Colonization of Asia, Spanish
1500 CE to 1914 CE
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The early history of Aceh remains uncertain, but one tradition traces its origins to the Cham people.
The Acehnese language belongs to the Aceh-Chamic language group, which consists of ten related languages.
According to the Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals), the Champa king Syah Pau Kubah had a son, Syah Pau Ling, who fled when the Vietnamese Lê dynasty sacked the Cham capital, Vijaya, in 1471. He is said to have later founded the Aceh kingdom.
By the mid-fifteenth century, the ruler of Aceh converts to Islam, marking a pivotal shift in the region’s history.
The Sultanate of Aceh is formally established in 1511 by Ali Mughayat Syah, who launches campaigns to extend his control over northern Sumatra beginning in 1520.
His conquests include Deli, Pedir, and Pasai, and he wages war against Aru, solidifying Aceh’s growing influence.
Portuguese mariners are opening a route around Africa to the East in the fifteenth century.
At the same time as the Castilians, they have planted colonies in the Azores and in the Canary Islands (also Canaries; Spanish, Canarias), the latter of which have been assigned to Spain by papal decree.
The conquest of Granada allows the Catholic Kings to divert their attention to exploration, although Christopher Columbus's first voyage in 1492 is financed by foreign bankers.
In 1493 Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia, a Catalan) formally approves the division of the unexplored world between Spain and Portugal.
The Treaty of Tordesillas, which Spain and Portugal sign one year later, moves the line of division westward and allows Portugal to claim Brazil.
New discoveries and conquests come in quick succession.
Vasco Núñez de Balboa reaches the Pacific in 1513, and the survivors of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition complete the circumnavigation of the globe in 1522.
In 1519 the conquistador Hernán Cortes subdues the Aztecs in Mexico with a handful of followers, and between 1531 and 1533 Francisco Pizarro overthrows the empire of the Incas and establishes Spanish dominion over Peru.
In 1493, when Columbus brought fifteen hundred colonists with him on his second voyage, a royal administrator had already been appointed for the Indies.
The Council of the Indies (Consejo de Indias), established in 1524, acts as an advisory board to the crown on colonial affairs, and the House of Trade (Casa de Contratacion) regulates trade with the colonies.
The newly established colonies are not Spanish but Castilian.
They are administered as appendages of Castile, and the Aragonese are prohibited from trading or settling there.
The colonies, however, are far from the seat of ultimate responsibility, and few administrators are guided by the humane spirit of those regulations.
The Roman Catholic Church, and particularly the Franciscan order, show some concern for the welfare of the natives, but on the whole, church efforts are inadequate to the situation.
The natives, nevertheless, find one effective benefactor among their Spanish oppressors.
Bartolome de las Casas, the first priest ordained in the West Indies, is outraged by the persecution of the natives.
He frees his own slaves, returns to Spain, and persuades the council to adopt stronger measures against enslaving the natives.
He makes one suggestion that he will later regret—that Africans, whom the Spaniards consider less than human, be imported to replace the natives as slaves.
In 1517 King Charles V (1516-56) grants a concession for exporting four thousand enslaved Africans to the Antilles.
Thus the slave trade begins, and will flourish for more than two hundred years.
Amerigo Vespucci, trained for a business career, is the third son of Ser Nastagio (Anastasio), a Florentine notary, and Lisabetta Mini.
Amerigo had been educated by his uncle, Fra Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, a Dominican friar of the monastery of San Marco in Florence.
While his elder brothers had been sent to the University of Pisa to pursue scholarly careers, Amerigo Vespucci had embraced a mercantile life, and had been hired as a clerk by the Florentine commercial house of Medici, headed by Lorenzo de' Medici.
Vespucci had acquired the favor and protection of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, who had become the head of the business after the elder Lorenzo's death in 1492.
In March of that year, the Medici dispatched the thirty-eight-year-old Vespucci and Donato Niccolini as confidential agents to look into the Medici branch office in Cádiz, whose managers and dealings were under suspicion.
In April 1495, by the intrigues of Bishop Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, the Crown of Castile had broken their monopoly deal with Christopher Columbus and had begun handing out licenses to other navigators for the West Indies.
Just around this time, Vespucci, engaged as the executor of Giannotto Berardi, an Italian merchant who had recently died in Seville, had organized the fulfillment of Berardi's outstanding contract with the Castilian crown to provide twelve vessels for the Indies.
After these were delivered, Vespucci had continued as a provision contractor for Indies expeditions, and is known to have secured beef supplies for at least one (if not two) of Columbus' voyages.
A letter published in 1504 purports to be an account by Vespucci, written to Florentine statesman Piero Soderini, of a lengthy visit to the New World, leaving Spain in May 1497 and returning in October 1498.
However, modern scholars have doubted that this voyage took place, and consider this letter a forgery.
Whoever did write the letter makes several observations of native customs, including use of hammocks and sweat lodges.
The names of Amerigo Vespucci's ships were the San Antiago, Repertaga, Wegiz, and Girmand.
About 1499–1500, Vespucci joins an expedition in the service of Spain, with Alonso de Ojeda (or Hojeda) as the fleet commander.
The intention is to sail around the southern end of the African mainland into the Indian Ocean.
Ojeda, on returning to Spain, had been commissioned by the Catholic Monarchs, without the permission of Columbus, to sail for America again, which he does on May 18, 1499, with three caravels.
He travels with the pilot and cartographer Juan de la Cosa and the Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci.
This is the first of a series of what have become known as the "minor journeys" or "Andalusian journeys" that are made to the New World.
Pedro Alonso Niño: Spanish Explorer and Navigator of the Early Americas (1499–1505)
Pedro Alonso Niño, a Spanish navigator of African descent, played a significant role in early European exploration, serving as a pilot on Columbus's expeditions before launching his own independent voyage in search of wealth and trade opportunities.
Early Life and Exploration with Columbus
- Born in Palos de Moguer, Spain, to a Spanish father and an enslaved African mother, Niño grew up in a seafaring environment.
- He explored the West African coast in his early years, acquiring navigational experience.
- In 1492, he piloted one of Columbus's ships on the first voyage to the New World.
- He later accompanied Columbus's third voyage (1498–1500), during which he witnessed the discovery of Trinidad and the Orinoco River delta.
Independent Expedition to the Indies (1499–1500)
- After returning to Spain, Niño sought to explore the Indies independently, focusing on gold and pearls rather than new lands.
- The Council of Castile granted him permission, with the condition that he must avoid Columbus’s discoveries and pay 20% of his profits to the Crown.
- He partnered with Luis and Cristóbal de la Guerra, a wealthy merchant and a skilled pilot, to finance and lead the expedition.
- In May 1499, they departed from Sanlúcar, reaching Maracapana (Venezuela) in 23 days.
Trade and Discoveries in the Caribbean
- Traded with indigenous peoples, exchanging trinkets for pearls at the islands of Margarita, Coche, and Cubagua, securing a large fortune.
- Sailed along the Venezuelan coast, where they discovered the salt mines at Punta Araya, which later became a major Spanish resource.
Return to Spain and Arrest (1500–1505)
- After just two months, Niño and his crew returned to Baiona, Spain, with immense wealth.
- However, he was accused of cheating Queen Isabella out of her rightful share of the expedition’s profits.
- He was arrested, his property confiscated, and placed on trial.
- Before the trial concluded, Pedro Alonso Niño died in 1505.
Legacy
- One of the first Afro-Spanish explorers, Niño helped expand European knowledge of the Caribbean and South America.
- His voyage demonstrated the economic potential of pearl trading, leading to further Spanish exploitation of the region.
- Despite his early success, his downfall reflected Spain’s strict enforcement of royal taxation and control over exploration profits.
Pedro Alonso Niño’s life and career embody both the opportunities and dangers of early European exploration, making him a significant but often overlooked figure in the Age of Discovery.
Three unpublished familiar letters from Amerigo Vespucci to Lorenzo de' Medici will be rediscovered in the eighteenth century.
One describes a voyage made in 1499–1500 which corresponds with the second of the "four voyages".
The two disputed letters claim that Vespucci made four voyages to America, while at most two can be verified from other sources.
At the moment there is a dispute between historians on when Vespucci visited the mainland the first time.
Some historians like Germán Arciniegas and Gabriel Camargo Pérez think that his first voyage was made in June 1497 with the Spanish Pilot Juan de la Cosa.
After Ojeda and Vespucci, bound for India by way of the Cape of Good Hope in 1499, hit land at the coast of what is now Guyana, the two seem to have separated.
Vespucci sails southward, discovering the mouth of the Amazon River and reaching 6°S, before turning around and seeing Trinidad and the Orinoco River and returning to Spain by way of Hispaniola.
The letter to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, claims that Vespucci determined his longitude celestially on August 23, 1499, while on this voyage.
However, this claim may be fraudulent, which could cast doubt on the letter's credibility.
Alonso de Ojeda has taken many captives back to Spain, whom he sells as slaves.
Even so, the voyage has not been financially successful, netting some fifteen thousand maravedis in profit to be divided among the fifty-five crew members surviving from the original three hundred.
Note that since forty maravedis per day is an average wage for skilled labor at this time, they could have made more money staying at home.
Returning on the heels of Pedro Alonso Nino's smaller but far more lucrative voyage magnifies this disappointment.
The date of return is disputed: it is usually stated that Ojeda returned in June 1500 but the historian Demetrio Ramos has suggested the earlier date of November 1499.
Queen Isabella I of Castile founds La Casa y Audiencia de Indias in 1503, eleven years after the discovery of the Americas.
The Casa, headquartered in Seville, is the Spanish counterpart of the Portuguese organization, the Casa da Índia, or House of Índia, of Lisbon, established in 1434.
As host city of what will come to be called the Casa de Contratacion, or "House of Trade," Seville becomes the center of Spanish trade with the New World.
Contacts between Asia and the west already dated back hundreds of years, especially between the Papacy and the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century.
There were also numerous traders that traveled between the continents, the most famous of which is Marco Polo.
Christianity is not new to the Mongols, as many have been practicing Nestorian Christianity since the seventh century.
However, the overthrow of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty by the Ming in 1368 resulted in a strong assimilatory pressure on China's Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities, and outside influences were forced out of China.
By the sixteenth century, there is no reliable information about any practicing Christians remaining in China.
Syphilis seemed to have reached Guangzhou in 1505.
The first Portuguese explorer credited with reaching China is Jorge Álvares, who arrives at Guangzhou via the Pearl River Delta in 1513.