Spain and the United States - Real Instituto Elcano

CHAPTER 1
OVERVIEW
Had it not been for Spain, the United States, as we know it today, might never
have existed.
Juan Ponce de León landed in 1513 on the east coast of what is today the
state of Florida and claimed it for the Spanish crown. In 1526 Lucas Vázquez
de Ayllón explored the coast of Georgia and South Carolina, and in 1539
Hernando de Soto landed on the west coast of Florida with a large company,
becoming the first white men to see the Mississippi River. Alvar Núñez Cabeza
de Vaca sailed along the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico and went through
what is today Texas. In 1565 Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded St. Augustine
in Florida, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the United States. 1 When
the English ship, the Mayflower, arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620,
the Spanish empire was already well established.
At the time of the American Revolution (1775-83), almost all of the
modern-day United States west of the Mississippi River up to Canada, as well
as what is now called Mexico (then known as New Spain), was a territory of
Spain. Spain was an ally of France and an economic competitor of Great
Britain. It took the side of the American rebels, more out of hatred for Britain,
its old rival, than for any enthusiasm for the cause of independence, which it
feared would spread to the Spanish colonies in Latin America, as it eventually
did. Spain hoped that a British defeat would enable it to recover those parts of
Spanish America (Jamaica, Honduras, parts of west Florida) and Europe
(Gibraltar and Menorca) that the British had occupied.
1. The Americas are named after the Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci, who sailed in 1499 – seven years
after his friend and rival Christopher Columbus first landed in the West Indies. Vespucci’s breakthrough came on
his second voyage, when he realised that what he was exploring was not India (as Columbus had thought) but a
new continent. He verified this by following the coast of South America down to within 600km of Tierra del
Fuego. “Since Europe and Asia have received the names of women, I see no reason why we should not call this
other place Amerige or America, after the wise man that discovered it,” said the German cartographer Martin
Waldseemüller in 1507.