No, you’re both wrong. The current would have been overpowered by the trade winds, which would have whooshed him right to Plymouth Rock.
According to this page–which admits up front that the figures given are very speculative–in 1450 Spain/Portugal had a population of approximately 7 million, while the British Isles had only approximately 3 million.
Spain didn’t have a lot of money either in 1492. The thing about the Columbus expedition was that it was actually pretty cheap - three small ships and less than a hundred sailors. The big thing against it was pretty much everyone expected it to fail. It was like placing a ten dollar bet on a 1000-1 shot.
But once Columbus surprised everyone and successfully found land where he said it would be, the numbers changed. Everyone knew that a new route to Asia (which is what they thought they had) would be a big profit maker and Spain was quick to follow through. England would have done the same if it had been them. And by the time people realized they hadn’t gone to Asia and found a source of spices, they knew they had found a new world that had silver and gold.
If that’s the case then the New World would be a bust. Or the tobacco trade gets a head start.
Okay, I’ll buy that. It matches the figure I had for England. The only figure I could find for Spain said its population was under two million but it didn’t offer any sources.
Without knowing how the seven million was split between Spain and Portugal, I’ll concede Spain had a larger population than England. But I don’t think England was so far behind that manpower would have been an issue. France certainly had more people than England and Spain combined but it was a marginal colonial power in the Americas.
There are a couple of dueling estimates of the Spanish population in the 1530’s ( which presaged a general European boom in the 16th century ). One group typified by folks like Paul Bairoch argues for an estimated ~7.5 million in Spain, with ~6.5 million in Castile. Others like Albert Carreras argue for a much lower estimate of ~4.8 million, with ~3.1 million in Castile. That big discrepancy highlights the weakness of the sources.
By contrast England + Wales seems to be estimated in the ~3 million range for the same rough date ( 1541 ). Still regardless of which dueling figures you accept for Spain, it is pretty likely by the latter half of the 14th century ( after the first big hit by the Black Death ) Castile alone was probably at least a bit more populous and prosperous than England and that was still likely the case by the Age of Exploration. Exactly how much more so is obviously a matter of debate.
But I’ve noted that population isn’t really a relevant issue. Cortes landed in Mexico with five hundred men. Pizarro set out for Peru with two hundred and fifty men. Alvarado’s expedition into Guatemala had four hundred men. Ponce de Leon’s expedition to Florida had two hundred men. Velasquez de Cuellar conquered Cuba with three hundred men. Does anyone think England couldn’t have found these numbers as well? Amazing as it seems, the Americas were conquered by just a few thousand soldiers. The difference between a manpower pool of three million and one of eight million wasn’t significant.
The trade winds are easterly, like the current.
Most do, but not all. A subset travels west, but evidently not many people can recognize them. They’re after both their direction and the peculiar sound they make: The Whooshterlies.
I got it after your second post. But there was nothing in your first post that indicated you were joking. A lot of people might seriously believe that a ship sailing across the ocean would just head straight west from its home port.
But doesn’t that depend on how they selected for their military, and that the greater population of Spain would give an advantage in finding really high grade soldiers ?
How were the conquistadors selected ? Did they have the equivalent of modern Special Forces selection courses or was the culture totally different ?
He’d have accidentally discovered the Isle of Wight.
Hernan Cortes was originally a lawyer.
Seriously.
Well, at that time in Spain there turned out to be thousands of adventurers willing to head off to the Americas for plunder and glory.
Would Britain have had the same? I’m thinking no. Spain didn’t conquer the Americas because they saw it first, they conquered the Americas because they were the only country with the preconditions necessary to conquer the Americas. Lots of other countries tried to send expeditions to the Americas, and none of the succeeded as spectacularly as the Spaniards. The Spanish left North America to the British and the French, not because North America was too far north for them, or because the British saw it first, but because it was comparatively worthless compared to Mesoamerica. North America was just a bunch of thinly distributed farming villages. Mesoamerica was a rich empire that produced literally tons of gold and silver.
Eventually farming villages and fur trading started to sound pretty good to countries who didn’t have access to the Spanish gold mines. But they were a distant consolation prize compared to the riches of the Spanish empire.
Concur. As it was, it took England 100+ years to start serious efforts in the new world. Being the “discoverers” of it (=movie executive producers) ca. 1500 wouldn’t have changed that, most likely.
Alright, that’s funny.
And then he got worse.
But, as George Lopez put it in an early comedy bit, we’d have no place names.
What if Columbus had sailed for England?
He would have come back to Spain, loaded with fish and chips and woollen goods.
Okay, I feel we’ve pretty much lost the topic here.
So Columbus discovered America for England. England occupied the same territory in the Americas that Spain did historically. How? A wizard did it.
Now that we’ve affirmed the premise, let’s discuss what changes in history would result from it.
New Amsterdam would have stayed New Amsterdam, for one thing.