Interesting point! So basically, if Columbus hadn’t returned successfully, Spain’s push into the New World might’ve slowed down, giving the indigenous peoples more time to get used to European contact and maybe even build some resistance to diseases before major conflicts happened.
That, and Spain (or whoever else) wouldn’t be coming in fresh off the surrender of Granada, with the attitude that all non-Christian states must be conquered as a matter of principle.
Exactly without that post Granada mindset, expansion wouldn’t have been driven by the same “conquest by principle” attitude, which could’ve changed a lot of outcomes.
Interesting point! So basically, if Columbus hadn’t returned successfully, Spain’s push into the New World might’ve slowed down, giving the indigenous peoples more time to get used to European contact and maybe even build some resistance to diseases before major conflicts happened.
That, and Spain (or whoever else) wouldn’t be coming in fresh off the surrender of Granada, with the attitude that all non-Christian states must be conquered as a matter of principle.
Exactly without that post Granada mindset, expansion wouldn’t have been driven by the same “conquest by principle” attitude, which could’ve changed a lot of outcomes.