🌊 Ripple · counterfactual
What if the completion of the Reconquista had gone differently?
1492 · iberia
Castile and Aragon take Granada, ending 780 years of Muslim rule in Iberia in the same year Columbus sails.
If it had gone differently: Spain stays preoccupied at home; there is no unified, militant, cash-strapped crown looking for a gamble across the ocean.
What it set up
- 1492Columbus reaches the Americas, The Atlantic stays a barrier for generations; Europe's empires grow east, not west.
- 1525The Atlantic slave trade scales up, The plantation economy never finds its labour force; Atlantic colonies stay marginal.
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