Spanish Empire: Sword and Cross

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Al Jazeera Untangles

How Spain conquered with armies and missionaries, fusing faith, unit and golden into planetary dominance.

This movie explores however the Spanish empire built its planetary dominance by fusing subject conquest, spiritual conversion and imperial wealth.

At the bosom of the Spanish enlargement was the adjacent confederation betwixt crown, religion and conquest. Military campaigns were inseparable from missionary efforts arsenic conversion to Christianity became some a justification for empire and a instrumentality of control. Faith and unit precocious together, reshaping societies crossed the Americas.

Through the conquests of the Aztec and Incan empires, the documentary shows however Spanish powerfulness was established done violence, alliances and spiritual authority. The ngo strategy dispersed crossed the Americas, reorganising Indigenous beingness astir churches, labour regimes and assemblage administration. Conversion promised salvation but enforced obedience and taste destruction.

The movie besides examines the economical foundations of Spanish imperial power. Vast quantities of golden and metallic were extracted from the Americas alongside the exploitation of Indigenous and enslaved labour. These resources fuelled European economies, financed planetary commercialized and helped integrate the Americas into an emerging satellite strategy built connected extraction and inequality.

By tracing however faith, conquest and wealthiness operated together, the documentary reveals however Spanish colonialism shaped planetary capitalism, spiritual powerfulness and imperial governance. It shows however the legacies of conquest, forced conversion and assets extraction proceed to power societal inequality, taste individuality and economical structures successful the modern satellite and however existent planetary superpowers similar the United States and China follow this exemplary to their benefit. It besides draws connected the parallels betwixt the erasure of taste artefacts past and today’s “algorithmic colonisation”.

Published On 4 Jan 2026

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