Question

England, Spain, and France all had their own agenda's while developing their respective empires. The Spanish agenda was to convert all natives to Catholicism. The Spanish showed little compassion and a lack of understanding of Indian culture. The Spaniards would build missions to spread the religion of Catholicism, yet the priests would not learn the native language and force the Indians to learn Spanish. The neglect and abuse that Spaniards displayed to Indians caused up rises against Spain, this along with rampant disease is the reason for the empire developing the way it did.

France ....do u agree or disagree ? y ?

Answer 1

No, that's silly. Evangelism was certainly a reason the Spanish offered to justify their imperialism, and have it blessed by the Church, but that is certainly a side-effect at most. Far more relevant was the monstrous amount of gold and silver acquired from Mesoamerica, as well as the opportunity to build seaports that would extend Spanish naval power to protect Spanish trading interests. The Spanish were devout, but not THAT devout.

Additionally, to tar an entire culture and people as uncompassionate and stupid is arrogant on your part. Who are you to judge an entire people? From a great distance in time and space, as well? That's just as bad as if the Spanish governor of Mexico in 1690 said that all native Mesoamericans were shiftless and ignorant. Try not to inject unintentional irony into your attempts to understand history, and be humble about what you can infer about the character of millions of people from the run of historical events.

WIthout doubt, some Spanish were not compassionate and stupid, and even cruel and selfish. But undoutably many more were not. Some missionaries were lazy, but many others were courageous, selfless, and genuinely concerned about the natives whom they attempted to serve. Many more simply made mistakes, as people do, and forgot that good intentiosn do not guarantee good outcomes. In short, it's very likely the Spanish during the period of Spanish imperialism were pretty much the same as every other large collection of human beings, with pretty much the same percentage of good people and bad, selfish and selfless, heros and villians. It is unlikely in the extreme that the Spanish people all together were markedly more evil than, say, the Mesoamericans themselves, the French, modern Americans, or the collective inhabitants of all freshman history classes at Western colleges.

if you are going to look for reason for the way the Spanish Empire developed, I recommend instead of focussing on the moral character of the people involved -- which, as I say, is unlikely to differ much from the moral character of any other people in any other period in history -- and instead look at the unique historical situation and events that affected them.

For example, Spain was a naval power, not a continental military power. It was also not experiencing strong population growth, was also very heirarchical, with a very strong ruling class that commanded an unusually large share of national wealth. It had ancient ambitions of representing Europe and the West generally, since it had very strong ties with the late Renaissance Catholic Church, and even the late Roman Emprie, and historic rivalries with France and England. All of these distinctions of Spain versus England are where I would look for the roots of the distinctions between the Spanish and British Empires.