What are the factors that brought the Spanish colonization to the Philippines?
My knowledge on this is sketchy at best. But as stated by the above poster, Spain wanted a trade route into the east for goods and spices. Since Portugal had a monopoly on trade with Japan, Spain needed to find another country willing to trade with them and establish a trading post in the East. Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese Sailor who fell out of favor with the Portuguese court had long been toying with the idea of circumnavigating the world(everyone thought the world was flat, so if you sailed the opposite way to the West you’d fall off the Earth, Magellan believed the theory that the Earth was round and that if you sailed far enough west, you’d end up in the east), but he needed a financier to fund such a journey since no one thought such a journey was possible and considered it a gamble because no one has done it before, so he approached King Felipe and Queen Isabella of Spain with a proposal to conquer any land he comes across in the name of Spain in return for ships, crew and s
