Spanish North Africa instead of New World Colonization

I look forward to hearing everyone scoff at these ideas.

I think the questions of productive use of the proceeds and inflation should be considered separately. (so, half a scoff? ;))

Dumping tons of gold and silver into an economic system using gold and silver as currency will reduce the relative value of gold and silver and drive inflation, and the Spanish Crown did not control the other 80% of the imported metal.

However, one could imagine far more productive ways of using the windfall loot than trying to force the Catholic faith down the throats of the Dutch. Improving roads, ports, and sanitation would have done wonders for the industrialization of Spain, and these are areas under the traditional authority of the Crown. Add to the list basic literacy... and you have the beginning of a Golden Age.

(Improving sanitation would have been huge -- it was not uncommon for a Medieval or Renaissance city to kill people faster than the birth rate and rely upon immigration from the countryside for population stability.)
 
I'll try to answer what the Spanish Crown could have done better with the New World bullion. I'll piggyback on Amateur's sentiments a few posts below. I thought about what Spain's major exports were at the time and they included wine, olive oil, and wool. The Spanish crown could have spent on more efficient grape and olive presses to make their wine and olive oil industries more efficient. They could have built improved roads and harbors to get their products to market. They might have had the foresight to invest in textile technologies to process their own wool instead of export the raw stuff. Spain was famous for its steel and might have improved metallurgical processes. Infrastructure building for roads and bridges to build national unity might have helped address Spain's internal divisions bringing Catalonia and the Basque Country closer to the Castillian orbit.

I'm liking it. It would also benefit from spending it on aqueducts and other projects to increase population density, improve farm yields, or even diversify its economy so it doesn't have to import as much (which would make sense in a time of "The Country With The Most Bullion Wins" economics, less gold leaving, is good.)

The era was also a time of patronage. What if Ferdinand and Isabella after Columbus' discovery thought sponsoring that crazy guy's voyage paid off and decided to sponsor other crazy people with interesting ideas. What if Spain was able to steal some of Europe's best talent like Da Vinci and Galileo with generous pensions? Spain might have created close to a modern form of research and development that the formidable Spanish military might have benefitted from.

This just sounds like a university if I'm honest, which Spain had a number of. What this would enable was the establishment of more universities outside of the churches influence. Which would be perfect places for people like Galileo, and others. "Schools of Natural Philosophy" could be quite beneficial for the Spanish, but I'm not sure where the genesis of the idea would come from.

When I initially saw your post, I thought of ways Spain could have better spent their money but realized what if they better understood inflation early. For example, what if Charles V convened a council that included Genoese and Antwerp bankers and scholars from the University of Salamanca (where early modern economic thought developed) to address inflation. Could they have set up a central bank that at least controls the King's Fifth of New World Bullion? Perhaps they could have controlled silver circulation based on observing the prices of goods. Also, what if they used silver bullion as a foreign policy tool? The King of France might be short on funds, perhaps the Spanish might have provided him funds if he stopped going to war in Italy.

I particularly like this bit. The idea of having the King's Fifth Royal Bank tickles me as I hear a million school kids ask about the first four. XD

But more seriously, with more restraint we are restricting the pace of the "Commercial Revolution" which would radically change European economics. Further, I don't think the King would be able to lend out his money that way without the Church getting involved, which if they insisted on doing so could lead to the Spanish breaking from the Church - and potentially a breakdown in the Treaty of Tordesillas in that scenario.

However it leading to some sort of improved theory on inflation? I'm not sure. Inflation was understood as a result of sixfold price increases over three generations, because of the gold of the New World, and the reopening of trade with the East. The only thing I can think of is that the King could issue a form of paper money backed by that bank very early, but I'm not sure if that is me reverse engineering the process or an evolution that makes sense.

I look forward to hearing everyone scoff at these ideas.
I liked them :)
 
@AngelDeJesus

I'm working on something at the moment, but I'll be breif: who is buying all these products and the sheer weight of labor and heavy materials needed to do these mass reforms coming from? Because now the State is getting caught on both ends of the inflation cycle as they are chasing ever more scarce and valuble labor respurces with a currency plunging in value, especially since you don't have a large pool of spare unpledged manpower you can tap into. You can't encourage enclosure before there's a large demand for woolens and other consumer products, which won't come about until you have a large buying market, which showed up in Europe exactly BECAUSE the Spainish silver flooding in produced a buying boom. Infringe on the production areas of the monestaries? The Church is going to come down on you hard for that. Hard push advanced sanitation when you've just been culturally ingraining the connection between that and Jewery/Islam for centuries? All of this is possible... if Spain can read the future and ride out imposing tax increases during the time the price of everything is still going up (as the gold and the credit related to it aren't spread out equally... at all)

Oh, and sponsoring crazy people is a spin on the roulette wheel. Yes, people laughed at Columbus and he happened to get profit by accident, but lottery tickets are in general not the soundest investment

(To clarify, I'm not saying Spain can't do far better with it's resources than it did IOTL. I'm merely pointing out there's no crystal ball you can give and there's alot of factions outside the control of the court in Madrid, and the growing pains being forced by active government policy requires overcoming roadblocks and will produce internal instability)
 
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Lusitania

Donor
While all these ideas put forth all seem very practical and good for the development of the country but people are mixing up 15-16th century catholic Europe and enlightened 17-18th century. The most important aspect was religion for the saving of the soul was the most important thing they could do for the unbelievers or those who were going astray. Also people keep talking about separating church and state and remove education from control of church. But all these points are impossible in catholic Spain during 15-17th century.
 
Inflation was understood as a result of sixfold price increases over three generations, because of the gold of the New World, and the reopening of trade with the East.

One caveat on the inevitability of inflation once the New World loot hits Europe is that IF the demand for gold and silver coins could be increased to meet the torrent of supply, inflation would be reduced or eliminated.

Given the time and place (late Medieval/early Renaissance Western Europe), one could envision an increase demand for coinage by increasing participation in the cash economy. I am not sure when the peasantry of Europe had 100% participation in the cash economy (as opposed to the manorial economy and barter), but I would think Spain of 1560 still had a significant portion of the population not using coins for the majority of their transactions. (Medieval serfs could go for months or years without ever touching significant coinage, every transaction involving direct trades of goods and labor.)

So.... if the Crown promoted elevation of serfs, indentured servants, and others not receiving cash wages (e.g. the lower ranks of the clergy) into the wage earning class, a portion of the New World coinage could be absorbed into their pocket change and sock-under-the-mattress savings, and reduce inflation.

This, and other measures to improve Spain's infrastructure, would be promoted as a means of improving the means of Christians to serve God and the Church. Cleaner, healthier, literate parishioners with coins in their pockets are better able to do God's work and support the local parish, yes? And as was the case in 19th century America, public education could be sold to the establishment as a means of converting the heathen to good Christian citizens (converted Moors and Jews in the case of 16th century Catholic Spain, Catholic and Jewish immigrants in the case of 19th century Protestant America).

Doubt any combination would eliminate inflation though. Way too much easy gold and silver coming in from the New World to drop the macroeconomic effect to zero.
 
1. The Ottomans did not go "full jihad" on the Eastern Orthodox Natives while the Spanish wanted to get rid of the Muslims and Jews, even in North Africa.
The Spanish did not get rid of Muslims and Jews immediately. They could certainly show some flexibility, especially if they're not recovering what they consider their old lands, but expanding.

4. The Balkans and North Africa have also climate differences. The Turkish Forces can deal with the Balkan climate as it is not too different with North West Anatolia. The Spanish however have to deal with the Sahara temperatures.
They don't need to conquer the Sahara. The valuable land along the sea coast has a climates similar to that in southern Spain and the rest is too sparsely populated to pose a challenge to

These things help. If the Ottomans went on a forced conversion early on, odds are the Bulgarian population would rise up with help from Wallachia and the Roman Emperor. But they didn't as a wise decision. It makes it even better as the Hungarians did attempt to convert the Bulgarians of Vidin by force, making the tolerance of the Ottomans much more desired than a potential Hungarian Rule. Even then, the Ottomans kept Bulgaria as a vassal until the Crusade of Nicopolis proved it to be risky.
Is this "the Ottomans saved the Balkans from Hungarian invasion" some standard part of historical education in Turkey? Because it's seems to be repeated way too often, considering that it's clearly incorrect. The Hungarians only a conquered a third of Bulgaria (the independent Vidin Kingdom) thirty years before the Ottoman conquest and were driven out by the central Bulgarian Kingdom and their Wallachian allies after just four years. They were hardly an existential threat. The reaction of the ruler of Vidin to the Nikopol crusade shows clearly that he considered the Ottomans a greater threat, despite being imprisoned by the Hungarians himself.

You also overlook the population factor. While the Balkans clearly had a larger population than the Ottomans did, the whole Maghreb probably had at most about half of the population of Spain. And while the relative religious tolerance contributed to the ease of their conquest, there was significant depopulation during their conquest. So on balance a conquest of the Maghreb by Spain would be not nearly as difficult as you consider it.
 
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