Before Rome
The earliest records of civilization in Spain date back to the times of the Celts and Iberians, in about 1100 BCE. These two civilizations integrated into the Celt-Iberian race that resembles most of Spanish heritage today. The early Spanish settlers held economic ties with only two Mediterranean civilizations, the Phoenicians and the Greeks. The two civilizations extended their influence into the peninsula and established several important colonies on the Spanish mainland and along the Mediterranean coast. It wasn't until the Punic Wars (246-146 BCE) that most of the region was conquered by Carthage on the path to Rome. The Carthaginians founded two major colonies, Ibiza and Cartagena, that became known to them as "New Carthage".
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Hispania and Roman Hegemony
After Rome had defeated Carthage in the third and Final Punic War, they pursued their colonial land claims as well. Following a sustained period of resistance, Emperor Augustus successfully annexed the newly named "Hispania" as a Roman province in 19 BCE. For the next 400 years, Spain's culture, economy, and infrastructure flourished under the new Roman tutelage. Spain's coastal cities served as major exporters of gold, wood, olive oil, and wine for the Roman empire. After the enactment of the Edict of Milan, Christianity was swiftly spread into Spain, and left an eternal footprint on Spanish culture and values. The Romans successfully ruled Spain until the 5th century CE, when the entire empire began to fall.
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Germanic Invasion and Visigothic Occupation
In the early 5th century, two Germanic tribes, the Suevi and the Vandals, crossed the Rhine river into the region of Gaul, before the inhabiting Visigoths drove them into Spain. The two tribes settled and occupied their own regions of the peninsula, the Suevi in the northwest and the Vandals in the south. Roman Emperor Honorius, having most of Spain now out of his direct control, commissioned his sister Galla Placidia and her husband, the Visigothic king Ataulf, to establish order in the region and to drive the barbarians off the peninsula. In return, the Visigoths were granted complete economical and governmental control of the province. Through both military and diplomatic means, the new governance successfully wiped out the Suevi and forced the Vandals out of Spain. In 484 CE, Toledo was established as the capital of the new Spanish monarchy, and ruled for several successive generations. After the fall of Rome in 476, the Visigoths continued ruling in the Emperor's place, and lead Spain into the Early Middle Ages. However, the kingdom's lack of a defined hereditary system for the Spanish throne allowed for internal affairs and royal elections to be influenced by the Germans, Franks, and most importantly, the Muslims.
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Al Andalus and the Moorish Epoch
In the early eighth century, a group of North African Muslims known as the Moors began their quest of complete cultural and authoritative control over the Visigothic Kingdom in Hispania. The Moors originated from two ethnic groups, the first being the Arabs from the Middle East, and the other being Moroccan Berbers conquered by the Arabs and converted to Islam. In the year 712, North African governor Musa ibn Nusayr led an army of Arabs onto the peninsula, and in three years successfully expelled the Goths from the majority of the region, pushing the last of the Christian monarchs to the mountains in the north. The Moors established a new territory in southern Spain known as "Al Andalus", which was organized and governed under the caliph of Damascus. The Moorish control of Spain would last for centuries, and drastically changed the course of Spain's dynamic history. Most of the remaining Visigothic nobles converted to Islam in order to retain their positions of authority, effectively spreading the religion into Spain's aristocracy and urban communities. Later, in the year 929, caliph Abd al Rahman III established the Andalusian amirate of Cordoba as a caliphate, severing ties between Al Andalus and exterior caliphates. While many Spanish Muslims rejoiced this newfound religious sovereignty, many Christians still in Al Andalus expressed fear towards the rising power of the Islamic state in Spain. Many of these Mozarabs, as they came to be called, publicly denounced the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and fled to the Christian states in the north. The growing tensions between the Islamic caliphs in the south and the Christian kingdoms in the north led to centuries of civil conflict in Spain.
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Reconquista and the Inquisition
Resistance to the Muslim occupation began in the 8th century, when small groups of Visigothic warriors took arms against their Andalusian neighbors. Pelayo, king of Ovideo, rallied Christian natives to take on the offensive, beginning the 700 year reconquest, or "Reconquista" in spanish. The objective of the Reconquista began as a matter of survival, but steadily transformed into a holy crusade to drive the Muslims back out of Spain and to reconstruct a universal Catholic monarchy that could govern the nation. The Kings of Leon, successors of Pelayo, further pushed the movement into the territorial south and continued the conflict between the Gothic Christians and the Moorish Muslims. An area encompassing a chain of strongholds on the Ebro River became to be known as Castile, which later became a kingdom in the year 1004. Out of a chain of pocket states along the Pyrenees mountains, in a region known as the Spanish March, emerged the Kingdom of Aragon and other smaller counties. These two Christian kingdoms, Castile and Aragon, would play a crucial role in the expelling of the Moors and the foundation of the Spanish empire. After the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile in 1469, they led the final charge of the Reconquista, and aimed to rid Spain of the Moors completely. By this time, most of the southern caliphates had lost their combined power, and were broken up into small, incompetent states. Along with expelling the remaining Moors from Spain, the two monarchs also aimed to unify all Spaniards under Catholicism. They realized that even with the new kingdom in power, many citizens hadn't converted to Christianity. Ferdinand and Isabella established the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition”, commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition, in 1478. The objective of the Inquisition was to forcefully convert all Jews and Muslims to Catholicism, by means of torture, religious persecution, and execution. While Granada, the final Moorish caliphate, was conquered in 1492, the Inquisition was not officially abolished until much later in the 19th century. Later, on April 17th, 1492, the Spanish empire was founded, and on August 3rd, Christopher Columbus set sail for the West Indies. The newly established Catholic monarchy would rule Spain for centuries, and would soon become one of the largest and most impressive empires of the modern era.
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