![[Pasted image 20250201175531.png]] *Elmina Castle in 1572* Both the Portuguese and the Spanish had been engaged in a centuries-long military campaign to regain territory in the Iberian Peninsula that had been conquered by the Muslim [Umayyad Caliphate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_Caliphate) in the 8th century CE. The *Reconquista* ended around 1415 for the Portuguese but it took Spain the rest of the 15th century to subdue the [Emirate of Granada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirate_of_Granada) in what is now southern Spain. Portuguese exploration of the African Coast, discovery of a route to Asia around the southern “Horn” of Africa, and colonization of Atlantic islands in the 1400s inaugurated an era of aggressive European expansion. Columbus’s mission to find a route to Asia across the Atlantic appealed to Ferdinand and Isabella, monarchs of the newly-unified Kingdom of Spain, partly because Portugal already controlled the route around Africa. The married monarchs finally defeated Granada in 1492. They also ejected Jews and Muslims who had refused to convert to Christianity from the Kingdom and used the Spanish Inquisition to prosecute “*conversos*” suspected of secretly practicing their original religions after converting. Once their Muslim rivals were conquered, the Spanish kingdom was able to direct its armies at other targets. In the 1500s, Spain surpassed Portugal as the dominant European power. This age of exploration and the subsequent creation of an imperial Atlantic World was one of the earliest phases of globalization, in which previously isolated groups—Africans, Native Americans, and Europeans—first came into contact with each other, sometimes with disastrous results. Although the Portuguese originally used their African colonies and fortresses such as *Elmina* primarily for trading gold, by the sixteenth century they had shifted their focus. The dungeon of the Elmina Castle was converted into a holding pen for African slaves from the interior of the continent, while on the upper floors Portuguese traders ate, slept, and prayed in a chapel. Slaves lived in the dungeons for weeks or months until ships arrived to transport them to Europe or the Americas. For many, the dungeon of Elmina was their last sight of their homelands.  ![[Inside_the_dungeon_-_the_line_in_the_middle_was_considered_adequate_sewage.jpg]] The history of Spanish colonialism begins almost at the unification of Spain itself. The marriage of [[Ferdinand of Aragon]] and [[Isabella of Castile]] in 1469 unified Catholic Spain and began the process of building a nation that could compete for worldwide power. Completing the *Reconquista* marked another step forward in the process of making Spain an imperial power, and Ferdinand and Isabella were now ready to look further afield. --- Next: [[2.7 Columbus]] Back: [[2.5 Portuguese Explorers]]