This Lesson's logo is a Spanish caravelle

Geography has not been kind to the Iberians, at least as far as the suitability of their soils and climate for agriculture. The land is rough and frequently arid. The central plateau is deeply cut by rivers, which, along with the surrounding mountains, tend to create many small pockets of human population which are cut off from each other. Thus, there is strong regionalism and individualism in the Iberian, characteristics which do not lead to teamwork or easy political control by a central government. The Peninsula's area is about that of the state of Texas. And yet from this relatively small region two countries launched a series of enterprises of exploration and conquest that created in the sixteenth century the largest empires the world had ever seen.