The Spanish Empire

The Spanish Empire was a Catholic empire while the Ottoman Empire was a Muslim empire. They were both similar in a way that they both wanted to spread their beliefs of god and wanted to convert as many people to their religion as possible. The Spanish were faithful Christians, but were violent in converting natives into their religion. Christian missionaries were sent to convert the natives from the places the Spanish conquered into Christianity. These Christian missionaries were known as Conquistadors. The converts would enter society as citizens, but second class citizens, unlike in the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire was run by a strict Muslim called the Sultan. In the Ottoman, the Christian young males would convert and enter the Janissary rank. The converts in the Janissary rank would be wealthy and powerful in the Ottoman society. This is because they both were different religions, and they had different ideas on how to deal with their converts.

Another difference was the differences in the reason they expanded and what they wanted to do. The Ottomans were more of a military empire and expanded by their strength. They wanted to be the strongest empire and they believed that to become successful, they had to be very strong. But, the Spanish was a merchant empire. They used their colonies to get goods and to trade or to exchange goods with other regions. The expansion of the Ottomans was land based and they conquered areas from the Middle East to Europe, while the Spanish expanded by making colonies in the Americas and sometimes Africa.

Even though they both had different means to expand, their downfall was because of the same reason. Corruption started and a lot of problems started to occur. The main reasons was because in the Spanish empire, they traded a lot and became very wealthy, but they did not know how to control the wealth and the wealth ended up going somewhere else that was not in their benefit. The Ottomans had corruption in its government and the empire fell due to the lack of a way to maintain the empire. Even though in the years 1450-1800, these two empires were one of the greatest empires, they both ended in a downfall.

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