Spanish Conquistadors - After Iberian Union

After Iberian Union

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China gained control of Taiwan in 1683, but the Portuguese and Spanish maintained a hold on trade with Chinese cities; the Portuguese operated from Macau and other cities, the Spanish controlled Manila. Arabs from the Middle East and Muslims from India were actively trading in the port by the 1690s. Dutch, French, and English later frequented the port through the Canton System.

By 1767, Jesuit missionaries on The Californias had established approximately twenty-three missions over a period of seventy-two years. The Viceroy of New Spain, Antonio María Bucareli y Ursúa, demanded to explore the area north of Alta California in response to information that there were colonial Russian settlements there. Near the end of 1771 the Portolà expedition arrived at San Francisco Bay (discovered in 1769). Between 1774 and 1791, the Spanish Crown sent forth a number of expeditions to explore the Pacific Northwest. Bruno de Heceta first explored the Pacific Northwest. In 1774 Juan Pérez, was exploring the islands in present-day British Columbia, and Canada. From 1769 to 1776 the Franciscan missionary Francisco Garcés of converso morisco descent, was exploring Sonora, Baja California, California, Arizona, and Nevada. The criollo Spaniard and later Governor of New Mexico Juan Bautista de Anza explored Arizona, Colorado and Alta California, founding the first overland route to San Francisco Bay.

In 1781, the Yuma tribe attacked and damaged the Spanish mission settlements of San Pedro y San Pablo de Bicuñer and Puerto de Purísima Concepción, killing Lieutenant Governor Fernando Rivera, the mission Father, and others. The following year, the Spanish retaliated with military action against the tribe by José Antonio Roméu governor of Las Californias. The Spanish were unable to defeat the Yuma, and the tribe remained in control of the land for the following seventy years. The event closed the Anza Trail, crippling the overland population growth of the colony.

The minister Don Mariano Luis de Urquijo recommended Alexander von Humboldt's American expedition to the King of Spain, the Humboldt expedition reached South America in 1799 and departed from North America in 1804.

Less known nationals from Spain and Portugal continued to conduct exploration work, support conquest and colonization.

After the Napoleonic Wars when both Peninsular countries were powers of second order, Portugal sought to form an alliance with the French rulers, but the British offered to support Portugal in return for free trade agreements and to remove their French rivals. Thus, Portugal was allied with Britain and preserved its possessions for a longer time. Spain with its few remnant colonies on every continent tried the same alliance with France, for example in the Cochinchina Campaign in Asia and the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco and the Spanish Sahara (the Scramble for Africa).

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