"Rich Rostrom" <rrostrom.21stcentury@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:rrostrom.21stcentury-DAB0D4.17061313072008@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> What effort did the Spanish make to conquer
> and Christianize North Africa, an adjacent
> country full of extremely hostile non-
> Christians? Answer: not much.
>
> Spain fought against the Turks, but that
> was a defensive struggle - it was the
> Turks who came west, not the Spanish who
> went east.
North Africa would have been a _very_ tough nut to crack. Even in the 19C,
with a far greater military superiority, it took France decades to conquer
Algeria, and places like Libya nd the Rif were giving Spain and Italy
problems well into the _20C_.
In the 16C, Spain and ****tugal managed to occupy coastal enclaves like
Ceuta
and Algiers, but any attempt to push into a hostile interior was apt to
get
nowhere fast. Defeating the "regular" forces of the Barbary States was the
least of the job. Is anything like that even remotely likely in Britannia?
> --
> | People say "There's a Stradivarius for sale for a |
> | million," and you say "Oh, really? What's wrong |
> | with it?" - Yitzhak Perlman |
|
