Why Didn't Spain Just Take the Whole of North America?

In 1800 Spain claimed more of North America than anyone alive — Florida, Texas, the Southwest, California and everything west of the Mississippi. The entire non-Native population of that frontier was about 30,000 people. The United States that year counted 5,308,483. Spain did not fail to claim North America. Spanish ships were on that coast a century before the Mayflower, and Santa Fe was a working provincial capital nine years before anyone landed at Plymouth. Spain claimed nearly all of it and could never put anybody on it — and by the end, it was giving ground. This video is the full answer to why, and it comes down to four things. SILVER. After Potosí in 1545 and Zacatecas in 1546, close to 17 million kilograms of silver crossed to Seville in a century and a half. That money set every priority the empire had, and the silver stopped at a line north of Zacatecas. Beyond it, as far as Madrid could tell, there was nothing in the ground worth the price of the ships. THE ENCOMIENDA. The Spanish colonial system ran on handing a man a piece of paper naming a town that owed him tribute. It only works if people already live in fixed settlements with leaders who can be held responsible. In central Mexico that existed, and Spain simply captured the Mexica tribute system and changed the address on it. On the southern plains there was nothing to grip. The Pueblo peoples of the Rio Grande were the one exception, which is the only reason New Mexico was ever colonised. THE EXPEDITIONS THAT FOUND NOTHING. Cabeza de Vaca and three others walking out of the desert in 1536 after eight years. Coronado riding north in 1540 with 350 Europeans, 1,300 Indigenous allies and his wife's money, wintering on the Rio Grande, burning a dozen Pueblo towns in the Tiguex War, and finally reaching Quivira in central Kansas to find grass lodges and maize fields. De Soto crossing the Southeast for four years and dying on the Mississippi, sunk in the river at night so the people he had claimed to be an immortal son of the sun would not find the body. After 1573 the crown stopped licensing conquests in the north altogether. AND THEN SPAIN STARTED LOSING GROUND. The video covers Oñate's 1598 colony, the Acoma massacre and the 24 men sentenced to lose a foot; the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, coordinated across two dozen towns and six languages with knotted cords, which killed 400 colonists and drove Spain out of New Mexico for twelve years; what Spain had to concede to get back in; the horses that escaped during the revolt and made the Comanche the finest light cavalry on the plains; the destruction of the San Sabá mission in 1758; the Villasur expedition wiped out at dawn on the Loup river in Nebraska; and the 1786 peace that committed Spain to annual payments to a people it could not defeat. It ends with the two documents that settle the question. The Reglamento of 1772, in which the Marqués de Rubí's inspection led Charles III to draw a defensive line that falls almost exactly where the US–Mexico border runs today — with Spanish families at Los Adaes marched off their own land to get behind it. And Nootka Sound in 1789, where Britain told Spain that a claim is not a possession and land belongs to whoever actually lives on it. Then silver at Arizonac in 1736, and gold at Sutter's Mill in January 1848 — nine days before Mexico signed California over to the United States. Every figure here is sourced. Where numbers are estimates or historians disagree, the video says so. CHAPTERS 0:00 Thirty Thousand People 1:44 The Mountain That Set the Priorities 3:35 The Paper That Only Worked in Mexico 5:43 Cabeza de Vaca and the Rumour 7:00 Coronado Burns the Rio Grande 8:10 Grass Houses in Kansas 9:20 De Soto Dies in the River 10:33 Nobody Was Coming 11:32 Acoma and the Twenty-Four Feet 13:28 The Knotted Cord 15:30 What Spain Conceded to Come Back 16:34 Their Own Horses Turned on Them 18:10 Dawn on the Loup River 19:36 The Line They Drew in 1772 22:02 Where All the Men Actually Were 23:33 Nootka Sound, 1789 24:55 Nine Days Too Late #SpanishEmpire #NewSpain #AmericanHistory #Conquistadors #Coronado #PuebloRevolt #Comanche #History #Documentary #ColonialAmerica #SpanishColonization #NewMexico #Texas #California #Potosi