Doubtless you all remember that in 1588 King Philip II of Spain sent a huge fleet of ships to conquer the England of Elizabeth I (130 ships and 30,000 men), but weather and other circumstances intervened and the invasion failed. Many factors led to this invasion, ranging from Elizabeth not having married Philip like her sister Mary had done, to Elizabeth like her father Henry VIII being a Protestant and Philip being a Catholic with authorization from the Pope to go take back England for Holy Mother Church, not to mention the usual great power land-acquisition game that was popular at the time; Philip already owned large chunks of Europe through the inheritance and marriage policies of his Hapsburg family, and large parts of the New World through conquest.
Howard Schmidt went straight to an even more basic reason: control of commerce. Continue reading