Essay On Colonial Expansion

1321 Words6 Pages
Colonial expansion under the crown of Castile was initiated by the Spanish conquistadores and developed by the Monarchy of Spain through its administrators and missionaries. The motivations for colonial expansion were trade and the spread of the Catholic faith through indigenous conversions. Vasco Núñez de Balboa was a Spanish explorer, governor, and conquistador. He is best known for having crossed the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific Ocean in 1513, becoming the first European to lead an expedition to have seen or reached the Pacific from the New World.He traveled to the New World in 1500 and, after some exploration, settled on the island of Hispaniola. He founded the settlement of Santa María la Antigua del Darién in present-day Panama in 1510, which was the first permanent European settlement on the mainland of the Americas. Career in the New World Balboa came from the ranks of that lower nobility whose sons—“men of good family who were not reared behind the plow,” in the words of the chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés—often sought their…show more content…
He returned to Santa María at the beginning of 1513 to recruit more men from Hispaniola. It was there that he learned that Fernández de Enciso had told the colonial authorities what had happened at Santa María. After seeing that there would be no assistance from Hispaniola, Balboa sent Enrique de Colmenares directly to Spain to look for help. While the expedition to the South Sea (the name at the time of the Pacific Ocean) was being organized in Santa María, some explorers travelled ten leagues (around 50 km or 30 miles) up the Atrato River toward the interior, but came back empty-handed. Balboa's request for men and supplies had been denied: Enciso's case was by then widely known in the Spanish court. Therefore, Balboa had no choice but to carry out his expedition with the few resources that he had on hand in Santa

More about Essay On Colonial Expansion

Open Document