Long before “the sun never set on the British Isles,” the Spanish continued to occupy vast territories in the New World. In a few years the Spanish conquistadors managed to completely destroy the most powerful empires of the Americas and repaired those empires with trees and gold and silver metals. Why did the powerful Aztec and Inca empires fall before the invading Spanish armies? At least four factors contributed to the defeat of the Aztecs. Some of these factors played an important role in the early conflicts between the Spanish and Native Americans, while others simply as the end Spanish colonies in the New World would remain viable.
First, the Spanish made much better technology than the natives. While the Incapa and Aztecs were armed with bows and spears, the Spanish were armed with guns and cannons. To men who had never seen a horse, had never seen an army of metal, had never seen gunpowder, the Spanish armies were quite formidable. And the Spaniards not only had stronger weapons than the natives, but also terrified the population. Understandably, some of the Incas and Aztecs thought they were fighting gods or demons. This technological and psychological advantage helped make up for what the Spanish lacked in numbers.
The Spaniards also had diseases with those who had decimated the population. While the Spanish had acquired some immunity to smallpox and plague after centuries of exposure, the Native Americans never experienced those diseases. before Therefore they had no immunity from them. The more likely he is to have contracted these diseases, and the more likely those diseases would be fatal. Although the Europeans never wanted to wage biological war on the Native Americans, the Europeans happened to bring diseases with them. the New World killed millions.
Another advantage of the Spanish was that many of the smaller nations wanted to ally with the Spanish against the larger nations. These alliances were especially useful against the Aztecs. Because the Aztecs had suppressed the brutality of their neighbors, they were not very convinced that they were close to the Spanish in order to destroy the Aztec empire.
The Spaniards had once conquered the New World, but it was necessary for them to depend on it. To do this they need to make their colonies profitable and worth investing in. Thankfully, the estates encountered were rich in gold and silver or in land for raising cash crops such as cane sugar. Since the Spanish knew that these colonies could make a profit, they wanted to protect the money and power of those colonists.
Against his European rivals Spain had the advantage of pre-eminence in the New World and of possessing one of the best ships in the world at the time. This made it difficult for anyone else, with the exception of the Portuguese, to establish some of the major Mexican colonies in the south. Thus, other European countries with colonial ambitions, such as Britain, France and the Netherlands, were forced to look to the Northern part of the World for colonial lands.
