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Reverberations

As the Christian kingdoms completed their conquest of territory on the Iberian Peninsula, they shifted their impetus elsewhere, even to the Maghreb, which is located across the Strait of Gibraltar. A Castilian Crown-sanctioned punitive expedition against Tetouan, a corsair stronghold, was launched as early as 1399–1400. The conquest of Ceuta in 1415 marked the beginning of Portuguese expansion in Africa. Thereby, it allowed Portugal to exert control over Castilian and Aragonese trade through the Strait, and it also allowed Portugal to establish a powerbase for the launching of raid expeditions in Muslim-ruled lands. Some 15th-century political writers promoted the idea of a "Gothic Monarchy", an heir to Rome, that included territory across the Strait.

The African enterprise which was undertaken during the rule of the Catholic Monarchs was nominally endorsed by papal bulls and it was also financed with donations which were used to pay the crusade tax, even if it was viewed with some suspicion by the Papacy. Conquest efforts in Africa on the part of the Catholic Monarchy by and large stalled following the death of Ferdinand II of Aragon. The model of conquest and repopulation by Christian powers in the Peninsula was however never reproduced in Northern Africa, and with the conquered territory—a fortified mark with very few fortresses scattered along an extensive coastline—merely adopting a defensive role, it allowed for Ottoman expansion in the region.

The Portuguese warred with the Ottoman Caliphate in the Mediterranean, Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia as the Portuguese conquered the Ottomans' allies: the Sultanate of Adal in East Africa, the Sultanate of Delhi in South Asia and the Sultanate of Malacca in Southeast Asia.

Christopher Columbus 's initial 1492 voyage to the Americas was predicated on the completion of the Granada War, with the Spanish monarchy only able to assent to his overseas journeys once it had completed the process of defeating the Moors. Columbus's views of the New World and the Christian convictions that shaped his actions there were influenced by historical European anti-Muslim ideas that had underpinned the Reconquista itself; he believed that by his voyaging, he would be able to reach the Grand Khan of Asia and create a coalition that could attack the Middle East from both sides and thus bring Jerusalem back under Christian rule.