1 00:00:01,580 --> 00:00:07,700 Ah, Spain. A land marred by the scars of its past. A land almost synonymous with empire, 2 00:00:08,099 --> 00:00:12,320 having been under the yoke of so many foreign rulers that even they began to lose count. 3 00:00:12,679 --> 00:00:17,039 A land whose very own empire would stand the test of time and dramatically change the course 4 00:00:17,039 --> 00:00:23,019 of Mesoamerican history, and yet somehow managed to avoid two world wars, all this and more in... 5 00:00:23,019 --> 00:00:58,619 So, you've probably heard that Spain was part of the Roman Empire. 6 00:00:58,619 --> 00:01:03,020 But before they arrived, the Iberian Peninsula already had several thriving civilizations, 7 00:01:03,020 --> 00:01:07,400 most of whom were thoroughly supplanted by Indo-European Celts, who had migrated south 8 00:01:07,400 --> 00:01:08,920 from France. 9 00:01:08,920 --> 00:01:12,599 Greeks and the Phoenicians had sailed these waters for centuries, setting up small trade 10 00:01:12,599 --> 00:01:14,319 cities and colonies. 11 00:01:14,319 --> 00:01:18,159 The Carthaginians, who were descendants of the Phoenicians themselves, set up a large 12 00:01:18,159 --> 00:01:23,799 trade empire between 650 and 300 BC, including parts of southern Spain, before coming into 13 00:01:23,799 --> 00:01:28,280 conflict with the Romans who by the 3rd century were still a fledging republic, just toying 14 00:01:28,280 --> 00:01:31,219 with the idea of conquering outside of Italy. 15 00:01:31,219 --> 00:01:35,280 This all changed with the Punic Wars in which Rome came out on top with a slip victory over 16 00:01:35,280 --> 00:01:37,700 the Carthaginian's leader, Hannibal. 17 00:01:37,700 --> 00:01:42,120 The people of Roman Spain became thoroughly Romanized, a process accelerated by immigration 18 00:01:42,120 --> 00:01:46,760 from other parts of the empire, Roman law, religion, and the language became thoroughly 19 00:01:46,760 --> 00:01:52,379 entrenched into society and culture, because, when in Rome I guess. 20 00:01:52,379 --> 00:01:56,840 Hispania fell to various Germanic and nomadic invaders in the 5th century, competing for 21 00:01:56,840 --> 00:01:58,219 land and dominance. 22 00:01:58,219 --> 00:02:02,760 The Suevi Vandals and Alans carved out short-lived kingdoms for themselves before being completely 23 00:02:02,760 --> 00:02:04,980 overrun by the Visigoths. 24 00:02:04,980 --> 00:02:10,740 In 587, the Visigoth king Reccared was converted from an Aryan Christian to a Roman Catholic, 25 00:02:10,740 --> 00:02:13,879 with the rest of his kingdom soon to follow. 26 00:02:13,879 --> 00:02:17,699 The Visigoths fought for power and control in the region with the Byzantines, remnants 27 00:02:17,699 --> 00:02:22,120 of the old Roman Empire in the east, and also got pushed out of most of southern Gaul by 28 00:02:22,120 --> 00:02:23,400 the Franks. 29 00:02:23,400 --> 00:02:27,639 But they did manage to consolidate their hold on the whole of Iberia, save for the Basque 30 00:02:27,639 --> 00:02:30,060 region, by the year 624. 31 00:02:30,060 --> 00:02:35,280 But Visigoth Spain was soon to be facing a new enemy 4,000 kilometers away in Medina, 32 00:02:35,280 --> 00:02:39,800 where from 622 the birth of Islam began to spread through the conquest of Muhammad and 33 00:02:39,800 --> 00:02:41,639 the Rashidun Caliphate. 34 00:02:41,639 --> 00:02:46,479 The empire was further expanded into previously Byzantine holdings in Africa with remarkable 35 00:02:46,479 --> 00:02:50,099 efficiency and speed under the Umayyad dynasty. 36 00:02:50,099 --> 00:02:55,439 In 711, a Berber army crossed the Straits of Gibraltar and conquered the fractured Visigoths, 37 00:02:55,439 --> 00:02:59,240 slowly invading further north halted only by the defeat by the Franks at the Battle 38 00:02:59,240 --> 00:03:02,919 of Tours and the Spaniards at the Battle of Covadana. 39 00:03:02,919 --> 00:03:07,039 The Umayyad dynasty's collapse at the hands of the Obasi allowed one Umayyad fugitive 40 00:03:07,039 --> 00:03:09,520 to claim the Spanish lands for himself. 41 00:03:09,520 --> 00:03:14,840 as the Emory and then the Caliphate of Cordoba, also called the Al-Andalus. 42 00:03:14,840 --> 00:03:19,840 It is around the 8th and 900s that a centuries-long process called the Reconquista began in which 43 00:03:19,840 --> 00:03:24,539 Spanish Christians warred against the Muslims with the goal of driving them out of Spain. 44 00:03:24,539 --> 00:03:29,599 The Spaniards and the Portuguese saw the Muslims as outsiders, both in culture and religion, 45 00:03:29,599 --> 00:03:33,199 and very little integration happened between the two classes. 46 00:03:33,199 --> 00:03:37,300 The Reconquistas saw the Christian domains in the north increase in size and the southern 47 00:03:37,300 --> 00:03:41,840 Muslim kingdoms fracture into the Taifa state, until the Almohads united them again in the 48 00:03:41,840 --> 00:03:43,300 12th century. 49 00:03:43,300 --> 00:03:47,620 The Almohads put what would be the last nail in Muslim Spain's coffin when they implemented 50 00:03:47,620 --> 00:03:52,479 a strict kill-or-convert decree throughout their domains, causing a mass exodus of Jews 51 00:03:52,479 --> 00:03:56,219 and Christians from Cordoba into the northern Christian kingdoms. 52 00:03:56,219 --> 00:04:01,180 A crusade was led against the Almohads from 1212 to 1250 by an alliance of Spanish kingdoms 53 00:04:01,180 --> 00:04:04,240 driving the Moors to a land known as the Granada. 54 00:04:04,240 --> 00:04:08,500 Castile and Aragon, two of the most powerful kingdoms in Hispaniolia, united with the marriage 55 00:04:08,500 --> 00:04:12,740 of Ferdinand and Isabel to create the Kingdom of Spain, which also conquered their last 56 00:04:12,740 --> 00:04:16,860 remnant of Muslim Granada and the Basque Kingdom of Navarre. 57 00:04:16,860 --> 00:04:20,439 Around the same time, an Italian sailor was bumping around from country to country seeking 58 00:04:20,439 --> 00:04:22,860 sponsorship for a voyage to the East Indies. 59 00:04:22,860 --> 00:04:27,399 Finally, on meeting Isabel and Ferdinand, and after about two years of indecisiveness, 60 00:04:27,399 --> 00:04:32,319 King Ferdinand agreed to fund Columbus' voyage, in which he discovered the Americas. 61 00:04:32,319 --> 00:04:37,399 by discovered you mean after Viking life Ericsson and the people who already lived there. 62 00:04:37,399 --> 00:04:41,579 The Spanish Empire in the Americas would change the world forever, at first propelling Spain 63 00:04:41,579 --> 00:04:43,379 to superpower status. 64 00:04:43,379 --> 00:04:46,959 But as soon would become evident, the discovery of new lands and the building of an empire 65 00:04:46,959 --> 00:04:51,019 wasn't enough to occupy the minds of the Spanish crown, and so turned their attention 66 00:04:51,019 --> 00:04:52,899 to religious hegemony. 67 00:04:52,899 --> 00:04:56,579 First decreeing the expulsion of Jews and soon followed by the Muslims, the so-called 68 00:04:56,579 --> 00:05:01,319 Converter Expel Laws in Spain laid the foundations of the Spanish Inquisition. 69 00:05:01,319 --> 00:05:06,160 nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. This period of Spanish history is notoriously bloody, 70 00:05:06,439 --> 00:05:11,620 even by European standards. The Habsburgs had cemented their claim on Spain as soon as they 71 00:05:11,620 --> 00:05:16,100 could by marrying into the Spanish family. The Habsburgs ruled over large swaths of Europe in 72 00:05:16,100 --> 00:05:20,579 a concerted and somewhat neurotic attempt to keep inheritance within the family, and they were 73 00:05:20,579 --> 00:05:25,899 notorious for their high decree of inbreeding. Habsburg Spain was also a political failure, 74 00:05:26,379 --> 00:05:30,980 drowning in inflation from an influx of American raw materials. Constant warfare and 75 00:05:30,980 --> 00:05:35,199 piracy took its toll on the empire, which lost its early lead for dominance in Europe 76 00:05:35,199 --> 00:05:38,459 to France, Britain, and Russia. 77 00:05:38,459 --> 00:05:42,220 The Habsburgs lost their hold on Spain after the War of Spanish Succession, in which a 78 00:05:42,220 --> 00:05:46,000 French house, the House of Bourbon, took over the Spanish crown. 79 00:05:46,000 --> 00:05:50,639 During the Napoleonic Wars in the 19th century, the Spanish army found themselves ill-prepared, 80 00:05:50,639 --> 00:05:54,800 as they had funneled their entire war treasury into preparation for a naval engagement with 81 00:05:54,800 --> 00:05:57,180 Britain, its main economic rival. 82 00:05:57,180 --> 00:06:01,139 The Spanish army was so soundly defeated by Napoleon that in the end they amounted to 83 00:06:01,139 --> 00:06:05,339 nothing more than unorganized skirmishes and guerrilla warfare. 84 00:06:05,339 --> 00:06:09,500 Napoleon briefly had his brother crowned King of Spain, but with his defeat in 1813 the 85 00:06:09,500 --> 00:06:14,339 monarchy was restored, with rejection of the first Spanish constitution. 86 00:06:14,339 --> 00:06:18,300 This led to a turbulent time in Spain, with revolutions and counter-revolutions for the 87 00:06:18,300 --> 00:06:20,300 next half century. 88 00:06:20,300 --> 00:06:24,779 In 1873 the monarchy was abolished and the first Spanish republic founded. 89 00:06:24,779 --> 00:06:30,060 The Italian king they borrowed, famously abdicating while declaring the Spanish ungovernable. 90 00:06:30,060 --> 00:06:34,100 But with the Spanish-American War and the Cuban Ten Years War, Spain became a shell 91 00:06:34,100 --> 00:06:38,459 of the empire it once was, losing all its holdings in America and the Philippines. 92 00:06:38,459 --> 00:06:43,279 With the outbreak of World War I, Spain declared neutrality and experienced an economic boom, 93 00:06:43,279 --> 00:06:47,220 stifled only by the Spanish flu and insurrections in Morocco. 94 00:06:47,220 --> 00:06:50,959 The instability and lack of centralized control would eventually lead to the Spanish Civil 95 00:06:50,959 --> 00:06:56,699 war between competing factions of nationalists and republicans who split the nation in two. 96 00:06:56,699 --> 00:07:01,339 The civil war is a long and grueling topic that has such complex motives and ideologies 97 00:07:01,339 --> 00:07:04,399 not unlike those happening in the rest of Europe in the 1900s. 98 00:07:04,399 --> 00:07:08,180 So complex in fact that it deserves its own video, which is why you should go to my friend 99 00:07:08,180 --> 00:07:11,519 over at Feature History who has made just that. 100 00:07:11,519 --> 00:07:15,759 Francisco Franco and his dictatorship which presided over the second world war created 101 00:07:15,759 --> 00:07:21,399 what we now call Nationalist Spain, an ideology not unlike Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, 102 00:07:21,399 --> 00:07:25,839 conceding however the official neutrality of Spain during the war. 103 00:07:25,839 --> 00:07:31,240 With his death in 1975, he decreed the restoration of the monarchy with full autocratic powers, 104 00:07:31,240 --> 00:07:35,600 but was marred in King Juan Carlos' decision to seek a constitutional monarchy for the 105 00:07:35,600 --> 00:07:37,279 kingdom. 106 00:07:37,279 --> 00:07:41,839 Spain joined the European Union in 1986, which helped stabilize the economy and industry 107 00:07:41,839 --> 00:07:43,139 in the new government. 108 00:07:43,139 --> 00:07:47,120 The boom in tourism and economic growth in Spain were unprecedented at one point, becoming 109 00:07:47,120 --> 00:07:50,000 Europe's fourth largest economy. 110 00:07:50,000 --> 00:07:54,439 This came to a grinding halt with the 2008 global recession, which saw a property bubble 111 00:07:54,439 --> 00:07:59,660 burst in Spain in particular, creating a devastating long-term economic hardship. 112 00:07:59,660 --> 00:08:03,699 Spain also currently has a few other issues on its plate, including a secessionist movement 113 00:08:03,699 --> 00:08:08,319 in Catalonia, a historically distinct culture region on the southeast, and the European 114 00:08:08,319 --> 00:08:11,300 migrant crisis beginning in 2015. 115 00:08:11,300 --> 00:08:16,079 Modern Spain is still a haven of tourism, with millions visiting each year, as well 116 00:08:16,079 --> 00:08:20,980 as an important political entity in Western Europe, working hard for industrial growth 117 00:08:20,980 --> 00:08:28,069 and slowly healing the wounds of its recent history. 118 00:08:28,069 --> 00:08:32,370 Thank you so much for watching everyone, firstly I want to thank Feature History for collaborating 119 00:08:32,370 --> 00:08:36,789 with me on this one, we've had our channels grow side by side since the very beginning 120 00:08:36,789 --> 00:08:41,450 and he covers topics way better than the kind of short summaries that I do and he's probably 121 00:08:41,450 --> 00:08:44,809 what you're looking for if you really enjoy great topics with a good depth of 122 00:08:44,809 --> 00:08:49,289 history. I'll include a link to his video down below which I collaborated on. Also 123 00:08:49,289 --> 00:08:52,909 be sure to like and subscribe and follow me on Twitter. Also there's been some 124 00:08:52,909 --> 00:08:56,509 requests for some of my characters to be on t-shirts and things like that so I've 125 00:08:56,509 --> 00:09:01,970 opened up a merchandise store which will be updated slowly each month with each 126 00:09:01,970 --> 00:09:05,269 country that I cover and with some of the characters that are on the channel. 127 00:09:05,269 --> 00:09:09,690 So far we've had France and Germany up available now and there'll be more 128 00:09:09,690 --> 00:09:16,309 coming soon. I'll have all the usual links down below. Until next time guys.