Spanish a: Did you mean...?

The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas (Tordesilhas) was an agreement between the monarchs of Spain and Portugal to divide the world between them into two spheres of influence. The imaginary dividing line ran down the centre of the Atlantic Ocean...

The repartimiento system was a distribution of rights to Spanish colonialists and municipalities, which allowed them to extract forced but low-paid labour from local communities in conquered territories. Designed to replace the inefficient...

The European colonization of the Americas was the process by which European settlers populated the regions of North, Central, South America, and the islands of the Caribbean. It is also recognized as the direct cause for the cultures of the...

The staggering quantity of gold the conquistadors extracted from the Americas allowed Spain to become the richest country in the world. The thirst for gold to pay for armies and gain personal enrichment resulted in waves of expeditions of...

Montezuma (aka Moctezuma), or more correctly, Motecuhzoma II Xocoyotzin, meaning 'Angry Like A Lord’, was the last fully independent ruler of the Aztec empire before the civilization's collapse after the Spanish Conquest in the early 16th...

The Aztec Empire (c. 1345-1521) covered at its greatest extent most of northern Mesoamerica. Aztec warriors were able to dominate their neighbouring states and permit rulers such as Montezuma to impose Aztec ideals and religion across Mexico...

Piracy has involved many nationalities over the centuries, but one of the prominent groups in the medieval and early modern periods was the French pirates, who terrorised the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean. French writers often...

Juan de Grijalva (aka Grijalba, 1489-1527) was a Spanish conquistador who explored the eastern coast of Mexico in 1518. His notable achievements included a demonstration that the Yucatán Peninsula was just that and not, as previously thought...

Ferdinand Magellan, or Fernão de Magalhães (c. 1480-1521), was a Portuguese mariner whose expedition was the first to circumnavigate the globe in 1519-22 in the service of Spain. Magellan was killed on the voyage in what is today the Philippines...

The Eighty Years' War (1568-1648, also known as The Dutch Revolt and Dutch War of Independence) was a military conflict between the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands and Spain, which then governed them, beginning in the reign of King...