainebleau, promulgated by King Louis XIV, Henry IV’s grandson. The Edict of Fontainebleau drove non-Catholics out of France by the tens of thousands and a number settled in the Caribbean.

Beginning in 1506, when the Cortes of Valladolid proclaimed Duke Philip of Burgundy the, king of Castile, the Low Countries provinces of Groningen, Frisia, Overijssel, Guelders, Utrect, Holland and Zeeland came under Spanish control and became a part of the Habsburg Empire. [The Low Countries were what is now Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.] In 1579, these seven Dutch provinces formed a mutual alliance and revolted against Spanish rule. In 1581, they declared their independence and became known as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands or more commonly, the Dutch Republic. Although the Dutch Republic was only 1.5 million people, it was a maritime force and dominated a worldwide network of sea trading routes.

 Portugal, Castile, the Pacific, and the Caribbean

When Castile and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, they apparently did not consider that the earth was round. They focused on the lands bordering on the Atlantic Oceans. Portugal was busy sailing south along the West African coast. In 1486, King John II of Portugal had commissioned Bartolomeu Dias to sail down the West African coast to reach the southernmost point of Africa so Portugal could establish a trade route to India across the Indian Ocean and to search for the land of the legendary Prester John and his rich kingdom. At about the same time, the king had commissioned Pero da Covilhã to find a combined land and sea route east to the Far East, to discover where cinnamon and other spices could be found and to search for the land of the legendary kingdom of Prester John. Both expeditions set sail in 1487. Dias returned the next year with the news he had found the tip of Africa. Covilhã successfully scouted the major trade routes of the Indian Ocean and had observed the cinnamon, black pepper and clove trade at Calicut, India, but on his return through Ethiopia in search of the land of Prester John, he became a captive and was never allowed to return to Portugal. By 1491, he had sent word to the king of what he learned and Portugal would now have a route to the riches of India and the Far East. Neither explorer, however, discovered the kingdom of the legendary Prester John. Portuguese explorers continued to sail further and further south down the West African coast until in 1498, Vasco da Gama sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean to Calicut. Portugal now had a second route to the riches of India and the Far East.

Seven years after Vasco de Gama arrived in Calicut, Portugal established the office of viceroyalty of India and appointed Francisco de Alaida. Alfonso de Albuquerque, the next viceroy, conquered Goa in 1510, which became the center for Portuguese power in South Asia. He expanded Portuguese influence across the Indian Ocean. In 1511, he conquered Malacca and then sent an expedition to find the Maluku Islands, commonly referred to as the “Spice Islands.”

Portugal and Castile’s view of the world, as evidenced by the Treaty of Tordesilla (1494), would soon change when Fernando de Magallanes, also known as Ferdinand Magellan, came upon the scene.

Magellan was born in about 1480 into a family of minor Portuguese nobility. He was a skilled sailor and naval officer who devised a plan to sail west around the tip of South America, across the Pacific Ocean to the Spice Islands, then across the Indian Ocean, around the southern tip of Africa and back north up the west coast of Africa to Portugal. In 1517, after King Manuel I of Portugal, the successor to John II, denied Magellan’s persistent requests to lead an expedition to reach the Spice Island by sailing west, Magellan renounced his Portuguese citizenship and moved to Spain. He and Pui Faleira, a Portuguese cosmographer, petitioned King Charles I of Spain to sponsor their plan. On April 19th, they received Royal permission directing them to seek spices in the Moluccas, an archipelago in the eastern part of Indonesia; on June 28th, Charles I became Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor; on August 10th or September 20th, Magellan set sail with a fleet of five ships from Sanlucar de Barrameda, northwest of Cádiz.

Although Magellan died in battle in the Philippines, he claimed the islands for Spain and Captain Juan Sebastián Elcano did locate the Malukas. Elcano and the sole surviving ship, the Victoria, completed the circumnavigation and returned to Spain in 1522.

The Magellan-Elcano expedition found a southwest passage around South America into the Pacific thereby avoiding the Portuguese controlled Cape of Good Hope. In 1525, King Charles V, believing that the Spice Islands were within the Castilian zone under the Treaty of Tordesillas, sent a seven-fleet expedition under Garcia Jofre de Loaisa to colonize the Spice Islands. The expedition landed at Tidore and built a fort; the Portuguese, however, had already landed at Tidore and had built a fort.

After almost a decade of conflict, Castile and Portugal signed the Treaty of Zaragoza (Saragossa) in 1529. Portugal received all lands and seas west of the line, including all of Asia and that included the Maluku Islands. Castile received all lands and seas east of the line, including most of the Pacific Ocean, including the Philippines. Castile received 350,000 gold ducats, money Charles needed to continue the funding of his wars.

Spanish colonization of the Philippines began when Miguel López de Legazpi landed in 1565. The Philippines was governed by the viceroyalty of New Spain that was established in Mexico City in 1535. Manila became the capital of the Spanish East Indies in 1571.

In 1565, Spain discovered a maritime route across the Pacific Ocean from the Philippines to Mexico. This route led to the transpacific transport link for the annual Manila to Acapulco galleons, also called the Manila Galleon. The continents were getting connected and the world was getting smaller. A galleon trading ship would leave each port annually. The ship leaving Manila would carry goods from all over Asia:

… jade, wax, gunpowder and silk from China, amber, cotton and rugs from India, spices from Indonesia and Malaysia, and a variety of goods from Japan….

Around 80% of the goods shipped back from Acapulco to Manila were from the Americas — silver, cochineal, seeds, sweet potato, corn, tomato, tobacco, chickpeas, chocolate and cocoa, watermelon seeds,vines, and fig trees. The remaining 20% were goods transshipped from Europe and North Africa such as wine and olive oil, and metal goods such as weapons, knobs and spurs. (Wikipedia, Manila Galleon, at 3-4, last viewed on 8/2/23)

After docking in Acapulco, the goods would be offloaded and carried by mule to the viceroyalty in Mexico City and then to the port of Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico. Some goods would be sold in the Americas while most would be loaded onto Spanish ships and taken to Spain.

The Spanish settlements along the Pacific coast of South and Central America were safe from English and Dutch pirates and privateers until the 1570s when Francis Drake surreptitiously sailed around Cape Horn and into the Pacific. As he made his way up the South American coast he sacked Valparaiso, Chile, and captured a number of Spanish ships, including one full of Chilean wine. The trade routes in the Pacific were also no longer safe. In 1579, Drake captured the 120-ton Spanish galleon, Nuestra Señora de la Conceptión, “Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception,” nicknamed Cagafuego, “fireshitter,” that was sailing the Peru-Panama trading route. That ship was so overburdened with cargo that Drake’s crew needed six days to unload its treasure and sort through what they wanted to take. In 1587, Thomas Cavendish, an English explorer and pirate, captured the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Santa Ana that was near its usual intermediate port of Cape San Lucas on the Baja California peninsula before it sailed to Acapulco.

Castile, Aragon, Portugal, the Habsburgs, and the Holy Roman Emperor

In 1469, Isabella of Castile married her second cousin, Ferdinand of Aragon. In 1474, upon the death of her half-brother, King Henry IV of Castile and León, Isabella became Queen Isabella I of Castile and León. Ferdinand became king consort. In 1479, upon the death of his father, Ferdinand became Ferdinand II of Aragon. Isabella became queen consort. Ferdinand and Isabella ruled Castile and Aragon jointly, a dynastically unified Spain, although Castile and Aragon remained separate kingdoms. Isabella and Ferdinand had five children: Isabella, John, Joanna, Maria, and Catherine.

In 1496, Maximilian, the Archduke of Austria, of the House of Habsburg, arranged for his son, Philip, known as Philip the Handsome, to marry Joanna, the third surviving child and the second daughter of Isabella and Ferdinand. Philip’s mother, Mary, the Duchess of Burgundy, had died in a riding accident when he was three at which time he inherited from her, under the guardianship of his father, the Burgundian Netherlands (Lord of the Netherlands and Duke of Burgundy). The marriage was designed to straighten the ties between the House of Trastámaras, a House that both Isabella and Ferdinand were from, and the House of Habsburg against growing French power.

When Philip and Joanna married in 1496, Philip’s father had just become King of the Romans, the elected successor to the Holy Roman Emperor. He had been serving de facto in the role of Holy Roman Emperor since his father, Frederick III died in 1493. He officially did not become the Holy Roman Emperor until 1508 and he would serve until his death in 1519. Three years before the marriage, Maximillian had transferred power for ruling the Burgundian Netherlands to his son, Philip. Philip and Joanna took up residence in the Low Countries.

When Joanna and Philip married, she was sixteen and he was eighteen. Between 1498 and 1507, she gave birth to six children, two boys and four girls. All six grew up to be either emperors or queens: Eleanor, Queen of France and Portugal; Charles, Charles I of Castile and then Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor; Isabella, Queen of Denmark; Ferdinand, Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor; Mary, Queen of Hungary; and Catherine, Queen of Portugal.

     A year after Joanna’s marriage to Philip, John, Joanna’s older brother, who had become the Prince of Asturias, a title given to the heir apparent to Castile, died. He had been the next in line for both the kingdom of Castile and the kingdom of Aragon.

     A year later, Queen Isabella of Portugal, Joanna’s older sister, died while giving birth to her son, Miguel de Paz. Two years later, he too died. Joanna was now the heir apparent for both the throne of Castile and the throne of Aragon.

     In 1502, Castile’s Cortes of Toro recognized Joanna, the heiress to the throne of Castile and Philip as her consort. She was named Princess of Asturias. Philip and Joanna then sailed to Castile to be recognized.

      In 1503, Philip returned to the Low Countries leaving Joanna in Madrid, pregnant with Ferdinand, their fourth child. He was born on March 10, 1503.

Queen Isabella I of Castile died on November 26, 1504, and Joanna became queen regnant (female monarch who reigns suo jure, in her own right) of the kingdoms of Castile and León. Philip was summoned to Spain where he could be recognized as king.

Ferdinand, Joanna’s father, refused to accept the fact that he had lost the monarchical status he had in Castile and León with his wife for thirty years. In 1506, the Cortes of Castile and León (the unicameral legislature) proclaimed Joanna’s husband jure uxois (by right of his wife) thereby excluding Ferdinand. Ferdinand then had the Cortes of Castile and León proclaim Joanna mentally ill and incapable of ruling. Therefore, he should be appointed her guardian and the kingdom’s administrator and governor. The Cortes agreed. Joanna became queen in name only.

Whether Joanna was incapable of ruling is still debated:

As a young woman, Joanna was known to be highly intelligent. Claims regarding her as “mad” are widely disputed. It was only after her marriage that the first suspicions of mental illness arose. Some historians believe she may have been melancholic, a depressive disorder, a psychosis, or a case of inherited schizophrenia. She may also have been unjustly painted as “mad” as her husband Philip the Handsome and her father, they had a great deal to gain from Joanna being declared sick or incapable to rule.
(Wikipedia, Joanna of Castile, at 6, last viewed on 8/3/23)

Philip appears to have fallen in with Ferdinand’s plan to have Joanna declared incompetent so he could rule the Kingdom of Castile. The records show that on August 24, 1505, Joanna was in the Low Countries and confined and that on September 15, 1505, she gave birth to Mary.

A little over three months after the birth of Mary, Philip and Joanna were on their way from the Low Countries to Spain when they were caught in a storm and wrecked on the English coast. They were not able to return to Castle until the end of April 1506.

Toward the end of June, Philip and Ferdinand attempted to mediate their differences as to who would rule Castile. When the mediation failed, Ferdinand left for his Kingdom of Aragon.

Philip died on September 25, 1506, three months after receiving the title of King Philip I of Castile. He was the first Habsburg king of Castile and León. Some say he died of typhoid fever; others say he was poisoned by his father-in-law, Ferdinand. Joanna was pregnant at the time of Philip’s death and she gave birth to their sixth child, Catherine, on January 14, 1507, in Castile. Now that Philip was deceased, Ferdinand became regent of Castile and León on Joanna’s behalf and her confinement continued.

Ferdinand was concerned that upon his death, his kingdom of Aragon would be inherited by his daughter, Joanna, and one of her children with Philip, would inherit and the kingdom would pass to the House of Habsburg. His solution was to pursue a pro-French policy and to marry Germaine de Foix, the niece of Louis XIV of France and his own great niece, and have a son who would inherit the kingdom of Aragon. Ferdinand and Germaine were married by proxy on October 19, 1506, and their marriage was consummated on March 18, 1507. They did have a son but he died shortly after birth.

When Ferdinand died in 1516, Joanna became Queen of Aragon, but in name only. Her son, Charles, now sixteen, became King Charles I of Aragon and continued his mother’s confinement. In 1519, he succeeded his grandfather, Maximilian I, as Holy Roman Emperor, and in that role he was known as Charles V. As Holy Roman Emperor, he was head of the rising House of Habsburg during much of the first half of the 1500s. The Holy Roman Empire extended from Germany to northern Italy with direct rule over the Austrian hereditary lands and the Burgundian Low Countries. He was both King Charles I of Spain (Aragon, Castile and León) and Holy Roman Emperor over the Spanish possessions of the southern Italian kingdoms of Naples, Sicily and Sardinia. In the Americas, he oversaw the continuation of Spanish colonization.

Joanna’s death on April 12, 1555, removed her as queen of Castile and queen of Aragon, even though she was in queen name only. Her son, Charles, then abdicated as King Charles I of Spain on January 16, 1556. He was succeeded by his son who became Phillip II of Spain (Castile, Aragon and León). As Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, he abdicated on August 27, 1556, and was succeeded by his younger brother, Ferdinand I. The Spanish Habsburg Empire and the Holy Roman Empire were now divided.

     In 1554, Philip II married his first cousin, Queen Mary I of England and Ireland, and he became king consort of England and Ireland. When Mary died in 1558, Philip returned to being only King Philip II of Castile and Aragon.

Meanwhile, the death of King Sebastian of Portugal in the Battle of Alcácer Quibir in Morocco in 1578 would have direct consequences for Spain. The direct line of the Portugueses royal family ended when Sebastian died without heirs. He was succeeded to the throne by his great-uncle Henry, a cardinal in the Catholic Church. When King Henry I of Portugal died two years later, leaving no heirs, Sebastian’s uncle, King Philip II of Spain, claimed the Portuguese throne through his younger sister, Joanna of Austria, who had married Prince João Manuel of Portugal. She was Sebastian’s mother.

Philip sent Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, the 3d Duke of Alba, to claim the Portuguese throne by force. After Lisbon surrendered, the Portuguese Cortes of Tomar elected Philip king on condition that the kingdom of Portugal and its overseas territories would not become Spanish provinces. Philip was now king of Castile, Aragon and Portugal although he could never become the Holy Roman Emperor. His father had given that title to Philip’s brother Ferdinand in 1555 and Ferdinand had passed it on to his son, Maximilian II in 1564 and he had passed it on to his son, Rudolf II in 1576.

Phillip II died in 1598 and he was succeeded by his son who became Philip III. He was known as Philip the Pious. Philip III died in 1621 and he was succeeded by his son, Philip IV.

One king was now king with three kingdoms: Casile, Aragon, and Portugal. The Treaties of Tordesillas and Zaragoza lost their meaning.

Castile’s Domination Begins to Wane

In the latter part of the sixteenth century, Castile’s dominance in the Atlantic, Pacific and the Caribbean began to wane. The bubonic plague pandemic, smallpox, and other diseases took their toll. The Moors and Jews, because they were not Catholic, were forced to emigrate thereby further reducing the population and eroding the tax base. Costly wars created pressures on the workforce and the military. Inefficient taxation and a series of weak monarchs further weakened the economy and the governance of an empire that circled the globe.

Castile entered the 16th century under the leadership of King Phillip III. He was described as an “undistinguished and insignificant man, a “miserable monarch,” and a “pallid, anonymous creature, whose only vice appeared to reside in a total absence of vice.” “For many, the decline of Spain can be dated to the economic difficulties that set in during the early years of his reign.” (Wikipedia, Philip III of Spain, last viewed 8/12/23)

As Castile was suffering from negative pressures, other kingdoms were emerging. The English Renaissance was at its height and France had become a power on the rise. Seven Dutch provinces in the Spanish Netherlands broke from Spanish rule and became the Dutch Republic. It issued a charter consolidating four trading companies into the first joint-stock company in the world, the United East India Company (the Dutch East India Company known as the VOC) that possessed quasi-governmental powers including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies. Nineteen years later, the Dutch Republic granted a charter for a trade monopoly in the Dutch West Indies. The Dutch West Indies Company (WIC) was given jurisdiction over Dutch participation in the Atlantic slave trade that included Brazil, the Caribbean and North America. The Dutch Republic was becoming Europe’s economic powerhouse.

England under Elizabeth began to explore the new world in the late 1500s. In 1583, Humphrey Gilbert claimed Newfoundland as England’s first overseas colony under a Royal Charter. Four years later, Sir Walter Raleigh attempted to settle on Roanoke Island in what would become North Carolina.

Elizabeth found privateering more lucrative than colonizing. She authorized a group of English privateers, which became known as Elizabethan Sea Dogs, to raid England’s enemies, whether England was formally at war with them or not. One such privateer was Francis Drake who was encouraged to plunder Spanish ships and towns in the Americas earning substantial profit for himself and the crown.

     The English navy, formally created by Henry VIII in 1547, began to engage the Spanish navy. In 1585, an undeclared, intermittent conflict between the Habsburg kingdom of Spain and the kingdom of England began when English merchant ships were seized in Spanish harbors.

One cause for this war dated back to the 1560s and the reformation in western Europe and England. The Dutch were becoming Protestant and challenging the Spanish Habsburg control of their provinces in the Low Countries. England, with its own reformation, sided with the Protestant Dutch rebels. Although undeclared, war broke out in 1585 between England and Spain and England began issuing letters of marque so Spanish shipping could be harassed. This war became known as the Anglo-Spanish War (1585-1604).

England’s execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587, outraged Catholics in Europe. In retaliation, Philip II, the king of both Spain and Portugal, who had been Queen Mary of England’s husband, vowed to invade England and replace his former sister-in-law, Elizabeth, with a Catholic monarch. Philip’s fleet was preparing to sail from Cádiz when it was attacked by Sir Francis Drake. Thirty-seven of Philip’s ships were burned. The invasion of England had to be postponed.

In May 1588, Spain launched an armada from Lisbon: 141 ships, eight thousand sailors and eighteen thousand soldiers. The armada’s mission was to sail up the English Channel, link up with an invasion force of l55,000 men in Flanders, escort them to England where they would overthrow Queen Elizabeth and return Catholicism to England. This would end the English support for the Dutch Republic and the English and Dutch privateer attacks against Spanish interests in the Americas. The Spanish Armada did not fare well. The English fleet, led by Lord Charles Howard and Sir Francis Drake and with the help of bad weather, poor Spanish leadership, and illness aboard ship, repealed the Armada.

A year later, Queen Elizabeth sent an English Armada, 180 ships and over 26.000 men, led by Sir Francis Drake as its admiral and Sir John Norris as its general, to attack the battered Spanish fleet that was being repaired in several Iberian ports, to land at Lisbon and raise a revolt against Philip II, and to capture the Azores. Drake ignored the queen’s instructions and instead sought to plunder. As a result, the English Armada was defeated and limped home.

In 1596, Elizabeth ordered an attack on Cǻdiz. It was captured and held for several weeks. King Philip II of Spain responded by sending a large armada against England. The eighty-one ships that sailed from Lisbon were battered by a storm and the attack was aborted. The next year, Philip sent a third armada to attack England. It too was hampered by storms and returned to the Iberian Peninsula without completing its mission.

With the 1500s coming to a close, Castile’s exclusive control of the Caribbean was about to change.

Author’s Note: “The Caribbean: The First Hundred Years of European Colonization” is the tenth blog in this series posted in the website “thepiratehaven.com.” Additional blogs will be posted from time to time.

 maf 8/18/23