The fall of Spain, the first global superpower, and the fall of the US

http://www.americaneconomicalert.org/view_art.asp?Prod_ID=1086 ^

[J Aguilar]

In the last 200 years, the Spanish fleet has been rebuilt three times. Each one of them, the results exceeded the average for a nation of its size, thanks to the efforts of officers like Fernando Villaamil or Isaac Peral.

Villaamil participated in the invention of the Destroyer and died in Santiago on one of them. Isaac Peral developed the first military submarine, an invention so revolutionary that the British had to bribe Spanish politicians in order to suspend further advances.

[J Aguilar]

First of all. 3/11 was a copy of the Bologna railway station bombing and wasn't carried out by "alien thugs", but by a well-known national one.

Secondly, a commercial empire was a British invention, which happened almost 150 years after the Spaniards reached the New World. That is, the Spanish social and economical structures on the Indies were primitive in comparison to what was happening in the, let's say, 18th century.

Although primitive, or because of that, these structures lasted far more than the British ones, which at the first sign of tightening conditions just blew up into 13 pieces.

It is true that the Spanish elites were not used to industry, but fighting, as a consequence of eight centuries of battling the Moors. Since the 1300's and the opening of the Gibraltar strait, Genovese and other Italians based their commerce fleets in Seville, they lobbied to avoid any development in Spain.

Spain already had industry in the Low Countries since 1519. In fact, they also lobbied to keep privileges for producing goods to be sent to the New World. Carlos V and Felipe II both endorsed them in order to calm down the riots in that region. The privileges were extended in the succesive peace treaties.

That is not true that in the 17th century was a sense of prosperity in Spain. Anyone can read Quevedo's El Buscón, written in 1626, an acid view of those years. What happened is that the wealth of the previous century had made the Spanish elites lazy: it was easier to surrender an island to the British (there were a lot of them) and await the silver to arrive again than to plan a counter attack.