The crown created civil and religious structures to administer the vast territory. Religion played an important role in the Spanish conquest and incorporation of indigenous peoples, bringing them into the Catholic Church peacefully or by force. Spaniards saw the dense populations of indigenous peoples as an important economic resource and the territory claimed as potentially producing great wealth for individual Spaniards and the crown. These overseas territories of the Spanish Empire were under the jurisdiction of Crown of Castile until the last territory was lost in 1898. The Spanish colonization of the Americas began in 1493 on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola after the initial 1492 voyage of Genoese mariner Christopher Columbus under license from the Queen Isabella I of Castile.
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