Had Spain kept its empire in the 1800s, North America would be a very different place.
If you vacationed on the beaches of Florida, you would be on Spanish land. If you lived in San Francisco, California, or Santa Fe, New Mexico, you would be a resident of New Spain.
Texas cowboys would be Spanish-speaking vaqueros, Lousiana crawfish would be a Spanish American dish, and the bison of the Great Plains would run on Spanish land. Dorothy, the Kansas girl in The Wizard of Oz, would have called New Spain home; so would Bill Clinton of Arkansas.
At the end of the eighteenth century, Spanish America was much larger and older than the United States. It included not only much of what is now the United States, but all of Mexico and Central America, along with most of South America and the West Indies.
Related Posts
-
Which came first: England’s thirteen colonies on the Atlantic coast or Spain’s colonies in the American Southwest?
The thirteen colonies that later became the United States began with the founding of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, England's first permanent settlement in North America. By that time, Juan de Ofiate had already…
-
Why did the Spanish Empire lose all its American colonies in the 1800s if Spain was so powerful?
In the sixteenth century, Spain was the most powerful nation in the world. It had a strong monarchy and a fearsome military, funded by gold and silver from the American colonies. Then, like…
-
How did the Lost Land get lost and How did Mexico lose its northern provinces to the United States?
Mexico lost its northern provinces to the United States in a three-step process: the Texas Revolution, the Mexican War, and the Gadsden Purchase. The story begins with the first U.S. citizens in Texas.…
-
When did Spain start founding colonies in what is now the American Southwest?
The first colony in the American Southwest was founded in present-day New Mexico in 1598 by Juan de (Mate (c. 1550, c. 1630). He is considered the founder of New Mexico, called Nuevo…
-
Do Spanish speaking people ever come to the United States from Spain or do they only come from Latin America?
So many Hispanic Americans trace their roots to Latin American countries that you might think Spain long ago closed its doors to emigration. In fact, Spanish relocation to North America did not end…
-
Was the Lost Colony of Roanoke really lost or were the colonists saved by Indians?
The mystery of Roanoke began in 1590 when colony leader John White, returning from a three-year trip to England for supplies, found the settlement deserted. All of the colonists had seemingly disappeared. According…
