>>13462118Real answer: Spain made way too much money, way too fast off their colonies. They went from a relatively poor backwater that had been plundered by the Moors for generations to the wealthiest kingdom in western Europe in less than fifty years. They had no idea how to actually manage the enormous wealth they got from their colonies. Overnight their entire system of government, at home and abroad, basically only worked if they had shiploads of gold coming every month.
It also meant that they basically never treated their colonies as colonies like other nations did. It was purely resource extraction and the people sent there treated it like they were going to work on an oil rig for a few months rather than actually trying to settle and establish a new extension of Spain. The only people who got sent to the New World to stay were either Catholic missionaries or people who were fucking pissed about it because it basically meant the crown was seizing all of their property in Spain to force them to stay. The dream of the Spanish settler was to stumble into wealth and then return home to live as a noble on whatever estates their family had established.
English and French colonists came to the New World with the idea they would basically continue in what they were doing back home except without the crown or established trade guilds regulating everything they do. They planned to have children, land they passed down, et-al. There was seldom, if ever, a plan to return to Europe after a few years.
That is why there is such a difference. A better comparison to Spain's conquests in the New World would be to the British takeover of India than actual colonies.
