When someone asks you what is the most important thing that happened in European History in 1492, the correct answer is the Fall of Granada.
- The new Christian hierarchy demanded heavy taxes from non-Christians and gave them rights, such as in the Treaty of Granada (1491) only for Moors in recently Islamic Granada. On July 30, 1492, all the Jewish community — some 200,000 people — were forcibly expelled. The very next year the Alhambra decree under Archbishop Hernando de Talavera (1492) dismissed the Treaty of Granada and now the Muslim population of Granada was forced to convert or be expelled. In 1502, Queen Isabella I declared conversion to Catholicism compulsory within the Kingdom of Castile. King Charles V did the same to Moors in the Kingdom of Aragon in 1526, forcing conversions of its Muslim population during the Revolt of the Germanies. Many local officials took advantage of the situation to seize property.
Thus paving the way for roughly 500 years of backwards descent into barbarism. "Spain" basically existed from 1492 until 1588 and ever since it's been a fucked up backwater puppet state. The glory years under Ferdinand basically accomplished widespread religious persecution and the destruction of knowledge and culture. I used to think we taught the importance of Columbus because we're so American-centric. Then I slogged through a thousand pages of King Fucking Ferdinand and now I think we teach the importance of Columbus because teaching anything else is an exercise in teaching why the Spanish don't matter.
Spain is a great lesson in the Hubris of Empire. In 1492 they are broke, battered, have a dual monarch uniting the country, only the two monarchs LOATHE each other together only for the glory of faith and nationalism. The two armies are not fighting yet only because they are not getting paid enough to start a civil war. Portugal, the biggest and wealthiest trading county in Europe at the time, is preventing Spanish flagged shipping from trading freely while licking its chops its your weakened state. Then Columbus. Within a generation, Spain is THE power in Europe, their kid(s) marry into the most powerful ruling families on the continent, they write a ton of checks resulting in their ownership of the Papacy. Spain cannot be touched economically, militarily, politically. They really are the first super power since Rome fell. Within three generations, less than a hundred years, the money is piddled away, there is no infrastructure investment, zero long term planning, the empire is theirs in name only and crumbling rapidly, those royal families they married into now own the country and her people, their biggest rival, Portugal, is ascendant again with their renewed alliance to with the British, and all that gold, all that money, all that wealth the looting of a whole hemisphere gave them is GONE. I say Hubris because the grandkids got bogged into foreign entanglements and flushed their wealth into the Crusades, the disaster in Belgium, and finally lost the whole fleet on an ill-advised war with Brittan that ceded the whole control of the ocean to their rival. Then they got dogged into the Reformation. It was a multi-decade punching of the tar baby that ended up with the Spanish never recovering. The military people on the ground even told them that the Armada was a bad idea, but 100 years of being on top they forgot that you can lose more than just a battle and a war. Its been 20 generations and Spain has done NOTHING of import in all that time since. Stuff like this, the rise and fall and the lost opportunities that seem so in your face in hindsight are why I love history. The Millennial generation, for those reading my ramblings, are the third generation since the USA was at its peak of empire. Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations and all that. I still think the USA is too big to fail... now. But having the hubris that you cannot fail is what causes history to laugh in your face.
My grandfather rode a Camel, my father rode a Camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a Camel. -The guy who turned this into this. I would argue that Ferdinand's Big Fuckups (because Isabella was a moderating force that kept him in check) were 1) Expelling the Moors 2) Exterminating the Jews 3) Siding with the faith that failed to bring Henry VIII to heel So really, "Jesus three ways." (well and also this bullshit but then I don't get to make a food joke)
I remembered the Camel comment but forgot where I heard it. Is this why Dhubai is becoming a hedge fund with a country attached to it? I read somewhere a while back that a lot of the Emirates are seeing the end of oil looming and are doing a lot of work to divest and invest. AKA all the merchant class, doctors, middle managers and professionals.2) Exterminating the Jews
The history of the Middle East is complicated but the recent history of the Arabian peninsula is less so. Under the Ottomans it was an empty quarter roamed over by beduin. Lawrence of Arabia decided we should back the Sauds over the Hejaz, at which point it was still a bunch of beduin, except they were british beduin instead of ottoman beduin, which mattered a shit-ton when oil was discovered in 1938. The UAE, on the other hand, was a bunch of pearl-diving trading ports and merchant stops along the Persian Gulf. And pirates. So many pirates. (10th century historian Ibn Haqbal) The British found a succinctly British solution to this millenia-old problem: pay the pirates to raid everyone else. Thus did the "Pirate Coast" become the "Trucial States." Even then it was a loose confederation (the trucial states still raided each other for 30 years after they agreed to leave British shipping alone) but it wasn't really until steam traffic could routinely outrun sail pirates that the trucial states focused on something other than piracy. So the tradition in Saudi Arabia is "ride around the desert never settling in one spot long enough to collect dust" going back to pre-islamic times. The tradition in the UAE is "predate all traffic that flows past your shores." You will find a compelling correlation between former pirate hotbeds and current gambling hotbeds.As early as about the year 815 the people of Basrah had undertaken an unsuccessful expedition against the pirates in Bahrain; 2 in the 10th century. People could not venture to sail the Bed Sea except with soldiers and especially artillery-men (naffatin) on board. The island Socotra in particular was regarded as a dangerous nest of pirates, at which people trembled as they passed it. It was the point d'appui of the Indian pirates who ambushed the Believers there. Piracy was never regarded as a disgraceful practice for a civilian, nor even as a curious or remarkable one. Arabic has formed no special term for it; Estakhri (p. 33) does not even call them "sea-robbers," but designates them by the far milder expression "the predatory." Otherwise the Indian term the barques is used for them.