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Spain planned to 'invade' Australia in the 1790s with 100-vessel armada
- kokey 12y agoCute. They couldn't even take Gibraltar then, and that was tiny and on their border.
- spoiledtechie 12y agoQuite incredible. Imagine Australia speaking Spanish instead of English. Its an extremely stable state. I would be reluctant to think it would still be fought over today if Spain did try to take it.
- vacri 12y agoIt probably would have been taken by the US in the Spanish-American War, just like the Philippines were.
- vacri 12y agoSounds like a pipe dream from the outset. 100 ships? Against a small colony on the other side of the world? As a sense of scale, the Spanish Armada, expected to take over England itself if it succeeded (albeit 200 years earlier) was 130 ships strong. And the first colonisation fleet sent by the British was only 11 ships. While not all ships are created equal, 100 ships is still an enormous undertaking, especially at the limits of your supply lines.
- CapitalistCartr 12y agoYeah, just to take a tiny colony 100 ships makes no sense. The English colonists were frequently fighting with the Aborigines, so were fairly well armed and defended against them, but not against cannon. I would think at most a dozen frigates, and perhaps a half dozen support ships would be plenty, even carrying a strong contingent of marines. The colony was still new and small. Perhaps they expected the British navy to show up.
- serve_yay 12y agoIt was the style at the time.
- shanmoorthy 12y agoThe voyage from Spain to England's quite short. For a voyage from South America to Australia across the Pacific, you'd need a few ships purely to carry supplies, plus you'd have to account for a fair amount of losses of ships and men due to bad weather, disease etc.
- marak830 12y agoAnd tkke on the world power of the English? I'm quite surprised!
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y agoIs it only an invasion if it's against white people?
- lurcio 12y agoPost of the day!
- Htsthbjig 12y agoHow attacking a colonial settlement is "invading" Australia?. In fact the British actually used to attack Spanish settlements at the time, and supported piracy against the Spanish Armada. It has very little to do with actual Australia. It were the British who invaded Australia, killing most of the native population. Go around Australia and see how many non whites there are. See who has all the wealth on the country.
- jessaustin 12y agoBased on their record elsewhere, it isn't clear that the Spanish would have treated Aborigines any better than the British did. It sucks to be colonized.
- lurcio 12y ago"supported piracy against the Spanish Armada" I wish your statement of fact on this issue had been as well placed as your sentiments.
- lazyant 12y agoIt's semantics but just in case "Viewed from London, buccaneering was a low-budget way to wage war on England's rival, Spain. So, the English crown licensed buccaneers with letters of marque, legalizing their operations in return for a share of their profits." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buccaneer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buccaneer
- yareally 12y agoPretty much all the major European powers handed out letters of marque to privateers/mercenaries though and the practice predated buccaneers and the Spanish Main. However, the British probably exploited their usage more than any other nation against the Spanish from the 16th to the 18th century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque
- lazyant 12y ago
- shanmoorthy 12y agoIf this had transpired, maybe our idiot Prime Minister would've made Rafael Nadal a caballero on Australia Day this year.
- forgottenacc56 12y agoI wish they'd do it now. We need a new government.
- vince_refiti 12y agoThe Spanish government has screwed the Spanish economy up. No thanks.