Quote from: r0ach on February 20, 2017, 10:44:17 PM

Quote from: iamnotback on February 20, 2017, 11:29:06 AM

Spain's fall from a world empire to a third world country is exemplary.

Haha, Spain's fall from world empire to third world country? If Spain is a 3rd world country, what is America? An 8th world country?

Spain in the 19th century (especially by the latter half) was not experiencing the Industrial revolution and was falling way behind England (UK). And much of the population worked in menial labor like a 3rd world country. It wasn't until the 1950s that Spain started to advance again (but one can argue they really never did recover, that their corrupt governance has persisted, and it has all been a EU hot capital debt bubble that will soon implode anew).

Comparing the grandest cities of Spain (built when it was the world's greatest empire plundering the gold of the colonies) to the an inner city housing slum in the USA is not compares apples-to-apples. Find photos of rural life and squalor in Spain in the 19th century.

http://www.localhistories.org/spain.html

Quote from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Spain_(1810%E2%80%9373)#Economic_and_social_conditions

The loss of Spain's vast colonial empire greatly deprived the country of much wealth and it was soon reduced to one of Europe's poorest and least-developed nations. Over three-quarters of the population were illiterate and there was little industry except textile production in Catalonia. Although Spain possessed the iron and coal needed for industrial development, most was in the north and northeast and difficult to transport across the vast arid plain of the central Iberian Peninsula. Worsening matters were the lack of navigable rivers and a very rudimentary road network. British industrialists taught Spaniards how to extract iron ore while others studied the possibility of constructing a railroad system. Railroad pioneer George Stephenson, after conducting a survey of Spain, commented that "I have not seen enough people of the sort to fill even a single train." By the time a railroad network eventually got built, it merely radiated from Madrid outward and bypassed the major centers of natural resources.

High tariffs also dogged Spanish development, especially grain, of which imports were almost completely barred. The eastern provinces had to pay high costs for domestic cereals transported with the greatest difficulty across the peninsula while cheap Italian grain could have been easily imported from ship. Although Spain had been a major textile exporter in earlier times, the country could no longer compete with British and other producers and by the 19th century, most of its exports consisted of agricultural products. Catalonia was the only part of the country with any significant industry, but Castile remained the political and cultural center, barring major change.

Spain had only Conquistadors, religion, and banana republic culture of aristocracy. So after losing its colonies, it had nothing of value.