Why Did Spanish Soldiers Chase the New World?

Si Sheppard says Spanish soldiers chased the New World for two separate reasons: Extremadura left proud fighters with little but dirt farming, and word from across the Atlantic promised much lower risk and much higher reward than wars against the Moors or the Turks.

Spain was a proud new country that had come together in 1492 after a long struggle to unite the peninsula and consummate the Reconquistas. The soldiers had a warrior background and little to show for it. Extremadura, the province where so many of them originated, was a land of hardship: small farms, dusty terrain, and unproductive ground. A man who wanted to be more than a dirt farmer took a career of high risk, possible death, and possible great reward, the same path men have taken into armies for centuries.

Fighting the Moors or the Turks was its own bad bargain: high risk and low return, even in home waters, because the Turks could fight. A small man whose only asset was fighting skill heard that a whole new land could let him become somebody. Getting there meant crossing a vast ocean, staying self-reliant, and falling in with men just as cutthroat as he was.