"It is next to impossible to imagine 15th century explorers, looking for the North Pole. They were practical men, just like their rulers and the investors who financed their travels, and their objectives were also practical: mainly to establish concrete contacts with specific non-European countries, countries whose existence was known, advanced culture and with commercial importance, countries whose inhabitants could provide valuable goods and countries whose rulers could seek partnership and political support. The exploration could reveal other advantages, goes without saying: unexploited fisheries and fertile islands with feuds and arable land available to whomever should wish to seize them. However, these Islands were better if populated, preferably by docile and laborious people... For the most part, the explorers did not seek new lands; they sought new routes to known lands... Thus, the originality and importance of the 15th century travels was not to reveal the uninhabited and the unknown as links, through usable sea routes, regions away from the populated and known... Columbus experience wasn't entirely different; but, obviously, was not the same in the case of native inhabitants. Columbus did not discover a new world; established contact between two worlds, both inhabited and both ancient in human terms." (J.H.Parry. 1989)
The "Discovery" reason.
The "discovery of the new world" in 1492, marks the beginning of the search of power for "traders or merchants". The invasion of America, Africa and later Asia, by the European crowns, was generally funded and encouraged by merchants; because we must remember that then there was no "private initiative". The open fight between the "State and the market" begins with the Americas invasion in 1492 and ends at the end of the 20th century with the imposition of economic neo-liberalism and economic globalization.
While it is true that the spanish conquerors brought the banners of the spanish crown, they were fully financed by merchants. That was one of the reasons why the spanish crown did not have full control of the spanish conquistadors, as they were not soldiers, nor high nobility. Instead, were the scum of a
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