In the century which followed the discovery of America, not only was the lead in initiative taken by Spain never lost, but she practically had no competitors in the conquest and colonization of the New World. If the lines of medieval enterprise had been followed in the opening up of new territories for economic development, it should have fallen either to Venice or to Genoa to undertake the work of exploration and exploitation of these unknown regions. But times had changed, and the Italian republics had changed with them. Under the stress of the Turkish conquests, which had led to the organization of a great military and naval power in the East, Venice could follow nothing but a policy of self-protection that admitted neither of expansion nor of adventure. Internal changes in the Italian peninsula, indicated by the overlordship of Milan, had reduced the power of Genoa, which had already been weakened by her long contest with Venice for the naval mastery of the Mediterranean. The rise of Spain was phenomenal; nothing exactly resembling it had been seen before, except in the case of those great tribal or national invasions that so often altered the face of Europe. For centuries, like Italy before the advent of Italian unity, Spain was only a geographical expression. Only fourteen years before Columbus’ first voyage, the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile had consolidated the royal power on the Iberian peninsula and made these two Spanish monarchs lords of the whole land south of the Pyrenees, except in the kingdoms of Granada in the south, of Portugal in the west, and of Navarre in the north. A steady policy of aggression and conquest soon brought about the disappearance of the small kingdom of Granada. Between 1486 and 1489 Loja, Malaga, and Baza had been taken; Granada alone held out a few years more. Ferdinand, a most astute monarch of the type of Louis XI of France and Henry VII of England, had already crushed the Portuguese faction in Castile, who had favored the alliance of their queen with the King of Portugal. His ideals were for an absolute monarchy, which, by the elimination of feudal traditions and by the accumulation of wealth, might become the predominant power in western Europe.