Spanish Empire: sword and cross | History

This film explores how the Spanish Empire built its global domination by merging military conquest, religious conversion and imperial wealth.

At the heart of Spanish expansion was the close alliance between the crown, the Church and the conquest. Military campaigns were inseparable from missionary efforts, with conversion to Christianity becoming both a justification for empire and a tool of control. Faith and might advanced together, reshaping societies across the Americas.

Through the conquests of the Aztec and Inca empires, the documentary shows how Spanish power was established through violence, alliances and religious authority. The missionary system spread across the Americas, reorganizing indigenous life around churches, labor regimes, and colonial administration. Conversion promised salvation but imposed obedience and cultural destruction.

The film also examines the economic foundations of Spanish imperial power. Large quantities of gold and silver were extracted from the Americas alongside the exploitation of indigenous and enslaved labor. These resources fueled European economies, financed global trade, and helped integrate the Americas into an emerging global system based on extraction and inequality.

By tracing how faith, conquest and wealth worked together, the documentary reveals how Spanish colonialism shaped global capitalism, religious power and imperial governance. It shows how legacies of conquest, forced conversion, and resource extraction continue to influence social inequality, cultural identity, and economic structures in the modern world and how current global superpowers like the United States and China are adopting this model to their benefit. It also draws on the parallels between the erasure of cultural artifacts then and the “algorithmic colonization” of today.